‘Far isn’t far’

Shetland on the internet

Bibliographic Data

ID18948825
AuthorsRupert Ashmore (0000-0003-0582-5856, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume28
Issue3
Pages271-282
Publication date2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1472-586X • E-ISSN: 1472-5878
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1472586x.2013.829995
OpenAlexW2014183065
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

This paper examines various websites based in the Shetland Islands, on Britain’s northern periphery. These sites focus on local life and culture and, by enabling interactive contribution, provide an extension of the social networks existing in the physical locations of the Islands. So rather than emphasising the separation of the virtual and physical realms, they enable a hybrid space, in which interactions within the virtual space enhance and accentuate the appreciation of physical locations within Shetland, and the social relationships based there. Therefore they focus users’ attention on the Islands as a specific and distinctive community. However, they are also embedded within the wider virtual landscape of the internet. Thus, through the use of these sites, perceptions of the local and peripheral continually oscillate with ideas of the globally connected. They enable users to perceive Shetland as a place that exists at many points on an axis of peripherality and connectedness. Ultimately, they enable a continuation, but also complication of an historical process, in which communal narratives of cultural identity and collective memory have been continually informed and reformed by the dialogue between Shetland communities and the wider world through the structures of mass communication

Geography · Media studies · Shetland · Sociology · The Internet · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · History · Philippine History and Culture · Scottish History and National Identity

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