Group Three.

The concept of collective meaning-making that we discussed in relation to Bingchun Meng's article, "From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as Alternative Political Discourse on the Chinese Internet," holds that communication on the Internet is a tool with which we endeavor to construct ourselves. The lexicon of "E Gao" was created deliberately, in order to subvert existing Chinese cultural norms and to construct a collective identity in opposition to those norms.

Yet could this sort of subversion be happening involuntarily, every day, throughout the world? This map suggests it just might. Created by Eric Fischer, the map visualizes the languages of the "twitterverse;" that is, those languages most frequently used on the microblogging site Twitter. Lit up like one of those composite satellite images of the world at night, this map reveals the density and location of tweets appearing on the site, color-coded by language. In many ways, the frontiers among languages mirror the borders of nation-states.

However, things get interesting when the borders don't match up. As we can see in the close-up above, some national borders seem to disappear entirely—Belgians, for example, speak French in the south and Dutch in the north. The Swiss, likewise, appear to tweet mostly in German, despite their four official languages. Notable outcroppings of Italian appear in southern and central France, and Catalonian pride is apparent in Spain's far northeast.

What do these linguistic communities on Twitter mean for the real world? If, as Meng's article suggests, communication on the Internet is about collective meaning-making, then there are collective identities arising virtually that don't necessarily jive with geographically delineated borders. This can have real-world consequences—political, economic and social. Belgium, for instance, has struggled to form a government for months. Expect more on this idea in our group presentation next Tuesday!

Source: Strange Maps