Digital Diaspora Research Articles

“Hello, It’s Me, Auntie Netta! I am Calling from Abroad”: Aunties and Digital Diasporas in Nimmi Harasgama’s Online Performances

The structure of diaspora in the twenty-first century cannot be fully understood without due attention to how diasporic relations to home are mediated by digital technologies. I suggest we must look in the direction of diasporic cultural production that utilizes such technologies to better understand how postcolonial spatiality is unmistakably commensurate with digital diasporas, or advancements in communication technologies that foster new cartographies. This study posits that the campy embodiment of the auntie figure by the Sri Lankan actress Nimmi Harasgama on YouTube (2009–2015) re-imagines diasporic affiliations to home/s by locating and encapsulating diaspora within circuits of digital connectivity. Harasgama’s YouTube alter-ego “Auntie Netta,” is an asylum-seeking diasporic character whose itinerary is makeshift. However, her communication with her friend “Gladys” via Skype calls remains constant. Both beyond and through the jest abundant in these clips, the calls remain an anchor to Netta’s historical sense of self and signify an embodied mapping of the transnational subjecthood occupied by both Netta and her creator, Harasgama. Through a close analysis of Harasgama’s performance and complication of the familiar figure of the auntie, I suggest that the digital diaspora is necessarily configured and co-constructed by the diasporic body, nostalgic memory, and digital connectivity.

Indian diaspora, caste and public diplomacy: a study of digital diaspora

ABSTRACT This article critically engages with the conceptual framework of diplomacy and the question of caste. Although Nehruvian foreign policy enunciated the spirit of anti-colonialism, anti-racial discrimination, and anti-imperialism, it failed to uphold anti-caste diplomacy in post-colonial International Relations. The caste system eclipsed Indian foreign policy by treating Dalits as ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault 1979). An increasing role of Indian diaspora in foreign policy discourse has established a new typology of diplomacy, ‘people-to-people’ relations in India’s transnational communication. Long ago, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had warned that although caste is a local problem, if the caste Hindus were to migrate to other regions on the earth, it would become a global problem. In such context, this article examines the role of digital diaspora networks in legislating anti-caste laws and policies in UK, EU, USA, and Canada. Eventually, it provides a perspective on the lack of diplomatic protection for Dalits in the international relations.

How Social Media Affordances Mediate the Digital Diaspora: Latinx Perspectives

With the increasing prominence of online communications, scholars have begun to investigate the concept of the digital diaspora—the ways in which immigrants create and maintain connections with each other, their country of origin, and the receiving nation. We suggest that the affordances of social media platforms are instrumental in developing and strengthening the digital diaspora. In particular, the six affordances—confidentiality, connectivity, creativity, interactivity, spreadability, and visibility—contribute to the power of the digital diaspora. We contextualize this discussion by focusing on Latinx immigrants in the United States. Their experiences and perspectives illuminate how an affordances framework can explicate the formation of a digital diaspora.

Digital Diasporas and Gendered Narratives: A Transnational Feminist Exploration of Americanah

This article examines the interplay between digital diasporas and gendered narratives within Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. It employs Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s transnational feminist framework to analyze the protagonist, Ifemelu’s, experiences across both physical and digital realms. The study highlights how digital platforms function as vital spaces for identity negotiation and community engagement, facilitating a complex dialogue between Ifemelu’s Nigerian heritage and her American experiences. By integrating theoretical insights from Mohanty, the analysis emphasizes the intersectionality of race, gender, and class, enriching our understanding of diasporic identity formation.

Diasporic citizen journalism: Exploring the discussion on the 2022 blank paper protests in the Chinese twitter community

Departing from the conventional nation-state framework, this paper explores citizen journalism from a translocal and transnational perspective. Focusing on Chinese diasporic communities on Twitter, the study presents an explorative inquiry into the phenomenon of diasporic citizen journalism. Through an empirical case study of the 2022 Blank Paper Protests (BPP) in China, the research reveals the pivotal role the Chinese Twitter-sphere played as a vital platform for cross-border news production and sense-making during a critical event. The study also illuminates the diversity, networked dynamics, and internal conflicts within the Chinese digital diaspora concerning the BPP. Theoretically, this paper underscores the imperative need to expand the horizons of citizen journalism research, suggesting diasporic citizen journalism as a new avenue for future exploration. Methodologically, the study showcases the potential of state-of-the-art computational methods, including Large Language Models (LLMs), in advancing journalism research. The methodology employed in this study exemplifies the integration of LLMs to enhance automated topic and sentiment analysis.

