SENSE OF BELONGING AND CONNECTEDNESS IN THE ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Iliyana Parashkevova Media and Communications Studies (One-year Master) 15 Credits Spring 2018 Supervisor: Ilkin Mehrabov

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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 , 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

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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 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

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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 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 , or PS. This service allows Esperantists to 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 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.

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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 World War and after Nazi’s rise, Esperanto communities’ development is impaired by oppression from Nazi regime as they perceived the movement as a threat due to its Jewish roots. The language was then officially banned in Germany from 1936 until 1956, followed by a ban in the , while Esperantists were targeted and executed by the Nazis (Harlow, 1993). Mentions of Esperanto are also found in Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’, where he defines it as the language of the Jewish conspiracy (1925).

What we observe recently is the significant rise and revival of the language with the help of the Internet, where Esperanto enthusiasts all around the world gather and use the Internet as a tool to create countless online Esperanto communities and culture as never observed before. The community members are presented in this paper as media audiences, who create culture virtually of a language that had almost none 70 years ago. The Esperanto media audiences use now Internet as a virtual place to gather and share their Esperanto passion, by offering and spreading hundreds of online sources where one can study the language and being able to spread quickly information about upcoming real- life events and meetings. I have also described the Esperanto community as fans, for how similar this media audience is to fans’ or fanatic behaviour – similar for how much time members spend consuming and sharing about Esperanto, for how they behave in group, the linguistic code they use incomprehensible for outsiders, the boundaries they create, and for how defensive members are about their language and culture. What makes this audience interesting for media studies to investigate is how this media audience revives a forgotten language with the help of a medium, the Internet, creating stronger than ever culture by uniting hundreds of speakers worldwide. I chose specifically Facebook as the focus of the study as it is the most popular social network for members to connect and the fastest way to spread information in between, and in that sense this specific group it represents members in their natural habitat for having more than 22.000 members and on average 15 publications a day. Publications are made only in Esperanto and the content includes heavily music, art and literature in Esperanto, political and social discussions, information and news translated in Esperanto as one of the biggest categories. This FB group Esperanto is where the Esperanto culture is created and spread as much as possible.

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A very interesting aspect of being a part of the Esperanto community is Pasporta Servo, established in the 70s and owned by TEJO. Pasporta Servo is a portal for free lodging for Esperanto speakers all around the world, similar to Couchsurfing. It is a non-profit organization with the idea of networking and removing cultural barriers exclusive for Esperantists. The distinctiveness part that makes this service interesting to investigate within the community is its high level of hospitality. The purpose is to connect Esperantists for language exchange. The only requirement to participate is to speak Esperanto with the hosts on a comprehensible level, and to buy a small booklet published by TEJO (the World Esperanto Youth Organization) that contains all addresses of Esperanto hosts around the world.

The groupings of Esperanto are sometimes referred to as either the or the Esperanto communities (Forster, 1982). However, while communities have usually a goal to learn a skill (or a language) on a smaller scale achieved within a community, a movement is characterized by trying to achieve this same goal while mobilizing a larger scale of people to bring a desired social impact.

Fig. 1. Movement vs. Community Source: Atkin (2012)

Atkin (2012) depicts the difference between these two definitions by pointing that a benefit for community members is the generation of sense of belonging in comparison to power for the members of movements. Relating these concepts to the literature review, the concept of movement is present much more often in writings of Esperanto in the past than it is now. As a reference, Forster describes the Esperantists as a movement not only in the presented researches of his book, but also in the title of the book itself The Esperanto movement (1982). Janton (1993) on the other hand uses instead the

Page 6 of 66 concept of communities and belonging. This is also highlighted as well in the most recent studies by Burghelea (2016) and Nielsen (2017a, 2017b), where light is brought to hospitality and belonging. Thus, when referring to movement in this thesis, I am referring to the initial Esperanto groupings in the last century, and to the groupings today as communities, which was suggested by the most recent academic sources.

To sum up, the purpose of this study was to examine if there was any sense of belonging in the Esperanto communities, as displayed by a Facebook group, the interview participants, and questionnaire respondents, how it is generated and represented.

As such, the main questions guiding the study are the following:

1. Is there any demonstrated bond and connectedness by members of the Facebook group Esperanto? If yes, how is it expressed? 2. What is the role of the Internet in developing the Esperanto language, culture and bond between members in the Facebook group Esperanto?

Definition of terms

- Esperantist – A person who speaks Esperanto and uses it actively for any purpose.

- Esperanto communities/groupings – In this thesis, the term Esperanto community is used to name Esperanto speakers, forming part of a community, whose idea and effort is to spread the Esperanto language neutrally worldwide while striving for neutrality and usage along with other languages, instead of its domination over them.

- Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo (TEJO) – World Esperanto Youth Organization, established in 1938.

- Pasporta Servo (PS) – Free lodging network for Esperantists worldwide. In exchange, guests are supposed to speak Esperanto with their hosts. Established in 1966.

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- Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA) – Universal Esperanto Organization – the oldest and biggest Esperanto association, established in 1908.

- Universala Kongreso (UK) – International Esperanto Congress.

1.2 Personal Motivation

My personal drive is that I am very passionate about languages, and have been part of several virtual polyglot communities for a while, some of which with more than 32.000 members1. I noticed that recently polyglots look more often for Esperanto speakers on these polyglot groups, and form discussions about the language and how useful it is to study an artificially created language.

Researching a bit Esperanto’s development throughout the years since its creation made me see it as a very interesting phenomena to look into from media studies perspective, taking into consideration that 80 years ago during WWII and periods it was a banned persecuted language. But with the rise of the internet, more people are becoming interested in learning Esperanto and becoming part of the communities. Therefore, I decided to devote this thesis and time to the Esperanto communities, to understand if there is any existing sense of belonging as demonstrated by members on the Facebook group Esperanto and as explained by interviewees.

2. Literature and Theoretical Framework

The literature in the field has been generally focused on Esperanto as a language from a linguistic point of view, and less on the communities from the perspective of sociology and media studies. The review begins with a history of the rise of Esperanto communities in the 20th century to provide the reader with insight on the background of these groups, how they emerged and how they were managed a century ago.

The majority of studies are significantly old, although there are scholars such as Burghelea (2016), who have recently researched cosmopolitanism and hospitality in Esperanto communities, presenting short but interesting findings about the culture in these communities. In addition, the Danish scholar

1 Polyglot group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/?fb_dtsg_ag=AdxshTELQcEDR_HUUSLur7DOx1Tcti8fd eqfrL9hbvSMYA%3AAdwI0rHBLgsTf3SyZsI3eyLMBzy0FaMjnGxhqa2CoJygmQ (accessed: 04/09/18)

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Svend Nielsen (2017b), presents density of Esperanto speakers by variables such as location, contribution to science, culture and health, linguistic diversity, GDP, and others, which in a sense draws a demographic profile of the modern Esperantists.

One of the most prominent books on Esperanto, The Esperanto movement (Forster, 1982), also contributes to the review, as it is the first and one of the very few books on Esperanto with a sociological reference. Pierre Janton later introduces Language, Literature and Community (1993) that has a deeper research not only on Esperanto as a language, but also on the development of the Esperanto communities in the 1990’s. Another scholar used for reference is Rasic (1994), a Croatian sociolinguist, whose work is extremely valuable for this field. Rasic publishes a book with ten studies on different groups focused on countries such as Bulgaria, Finland and German Democratic Republic, and researching Esperanto speakers for a period of more than sixty years. His purpose is to understand these groups’ usage of the language, look for patterns and create a demographic profile of Esperanto members in terms of multilingualism and education.

The presented sources so far demonstrate the limited research in this field, and the need for new studies on the sense of belonging and connectedness of the Esperanto communities that this paper is focused on. The Esperanto communities are atypical and newly revived, which itself might be the reason for the lack of thorough and present investigations.

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2.1 The First Esperanto Communities

As extracted from Forster (1982), the earliest Esperanto local club was established in 1888, supposedly in Nuremberg, Germany. A couple of years since its establishment, the number of associations founded around Europe, Asia, USA and America increases significantly.

In his book, Forster (1982) illustrates the growth of Esperanto groups between 1912 and 1926 as well as after WWII, showing how the communities develop rapidly around WWI. The period after WWI is considered a golden age for the language (Robert, 2016). The heaviest presence of Esperanto groups for Europe is documented in Germany and the Slavic countries, and outside Europe in Japan. The communities decrease significantly around and after WWII with the coming pressure from the Nazis and Stalin, who believe that the language supports Jewish domination (1925).

At present, the members of all Esperanto communities are impossible to count. A rough estimation has been made in 1987, where they were counted to be around 120.000 (Janton, 1993). In 2017, the Danish scholar Svend Nielsen makes an approximate calculation of 63.000 speakers worldwide based on a total of online profiles on the most popular Esperanto websites such as lernu.net, UEA, Pasporta Servo, .directory, Edukado, as well as published official data on membership from organizations (Nielsen, 2017a). Still, Nielsen does not mention if the profiles are active or in total, as that would certainly influence the number.

2.2 The Esperanto Associations in the Past

There are many specialized Esperanto associations established in the period after 1945 worldwide (Janton, 1993), where created by and for Esperanto enthusiasts, members desired to have a network within their professional field consisting of Esperanto speakers. Some of the biggest associations in the past are intended for Esperanto enthusiasts of music, law, medicine, philology, philosophy, journalism, economics, European affairs, cycling, and a few of the mentioned associations contribute significantly to the Esperanto communities, as they do research and publish on science and technology, despite their limited resources (ibid). Taking a note of the diverse associations that Esperantists worked on creating in the past says a lot about the personal values and culture members possesses.

The literature review does not reveal any collective representation such as special rituals, ceremonies, greetings or holidays practiced by the communities in the past and today. Today, there are two dates considered as Esperanto day, for which exist discussions: the first date is Dec 15th, the birth date of

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Zamenhof and most often celebrated as the Esperanto day, and the second date is July 26th, when the first Esperanto book Dr. Esperanto Lingvo Internacia (Eng: International language) was published for the first time (People's world, 2015) And finally, there is also the distinguishing Esperanto flag with its particular green colour.

Fig. 2. The Esperanto flag, first accepted in 1905, where the colors are said to stand for hope (green color) of the 5 continents (5-pointed star) in common understanding and peace (Martins, 2017).

2.3 Sense of Belonging and Connectedness in a Community

Communities as ‘the building blocks of a society’ have always played an essential role in our lives (Budiman, 2008). The earliest studies related to communities date back to 1880. Ferdinand Tönnies, a German philosopher and sociologist, best known for his contribution to the fields of philosophy and sociology, supports with his researches for the distinctions between the two kinds of social ties and groups (1887) - Communities defined as Gemeinschaft, and societies defined as Gesellschaft. Communities, according to Tönnies represent the structure of one’s social life that produces social relationships.

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Any kind of social co-existence that makes a person feel familiar, comfortable and exclusives is to be understood as belonging to a particular community (Tönnies, 1887). Societies on the other hand, or Gesellschaft, are the artificially constructed entities, which consist of individuals living close to each other but independent of one another (ibid). Such a sense of connectedness (or community) is also present in Maslow’s hierarchy under the third Love and belonging component (1943). This third level of the hierarchy represents friendship, trust, acceptance, affiliating and being part of a group as an essential human need to feel that one belongs (ibid).

