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Paper short abstract

The paper explores the creation of digital solidarity and collective identity among members of Czechoslovak prepping communities. Employing digital ethnography through online observations and digital artifact analysis, it examines the collective character of prepping within a post-socialist context.

Paper long abstract

As prepping moves from the margins to the mainstream, digital platforms have become crucial arenas for negotiating crisis, belonging, and the politics of the future. This paper examines Czechoslovak digital prepping communities as sites where representations of crisis and catastrophic discourse are not merely expressions of anxiety, but active resources for building digital solidarity and collective identity.

Drawing on Stadler’s digital solidarity theory and Wenger’s communities of practice, I ask: What forms of solidarity emerge within preppers’ discourse, how do preppers use visual and textual discourse to construct community, and how do political divides manifest and get negotiated within these digital spaces?

Methodologically, it employs digital ethnography, utilizing online participant observation and digital artifact analysis ranging from posts and comment threads to images and videos, across several Czechoslovak Facebook groups dedicated to prepping and two Czechoslovak online prepping forums.

The Czech and Slovak post-socialist context, characterized by hybrid forms of citizenship that oscillate between expectations of state care and neoliberal self-reliance, provides fresh insights into predominantly US and Western European prepping, enabling me to discern how prepping is reimagined as a collective, rather than purely individual, project.