Diasporic Epistemologies in Cuban Independent Journalism

This article examines how digital diasporic journalism changes epistemic practices in the Cuban context. The last decade has seen a practical transnationalization of digitally native independent news sites in Cuba in light of two phenomena: the emigration/forced exile of many young journalists and the affordances of digital technologies, making it possible for these journalists to continue reporting despite their spatial dispersion abroad. How are digital and diasporic ways of knowing changing Cuban journalists’ epistemic practices? By taking a relational approach, we explore digital diasporas as a site of connectivity co-inhabited by multiple and hybrid traveling imaginaries. The article is based on 44 interviews with Cuban independent journalists, which are analyzed through postfoundational discourse analysis (PDA) and situational mapping. The data reveals three important epistemological cleavages that shape digital diasporic journalists’ access to knowledge. These are (1) place as an epistemic category, (2) the epistemic status they confer on themselves and other social actors, and (3) the autonomy they claim when constructing clear boundaries between journalism, activism, and propaganda.

Constructing Cool: Modesty, Mipsterz’ Visual Culture and the Self-Fashioning of a Transnational Muslim Digital Diaspora

This article examines the visual culture and fashion aesthetics of “Mipsterz,” or Muslim hipsters. Though the term originated amongst a group of friends based in New York in 2012, the neologism has arguably taken on a global life in fashion blogs and social media, with influencers from Turkey to Indonesia connecting transnationally. Many public debates celebrate these young, alternative voices and their projected self-images, while others critique the manner in which the ‘hipster’ label sanitizes, whitewashes, or secularizes Muslim piety. Indeed, these youths’ discourse highlight issues of performance, assimilation, normalization, and the dialectical construction of collective identity and individual subjectivity, yielding even greater interdisciplinary questions. Sitting at the theoretical nexus of cultural, fashion, and media studies, this article analyzes the ways in which such digital platforms not only give faith and fashion form, but it critiques the aesthetic, photographic, and performative mechanisms through which new sartorial politics are visualized.

Digital Diaspora Activism at the Margins: Unfolding Rohingya Diaspora Interactions on Facebook (2017–2022)

This study maps the Rohingya diaspora’s digital engagement on Facebook and explores how their participation has transformed over the years. Using the CrowdTangle analytics platform, this mixed-methods study presents the Rohingya community’s collective engagement on Facebook across six years, from January 2017 to December 2022. It comprises 47 Rohingya diaspora FB pages that published 34,905 posts and received nearly 8 million user interactions. Revealing their yearly transformation in interactions on Facebook, this study uncovers their contextual embodiment—within the increasingly complex and ever-changing regional and global socio-political landscape. Three key insights emerged from our findings. First, memories of loss, suffering, and longing for home intertwine in Rohingya transnational digital connectivity. In this remembrance process, Arakan (Rakhine) remains the place of reference and the center of gravity in their multi-layered identity formation and political mobilization. Second, as a gateway to seek global attention and articulate their political grievances, Rohingyas compose a coherent, unified, and human rights-based discourse on Facebook. Through such framing, they create an oppositional consciousness, drawing positive attention to their plight and the injustice they have endured for decades. Third, Islam, Muslim solidarity, and the narrative of Muslim victimhood emerge as indisputable markers in their identity (re)construction and manifesting political resistance. Anchoring on Islam, they build bridges between the scattered diaspora members and transcend their local struggle to the global audience, cementing the nexus between their Muslim identity and discrimination by the Buddhist-majority Myanmar government.