Self – actualization

Esteem

Love and belonging

Safety needs

Physiological needs

Fig. 3. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Communities are thus the more personal and intimate groupings who predispose members to contribute and strive towards a common goal and values of the particular grouping (Tönnies, 1887). Being a member with a strong community identity means that the individual would unconsciously see himself as a servant to the particular community, which creates fulfilment (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). Budiman (2008) add that communities are not necessarily based in a geographical proximity, as with the rise of Internet and technologies this is not a necessity. Wherever members are located, their bond stays strong, as they know they are working on the same task (ibid).

2.4 Online Communities

“Virtual communities are the social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. (Rheingold, 1993)”

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Virtual communities are communities existing in the cyberspace and supported by computer-based IT, whose focus is communication and interaction driven by members (Yap & Bock, 2005, as ref. in Äkkinen, 2005). The very first virtual communities are tracked back in the beginning of the 90’s, with the rise of video games and had initially the idea to provide gamers with a place for sharing and distribution of different material, not necessarily related to games, which later contributes to the development of more communities (Preece J. M.-K., 2003). In their early rise, communities were perceived as exotic due to the still limited usage of the Internet (ibid). However, the feeling and perception of differentiation between virtual and face-to-face communities reduces with the heavier Internet usage in the end of the 90s (Rainie and Packel 2001, as ref. in Preece 2003) and the rapid development of technologies and Internet (Budiman 2008).

Similar to being a member in real-life communities, membership in virtual communities is also characterized by a strong need for sense of belonging and identity (Wellman, 1999). One of the earliest scholars to notice and study the early development of friendships, sense of belonging, trust and empathy among virtual communities that I managed to find, is Rheingold, who published the book “The Virtual Community” in 1993, based on his experience with The Well, one of the oldest virtual communities (Wingfield, 2012). In his book, Rheingold speaks of virtual communities not only as a virtual space for people to meet, but for also their function as a tool:

“Some people come to the WELL only for the community, some come only for the hard-core information, and some want both.”

Rheingold then compares virtual communities to real-life ones by defining the latter as having the strong need for a sense of space, where gatherings can happen compared to virtual communities that do not need such a sense of place, but instead need imagination (Rheingold, 1993). Later, in 1996, Hagel and Armstrong write “The real value of on-line communities”, with focus on how businesses can make profit on virtual communities. There the authors propose 4 different kinds of communities that meet consumer needs – communities of transaction, communities of interest, communities of fantasy and lastly, communities of relationships (Hagel & Armstrong, 1996). They further point out that the value of such virtual communities is in the intense loyalty these communities generate in their participants. They also highlight that all communities are characterized by interaction of members, as different as the communities might be from each other (ibid). In a later study, Wasko and Faraj conclude that “the most successful communities act out of community interest rather than self-

Page 13 of 66 interest”, simply because members believe this is the right thing to do (Wasko & Faraj, 2000). Another research by Typaldos from the same year proposes 12 elements from which online communities consist in a hierarchical order, very similar to the elements that Sense of community theory suggests for real-life communities (see fig. 4):

Fig. 4. Elements of virtual communities. Source: Typaldos, C. (2002) as ref. in Äkkinen (2005)

The table above, from my perspective, demonstrates more similarities to offline communities than differences – we all need a purpose, sense of belonging and identification with a community. Making such a distinction between offline and online communities is much more difficult today, and just as Lenard adds, “our physical and virtual life are blended into one” more than they have ever been (2015).

2.5 Classification of Community Members (fans)

A big part of the studies on media audiences are focused on researching of fans as part of the consumer culture (Sullivan, 2013). It can be argued that the Esperanto communities can be understood as a mix between communities of interest, relationships and fantasy, considering Armstrong and Hagel’s classification of communities (1996), where fans gather around a particular medium – the Internet, to cultivate their love towards the Esperanto language and culture. How communities develop with the help of the Internet makes them interesting for media studies.

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The origin of ‘fan’ is said to be an abbreviation for fanatic, originating from the Latin fanaticus, and had back in time the meaning of someone with ‘obsessive interest and enthusiasm for a particular activity2’. The word ‘fan’ nowadays speaks more to a lesser degree of involvement of a fan, which which varies from low to high intensity (Thorne & Bruner, 2006).

Collectively fans constitute a particular media’s fandom or a subculture, where close feelings about a given media connect them, and one could often hear the usage of the same subject-specific jargon or linguistic code within this fandom (Fiske, 1992). This code could be expressed in the way they talk, greet each other, or dress. Fiske proposes that being a part of a fandom establishes not only self- identity, but it additionally could transform the fan’s participation into a political engagement and a form of resistance and emancipation from traditional authority (Sullivan, 2013; p.196).

As Sullivan mentions, fans are intriguing to research as they spend extraordinary amount of time and energy consuming one particular media and have their activities built around this particular media to fill out any gaps they might have, find out details and collect more information, which often means repetitive reading, searching, watching and looking (2013).

Along with this, Thorne and Bruner (2006) introduce a set of characteristics of fans:

1. Internal involvement 2. External involvement 3. The desire to acquire objects related to that particular media 4. Desire for social interaction with like-minded people.

The internal involvement relates to how fans focus their time and energy on the particular media, without being bothered if friends and family share their enthusiasm and understand them. The external involvement relates to the wish to engage more, maybe by attending group or community meetings or events. The desire to acquire objects becomes stronger after the internal and external involvement, and fans start consuming products related to that specific subculture in order to express their personalities (ibid, p. 54). Finally, the heavier involvement makes fans start interacting with each other, as scholars conclude (Thorne & Bruner, 2006).

2 Origin of word “fanaticus”. Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fanatic (accessed 15/08/18)

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Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998) are some of the first scholars to recognize that there are different levels of excitement and involvement among fans, from which the scholars develop the so-called continuum of fandom (see fig.5). The continuum illustrates on one end the consumer, in the beginning of his excitement about a particular culture, to producer on the other end. The producer here might be anyone who decides to make something more out of their passion for particular media, but naturally, producers always start their journey by first being consumers.

Fig. 5. Continuum of Fandom Source: Stephanie Plumeri, as ref. in Sullivan (2013)

The more fans’ enthusiasm about a given media text, TV show or music group grow, the more they desire to do something more with their passion than simply consuming it (Thorne & Bruner, 2006). As they move from consumers to enthusiasts, fans start interacting with each other, or reach the 4th characteristics of fans according to Thorne and Bruner - the desire to interact with like-minded people. They begin connecting with other fans with whom to share their interests and enthusiasm, discuss with over parts of that media, criticize together, engage in writing magazines or articles, and most importantly they start integrating elements of that media into their own lives (Sullivan, 2013).

Distinguishing between consumers and enthusiast might be challenging in virtual communities. If the consumers are the new users, who simply read and do not interact, then noticing them and distinguishing them would be difficult. Preece et al. (2004) are one of the first scholars to research lurkers, defining them as “the member who has does not post anything in the online community he belongs to, but just reads what the others write about” (ibid). Such lurkers might be initially the consumers, who start reading in order to collect more information about the group they have recently joined before initiating interaction with other members. Preece et al. also explain that this behaviour

Page 16 of 66 might be motivated from the fact that consumers or lurkers might already receive the information they need, so there is no need for further interaction at this point. To sum up, fandom can take many forms, depending on where a fan is standing within this continuum. The continuum can be understood as a map that allows movement – from consumers to fans and producers, when their interest is increasing, and from producers to fans and enthusiast, when their interest in particular media is decreasing.

Connection for such fandom nowadays happens most often on the social media due to the ease of access – in different forums, websites or virtual groups and communities (Budiman, 2008), but also in real life local and global meetings and gatherings, some of which themed according to the particular media (Sullivan, 2013). Social media community building demonstrates a positive level of interaction between students. More specifically learning communities report a higher engagement in class and better grades among students who use Facebook groups to study and keep up with other students (Felicitas M. Brecha, 2017). However, as Shareefah (2017) points out, Facebook has also several weaknesses concerning its possible censorship by governments, as well as other Internet regulations through which social media users could be constrained, such as user removal of groups and blocking. Facebook also has the right to remove content if the content has any offensive, religious or sexual tone (ibid).

2.6 Sense of Community theory

Other central studies on communities that need to be mentioned are by McMillan and Chavis. The scholars develop a definition that grasps the concept of belonging to a community as the core of their Sense of community theory originating from 1986. Sense of community is defined as the feeling of belonging and knowledge that one’s presence in the community is of importance (McMillan, 1986).

Initially, in 1986, the scholars present 4 principles that constitute sense of community and belonging: Membership, Influence, Reinforcement of Needs, and Shared Emotional Connection. Later, in 1996, McMillan develops the theory further by extending the principles and re-arranging the names of the 4 initial components to Spirit, Trust, Trade and Art respectively. As described by him, ‘Sense of community is the spirit of belonging together, a feeling that there is an authority structure that can be trusted, an awareness that trade, mutual benefit come from being together, and a spirit that comes from shared experiences that are preserved as art’ (McMillan, 1996, p. 315). The four concepts could be found briefly described in the graph below (fig.6). It is important to mention that all these 5 attributes need to work together to define who is part of the community and who is not (McMillan &

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Chavis, 1986). The sense of belonging and sense of communities are for that reason the involvement and experience of an individual within a community, his perception of similarity with the rest of the members and willingness to contribute to the economy of that community, knowing one’s place and expecting that one’s needs will be met (Sarason, 1974, as ref. in Barbieri, 2014). All these aspects combined together create the desire to stay in the community, or the strong sense of community.

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Fig. 6. Sense of Community components Source: McMillan and Chavis (1986)

2.7 Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory is another theoretical framework as an addition to Sense of Community Theory, which is looking at ways to understand and explain intergroup behaviour. It is first introduced by Tajfel and Turner in 1979, and as the theory reads, a person’s perception of himself (that is, his social identity) depends in a big extent on the groups one forms part of (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Tajfel and

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Turner argue that social identity is the individual’s self-image, derived from the social categories with which one identifies himself. This is to say that a group membership affects one’s behaviour, as the social identity we expose to the world differs from one community to another, due to the different circle of people in each group (ibid).

Predominantly, members try to create a positive self-image of themselves within a particular group and compare the group with other social groups so as to ensure its distinctiveness (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). If the community is perceived as salient and exclusive, the result is usually that members are motivated to stay and contribute to that community, in order to protect the social status of the community or group (McKinley, 2014). This would consequently make them act as ambassadors for the positive image and perception of the community (ibid).

Adding on Sense of Community Theory, Tajfel points out that members’ stimulus to contribute is not always necessarily as an expectation for monetary reward later on as a result of their membership. Participation is also often influenced by the social and/or cultural capital that each one of us possesses.

In an article from 1985, Bourdieu represents the social world as a multi-dimensional social space (or field), where agents are distributed and defined according to their position in this social space in accordance with the volume and composition of their capital (The social space and the genesis of groups, 1985). Knowledge of where one is situated within this social space speaks of his condition and position, however it also helps individuals create a sense of one’s place (ibid). Furthermore, Bourdieu argues that gathering of different agents in groups or movements is more probable to happen if they are in close relation to the social space of one another, but can also happen if other ideas unite them, e.g. national identity or moral views (ibid, p. 726). Still, the latter are more likely to split due to their differences in the social space, as Bourdieu explains. The concept of distinction, also called symbolic capital, is then presented as one’s position in the social space in relation to other groups seen through categories of perception of an agent (ibid, p. 730). There is to an extent a pursuit of distinction, which, as Bourdieu argues, might be expressed in the way one speaks, ultimately creating boundaries and separations. Such a distinction later attracts similar distinctions, or as Bourdieu states: “symbolic capital goes to symbolic capital.” Another distinguishable work of his book Distinction (1987) was also used for reference. There he speaks of the social hierarchy of consumerism, also called class, focusing his research on taste and preferences based on results from a survey. His writings demonstrate that the different choices are not objective and are all distinctions in oppositions to the choices of different classes of people (ibid).

