Showerpress

The term often appears in posts regarding electronic rights defending the ‘electronic frontier’.

Apart from the issues of digital rights, the concept of the netizen also demands discussion of how national identity functions  online.  ‘Nations’ here can mean web communities, often under a single domain.  Let’s look at the Reddit community as an example.

What is reddit?

Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web.
Users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what’s good () and what’s junk ().
Links that receive community approval bubble up towards #1, so the front page is constantly in motion and (hopefully) filled with fresh, interesting links.

The website was created with the above description in mind, summed up by the title: “What’s new online!” But it’s not just a catchy name, a tool for accessing new information like Google.  Reddit can be described as a nation state because it has laws and law enforcement, referred to as rediquette; culture, demonstrated through memes, jokes and a dlaiect which is specific to the community; disparate communities within the reddit umbrella, i e. subreddits; and is both influenced and influences it’s neighboring ‘nations’.  More importantly though, its members frequently discuss what it means to be a redditor, and the various strengths and weaknesses of the community.

The most obvious difference between, say, Reddit and France is that you can’t live in Reddit.  Can you?  I think the creation and development of internet usernames creates a new sort of citizen.  When we speak of netizenship, who is it we refer to, the person behind the computer or the person online?