“Bardo, or the Mexican digital diaspora”

ABSTRACT Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades/Bardo False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) raises important questions about the nature of national film culture in the age to global film commerce. The product of a collaboration between the Mexican filmmaker and Netflix, the US-based global streaming service, Bardo crystalizes long-simmering concerns about digital technologies that have shaped film production and distribution and their impact on contemporary Mexican movie-going audiences. The film’s narrative rhetoric is directed to ‘Greater Mexico’, a cultural community beyond traditional territorial borders. With the objective of calling into question the effects of digitally-driven globalization, the film focuses on the crisis of conscience of creative artist Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), whose symbolic cross-border journey has blurred the lines between the Mexican identity instilled in him by cultural tradition and politics and the post-national environment which, through globalized mass media flows, has since reshaped his outlook. This odyssey to his intimate past eventually leads Silverio to recognize the falseness of his assumption of his own Mexicanness and to acknowledge the progressive evolution of an emerging Mexican culture forged in the borderless, unbounded spaces formed by transnational commerce.

Japan’s digital diaspora: social capital, health, and public communication in r/japanlife

The present study examines the communication of members in an online community designed for both native and foreign residents living in Japan. The community serves as a platform for members to discuss various topics related to lifestyle, health, food, fashion, among other topics. Using a topic model, we analyzed a mid-size sample (n = 150k) to identify the primary topics of discussion and the potential benefits of participation. The findings indicate that health, lifestyle, travel within and outside of Japan, financial and domestic advice seeking, and temporal discussions for foreigners were the main themes discussed. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest future research directions, such as exploring sensitive topics among Japanese residents and examining the role of mediated communication in society.

‘Meeting differently’: Indian Independence Day celebrations in the digital diaspora

‘Meeting differently’: Indian Independence Day celebrations in the digital diaspora

Research inquiries for digital diaspora and digital diasporic media

Diaspora and diasporic media have been studied consistently. As research subjects, however, their transition to, or creation on, digital platforms makes it increasingly ambiguous to distinguish digital diaspora from digital diasporic media. This study examines literature on digital diaspora and digital diasporic media and explores this ambiguity by looking at how these two research subjects have been conceptualized and methodologically approached. Referring to Candidatu, Leurs and Ponzanesi’s typology of digital diaspora research, this study concludes that the ambiguity is associated with shifting research paradigms in both internet and digital diaspora studies. The study further offers new insights that digital diaspora and digital diasporic media diverge on the projects each pursues and the nature of content each delivers, but converge on ‘media’ in the age of social media and the increasingly transcultural initiatives of these media. The study also offers the areas of further research that emerge from this ambiguity.

재미한인의 다원화와 디지털 디아스포라: 다인종 한인 자녀를 둔 부모의 온라인 커뮤니티 활동

최근 족외혼과 다인종 한인의 증가로 인해 재미한인의 다원화는 더욱 가속화되고 있으며, 온라인 기반 네트워크와 커뮤니티가 한인디아스포라 사이에서도 중요한 사회적 관계 형성의 장이 되고 있다. 이러한 배경 하에 본 연구에서는 ‘다인종 한인 자녀를 둔 부모’ 페이스북 그룹과 같은 온라인 커뮤니티의 형성과 유지 요인을 파악한다. 또한 미국소재 다인종 한인가족에 대한 전반적인 이해를 제고하고 이들과 재미한인사회뿐 아니라 모국인 한국과의 교류와 네트워크 활성화 방안에 대해서도 제언한다. 주요 연구방법으로 19명의 다인종 한인 자녀를 둔 재미한인을 대상으로 온라인 설문조사를 실시하였다. 본 연구 결과에 따르면 재미한인 부모들은 온라인 커뮤니티를 통해 다인종 한인 자녀의 한국어, 한국문화 교육, 그리고 한국인으로서의 문화정체성 유지에 관한 정보를 교류하고 있었다. 또한 사이버 공간을 통해서 연구참여자들은 자신과 자녀가 경험한 인종적 편견과 차별에 대해서 토로하고 대처법을 강구하고 있다. 본 연구 결과를 바탕으로 다인종 한인 가족들에 대한 연구를 미국 지역뿐 아니라 타지역으로 확대하고 ‘디지털 디아스포라’에 관한 연구가 더욱 활성화 될 수 있기를 기대한다.

Exploring the use of WeChat for qualitative social research: The case of Italian digital diaspora in Shanghai.

