Imagined communities,third space and heritage preservation in the digital age: Exploring the discursive construction of Jewish identity on the terrain of Facebook

Abstract

This study takes a discourse-oriented ethnographic approach to three Facebook (FB) groups of Jewish interest to examine how the members of these specific groups create their own ‘third space’ and maintain their cultural and religious identities by emphasising the Facebook polymedium as an ‘imagined community’. By introducing an interdisciplinary approach, based on a combination of digital ethnographic approaches, drawing on multi-sited ethnography and Critical Discourse Studies’ (CDS) analytical framework, especially the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) and its argumentative strategies, this study examines how members of the FB groups under investigation shape a Greek Jewish heritage by sharing cultural dynamics and collective memories, especially at a time of a worrying surge in antisemitism. The article also explores how these FB groups’ members negotiate the digital juxtaposition of space via the dichotomy of ‘here’ and ‘there’, as well as the division between ‘then’ and ‘now’, or past and present.