Internet Representations of the South Discussing the Internet in the context of the American South may strike some

readers as strange. Cyberspace was hailed early on as a monolithic technology that, because of its rapid communication capabilities, would eliminate the need for traditional geographic and cultural distinctions. In reality, there are many Information Superhighways, and theylike highways in the physical worldrun through and connect a multitude of different communities of expression, including regional expression. The very names attached to Internet sitesfor example, www.southerner.org and www.dixieweb.comreflect how people incorporate attachments to the South into their online identities. Rather than signaling the end of the importance of regions, the Internet and its many componentsincluding web pages, listservs, chat rooms, blogs, and social network sites such as MySpace.comhave ushered in a new platform for representing, talking about, and even debating the South. These online representations together constitute a Virtual South that has not been widely analyzed. For scholars of the South, the Internet provides a new laboratory for studying the continuing importance of the region within popular culture and the evolving nature of what it means to be southern within a global economy and society. A few key ideas underlie our understanding of how regional cultures such as the South have a place within the new landscape of the Internet. As illustrated through their homesteading of cyberspace, southerners are increasingly connected to, rather than isolated from, the larger world. The contemporary South, according to anthropologist James Peacock, is characterized by a globalized regionalism in which local and global forces intertwine to re-create southern identity in ways that depart from but remain tied to

the past. Rather than a fixed and tightly bound entity, southern culture is (and has always been) a dynamic and hybrid collection of cultural exchanges, influences, and relations. As historian Helen Taylor suggests, southern cultural forms move or circle well beyond the region, even across international boundaries. This circulation of culture is greatly assisted by the mass media, including the Internet. The media is typically viewed as a homogenizing agent that erodes regional distinctiveness, but this is not necessarily the case. Building upon the work of communications scholar Stephen Smith, it is useful to think about how the Internet creates and transmits an electronic folkore about the South. Cyberspace is inundated with stereotypes and images that promote, rather than diminish, the idea of southerners being unique. These online regional representations even as they inform, entertain, or offendassist us in building an understanding of the world and where we (and others) fit into that world. The Internet, like all forms of mass media, is engaged in the ideological work of framing the meanings attached to people and places. The contours of the Virtual South often resemble and reinforce depictions found in films, books, music, television, and advertising. Yet, the Internet it is also a source of alternative regional images as a growing number of people go online, many of whom would not have a media outlet if not for cyberspace. While the Internet does not show all possible points of view, it does allow some individuals and social groups to bypass traditional barriers to representation and publish views that may challenge conventional notions of southern identity. Thus, cyberspace is a possible site for cultural struggles and a valuable barometer of the multiple and sometimes competing interpretations that surround the region. Of the many

contexts in which the South is represented as socially important in cyberspace, three appear to dominatemarketing, humor, and identity. In the realm of online marketing, people often promote the image of a hospitable American South. The scale of this discourse is significant. A recent search of Google found that the phrase southern hospitality appears in over 1.1 million web pages. Many online references to hospitality continue the long-standing practice of invoking idyllic images of a genteel and aristocratic Antebellum South. For example, Internet marketing for the Blue Willow Inn Restaurant in Social Circle, Georgia brags: The hospitality and manners of the Old South are alive and well in the Modern South. The restaurant has devoted an entire web page to educating people, presumably non-southern Internet users, about the history and authenticity of southern hospitality, arguing that it is not a myth perpetrated by the Hollywood version of life in the South. While some Internet promotions distance themselves from Hollywood depictions of the region, others embrace and build upon these images. The Tara Inn stands as a symbol of the popularity of the movie Gone with the Wind. The inn is marketed online as offering guests a lasting impression of southern hospitality. Oddly enough, the Tara Inn is located in Clark, Pennsylvania (74 miles from Pittsburgh) and its owners are natives of northwestern Pennsylvania, thus proving that southerners are not the only ones interested in selling and consuming the South. Identification with the region and its history (real or imagined) goes well beyond its geographic boundaries, a situation that the Internet helps make possible and, in fact, encourages. The promotion of the South does not go unchallenged in cyberspace, however. When a disgruntled visitor to Nashville described southern hospitality as a joke in an