The widespread use of digital communication technologies has created new opportunities for social research. In this paper, we explore the limits and potentials of using messaging and social media apps as tools for qualitative research. Building upon our research on Italian migration to Shanghai, we discuss in detail the methodological choice of using WeChat for teamwork, remote sampling strategies, and conducting interviews. The paper highlights the benefits that researchers may have from employing the same technology that the studied community uses in their daily life as a research tool, and advocates for a flexible approach to research that adapts its tools and methods to the specific requirements and characteristics of the fieldwork. In our case, this strategy allowed us to emphasize that WeChat represents a digital migratory space which played a crucial role in understanding and making of the Italian digital diaspora in China.

In search of a Rohingya digital diaspora: virtual togetherness, collective identities and political mobilisation

Frequently called the most persecuted minority in the world, the Rohingyas have suffered systematic violence and oppression in Myanmar since the 1970s. Today, the vast majority of the nearly three million Rohingyas are in exile, escaping state-sponsored human rights violations and persecution in the Rakhine state of Myanmar—a place they call “home”. Neighbouring Bangladesh, which currently hosts over a million displaced Rohingya, has been a ‘sanctuary’ for at least the last four decades. A sizable community has also emerged successively in other South-East Asian countries and pockets of Australia, Europe and North America. In this context, bringing together issues at the crossroads of (im)mobilities, online connectivity and the quest for identity, this study examines the role of social media platforms in forming and shaping new types of diaspora activism among the exiled Rohingyas. Drawing on yearlong online ethnographic findings, it unpacks how digital platforms constitute a space for togetherness, where diasporic Rohingya identities are constructed, contested and mediated. Analysing recurring themes and patterns of engagement on these web-based platforms, the paper looks at how diasporic civic and political e-activisms are transforming the very contours of Rohingya identity formation and their pursuit of recognition. Finally, focusing on such a creative constellation of socio-cultural and political issues in virtual space, we demonstrate how Rohingyas practice a politics of resistance and recognition when confronting the policy pretensions of Myanmar’s government.

“You have raised me between two worlds”: Mothers, daughters, and emotions in the Sahrawi digital diaspora in Spain

The theoretical development of the concept of diaspora accounts for almost any transnational population that maintains strong emotional ties based on nostalgia and memory with their territories of origin, but also affects and ties with their territories of destination. These processes are generated through intrinsically diverse experiences that are constructed in-between both social realities. The emergence of digital technologies has provided these populations with a new scenario wherein the past and present homes are connected by immediate communication, which currently reduces distances, and uprootedness. However, few investigations have analyzed the frequent communication paradoxes that occur within these communities based on not only the need to be connected but also the failure to meet family expectations. Most studies have focused on the experience of mothers and the role they play in maintaining traditions linked to their places of origin, leaving behind the experience of daughters and their mutual relationship. This article addresses this gap while exploring the challenges that these contradictions present for the Sahrawi digital diaspora in Spain. Specifically, it investigates relationships between mothers and daughters and their impact on the social media practices of the latter. Through a social media ethnography that was developed between 2016 and 2018 together with Sahrawi refugees in Spain, this research examines how aspects such as the maintenance of family honor and the need to build one’s own life plan constantly clash in relationships between mothers and daughters with respect to cultural preservation, the emergence of new forms of belonging, emotional relations, and community expectations.

Virtual Connectivity through Creativity:

This article involves a popular Facebook group named Pencil that features creative productions from Bangladeshi people from around the world. While its basic focus is on writing, it also creates room for audio-visual productions such as songs, poetry recitation, dance, and photography. Among the contributors, a modest number is from diasporic Bangladeshi women who represent Bangladeshi culture through their artistic endeavors. The purpose of this research is to study how diasporic Bangladeshi women writers make use of the virtual platform of Pencil to express their kinship to Bangladeshi culture, as well as to carve an identity to endorse it. The prevalent discussion here is theoretical with a limited close reading of texts. While discussing the process of identity formation, this research refers to Stuart Hall’s concept of “cultural identity” to create its theoretical background. Another predominant idea of the research is the “cyberspace” provided by the Internet to diasporic subjects. The final concept is “digital diaspora” which is integral to the study of cyberspace and diaspora. Considering the debate on the ambiguous role of cyberspaces in women’s emancipation, this article argues in favor of cyberspaces by perceiving that the virtual platform promotes women’s resourcefulness.