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2.8 Cultural Capital

In another sociological essay from 1985, The forms of capital, Bourdieu introduces three distinct forms of capital: economic, social and cultural. Capital, as described in Cambridge dictionary is the wealth to produce more wealth. In line with Bourdieu’s essay, social capital is the social connections and relationships that can help a person achieve a higher status in society through the acquisition of cultural capital. In contrast, cultural capital is the intellectual knowledge that could be later converted into an economic capital.

Correspondingly to Bourdieu’s definitions, cultural capital exists in three forms: embodied, objectified and institutionalized (1985, p. 47). The embodied cultural capital is the knowledge that a person accumulates while growing up, e.g. culture and behaviour. The objectified is the capital in the form of material possessions, such as writings or paintings (ibid). And lastly, the institutionalized capital relates to the academic or professional qualifications of a person. A study building upon Bourdieu’s concepts from 1995 examines a sample of Mexican-origin US high school students, where authors find that cultural capital in the forms of grades and education is related to the later creation of ties between students and other institutional agents, such as teachers and counsellors (Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch). In other words, acquiring cultural capital assumedly leads to a later acquisition of social capital. In another study from 2017, Pakistani scholars are exploring how Facebook contributes to bridging and bonding of social capital among Business students in Pakistan, where Facebook allows participants to sustain connections easily for its user-friendliness and fun to use (Raza, 2017).

Another scholar, drawing heavily upon Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and introducing the concept of “fan cultural capital” in relation to fans’ object of admiration is John Fiske, who speaks of fans trying to accumulate cultural capital in the form of any information related to their fandom, which ultimately increases their ties within the fan community3. Fiske, based on one of Bourdieu’s most known work Distinction (1987), also explores cultural hierarchies in societies, societies being fan communities. He presents how fans tend to separate themselves from the popular mainstream culture by joining distinguished communities. Fiske also proposes that fans can start discriminating within their community as well, becoming “the harshest critics of their favourite programs and movies” (Fiske, 1992, as ref. in Sullivan, 2013).

The Croatian linguist and sociologist Nikola Rasic is one of the first scholars to research multilingualism among Esperantists in the 20th century (1995), and his study shows that on average every Esperanto

3 Fan Culture; Fiske, J. https://sociology.iresearchnet.com/sociology-of-culture/fan-culture/ (accessed 01.10.2018)

Page 21 of 66 speaker can converse in 3 more languages, in addition to Esperanto and a native language. Interestingly, 4.4% of the interviewed participants knew no other language besides Esperanto (Rasic, 1995; as ref. in Fettes, 1996). English, German and French are reported as the most widely spoken languages among Esperantists. Rasic also notes that the majority of the participants have a higher education on a university level or similar, and many of them state that they feel more secure using Esperanto than any other language (ibid, p.56).

In one more research conducted by Svend Nielsen from 2017, an attempt has been made to evaluate the density of Esperanto speakers by variables such as country, contribution to science, culture and health, linguistic diversity, GDP (2017b). Nielsen concludes that there are more Esperanto speakers in countries that contribute a lot to science and culture than in any other countries, and the linguistic diversity is of no importance for them. The countries with the most Esperanto speakers were reported to be among other the Scandinavian countries, , , Lithuania, and Iceland (ibid).

To sum up, to understand the way bond and connectedness are generated within the Esperanto community on Facebook, I have relied heavily on Sense of community theory (1987), Sense of identity theory (1979), Bourdieu (1985; 1987), Fiske’s definitions of fandom (1992). While Sense of community theory was initially created for real-life communities, I believe belonging and how people bond online and offline is very similar, as much as the Internet has given broader possibilities to be more connected. The used Sense of community theory is a classic theory in the sense that it provides 4 easily identifiable components within the interviewees’ speeches and the digital ethnography, and proved to be very similar to Typaldos’ 12 elements of online communities from 2002. To get an understanding of how a culture of community is created online is to also understand who the members are and what their motivation to join and stay in the communities is, as well as how they interact between each other to create bonding. Here Bourdieu’s definitions of cultural and social capital helped, which proposed new lenses on group behaviour, suggesting that groups or communities tend to stick more if they have the same values and interests, which was used to analyse interviewees’ responses regarding the more specific Esperanto communities they belonged to and also explaining boundaries which can be created in order to keep the group’s identity. The continuum then helped categorize the interviewees’ answers through for the 4 level of interactions, which were investigated within the FB group Esperanto group.

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3. Data and methodology

3.1 Methodology

For this study, I opted for an inductive mixed approach through the paradigm of interpretivism. As in most inductive approach studies, research is undertaken to make sense of the phenomena, and the theory is used to help interpret the collected data, allowing for a more flexible way of generating knowledge (Collins, 2010). As the Esperanto phenomenon is developing online and Internet is currently one of the main used media to create an Esperanto culture (Salisbury, 2017), the study was set to be collected online, as online was where a community was being developed and participant observation could be done while members interact with each other. Facebook was then chosen as the focus of the study after the first interviewee Enric highlighted several times that there are many Facebook groups used heavily for communication and sharing of material between the members, from which he also takes constantly part. I came across the public Facebook group Esperanto, which had more than 22.000 members sharing daily, making it perfect for digital ethnography and for further collection of data sets such as interviews.

Initially a questionnaire was created and spread in different Esperanto forums and groups online with the idea to ask members about their perception of the Esperanto communities, however this data set did not collect enough responses, but got 22 comments which I have used to analyse. Along with the questionnaire, the first interview to compare to the questionnaire findings was conducted, followed by a brief digital ethnography, 1 more interview and 1 brief conversation with a Bulgarian Esperantists, which are described further in the next sections from a social constructivism (also called constructionism) perspective. As much as an attempt was made to conduct more interviews, finding participants turned out to be very challenging, which is why the brief conversation with the Esperantists Mariana was done, as a way to accumulate more data sets in order to compensate for the not completed questionnaire.

My outsider position benefitted the study as I tried to present the findings in a non-biased way for not having any prior knowledge or opinions, focusing on what I get as information from participants. The expected outcome was to collect primary data on how sense of community is generated online through member interaction by comparing interviews, digital ethnography analysis, questionnaire and seeing how these relate to theory with the ultimate goal to contribute more to the studies of online communities and lack of researches on Esperanto.

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In terms of the research stand, social constructivism presents the epistemological view that knowledge depends on the interpretation of the social actors, constructed through their interaction with the environment of the social context (Collins, 2010). In other words, the aim of the chosen methods for this study was to understand the sense of belonging within the communities through the lenses of the members – from their experiences and created meanings, and from what I document from their online interaction, without highlighting one valid truth or objective reality. As Collins further adds, using such an approach is not to say that all extracted data is to be considered ‘the ultimate truth’, but that their ‘truth’ is to be taken into consideration and critically reflected upon simultaneously, in order to produce new meaning or knowledge. Moreover, this approach acknowledges that understanding of the phenomena may still be incomplete, as it also contains information available at the time from members participating at the time.

3.2 Interviews and data sets

A data collection method that was taken use of was conduction of semi-structured interviews. The idea of interviews is to use people as the primary source of knowledge for a particular study. Using an interview to research sense of belonging in the Esperanto communities enabled to hear about members´ opinion, ideas and behaviour towards these communities. The participants were based outside Denmark, therefore the interviews were conducted online.

The interviewees that could serve best for the purposes of this study were selected carefully. The administrators of the Facebook group Esperanto and Facebook group for Esperanto speakers or learners were targeted. The administrators of the groups mentioned above were behind the creation of the virtual spaces for Esperantists, and assumedly could share insights on members’ behaviour as no other members could. The search process for administrators to interview began early in the project, the research question was presented to them, as well as a brief overview of topics that they will get asked for. I contacted 7 administrators from these 3 active Esperanto groups on Facebook, but there was only 1 positive reply by Enric Baltasar, one of the administrators of Comunidad Esperanto Duolingo. I was also interested in the members’ opinion, as they would have also provided interesting perspectives, but the invitation was, unfortunately, refused.

The interview criteria that respondents had to fulfil in order to participate were to be active Esperanto community members and to have participated in Esperanto global or local gatherings in the past and recently. Ideally, participants would speak Esperanto on an intermediate level and would have participated for at least 1-2 years in the virtual/real-life communities, and finally, they would have

Page 24 of 66 preferably travelled or hosted through Pasporta Servo. Variables such as income, age, location and education were also asked to form a demographic profile of the average Esperanto member.

The first participant that agreed to a Hangouts interview was the youngest president of TEJO (The Esperanto Youth Organization) Enric Baltasar, 26-year old Spaniard, initially being part of the Esperanto communities only as a member for a long time, and later becoming the Youth President of TEJO, where he spent 1.5 years. Furthermore, Enric Baltasar contributes to the Esperanto course on Duolingo since its launching in 2015. He is now an administrator of the popular group for learning of Esperanto for Spanish speakers, Comunidad Esperanto Duolingo, and is also working on personal projects. His participation enhanced the research due to the fact that he has been both a long-term member and a president of the youth organization for almost 2 years, making him a credible participant, who had seen the both sides of the communities – from members’ perspective and from leaders’ perspective. He was willing to share insights openly, which contributed a lot for a fruitful analysis. The interview was conducted on Google Hangouts, recorded, and lasted 40 min.

The second interview was conducted later with a Dominican Esperantists, a member for almost 20 years, who I found through a post he made on the FB group Esperanto sharing music in Esperanto. Rafael Hernandez has been part of UEA since his very first online involvement with the communities and has participated extensively in different events and congresses worldwide. He is currently working on establishing the first Dominican – Esperanto association in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

The third participant was a Bulgarian Esperantist, called Mariana Georgieva Evlogieva who has also been part of the communities for around 20 years and has been a teacher of Esperanto ever since. I found her contact through a comment she left on the FB group Esperanto and approached her in Bulgarian. She is the first woman to create an online Esperanto course for Bulgarians in 1998. The interview was in the form of a conversation on Facebook, where she agreed to answer questions.

The interview preparation for Enric included a list of questions and topic areas that had to be covered, inspired by the Sense of community theory (McMillan & Chavis, 1986), Bourdieu (1985; 1987) and Fiske’s writings (1992). The questions were asked in a way that allowed for flexibility, depending on how willing the interviewees would be to speak and share. Similar questions got the other participants, but the focus there was to cover more topics regarding the interaction online and how the Internet contributes to the Esperanto culture and a member’s participation.

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3.3 Extract from survey data

The initial set of collected data for this thesis involved a questionnaire (see app. 1), published in and targeted towards the Facebook group Comunidad Esperanto Duolingo, Duolingo forums, other smaller Esperanto groups on Facebook and Esperanto users. However, it did not receive a high response rate and was then replaced by the 3 conducted interviews and digital ethnography. The total responses for the questionnaire were 65 answers plus 22 comments, yet not all questions were answered. For this reason, I have still made use of it but concerning only the demographic profile and comments of the respondents who have left comments. The commenters’ demographic profile that was extracted from the survey could be seen in the graphs below:

Fig. 7: The graphs indicate University degree, gender (Participants) and Occupation of the 22 commenters in the survey. The vertical numbers show the number of people belonging to a category (for University degree and Occupation).

