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In:Social Media and Society: Integrating the digital with the social in digital discourse
Edited by Majid KhosraviNik
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 100] 2023
► pp. 83–106

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Towards an ethnographic approach to social media discourses

Exploring ethnic nationalism and the Greek ‘right’ to the name ‘Macedonia’

 | Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
 | University of Malta
Published online: 14 April 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.100.05bou
Abstract
This chapter intends to show how the arena of political debate has relocated from Parliament to Facebook in contemporary Greece and explore the parameters and impact of such relocation in discourses of contemporary political polemics. It explores the way social media spaces combine bottom-up and top-down discourses and their repercussions for discourses of national identity. We assume that social media dominate current politics not only as a source of official announcements but, quite contrarily, that platforms such as Facebook enable communication between civilians and politicians and shape a new public sphere with a new discursive dynamic. In line with studies on the Self and the Other in digital discourses of identity (e.g., KhosraviNik and Sarkhoh 2018), the chapter particularly focuses on the dispute over the name ‘Macedonia’ in Greek digital discourses. The chapter considers the research on the impact of social media on current politics and proposes an ethnographic approach for the analysis of social media discourse by integrating traditions in discourse studies, anthropology, and digital ethnography (Androutsopoulos 2008; Horst and Miller 2012; Hine 2015; KhosraviNik and Unger 2016).
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Ethnic nationalism and Greek national identity (re)constructions
  • Synthesising multi-sited digital ethnography and critical discourse studies
  • The discourse-historical approach and argumentation
  • Ethnography of users and selection: Provisional ethnographic findings
  • Communicating Greek patriotism on Facebook: Top-down discourses
  • Facebook as a terrain of digital activism and political debate: Bottom-up discourses
  • Concluding remarks: Ethnic Nationalism vs Patriotism
  • Notes
  • References
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