Internet discussion forum, the comment drew numerous replies (both in agreement and disagreement) and initiated a spontaneous discussion about other peoples southern experiences. The online representational process is not fixed but open to a bidirectionality and interactivity that also shapes the Souths image, whether in positive or negative terms. Humor comprises a large part of the Virtual South and much of this humor represents southerners as simple, unsophisticated backwoods characters, continuing a tradition that dates back to the regions frontier era. Some Internet humorists are fond of exaggerating the distinctiveness of southern speech and have published an online Hickphonics to English Dictionary to assist in translating bahs to boss, tire to tower, and bob war to barbed wire. For other humorists, the focus is not on reproducing the stereotypical dialect of the region but on defining the general content of southern conversations. The Top 40 things you would NEVER hear a southerner say is a narrative frequently found on the Internet. Supposedly, southerners never say: Ill take Shakespeare for 1,000, Alex, Wrasslins fake, or Unsweetened tea tastes better. The supposed differences between southerners and non-southerners are another common subject of Internet humor. In attempting to differentiate the South from the North, a participant in one online discussion forum described northerners as bluenecks and disseminated a list of humorous statements entitled You might be a Yankee if One of the statements contended that you might be a Yankee if you think barbeque is a verb rather than a noun. Southern anxiety over increased tourism and migration from the North is evident in online texts such as Warnings Issued by the Southern Tourism Bureau to all visiting Yankees and Tips for Northerners Moving South.

The representation of the South through online humor is not only accomplished through the written word but also through an ever-growing number of visual images found along the Information Superhighway, spurred in part by the proliferation of digital cameras and photograph and video sharing Internet sites. Two frequently shared pictures are redneck horseshoes, which shows two men tossing toilet seats as a form of southern recreation, and redneck swimming pool, which shows a resourceful man swimming in the back of his plastic-lined and water-filled pick-up truck. While the Internet carries on the tradition of southern frontier humor, it also has the capacity to transform this tradition. With the increasing participation of females in online representation, Internet southern humor is no longer just about masculine exploits and there are early signs that the traditional dominance of men in making humor is being challenged. Finally, as access to Internet technology broadens geographically and socially, the Virtual South is increasingly a foundation for the expression of identity. A Google search reveals that phrases such as I am a southerner and I am from the South appear frequently in cyberspace. For some Internet users, representing the South in fond and personal ways comes in response to moving away from the region. An interesting example of this is the Southern Gal Goes North blog in which an Alabama-raised wine consultant now living in Chicago archives her region-based memories and writings. Other identity-related depictions of the South take a much more political tone as the internet is used as an arena for debating heritage and history. For instance, the Southern Heritage News & Views blog is devoted to defending Confederate symbols in the midst of growing calls to remove them as well as to advocate a conservative agenda on other issues. Part of the cultural power of these online regional representations comes not only

from their content but also in the way they provide hyperlinks to other like-minded people and organizations, in effect creating what appears to be a cyber movement. Yet, the Virtual South is not just wielded for reactionary purposes. Confederate-based representations of identity have been contested online and Internet discussion forms host comments from African Americans who, rather denying their southern heritage, call for a representation of heritage built upon civil rights and social justice rather than slavery and racism. Accompanying these calls for diversity are non-traditional constructions of southern identity, such as those found in online gay and lesbian communities (e.g., Kudzu Bears of Mississippi, Carolina Lesbian, and Dallas Southern Pride). Regardless of ones political stance, an Internet presence is now seen as important to claiming ones place within the South and asserting the legitimacy of ones representation and identification with the region. In conclusion, the cultural influence of the Internet should not be measured by what it gives us in terms of a single image or picture of the South. Although the Internet appears to advance several enduring southern stereotypes and representational traditions, the real potential power of the online realm comes in how it can complicate these traditions and established images and allow different perspectives of the region to be seen and heard. In cyberspace, as in the physical world, the South and what it symbolizes is under constant redefinition.

Derek H. Alderman Derek H. Alderman, in Intersecting Paths: The Legacy of Old Southwest Humor, ed. Edward J. Piacentino (2006); Derek H. Alderman, Southeastern Geographer (1997);

Derek H. Alderman and Daniel B. Good, Journal of Geography (1997); Tara McPherson, in Race and Cyberspace (2000); James L. Peacock, Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World (2007); Stephen A. Smith, Myth, Media, and the Southern Mind (1985); Helen Taylor, Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens (2001).