Online, Offline and Beyond: The Social Imaginary in a Scottish Diasporic Online Group

Abstract

This project uses the method of depth hermeneutics to examine how a group of relatively technologically unsophisticated online discussion participants innovate in the formation of a social imaginary, as defined in Thompson's (1990) explication of the use of media to facilitate social interaction. By deploying a diverse range of technologies with which they are competent, the group avoids the uncertainties of new modalities of social networking such as those represented by Second Life, MySpace and Facebook, while pursuing their goal of discursively negotiating a Scottish cultural identity both online and offline.