The University degree table above shows that the Bachelor’s degree was the dominant degree among the respondents – 8 out of 22 indicated a Bachelor’s, followed by 5 respondents with a Master’s degree and 4 with PhD. 9 out of 22 respondents have pointed out student as their occupation. The middle pie chart shows that the majority of respondents who left comments were male (18/22). Their average age was 36 years and came mostly from the US, except for 5, who indicated they came from Russia, Brazil, Canada, Finland and Japan. This set of data was used together with Bourdieu’s theories on cultural and social capital, to be able to draw a profile of the average Esperantist online to the extent to which it was possible, and the cultural capital members possessed, used to compare to the literature reviews which was indicating high cultural and social capital among Esperantists in the past.

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3.4 Digital ethnography

Another used data set was the digital ethnography. As Varis (2014) describes it, it would be quite challenging to describe the process of digital ethnography, as it is not a method, but more an approach not reducible to specific techniques (ibid). The method consisted of observation of participants in the FB group Esperanto to gain brief behavioural insights. Web ethnography was done through collecting and analysing the posts generated in this group, as well as files and documents that were shared within the group. For three weeks, from 27.09. 18 until 13.10.18, I kept a diary of the daily activity in this group, where I tracked what members were posting, sharing, re-sharing, and discussing, to get an idea of the topics they found interesting to speak about, and how they used social media to create a community and a feeling of belonging. The tracking showed an average of 14.6 publications a day. All content for this period included exactly 190 publications, without counting posts not directly related to the community or the language. I also counted older posts who were newly re-shared and commented, as if they had activity, then it meant that it was type of content that members found appealing. The targeted audience for this method was all active participants in the group.

3.5 Ethical Consideration

As Collins (2010) writes, ‘we all have a moral outlook, governing how we behave and how we determine what is right and wrong.’ And while there are many aspects on which the majority of a society agrees, there could always be found disagreements about these same aspects. For this research I looked into a few important ethical codes, based on Resnick (2015), which are depicted below:

- Honesty and integrity – I believe to have conducted the literature review, data collection, analysis and results of the research in an honest manner. All quotations and borrowed work have been cited and are present in bibliography and as online sources.

- Objectivity – I strived for as objective research as possible. No interviewees or questionnaire participants were close to me as to avoid any bias based on a relationship, and I am also relatively new to the communities, thus I did not possess any prior views on the Esperanto communities before initiating the research. The target group and sample for both the questionnaire and interview were also chosen so as to reflect as objectively as possible the Esperanto communities.

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- Openness – The data collection process, analysis, and results from this study are open to public, and I am willing to share any further graphs, recorded and transcribed interview or information needed later on. I am also open to new ideas and criticism of my work.

- Confidentiality and permission – Confidentiality was one of the most important aspects concerning the qualitative data for this study, as it involved conduction of interview with an Esperanto member, who was a former president of TEJO. Before the interview, the knowledge that this thesis might be disseminated and affect the participant was carefully considered. Upon initiating the interview, I asked for the interviewee’s consent to record and transcribe the interview. Enric, Rafael and Mariana agreed to have their real names stated with the condition that they will be later sent the transcribed interview and all parts that involved them directly, which was respected. No further issues were reported from the interviewees’ sides or participants.

The digital ethnography analysis followed the 4 main principles of the Code of Human Research Ethics by BSP from 20074:

1. Verifying identity – Researcher’s identity, research topic and method were shared with an administrator of the group, presenting the aim of the study in detail and what is to be collected.

2. Public/private space:

– Address of forums & online pseudonyms not published – Names and profile pictures have been blurred. Nonetheless, the group is currently public and accessible by anyone, which also means that sources can be tracked.

3. Informed consent – One of the administrators of the Facebook group Esperanto, D. M. W. was aware of the research and provided his consent about its conduction.

4. Deception – The administrator was aware of how the data is to be collected, and that names and photos will be blurred.

5. Data protection: consent for processing of personal information. – Members were not aware of the data collected except for one of the administrators. The BPS report (2007) reads the

4 BPS (British Psychological Society) (2007). Report of the Working Party on Conducting Research on the Internet: http://www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/ conducting_research_on_the_internet- guidelines_for_ ethical_practice_in_psychological_research_online.pdf (accessed 30/10/18)

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following: “Visual researchers may conduct research in public places or use publicly-available information about individuals (e.g. naturalistic observations in public places, analysis of public records, or archival research) without obtaining consent” (Papademas and IVSA, 2009: 255, as cited in BPS 2007:3).

3.6 Limitations of the Study

As a limitation of the study, I would define my very basic proficiency in Esperanto, which affected the willingness of some members to participate, explaining they could not express themselves as well in English as they could in Esperanto. And while there are quite a few limitations of the study, I tried to make use of as much data sources as possible, presenting new

Similar to biases in interviews and questionnaires, the digital ethnography could also be biased. As Kirk (2014) explains, presented data and observations always remain incomplete and in a sense biased, as what we see depends on what the researcher would choose to show and mark as important. He further adds that when selecting a certain type of data, we simultaneously choose not to include other sets of data, but one still needs to be objective and follow the phenomena as they unfold and reflect them as good as possible. One more limitation to this method is the limited time frame when the data was collected - 27.09. 18 until 13.10.18. Digital ethnography is usually done within a larger time-frame to be able to track the content, as it might be that members share or get involved less in this period compared to other time of the year, which would certainly impact the findings. Still, to try to reduce the possibility of such kind of bias, I also reviewed older publications and active discussions as a way to ensure that all type of content was covered and documented in my findings while backing it up with interviews.

One more limitation that needs to be mentioned is that this research was done through my external research stand, as a member of the community who does not speak the language, nor engages in discussions due to my basic Esperanto proficiency. Thus, the documented findings are through my observer lenses. There was also content on the Facebook group Esperanto that I could not grasp the meaning of, and for this reason I counted it as other content (fig.8). This fact once again defined the boundaries between speakers and non-speakers, inevitably affecting the conclusions of this thesis.

A final point that needs to be clarified is that the study is investigating the sense of belonging in the online Esperanto communities as a whole as it was represented by members, but has not been narrowed down to one particular community or location, which would have complicated the data collection, as none of the 2 big Esperanto organizations had one specific social media channel through which the research could have been done.

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4. Findings and Analysis

4.1 Esperanto Facebook group and interviews

The conducted observation online was focused on analysing the interaction between members in the biggest Esperanto group on Facebook, called Esperanto, which has a membership of 22.459 people. The group allows posts only in Esperanto, and is targeted towards Esperantists with a good level of Esperanto. I was interested in observing members’ discussions and publications, and I started collecting daily data on the type of topics they were discussing and sharing for a set time frame. My very first observations of this group were just to help me get an idea on the most discussed topics, which I divided in sections, and was then adding daily the number of publications belonging to each section. Yet, not all publications and activity were documented in my research diary as some posts included photos and texts I could not understand and translate due to not being part of the community, so I need to highlight once again that this research was through my lenses of an external observer and one not-interacting with the members in Esperanto. Also, another fact worth mentioning is that many old publications from 2014 and 2015 re-appeared as new posts for the ongoing engagement of members with these posts. They counted as one publication, and were distributed according to the categories. A summary of all shared content in the group for the chosen timeframe could be found in the graph below:

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Fig. 8. Categorized type of content in the Facebook group “Esperanto” for the period 27.09.18 – 13.10.18 (see app. 3, fig. 8 for clarification of the categories).

The total number of categories that I managed to define after going through the content of the group was 12, and the total number of all publications shared in the group for the selected period was 190. On average there were 14.6 publications posted a day, and the category with most publications was

Page 31 of 66 the one referring to posts about past and upcoming events, most often events organized by UEA, which was also indicated by the group itself. This as McMillan and Chavis (1986) explain as the emotional connection between the community members – the making and sharing of history of events within the community and the knowledge that this will continue to develop (see fig.6). The second most published category was news and information, which was most often an external link leading to Esperanto news websites and information about the communities in Esperanto. Publications related to news were one of the most engaging ones as they attracted discussions where members were presenting their views. This category also included posts related to Esperanto and its worthiness nowadays. This category also demonstrated how members develop their culture by being both in line with current political situations and practicing the language by translating the news at the same time. Hobby and entertainment was the third most shared category consisting most often of funny videos through external links. This was also one of the most commented and engaging categories (see the rest of the categories in app.3, fig. 8). The interviewee, Rafael, confirmed that this is the category in which he most often engages, in the posting of the so-called memes, as they are “a fun way to use the language to laugh and to have a nice time in the group.” Enric explained that he does not engage often in discussions under publications in the Facebook group Esperanto and in his group Comunidad Duolingo Esperanto, but most often “takes the initiative to write posts and start discussions related Esperanto and its current leadership”, which he tries to challenge, and shares it with his friends Esperantists on his personal profile, instead of in a group.

Besides keeping a daily journal on the activity in the group in terms of what members found interesting to share, I also noted down the most commented discussions in the group, for this period where I took notice only of the publications with more than 15 comments. The titles of the discussions are translated into English:

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Fig. 9. The most engaging publications from the Facebook group “Esperanto” for the period 27.09.18 – 13.10.18. The discussions with most engagement are highlighted in darker yellow, and it could be seen that 2 out of 4 are regarding UEA and relate to political discussions concerning migration and challenging Esperanto as a language.

Once again, the categorization above (fig. 9) demonstrates that the most popular discussions in the group relate to UEA (Universal Esperanto Association) events not only as the most shared ones but also as the most commented ones. Other very engaging discussions in the Facebook group Esperanto were related to current political events most often asking members’ for their opinion, and to Esperanto’s identity and worthiness nowadays. In the latter, members were defending Esperanto as if defending their community identity and purpose, present as ‘boundaries’ and Us vs. Them attitude in the Sense of community theory (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). Nonetheless, it needs to be mentioned that only the content that was approved by administrators was possible to analyse, as the administrators have the right to remove content in other languages than Esperanto, as well as offensive or religious posts (Shareefah N. Al’Uqdah, 2017), which might have affected the content that appears on the group.

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4.1.1 The Internet as a tool for community creation and development

The introduction of this Esperanto phenomena for this thesis began with a reference to the revival of the communities with the help of the Internet and especially Duolingo, which initiated a course in Esperanto in 2015 and attracted many learners. The brief interviews I had with two participants of the Facebook group Esperanto pointed without doubt that the Internet has been indeed a necessary part that revived the language. The uncountable number of online groups for Esperantists have introduced the language to both new people who had little to no prior knowledge or feelings towards it, but to also other older Esperantists who grew further their networks. Rafael shared that he first heard about Esperanto from an old Esperanto book that he got from his French teacher, but in 1998, with the rise of the Internet in the Dominican Republic, he initiated contacts with other Esperantists around the world and later became a member of a local association part of UEA, which helped him travel for free to Esperanto gatherings and events outside his country:

“In my city, in my country, I was an "isolated Esperantist" (izolita esperantisto). That means that there were no local clubs, no local associations in order to practice the language. Isolated Esperantists exist in many countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Thanks to the Internet I am in contact with the Esperanto community when I am not participating at an Esperanto event.”

