Paper Proposal: Digital Borders #America

For my final paper I want to look at how American nationalism exists in the postmodern space of the digital. Through examining Twitter posts and Tumblr trends, I want to see how the American nation is defined by a mass consisting of both Americans and non-Americans, and how this opposition can arise. By looking at 2 or 3 specific events (yet to be determined i.e. The Super Bowl, Osama Bin Laden's death, 2012 Presidential Debates, the Aurora shootings) I hope to view the digital sphere responding in real time to national news. Using Anderson's break down of the nation and the citizen, I want to look into the question: how does an online community draw borders within the nation or expand borders to the global? Then I hope to compare these two or three events using mainly Ahmed to examine the gaps in these representations of American nationalism and how they frame knowledge and create a digital and extra-digital response defined by distinctive affective features. Framing all of this, I will use Jameson to help me navigate such a dynamic and overwhelming space such as Twitter or Tumblr where the barrage of information will come to define my argument.

So I'm looking at how the digital is integral in guiding a move toward a fragmented national identity and definition throughout the duration and aftermath of an event.