Networked Cosmopolitans: Making connections in a world of politics

Abstract

It has become a commonplace that the internet has created a global village. Yet in recent years, democracies have seen increased nationalism, populism, division, and a desire to protect and close borders to the outside world. How do we reconcile these trends with understandings of the internet as a cosmopolitan space? This dissertation takes an empirical approach to online communication, using a combination of Big Data gathered from Twitter and qualitative interviews with users in the Scandinavian region. This article-based dissertation is composed of four articles that use a combination of network analysis, quantitative content analysis, and qualitative thematic analysis, to understand the dynamics of cosmopolitan communication on digital, networked platforms. The findings demonstrate that cosmopolitan communication cannot be separated from national citizenship, and in fact is widely practiced by those with anti-cosmopolitan tendencies. Engagement with the Other have become a normal part of modern political engagement. The dissertation proposes an ideologically neutral “networked cosmopolitanism” as a model for political engagement in global, digital spaces.