Rafael shared he met an Argentinian Esperantist online in 2001 who helped him get into the online community and become more active. This was in a way his initial building of identity with the Esperanto community, as Typaldos (2002) defines is one of the initial steps in her proposed elements of online communities. It has since then kept him active for being able to connect immediately with other speakers of the language, located in a different country, which is also what Budiman (2008) describes as geographical proximity for communities being of no importance, documented even in the early rise of the Internet and technologies. Being an “isolated Esperantist” and located in the Dominican Republic from the beginning of his journey until today makes him depend on the Internet in order to be part of the community.

Similar was Mariana’s experience, another member of the Facebook group Esperanto, who first joined an Esperanto community based in Bulgaria in the 80s, and was later the first woman to introduce the first online Esperanto course for Bulgarians, which could be in a sense interpreted as the personal investment to be part of the community of Esperantists, as the membership component of the Sense of community theory (1986) suggests is needed to judge the strength of a community (see fig.6). Her online contribution has also been central for the revival of the language with the help of the Internet, as just as she explained, “it was the first course in foreign language for Bulgarians at the time, so many

Page 34 of 66 people got interested in the idea to be able to learn a language on the Internet, for many of them this was unbelievable.” Mariana added that the online communities she is currently part of are countless, however that there are many new online communities emerging with a very short life-span, yet highlighting it is still the Internet that makes it easier for her to be informed about future meetings and congresses and to keep up with the groups. This was also what Rafael expressed when he stated that he feels sense of belonging to particular groups of Esperantists and it is the Internet which helps him connect with them without being in a physical proximity:

“…for example, the gay community sometimes gathers and organised an activity. The gay/lesbian group in Facebook is a way to be in touch with these people when I am not with them in the real world. The group "Esperanto in Latin America" helps me to get in touch with Esperantists that live in this part of the world. During UK, the American Esperanto Commission gathers and we can continue the debates that we start on the internet.”

Enric was one of the first interviewees to mention that there are also members who use the online communities as a way to promote their music and art, as their success in the Esperanto communities would be much higher than if they joined any other communities. As Rafael added, there are also community members from Latin America who join the online communities with the idea to become part and travel for free, as he did. He furthermore noted that there are also members who get in touch online with members from the community to ask for money, using the Internet to take advantage on being members.

Enric also mentioned that he got to know about Esperanto online, where he found out about the language and its propaedeutic value, and began learning it online in order to improve his English skills. When asked about the existence of the language and culture without the Internet, Rafael replied that the Internet is very important and has done a lot for the recent growth of the language and its spread, but under any circumstances Esperantists will find a way to exist:

“Sometimes I think about "what if the Internet went out some day?" "Will the Esperanto communities disappear?" Well, I do not think so. Esperantists have evolved from 1887 until nowadays and I am sure our common love for our international language will help us to get in touch by other means (like snail mail, telephone and so on).”

The Internet in this sense has been and still is central for new learners who come across and hear about Esperanto by accident, and has been and is also used by already Esperantists as a tool and personal investment from their side to grow the community even more, by making it possible for people being located far from real-life communities to be part of the Esperanto groups and to get to

Page 35 of 66 know the language and culture. What is more, it has given Esperantists the opportunity to group, very similar to grouping in real-life communities, finding more within a group than simply a language. What makes them media audiences and media makers is what they do to personally invest in the development of the language and culture with the help of the Internet– e.g. creation of courses, art production, events organization.

4.2 Spirit & Membership

According to McMillan and Chavis (1986), membership or spirit consists of boundaries, emotional safety, a sense of belonging and identification, personal investment, and finally, a common symbol system (see fig.6). To analyse membership is to understand the extent to which members are contributing to the particular community, to have the right to belong and to feel they belong.

Furthermore, the factors, used to analyse membership were membership length, serving as an ambassador, and volunteering. The membership length says a lot about an individual’s commitment, as well as how long one has been using the language.

When asked to explain the way in which TEJO works, the Enric replied that the organization functions mostly on funds from the EU, but it also relies on its full-time volunteers, who normally stay in Rotterdam (TEJO’s base) for a period of around 9 months. There volunteers assist in organizing events, congresses and work on administrative tasks with the goal to promote TEJO. The volunteers were in the past also requested to pay a small fee for their volunteering experience. Rafael also added that in order to become more active within the community, an Esperantists he met online helped him become a volunteer at UEA’s headquarters in Holland in 2001, where Rafael improved his Esperanto and was helping with other administrative tasks. His initial volunteering experience, as Rafael clarified, was used as a way to get involved more with the community, and later that year it also allowed him to travel for free to other destinations for Esperanto meetings and events, where he spoke at different events representing his country. As Rafael added, “I can say that 2001 was my "debut" as an Esperantist to the world.” Interpreting this statement from Tajfel and Turner’s lenses for describing tendencies of intergroup behaviour (1979), this is his first identification with a community or the initial individual’s self-image, derived from the social categories with which one starts identifying himself. Being part of a community, having very close friends there and supporting him financially, Rafael explained, was also in a sense his safety net or emotional safety, as McMillan and Chavis depict it (1986) for having him financially covered by UEA and allowing him to develop personally. The volunteering experience that Rafael spoke of could also be interpreted by what McMillan and Chavis (1986) describe as the personal investment, i.e., the knowledge that one has invested from his

Page 36 of 66 time and energy for the community, and thus has a place there (see fig.6). This factor, according to the scholars, is one of the most strongly contributing to meaningful and valuable memberships. Nonetheless, recent publications related to PS or volunteering in the Esperanto organizations were not common in the Facebook group, and were not made for the chosen period.

Members’ motivation to join the Youth Esperanto community, as Enric noted, is to have the feeling of belonging that we all want to feel, similar to the need to join any other community of people.

‘People participate as they want to be part of something bigger - a community. They want to feel the loyalty and want to identify themselves with something; Even if you pay a fee to be a member, it feels like you are contributing to something. Because you learn a lot for your personal life when contributing.’ When it comes down to the members’ association with the communities they formed part of, I looked also for what members were saying in the form of comments in both the survey and below my publication on Comunidad Duolingo Esperanto. Some respondents spoke of the communities in a general and neutral tone (e.g. ‘the communities are…’, ‘the Esperantists’, ‘The Esperanto community, etc.), while others spoke more of their personal experience. As reads below, a comment by an anonymous questionnaire respondent:

‘You may want to ask if the survey takers are part of any Esperanto organizations, such as TEJO or a national organization. In my case, I'm a member of the Canadian Esperanto Associatio.’

The question concerning the organization one belongs to was later added. Interestingly, a big number of respondents (45 people) participating afterwards state the name of the community/organization/group they form part of, even the ones that answer to a significantly small amount of questions in total. Analysing the comments section, there were also other respondents, whose opinion included possessive adjectives and statements as “in my case”, “in my/our community”, “in UEA”, “we”. Such statements could be in a way interpreted as a representation of the member’s feeling of acceptance by the group. In other words, this is one’s identification with a specific group from which emerges the willingness to share and name the community. McMillan and Chavis (1986) depict such a behaviour as one that could be often emphasized (sub) consciously from members, who identify themselves strongly with a group or community. Strong identification with a community makes members insist on stating the name of their community/organization. Similar statements to “our community” were also spotted in publications in the Facebook group Esperanto in posts regarding languages and the development of the Esperanto communities, but were more common in comments

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than in titles of the publications, but the level of interaction with posts including the keyword “nian” (Eng: our), e.g. “nian lingvo” (Eng: our language) was not high. When asked regarding her sense of belonging, and common goal of the community of Esperantists, Mariana replied:

“Yes, we have a common goal - the spread of Esperanto. But each of us has different goals and therefore does not interact equally with everyone, but rather with those with which one associates things other than Esperanto. For example, there is an active community of Esperanto medics that I respect, but I would not say that I “belong” with them because I am not a medic.”

What Mariana shared is similar to Rafael who mentioned that the Internet helps him to get in touch with Esperanto communities he particularly cares about – e.g., the Esperanto gay community, and the Latin American Esperanto community. These statements could be connected with Bourdieu’s work in “The social space and genesis of groups” (1986), where he argues that being in close relation to one’s social space, that is sharing similar interests, works better for uniting groups of people than if people from different classes or social spaces were united around an idea (ibid, p. 726). While these participants and all other Esperantists have the same and yet different goal of disseminating the language as such, where Esperanto is also their common symbol (see fig.6), they tend to group with people close to them, their interests and identity.

4.2.1 Boundaries and Exclusiveness – Us vs. Them

There were some challenges when collecting the data in the form of negative responses from members who did not wish to participate in the study. The reason for this, as some of them explained, was that it was to be conducted in English, and English was considered by some as ‘the language of the Empire’. As reads below, a screenshot on the conversation on Facebook below my post in the Facebook group Comunidad Esperanto Duolingo, where I published an external link to the survey regarding the sense of belonging in the communities:

Fig. 10. Facebook comments below my post for the questionnaire in English. Source: Comunidad Esperanto Duolingo

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Eng: Victor: If you wish to have people respond to your questionnaire, please edit the text in Esperanto Marc: That is right. The English languages is now the ‘Language of the Empire’. If one wants to change the world, sometimes he has to say ‘NO’.

The debate of why speaking Esperanto is an act of rebellion continued in Spanish (as it was an Esperanto group for Spanish speakers) long after these two initial comments. Discussing such a behaviour with Enric, he expressed that similar affiliation occurs often among the older generation of Esperantists, but young people are trying to break the pattern.

Relating this behaviour to the theoretical framework, Fiske (1992), based on Bourdieu (1985), points out that fans often have such tendencies to create boundaries between members and the non- members. McMillan and Chavis’ are also other scholars who take notice of such segregation of groups (1986). As they elaborate, people in general tend to identify themselves with certain social groupings, and along with this they also have tendencies to dis-identify with others (1986:9). The division in that specific case was emphasized between the members and non-members, where I as a researcher am excluded from that group for not addressing them in the language specific for the community. The language in this case, as Sense of Community theory would explain, serves as a tool to create social distance between the speakers and non-speakers (ibid.). Such a behaviour was also noticed from the digital ethnography analysis, where posts relating to debates if Esperanto is a real language or not, why Esperanto is useful, and other political discussions related to Esperanto were among the most discussed publications (see fig. 8), serving as an example for segregation in favour of the language, where members create boundaries while trying to keep the identity and purpose of the community, as Typaldos (2002) explains one of the elements of online community consist of.

The response rate was relatively low a couple of days after the questionnaire was published, thus it had to be translated from English into Esperanto. The questionnaire also included a brief on the research being conducted in Esperanto. Upon closing the questionnaire, the average age of all respondents was 33 years, and over 35% of all 65 participants had left comments. Unexpectedly, there were 19 comments in English, only 2 in Esperanto, and 1 in Russian, even though the introductory brief was in Esperanto. Participants’ age, along with the content and choice of language of the commenters confirmed Enric’s argument, suggesting once again that there is barely any division between members and non-members when it comes to the younger generation, also confirmed by the Rafael. Young members were still willing to share comments in the questionnaire about Esperanto in English to a non-member and non-speaker.

