The Invisible People
An exploration into the imagined community and popular culture.
Our lives seem to revolve around popular culture. Our deep engagement allows it to influence nearly every aspect of our lives, from what we wear to what we eat. Popular culture refers to the culture that we make as the people, through our engagement in media texts. Internet growth has become one of the biggest wonders of the twenty-first century, introducing hugely successful media platforms that pop culture can be created on. Due to this the socially constructed idea of what a ‘community' is has drastically shifted, as now communities can form amongst strangers who will never even know another's face, but still manage to form what we now know as horizontal comradeship. But, how can you have a community without any physical contact?
In our lectures this week, we discussed the theory of imagined communities which emerged as a result of an increase in globalisation. This theory was first developed by Benedict Anderson and published in his 1983 book, Imagined Communities, which acts as a concept used to analyse nationalism. Imagined communities focuses around the idea that a community is imagined. By the term ‘imagined’ it doesn’t mean that it is not real but more so the fact that the people in the community will never know most of the other members, yet in their minds they live in communion.
As of 2021, YouTube has 1.86 million users worldwide, creating one of the largest online imagined communities . I actively support an American youtuber and social media influencer named Eva Gutowski. Her YouTube videos show different aspects of her life, and she has been on the platform for years so as a viewer I have been able to see her go through many stages of her life. Eva shared personal information about her life including a video about her experiences with sexual assault. This video alone created a community in the comment section with people coming together to talk about their own experiences and supporting Eva, despite us all being mere strangers to one another. In relation to Anderson’s theory, it is only an imagined community, as I am one of hundreds of thousands that watch her content, but I will most likely never meet many of her other followers or Eva herself. Through her content we have been able to build a collective image of her and form a community where we are able to interact using comments, likes and shares, exchanging opinions and observations with each other.
Due to globalisation we have changed the way that community is perceived, as it used to be defined as, “ a spatially compact set of people with a high frequency of interaction, interconnections, and a sense of solidarity”. Now we are able to achieve these outcomes without ever meeting each other in person, and solidarity and collectivism is still achieved. Youtube has become a breeding group for popular culture to emerge, and we are able to form communities with our favourite YouTubers without ever having to meet. We all have the power to now start our own online communities by building a following and posting content that appeals to a certain niche of people. Globalisation has allowed these imagined communities to not feel so imagined anymore, as we are all drawn to the popular culture generated on these platforms and redefining what it means to be part of a community.