The exclusion of Others through Facebook: The technological unconscious, the Orientalist unconscious, and the European migrant crisis

Abstract

The paper focuses on Facebook's shaping of communication regarding the European migrant crisis in the Czech Republic. Topological spaces in communication with entanglements of inclusion and exclusion were produced by practicing the communication, with the mutual influence of two kinds of the collective unconscious, the technological and the Orientalist unconscious. The paper is based on a participant observation of Czech-language Facebook groups and pages where discussions about the European migrant crisis proliferated. Due to the technological unconscious, algorithm-induced “filter-bubbles” helped to separate discussions of different opinions about migration so people with anti-immigration attitudes could be building European free-thinking people identities who distrust mainstream media, and people with pro-migration attitudes were excluded and considered trustful “sheeple”. Due to the Orientalist unconscious, European free-thinking people identities were strengthened by the sharing of ideas about uncivilized, irrational, and barbaric imaginative spaces of migrants' origin, which were entirely Other to Europe.