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Boundaries or exclusiveness could also be, except for the language, associated with the groups having distinctive dress code, rituals or greetings inherent only to the specific community, as the Sense of Community theory states (1986:9). In the beginning of the interview, Enric shared that the language itself is the only distinctive part that makes the Esperanto communities stand out compared to other fan communities, but the Esperanto communities are not particularly exclusive, and are in fact open to anyone. This openness is indeed what the digital ethnography demonstrated - joining the biggest Esperanto group on Facebook was open to anyone and anyone is accepted.

Enric also added that the membership and language acquisition come with a specific vocabulary of words and idioms, existing only in Esperanto and understood only when one reaches a certain level of Esperanto, which was contradicting to the interviewee’s statements and the way communities were presented as extremely welcoming in the literature review. Such slang words are krokodili, used to name an Esperanto speaker in the early stage of his learning, who speaks to other members in his native language instead of in Esperanto. Another reference to the Esperanto expression krokodili was also something I came across the Facebook group Esperanto in a shared external publication from Aug 18th with a very high level of interaction under the post. The publication consists of images of a crocodile in different human situations, where being a crocodile as depicted is causing trouble. The external link and original source has no reference whatsoever to the Esperanto expression. It is originally published in a Portuguese comedy and entertainment Facebook page, nonetheless the Esperanto community interprets it as being a crocodile in an Esperanto world that causes the trouble not only him but the others around him as well:

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Fig. 11. Reference to usage of ‘krokodili’ in a publication in the Facebook group “Esperanto”, demonstrating a high level of engagement with 108 reactions, 19 comments and 25 shares. The title of the original publication in Portuguese reads: “And you complain about life. But have you thought if you were born a crocodile?”

Bourdieu initiates his book Distinction (1987) with a short paragraph which explains briefly such an attitude: “A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded.” Not being familiar with the cultural code, as Bourdieu explains, makes one not being able to “move from the 'primary stratum of the meaning we can grasp on the basis of our ordinary experience' to the 'stratum of secondary meanings', i.e., the 'level of the meaning of what is signified', unless one possesses the concepts which go beyond the sensible properties” (ibid). That is, an outsider would grasp the primary meaning and funny side of the images, but will not go beyond this, and need to possess the knowledge in order to interpret it through the Esperantist lenses.

As explained by Enric, members are trying to banish as much as possible usage of other languages than Esperanto on their meetings, so as to keep the Esperanto identity. This last statement opposes his own and other members’ earlier argumentations regarding the welcoming aspect of the communities, as not speaking the language in certain cases could result in members’ exclusion.

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4.3 Integration and fulfilment of needs

The Sense of Community theory (1986) suggests that a strong community is the one where members reinforce each other for their accomplishments. Publications in the Esperanto group related to membership appreciation, or to what McMillan and Chavis refer as integration and fulfilment of needs (1986:11), is another regularly shared content. As much as such membership recognition is regularly presented in the group, my brief analysis demonstrated that such publications are mostly shared by administrators or older generation Esperantists, take the initiative to recognize the work of a member. Rafael pointed out that he enjoys reading publications related to praise of members as it motivates him and reminds him of his ambitions, “I would love to write a novel in Esperanto one day and win a diploma during a UK [Universal Esperanto Congress]....” He recalled how a Spanish Esperantist used a picture of his C1 level Esperanto diploma in an article about Esperanto exams. McMillan and Chavis suggest that group leaders often use recognition of members as a way to reinforce behaviour of other members, and a community is successful in this if the members start reinforcing each other (1986:12).

Above it could be seen a photo publication, re- shared from another Facebook page, showing a UEA certificate belonging to an Esperanto artist for his music in Esperanto, demonstrating a high level of interaction under the post:

Fig. 12. An example for member recognition publication consisting of a picture of diploma of the praised member by UEA on the Facebook group “Esperanto”, published 27.09.18. The post shows 68 reactions, 4 comments.

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Another recent publication from Oct 1st announcing the 1st place of a Bulgarian Esperanto speaker in a local contest for Esperanto poetry:

Fig. 13. An example for member recognition publication on the Facebook group “Esperanto”, consisting of a picture of diploma and the Esperanto poetry of the praised member by a Bulgarian Esperanto association, published 01.10.18.

The analysed content for the selected time-frame indicated that engagement with such posts depends more on the institution by which the certificate is granted. As seen in fig. 12 and fig. 13, if granted by UEA, the level of engagement in a publication is significantly higher than if granted by another local and smaller institution. Throughout the interview, Rafael was highlighting the events he has attended with UEA’s help and the biggest one he is about to attend, also organized by UEA, which also serves as an example for praise of a particular institution. This could be interpreted in a way to what Fiske (1992) refers to fans being “the harshest critics of their favourite media”, where they can start categorising and discriminating within the fandom on what a good content is depending on where it

Page 43 of 66 comes from, in this case the long time ago established association UEA is more trustworthy and gaining attention than other local contests and organizations.

When asked regarding member recognition, Enric also confirmed that attention is paid to such a recognition, and there are still ongoing rewards given by UEA for contribution and activities in the communities. Furthermore, Enric stated that the communities recognize publicly the work of the members mostly through social networks and in public lists, as well as in monthly articles, which is also confirmed by the publication above. He added that there are more formal awards as “Honora prezidanto” (Eng.: “Honourable president”) and the most recent one from this year “Nacia sekcio de la jaro” (Eng.: “National section of the year”). Moreover, there is a magazine that selects “Esperantisto de la Jaro” (Eng.: “Esperantist of the year”). Nonetheless, no recent publications in the Facebook group Esperanto were referring to this specific award. It was present only in older publications from 2016 with a very low level of engagement under such posts.

4.4 Influence

One of the principles for a strong sense of community as suggested by McMillan and Chavis is Trust or also called influence (1986:11). This principle could refer to conformity of community members to the rules of the group as well as the kind of leader this community has chosen. When it comes to the hierarchy of this Facebook group, it has 23 administrators who take care of the group. The group has also rules relating mainly to the sole usage of Esperanto and considerate behaviour towards other members, and warns of expulsion if one disobeys. Still, going through older publications and using the search option in the group, there are no posts related to expulsion of members or any warnings, but only writings under English posts that they need to be in Esperanto instead. The administrators are one of the most active members who engage in sharing news in Esperanto, external links to music and artistic videos in Esperanto, commenting other members’ posts and often asking members to express their opinion and stands by filling out brief questionnaires. Mariana explained that as in every community and smaller group “…there are leaders. And there are authorities that are not necessarily leaders. In all online groups and communities there are both formal and informal leaders, who take responsibility for bigger projects and delivering.” McMillan and Chavis relate to such group or community participants in their theory, and also highlight that such members who acknowledge other members’ opinion, needs and values are often the most influential members (ibid.)

Enric was emphasizing throughout the whole interview that the online and real-life communities are all built on equality and are striving for such, thus there are no established hierarchies for decision-

Page 44 of 66 making processes. The structure of TEJO, as he spoke of it, is a representative democracy, used to take most of the decisions and needed for a better resource management. A representative is chosen as the head of his section, to whom members send messages, which are then forwarded to the International Committee forum to be discussed. Members are strongly encouraged to express opinion, suggestions and ideas freely, speak up during committee sessions, have real-time discussions with the board members during meetings, as well as to publish on the magazines. Enric described his mandate exactly as such where the information and idea flow combined with direct communication and promotion are stressed, while striving to create an environment that motivates members to participate with fresh ideas.

‘Members join to feel they belong, thus it is important to ask for their ideas and opinions both online and offline, to make them discuss individually and in groups, in order to create the current strategic plan.’

The representative democracy that Enric explained is needed for better resource management also corresponds to what McMillan and Chavis define as the need for authority structure that can sustain the fire, knowing who does what in the community, and what can be expected from each member (1986:13). That is to say that a community must have a way to process information in order to grow. When such order is present, one can start “predicting, planning and committing”, and this is when trust within members is developed (ibid).

Nonetheless, Rafael was not as confident when asked if he believed members’ opinion is valued, but stated that members are free to be creative online in terms of speaking up or creating new groups. He mentioned that he is currently in charge of online Esperanto group which prepares Esperantists for the UEA congress in Finland next year by teaching them Finnish in Esperanto.

4.5 Trade & Reinforcement of Needs

This aspect of sense of community relates to the rewards that members receive in return for their contribution to the community. McMillan and Chavis speak of these factors as indicators of a strong community. Theory says that effective reinforcements are normally membership status, success of a community, and/or capabilities of co-members (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). Revising his own theory in 1996, McMillan highlights the importance of sharing similar traits that result in bonding when discovered.

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Commenting on members’ drive to join the communities and learn Esperanto, Enric disclosed that in his perspective, a membership in the Esperanto communities is understood in a very different way from memberships in other communities. Learning the language, as perceived from people outside the organization is not normally associated with bringing a certain kind of social rewards later on in comparison with belonging to other communities, where this might often be the case. He then clarified that learning Esperanto does not come with the same advantages as if one learned a language with a broader application or job opportunities (example given with German).

As depicted by Enric:

‘[…] it’s actually more common that the people you meet have or will have higher education than out of the community. The root of this is that starving people difficultly will find time for something not valued in the market and short-term [as speaking Esperanto]. With this and the level of trust within the community is very high.’

What Enric tells above could be interpreted in relation to Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital growing into social connections within the community (1985), and to McMillan and Chavis’ theory (1986), suggesting that a member’s motivation to join might be the capabilities of other members and knowledge, and not necessarily an expectation for a monetary reward later on. An example for Rafael’s development of cultural capital is how he shared that he initially started learning the language from a book, later online (that is, the acquisition of cultural capital, or the knowledge of Esperanto, or) until he increased his network in the community with the help of a member in UEA, and having this contact in an authority gave him the opportunity to take an internship there and become a speaker at Esperanto events, where ultimately more bonds start developing and motivates him to stay.

The survey questions that also served to analyse such cultural capital asked participants to state their education and profession, as well as location. Out of 65 people, 6 individuals indicated they had a PhD, 18 have a Master’s degree, 15 have a Bachelor’s, followed by 14 with high school, 10 with college and 2 participants have selected primary school. Many of them come from countries such as Australia, Denmark, USA, Germany, Japan, and Canada, which corresponds also to Svend Nielsen’s studies. As a reference, Nielsen concludes that there are more Esperantists from countries that contribute significantly to science, culture and technology (2017a).

Enric also specifies another not so well-known aspect of learning Esperanto which comes at a later point with the acquisition of the language - the propaedeutic value that Esperanto offers, i.e. the base that Esperanto and vocabulary provide, on which other languages would be then easily

Page 46 of 66 learned. This, as he shared, is why he began studying Esperanto on the first place. When asked about her motivation to learn Esperanto, Mariana answered in a similar way:

“The community is indeed very welcoming,[..] What is more is that Esperanto has greatly enhanced my learning of Latin and English. But perhaps more notably it helped me use my mother tongue Bulgarian better - I'm writing more professionally, and that's really important.”

Furthermore, according to Enric, and also confirmed by Rafael, being an Esperanto member can open up gates towards other bigger non-Esperanto organizations, which could serve as an incentive to join the communities.

‘[…] and so people join not because we are in any way special or different, but because of the recognitions of the projects and the network. We change the world together. Because we connect.’

