A digital territory to be appropriated: the state and the nationalization of cyberspace

Next to land, water, air and space, cyberspace is the complex socio-technical setting often called the ‘fifth domain’. Nationalism has taken over the organization of the first four domains, in the form of constructing national states, national territorial waters and national airspace. The basic proposition of this article is that the ideology of nationalism has also infiltrated the fifth domain – cyberspace – in two ways. First, through state-led cyber-nationalism via official government websites that present ‘national’ achievements and propagate the official state positions on disputes about territory, symbols or history. Second, through individual communities who use the internet to sustain a sense of national belonging and/or to promote and disseminate their nationalist ideals. Both ways are important in an online national identity (re)production framework that, in a fluid, global, modern world, functions supportively towards the traditional national identity (re)production mechanisms. This article aims to examine the patterns of the nationalization of cyberspace through an analysis of state-led institutions and government websites that aim to enhance national identity and the sense of national belonging in a globalized world, as well as to propagate official state positions. It will focus on Greek, Dutch, US and Israeli websites. The term ‘nationalization’ in this context denotes the ideological charging of the cyber-footprint of the nation: how the internet produces and re-produces the nation, how the users partake in the national community by way of ‘consuming’ the digitalized national ideology, and the way cyber-nationalism defines people’s sense of belonging.