Catalan in the social media: The battle over global linguistic diversity on the Internet

Abstract

This article is divided into seven sections. After a first introductory section, the second, entitled “A supraterritorial world”, presents the power structures in today’s society which allow to understand the role that languages play in it. The third section, “Internet and linguistic colonisation”, is a proposed take on the status of languages on the Internet. The fourth one, called “Internationally, are there governments concerned with the use of their languages on the Internet?”, analyses the relationship between governments around the world and content creators. The fifth section, entitled “The reality of Catalan on the Internet: Taking stock of the past four years”, lists several actions undertaken in this field in Catalonia. The sixth section is called “So now what? Catalan’s challenges on the social media” and summarises some of the issues yet to be addressed. The article closes with a seventh section entitled “Significant, unstoppable years”, which contains the conclusions.