4.6 The collective heritage

The most shared type of content in the group as demonstrated from the graphs (fig. 8 and fig. 9) was the sharing of upcoming events around the world. Publications related to upcoming and past events, UEA events and Esperanto congresses are also being among the most engaging ones with the most external shares of the publications, as the group itself indicates. An older post from July 2017 informs members of the 104th congress for Esperantists organized by UEA happening in 2019 in Finland:

Fig. 14. An example of publication informing of the incoming 104th UEA congress for Esperantists in Finland, published on 29.07.17. The publication is one of the most engaging ones with 84 likes/reactions, 52 comments and 19 external shares.

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The interviewee Rafael explained that UEA cares a lot for organization and attendance of such events, and has financed many his trips from the Dominican Republic:

“During summer 2001, I also was invited to participate at the summer Esperanto events, the International Congress of Young Esperantist (IJK) and the International Esperanto Conference (UK) in France and Croatia. I also went to Germany, to the "Esperanto Village" to take part in an Esperanto course for teachers. I also travelled to to speak about my country, the Dominican Republic, in Esperanto, at a local Esperanto group. I am no longer helped financially but I still attend events and next year I am taking part in the UK in Lahti, Finland...”

Sense of community theory explains this as an emotional connection found in the experiences that members share through interaction with one another and which leaders try to create. An example for this is exactly such organizing and participating in events, as such experiences “become part of the collective heritage of the communities” (McMillan & Chavis, 1986:10). The annual conventions by UAE and TEJO, and all other events that members organize are in that sense the collective heritage, symbol and representation of the communities. The importance of such social interactions is also present in the 4 principles of Thorne and Bruner (2006) as one of the main characteristics of being part of a community, being emotionally connected to it and having the need to interact with other people who share the same passion.

At a later point during the interview, Enric also mentioned that members get the opportunity to create and participate in events through the so-called Landa Agado, which is a group that joins activists living in the same area with the idea to share experiences, organize youth meetings and brainstorm on ideas. The frequently used communication channels are among others Facebook groups, Skype meetings and offline meetings during international youth events. Ideas and youth projects are realized periodically in the Landa Agado group, nonetheless members with a formal role need to participate for a project to materialize.

4.7 The continuum of the Esperanto fandom

Through the lenses of the continuum of fandom suggested by Stephanie Plumeri, as ref. in Sullivan (2013), I have tried to detect the 4 proposed levels of interaction in a fan community – consumers (lurkers), enthusiast, fans and producers, and see how they correspond to the continuum. Members’ role was analysed according to the engaging publications members made in the group Esperanto.

Consumers, as described by Sullivan (2013) are the newly joined members. In this particular Facebook group they were the members who have just joined or have been part of the community for a short

Page 48 of 66 time, mostly watching with a low to no level of interaction, focusing more on the initial consumption of the media than on the interaction with others about it. Preece et al. also explains that at a later point such users might be also called lurkers, for the fact that they passively keep up with a community online without interacting. Because of their low engagement, distinction between consumers and the next level in the continuum enthusiasts was difficult to make in the group, which is why I looked at both as the same kind of initial fan interaction. Nonetheless, the interviewee Enric shared that he does not engage often in group discussions, but spends most time reading what members talk about, and engaging by only giving likes to the content. He then added that he often shares Esperanto-related content on his profile where he finds it more useful, which makes him a lurker outside his profile, as Preece et al (2004) categorize users.

The enthusiasts’ level according to Sullivan (2013) refers to people who have already been engaging for some time with their fandom and start engaging more. The consumers/enthusiasts in this group have been studying Esperanto for some time and start interacting in the Facebook group casually by getting involved in basic conversations or by sharing links to external performances in Esperanto. This level of initial interest is what also Thorne and Bruner (2006) refer to as the external involvement in their proposed 4 components of interaction of fans - when one’s internal interest starts growing, one becomes part of a group and starts interacting (ibid.).

Posts from such consumers and enthusiasts are not as common and were challenging to define, since this Facebook group is more targeted towards experienced speakers, regardless it includes beginners’ posts mostly asking for advice on how to approach the language or asking for correction of grammar. A reference to such beginners in Esperanto is also present in one of the most prominent Esperanto books by Janton (1993), where he calls such members of the (real-life) community “Esperantists without Esperanto.” As an example, here is a rare post from 2014 that shows up when searching for the keyword novulo (Eng: novice, beginner), and also appeared in the news feed of the group on Sep 28th for ongoing activity:

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Fig. 15. An example of publication by a member beginner asking for help with . The publicaion attracts 58 reactions and 22 comments in total, published 09.09.14 but re-shared 28.09.18.

The user to which the post above belongs presents himself as a beginner, and asks members to help him correct the grammar on the text from the photo. The level of interaction is quite high, indicating of members’ willingness to help and explain the grammatical rules in detail when addressed in Esperanto. Further down the continuum, fans can also refer to what Thorne and Bruner (2006) define as the 3rd component of fan interaction – the desire to acquire objects – books, poetry, and any products related to the community. Such a consumption is also present in Bourdieu’s work Distinction (1987), where he names it “a stage in a process of communication”, as a way to communicate one’s self. Consumption as a definition is also found in his descriptions of the three kinds of capital, where the accumulation of any kind of material objects is named “the objectified capital” (1985). At this point, fans start integrating Esperanto in their life and desiring to express their passion for Esperanto. Such an example gave Enric, when he mentioned that he had a whole website dedicated to Esperanto.

The publications by fans are also the ones with the highest engagement for a short period of time. Such a post from a member with a high level of interaction between 30.09.18 – 02.10.18 is demonstrating exactly the integration of the language and its culture in one’s life, as the continuum proposes:

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Fig. 16. An example of a publication by a defined “fan”. The post includes 4 private photos of the “fan” holding the Esperanto flag on a snowy hill from a trip to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Published on 30.09.18 and attracting more than 100 likes/reactions, 6 comments and 9 external shares. The producers that I came across are on the other end – they have first been consumers, and have gone through the other levels of interactions, as Sullivan adds (2013), and have now joined or even established big Esperanto organizations or smaller local groups. They are the ones that turn their passion for this particular culture into a profession with the idea to popularize the language more and market it. As an example of producers in the Esperanto communities could be given the establishers of TEJO – the Esperanto Youth Organization, or the interview participant, Enric, who was TEJO’s president, Esperanto group administrator and contributor to Duolingo Esperanto, as well as all members who organize smaller local Esperanto organizations and online or real-life communities. The artists who make music and poetry in Esperanto as reported in the 4th most shared and discussed category (fig. 8), as well as the news translators and artists in the group are also producers. An example of a producer I came across in the group could also be seen in a publication from 01.10.2018, where a member shares an external link to his own e-shop for design of Esperanto tees:

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Fig. 17. An example of Esperanto product and a “producer” promoting his e-shop for Esperanto tees, published 01.10.18. The post reports 17 reactions, 3 comments and 1 external share within a day. Another example of a “producer” in the group:

Fig. 18. An example of a “producer”, promoting his project “Hotel Esperanto” in Brazil and looking for extra help, published 09.09.18, and reporting 73 reactions, 10 comments and 12 external shares.

The publication above belongs to a member who shares a personal project he has been working on for a while – Hotel Esperanto, located in Brazil, ready to accept guests in its 14 rooms, lounge, swimming pool and large garden. The producers and their activities could be also connected to what McMillan and Chavis define as investment of one’s self as a way to express one’s identity with the community (1986).

The interviewee, Mariana also could be defined as a producer for the first Esperanto online course for Bulgarians, where her passion with a particular media makes her to start producing content in order to popularize it, and “[with the purpose to] remind Bulgarians who have forgotten about Esperanto, and at the same time to introduce it to a new younger audience who had just began using Internet and would hopefully see its [Esperanto’s] value and beauty”, as she explained. Rafael also gave an example of acting as a producer – he and his local community of Esperantists are in the process of creating the first Dominican - Esperanto association with the goal to use Esperanto as a bridge to communicate with Haitians, where there has been a linguistic issue between Dominicans and Haitians for a long time. The association’s goal is the promotion of the peaceful language for better communication and understanding. He also added:

“An own culture is very important for the Esperanto community. Last week, a French professor of the University of the Antilles told me that Esperanto does not have a culture. I told her we had a big literature, music and so on but she was sceptical. We need more cultural products, of course, but we

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need cultural products as good as the cultural productions of countries like France or the . Esperanto music is good but it can be better. Literature is very good but it is not well known at an international level. We have, for example, to translate our own to other languages so people that do not speak the language will know about it.” As Rafael concluded, such producers are now more essential for the development of the Esperanto culture than ever, that is a synergistic environment for expression where members connect and start achieving their best potential with the community, as Typaldos (2000) names it (see fig. 4). What this analysis showed is that the more Esperantist’s engagement increases, the more they tend to become producers, but as the continuum itself says, it is a map and one has the freedom to move. Producers can also produce or stop producing. But their interest can also decrease and they can start engaging rarely.

5. Concluding discussion

The literature review provided a background of the establishment of the communities in the past, to give an idea of who the members were, where they came from and how sense of community was negotiated back then within the movement. Janton (1993) also makes note of the big number of diverse associations created for a short period of time before and after WWI and WWII. The findings for the first Esperanto communities documented high cultural capital that members possessed, not seen in other communities at that time. This kind of capital has been in the form of knowledge, broad interests, speaking of foreign languages and cosmopolitan perspective. Members have been striving not only towards disseminating the language as such, but also towards creating a special culture around it where people with all kinds of interests and hobbies could join, to establish and/or find their place.

To understand the way sense of belonging was displayed within the communities, I used Sense of community theory, and its four components - membership, influence, shared emotional value and reinforcement of needs, where each of them was measured compared to what the members were expressing, and the digital ethnography demonstrating in terms of publications and engagement online. The continuum of fandom was also utilized to help define the members making publications in the Facebook group Esperanto – the interviewees were defined as the media audiences who turn into media producers. The more they consume, the more engaged they become and want to popularize Esperanto in many ways – courses, websites, products, hotels with the Esperanto name,

Page 53 of 66 ets. The Internet’s role as a medium or more specifically Facebook’s role was highlighted throughout the data collection by all participants, understanding it as a crucial part in the process of creating a culture and community, and most importantly for being able to keep the community members close, removing geographical barriers. As Rafael mentioned, many Esperantists are isolated, meaning located far from other communities, thus the only connecting bond for one to feel belonging is the Internet and the Facebook groups to keep up virtually with what the community does. This aspect makes the phenomena interesting from media and communications perspective, for how a group of people uses media to create a culture virtually, which also contributed more specifically to the lack of knowledge in academia about Esperanto and its communities.

As much as the data from the questionnaire was limited in terms of number of respondents, it was still sufficient to indicate not only demographic characteristics of the individuals of the groups, but to also suggest their connection to a particular community and what they thought of the communities they formed part of. Their bond was noticed in members’ personal investment or volunteering experiences, the way they acted as producers, the way they defended their language and culture when challenged, as well as in their speech, by using pronouns to identify themselves with their communities.

Matching to some extent MacMillan and Chavis’ theory there was also segregation and the attitude ‘Us vs. Them’, scholars use such boundaries to say that the sense of belonging increases proportionally with the creation of such boundaries, as it makes individuals feel they are part of something exclusive. Members also used particular words to identity non-Esperanto speakers, highlighting even more this segregation between speakers and non-speakers, also as a way to keep their identity, as Enric explained. Yet, the data results led me to think that young people are not as attached to such concepts, and joined the communities as they wanted to feel they belonged, but also as the communities provided a virtual space (Rheingold, 1993) with cultural diversity and the possibility to find one’s tribe within a huge group of people, where not only Esperanto is the bonding factor – e.g., Esperanto medics community, Esperanto Gay and Lesbian community, etc.

