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Sense of Belonging and Connectedness in the Online Esperanto Communities

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SENSE OF BELONGING AND CONNECTEDNESS IN THE ONLINE ESPERANTO COMMUNITIES Iliyana Parashkevova Media and Communications Studies (One-year Master) 15 Credits Spring 2018 Supervisor: Ilkin Mehrabov Page 1 of 66 Abstract The thesis is focused on researching the recent phenomena of the emerging virtual Esperanto communities. The aim is to understand how feeling of belonging and connectedness are generated online. The theoretical framework that the study follows is Sense of Community theory by McMillan and Chavis (1986). It presents 4 components that combined together create a strong bond within a community – membership, influence, shared emotional value, and reinforcement of needs, later revised to spirit, trust, art and trade respectively. This particular theory helped significantly structure the way the analysis was carried out. The main results from the qualitative and quantitative data are that the sense of connectedness the respondents demonstrated to the Esperanto communities was strong. The interview participants have been members for more than 10 years, and have indicated they believed they shared similar values and needs with their co-members, but most strong ones with the groups they shared other interests except Esperanto. The Internet, as all interview participants confirmed, has played a huge role for the development of the Esperanto language and culture and currently connects thousands of Esperantists worldwide and provides them with a space to be producers of their media, Esperanto. Furthermore, some statements demonstrated that not speaking the language results in excluding people from the group, excluding also new members who used auxiliary languages (e.g. English or German) along with Esperanto, to help their communication at Esperanto gatherings. Finally, there were also found signs of segregation among an older generation of Esperantists, who made division between Esperanto speakers and non-speakers and between the different Esperanto institutions. Keywords: Esperanto, Esperantist, Esperanto communities, sense of belonging, sense of community, TEJO, UEA. Words: 17.063 Page 2 of 66 Contents 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Context .................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Personal Motivation ................................................................................................................ 8 2. Literature and Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................... 8 2.1 The First Esperanto Communities ......................................................................................... 10 2.2 The Esperanto Associations in the Past ................................................................................ 10 2.3 Sense of Belonging and Connectedness in a Community ..................................................... 11 2.4 Online Communities ............................................................................................................. 12 2.5 Classification of Community Members (fans) ....................................................................... 14 2.6 Sense of Community theory ................................................................................................. 17 2.7 Social Identity Theory ........................................................................................................... 19 2.8 Cultural Capital ...................................................................................................................... 21 3. Data and methodology ................................................................................................................. 23 3.1 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 23 3.2 Interviews and data sets ....................................................................................................... 24 3.3 Extract from survey data ....................................................................................................... 26 3.4 Digital ethnography .............................................................................................................. 27 3.5 Ethical Consideration ............................................................................................................ 27 3.6 Limitations of the Study ........................................................................................................ 29 4. Findings and Analysis .................................................................................................................... 30 4.1 Esperanto Facebook group and interviews ........................................................................... 30 4.1.1 The Internet as a tool for community creation and development ............................... 34 4.2 Spirit & Membership ............................................................................................................. 36 4.2.1 Boundaries and Exclusiveness – Us vs. Them ............................................................... 38 4.3 Integration and fulfilment of needs ...................................................................................... 42 4.4 Influence ............................................................................................................................... 44 4.5 Trade & Reinforcement of Needs ......................................................................................... 45 4.6 The collective heritage .......................................................................................................... 47 4.7 The continuum of the Esperanto fandom ............................................................................. 48 5. Concluding discussion ................................................................................................................... 53 5.1 Research implications and need for further investigations .................................................. 55 References ............................................................................................................................................ 58 Page 3 of 66 1. Introduction The focus of this thesis is to understand if Esperantists demonstrate any sense of belonging and connectedness in the Facebook group Esperanto in which they form part of, and if yes - how is it generated and what is the role of the internet for the existence of these communities? The Esperanto communities and language have grown significantly for the past 5 years with the rise of the Internet (Salisbury, 2017), where all kinds of people are given the chance to participate in Esperanto communities online. A big number of global and local gatherings and congresses are being organized every year and it becomes easier than ever to find and join a local community nearby if one desires to learn the language or simply belong to ‘something exclusive’, as Esperantists describe their communities. The little that is known today regarding the Esperanto communities makes them interesting to research from a sociological and media studies perspective for how a community is being virtually born and developed and Esperanto culture re-created an revived with the help of the Internet. This makes this media audience part of the consumer culture which uses the Internet to help its growth. There are two very important organizations for the Esperantists - the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) and the World Youth Esperanto Organisation (TEJO), which are also the oldest ones. Soon after its establishment, TEJO becomes the youth organization of UEA. Both organizations include smaller sub-communities, which are present both online and offline, as well as some independent local associations. These two organizations hold the biggest Esperanto congresses ever since their establishment, in 1908 and 1938 respectively. TEJO’s distinctiveness lies in its free lodging service exclusive to Esperantists, called Pasporta Servo, or PS. This service allows Esperantists to travel worldwide for free and be hosted by other Esperantists. The only condition is to speak well Esperanto. The purpose of this thesis is to be the first study on sense of belonging within the Esperanto online communities. Furthermore, the role of the Internet in relation to the development of the Esperanto culture and identity is also investigated with the help of 3 interviewees. Finally, it should be also mentioned that Esperanto is one of the very few languages created for peace and it is the most successful artificially constructed language to learn. It was argued that studying Esperanto does not bring the same reward as studying a language valued on the market. Therefore, examining people who learn such artificial languages can contribute immensely on what we already know about community behaviour and motivation. Page 4 of 66 1.1 Context Esperanto is an artificially constructed language developed by the Polish-Jewish doctor Ludwig L. Zamenhof in 1887. Its purpose was to work as an auxiliary language across countries and to bring peace and comprehension. The language after its creation in 19th century started to develop rapidly – many communities formed, and they started learning and disseminating the language all around the world. However, around the Second
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