Ethan with his statement “we are theoretically highly global but are practically highly local” tries to

explain to us his idea of how internet tools in a twisted way, act as a closure block for us to look out into
the other parts of the unfamiliar world.

He discusses in detail taking fakebook’s friending patterns as an example and points out that most of the
people that we are friends with on the platform are from our own locality. There are no physical barriers
to reach out to people across the nation however, we still tend to stay within our vicinity. He used a
sociological term “Tamale” to give a more profound meaning to this situation. It means that we have a
powerful tendency to stay close to people who are demographically, sociably and economically similar
to ourselves.
This is because people naturally are attracted towards people with common ground, be it race or
religion.

He goes on to further explain by taking newspapers as an example. The news that we consume daily, is
mostly curated from our local sources and about local activities. Statistics show that 93.9% of Americans
read news from their own print media sources. This is a common trend among other countries too. Our
consumption point is mainly local, rather than international which we believed would be the case with
the rise of internet.

Rather than a looking at a fair share of attention divided related to important issues in the world, we are
pushed towards what is familiar to us. It creates a problem for civic actors because their aim is to be
knowledgeable and aware of events happening around the world. A bridge is created between cultures
through this theory which does not help in the growth of global civics society. Rather than creating tools
to lessen the gap between unfamiliar people, cultures and so on it is instead widened. It is important as
civic actors to have our horizon’s expanded and see the world with different views than just one which is
prejudiced. It creates a challenge for civic actors to go beyond these internet tools such as facebook
because it makes us rely on what is already stored in our minds, trapping us in a limited world where we
are unable to gain new knowledge and discover unknown content.

Ethan puts into discussion a concept called “cosmopolitanism” in relation with his statement. This allows
us to put into perspective that there are other ways of living in this world which might be different or
even better than what we are doing right now. And an obstacle is raised in the way of this concept when
we live in highly local society. Only one perspective which might even be flawed becomes the narrative:
a problem for civic actors to translate the deep connections around the world which is what they are
supposed to do.