The theory also helped understand the way power is distributed in this particular community. As the interviewee mentioned, the focus is on representative democracy, where members are involved, often through a representative. Members are free to be creative and create their own communities, as well as to speak up, even though it was not clear from interviewees’ side how easy it is to participate in decision-making processes. Yet, when it comes to appreciating a member’s work, the representatives do well by promoting it in magazines, lists or in the form of different rewards, and heavily in the online groups, which as the interviewee Rafael noticed is motivating and inspiring for

Page 54 of 66 him, reminding him of the dreams he would like to achieve with Esperanto one day. The publications attracting most attention are such praising members with UEA’s diplomas, and in general all UEA’s publications attracted more engagement and were the most discussed topics, as the FB group Esperanto indicated itself.

In terms of what members saw in the communities as a reward to be a member, this aspect also seems to be in contrast with other communities. As it was documented by the literature, Esperanto members have had a distinctive cultural capital ever since the communities were established. The interviewee Enric expressed that the language today is hardly ever associated with bringing rewards as is common in other communities and as learning of another language could bring. Thus, many of them join, expecting to meet people with similar cultural capital, who also share the same values, highlighting the social and cultural capital that one has beforehand. And later on, they get to know about other benefits from learning Esperanto.

There were more than 5 comments and 2 interviewees claiming that the communities were in no way exclusive, nor did they had boundaries, and anyone is welcome to join. As much as the respondents and interviewee insisted on the non-exclusivity, there were found aspects that could be considered exclusive if one did not speak Esperanto, which measured up to a full extent to the sense of community theory. It was also mentioned that members try to ban other languages in their conventions, which once again excludes newcomers who may or may not speak Esperanto, but also highlights how much members try to keep the Esperanto identity. There were not found any other particular greetings, dress code or rituals practiced within the communities, except for the language barrier, which once learnt serves as a pass to be let to these communities.

Finally, understanding communities is understanding belonging and trust. As an essential part of the human nature, the individual has always had the need to feel he belongs (Maslow, 1943). Still, being a part of a community and feeling belonging is neither the beginning, nor the end of the journey, but instead a way through which to achieve other ends together (Penne, 2017).

5.1 Research implications and need for further investigations

The sense of community theoretical framework assisted not only in structuring the data before and while it was collected, but also in organizing the way the analysis was carried out, and in understanding and interpreting the collected empirical data applied to the context of the Esperanto communities.

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The four components of the theory provided a basis on which to look for patterns among members’ comments and attitudes, to identify tendencies. The theory also helped define and name some important aspects of the sense of belonging such as membership, influence, emotional value, and integration of needs. Some indicators were merged together, to give a better idea of what the membership in these groupings consisted of, and how much members contributed with regard to time spent being members, volunteering activities, how much they trusted each other and were willing to accept a stranger in their home, as well as used to find any existing boundaries and symbols of the communities. Still, this framework fitted perfectly well the case of Esperanto, enhancing it more.

The framework proposed reinforcement of needs as an important component of a strong community. The data and literature background documented high cultural capital among members that has always been the case ever since the first communities were established. An attempt was made to use this component of the framework in connection to cultural capital, as described by Bourdieu, taking it a bit further from what the theory on sense of community dictates. What cultural capital suggested here is that one’s incentive to be a member might be the capabilities of other members, or similar cultural capital in the form of education and personal views, which is also later converted into growth of one’s social ties.

The communities have been recently revived and are just beginning to thrive with the help of the Internet, for which Rheingold’s Virtual Community assisted heavily in understand what to look for when doing digital ethnography and the fandom continuum. This study’s purpose was to carry out an inquiry in the very beginning of this phenomena, to provide the base through which to follow its development later on. The used framework and the collected data demonstrated more similarities than differences between older studies on communities and the case for the Esperanto groupings, which is to say that we all equally strive towards belonging, as much as the communities might be different and distinctive.

Finally, what also needs to be mentioned is that as much as I believe to have provided important insights for the Esperanto communities, I also acknowledge the fact that I have not managed to understand fully the sense of belonging and how the communities function to a full extent due to not being a member, but an external researcher. Undertaking such an area to investigate was quite challenging also for the lack of new studies and knowledge on the communities, but it was rewarding as well. Nonetheless, the theories used served as guides for things to look for and be aware of, and I believe would also serve as future points to start from in next investigations.

Next studies could be focused on analysing the level of trust or sense of community, having a better response rate to follow and compare the growth of the communities, which will inevitably happen if

Page 56 of 66 they grow the way they do at present. Furthermore, investigations on identity factors that impact sense of communities could be studied better, e.g. how they compare to some of the factors mentioned here such as high cultural capital among members, and finally how PS contributes to members’ sense of belonging. The behaviour of some older Esperantists participating (or not), as well as some comments from the questionnaire in my study were suggesting of a movement more than of a community, but since the nature of my investigation in relation to movement was very brief, it is a topic that future researchers could take upon. Also, lurkers in Esperanto virtual communities can be defined better and more clear in future studies, to understand more about the communities and the sense of community, and if there are any specific reasons for interacting except for new users.

To summarize, what this research brought to the studies on groups is just another way to understand better how different kinds of communities are built with the help of a medium, and how sense of community is negotiated within members with the help of the Internet and more specifically Facebook, being a crucial factor for the community development. My personal goal with this research was to map out the beginning of studies on Esperanto, and most importantly to also bring more light and attention to such languages, whose purpose is to serve as a tool for peace across all people and races, and how media audiences become media producers with their actions. What is more, the value in relation to society that this artificial language has nowadays is not only highlighted throughout the representation of cultural diversity of members in both literature review and the data analysis, offering one the opportunity to get into these culturally rich communities, but it was also represented as a language with a propaedeutic value that can serve as a base for acquisition of more languages further on. And this, in my perspective, makes it an important artificial language, worth of being studied today in relation to its media producers.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Questionnaire

The initial questionnaire translated into English.

1. Please, indicate your level of Esperanto: 2. How long have you been studying Esperanto? 3. How would you rate the following statements for Pasporta Servo: Community members and I value the same things I trust the people in this community People in this community have similar goals/mind-sets Being a member of this community makes me feel as a part of something exclusive I spend a lot of time being a member Fitting into this community is of importance to me Being a member of this community is a part of who I am I care what community members think of me It is important to be part of this community Members of this community care about each other 4. How would you rate the following statements for Esperanto communities? Community members and I value the same things I trust the people in this community People in this community have similar goals/mind-sets Being a member of this community makes me feel as a part of something exclusive I spend a lot of time being a member Fitting into this community is of importance to me Being a member of this community is a part of who I am I care what community members think of me It is important to be part of this community Members of this community care about each other 5. How often do you participate in Esperanto gatherings? Every month Every 2 - 4 months Every 4 - 6 months Once or twice a year 6. What is your experience with Pasporta Servo? (visiting/hosting) No experience Less than 5 people 5 - 10 people 10 - 20 people More than 20 people 7. If you haven't used Pasporta Servo or anything alike, how likely would you be to open up your doors for an Esperanto speaker?

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8. Would you meet up with somebody if you're both members of Pasporta Servo or Esperanto movement? 9. How did you find out about Pasporta Servo? 10. For participants who have used Pasporta Servo: How many days do you normally spend when visiting/hosting through Pasporta Servo? 11. If you're travelling, how likely are you to search for hosts on Pasporta Servo? 12. I participate in Pasporta Servo in order to: 13. For participants who have used Pasporta Servo: Do you keep in touch with the travellers you have hosted/people who have hosted you? 14. For participants who have used Pasporta Servo: On the scale from 1 - 5, how important are the following criteria regarding your acceptance of guests through Pasporta Servo? Esperanto proficiency Nationality/Origin Quality of the request Mutual friends To have attended the same meetings/gatherings Like-minded people Education Social status 15. Sex: 16. Education: 17. Please, indicate your current location: 18. Please, indicate your age: 19. Have I maybe missed any important point so far? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Pasporta Servo community and/or the Esperanto movement! – The 22 comments that were used for the analysis.

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Appendix 2: Interview questions

An overview of the selected topics for the interview with Enric:

1. What brought you to Esperanto? How long have you been part of the community? 2. Tell me a bit more about TEJO, the way it functions, and who the members are. 3. What is in your opinion a member’s motivation to join the communities? 4. Are the Esperanto communities in your opinion exclusive, and if yes, to what extent? 5. What do belonging and being part of the community mean for you? 6. Is there trust between community members and to what extent? What triggers it? 7. Are there any hierarchies within the communities? Is there any significant division between different group members? 8. Have you ever used Pasporta Servo, and if yes, what was your impression about this service? 9. How likely are you to host a stranger if the only thing you know about him is that he is an Esperanto speaker?

An overview of the selected topics for the interview with Rafael and Mariana:

1. Length of membership; how did you get to know about the community and how you learned the language. Did the Internet help you learn the language and if yes, how? 2. How often do you interact with the online community and in what way? Which channels do you use for interaction? 3. How do you participate in the online communities? Do you tend to mostly post photos, or comment or maybe start and participate in discussions with other members? 4. What is the importance of the Internet for the existence of these online communities for you? 5. Have the online communities increased your participation in real-life communities? And in general, what value do you see in participating in the Esperanto online communities? What makes them important for you? 6. How do you feel about membership praise which is often published in the online groups? Do you pay attention to such posts, and is it something you follow with interest? Is it something that the community cares about? 7. Is the opinion of members valued in your opinion? Have you contributed directly to any decision-making, and how easy is it to do so? 8. What in your opinion are the values of the community? Does everyone have the same goal as part of the community? 9. Is there any task assignment among members and leaders who take care of processes? Do you know what tasks other members have to keep the community developing? Is the Internet helping for this tracking? 10. What in your opinion is mostly encouraged to be develop in the online community? Does the internet play an important role in this development of Esperanto culture?

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Appendix 3: Fig. 8 - Clarification of categories

Fig. 8. Categorized type of content in the Facebook group “Esperanto” for the period 27.09.18 – 13.10.18.

Categories:

Events and meetings – Posts related to organization of past and future events and meet ups for Esperantists, photos and videos of meetings and congresses. News and information in Esperanto – News and information translated in Esperanto. Hobby and entertainment – Entertainment consisting most often of memes and videos in Esperanto.

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Artistic performances – Most often members sharing posts of music and poetry in Esperanto. Language learning – Tips for language learning and offered classes online, discussions of grammar and etymology of words. History of/in Esperanto – Esperantists from the early development of the communities and their role in the development of the language and communities, World history translated into Esperanto. Other (non-comprehensible; one-time posts) – Non-comprehensible for researcher content, non- Esperanto related, and posts that happened only one in a while with a low level of engagement. Esperanto-related products – Cups, tees, bags, flags, etc. with the logo of Esperanto; consumption. Personal blogs and vlogs – Vlogs and Blogs of Esperantists in Esperanto. Membership recognition – Posts related to praise of members in the form of photos of diplomas, informative publication or external link. Zamenhof related – Related to praise of Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Esperanto hotels, restaurants, cafes – Members who have created cafes, hotels and restaurants with the name Esperanto and in the name of the language. Political discussions – Political discussions related to both the language and its usage, and other popular topics related to politics and migration, e.g. EU refugee issues.

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