‘Alexa, was Buddha Born in Nepal?’: microcelebrity, citizenship, and digital diaspora on YouTube

ABSTRACT The claim that ‘Buddha was Born in Nepal’ is pervasive in contemporary discourses about Nepali national identity. This article focuses on the ways in which the claim to Buddha’s birthplace is deployed by some Nepalis living beyond Nepal as both a means of maintaining a connection to Nepal as a diasporic homeland and as a means of building their own online celebrity. In particular, I analyse how the claim is communicated online by three Nepali YouTubers (Lex Limbu, James Shrestha, and Sagar Tamang), whose videos embed the claim to Buddha’s birthplace within recognizable genres, memes, and narratives that are part of the Internet’s shared culture. I argue that the makers of these videos are not only reaffirming their own sense of connection to Nepal as their diasporic homeland, but are also building their own personal brands by linking their own reputations as digital microcelebrities with the Buddha’s global name recognition. Through this case study, I aim to theorize how microcelebrity can be a form of practicing citizenship at a distance within the context of a digital diaspora.

The role of the digital diaspora in overcoming the vulnerabilities of migrants under the covid-19 pandemic (the case of Moldovan migrants)

Contemporary information-communication technologies contribute to the development of the quasi-institution ‘transnational migrant community’ in the form of digital diaspora. It has several functions: maintaining ties with the country of origin, ensuring transnational interaction, constructing the identity of migrants, consolidating their ethnic community and social adaptation, expressing the subjectivity of the diaspora in the public sphere, psycho-emotional support. The relevance of the study of the digital diaspora’s role in overcoming vulnerabilities of migrants under the pandemic is determined by the need to consider the adaptation of migrants in the context of the transformation of migrations and the use of contemporary information-communication technologies by migrants. The object of the study is the online groups of Moldovan migrants, which are characterized by the rapid institutionalization of diaspora organizations. The authors focus on the mechanisms of social adaptation of Moldovan migrants, which serve to overcome their vulnerabilities and risks under the pandemic with information-communication technologies. The study is based on the concept “digital diaspora” and the secondary analysis of the data from the Representative Office of the International Organization for Migration in Moldova on the Internet practices of Moldovan migrants (2017) and on the situation of migrants under the pandemic (2020). The main research method is the analysis of the content of the largest Internet groups of Moldovan migrants in the social network with the techniques “problem tree” and “decision tree”. The study showed that during the pandemic, the Internet groups of Moldovan migrants became a platform for their self-organization and overcoming vulnerabilities, and also performed informational, organizational, representative, mobilization and recreational functions. The authors believe that the experience of the Internet groups of Moldovan migrants can be extrapolated to other migrant communities and other contexts supporting the political, economic and social-cultural subjectivity of migrants.

The Digital Archive of Diaspora: Blogging (Post)Migration

Transnational diaspora groups make intensive use of community media when communicating and connecting in cyberspace. In particular, I argue that blogs constitute a new kind of (post)migrant archive that compiles shared histories and experiences of diaspora. The principal role of the digital archive has become defined, not so much by storage, as by circulation and transfer, in what media theorist Wolfgang Ernst (2002) calls the paradigm shift in the reconceptualization of the archive in the digital age.Indeed, circulation and transfer are also essential dimensions of the digital diaspora. Regarding the modes of interactions of diaspora communities on the web, I will analyse how (post)migrants’ online self-representation and their struggle to gain visibility shape new understandings of the digital archive of diaspora. My focus targets blogs as one of the most popular genres in cyberspace. The samples I analyse are written by (post)migrants and are often intended to decenter the German “Mehrheitsgesellschaft” [“mainstream society”] and diversify its artistic-intellectual scene.It has been shown that these new media settings also give rise to new forms of writing; for example, authorship is often collaborative. My thesis is that this very heterogeneous virtual collaboration often has the effect of transcending the contours of stable “Turkish”, “Arab” and/or “German” identities and of thus also contradicting dominant parameters of identity politics.This is the case with the collective blog “migrantenstadl” that is the subject of my analysis; “migriert, migriert, sonst sind wir verloren” [“migrate, migrate, otherwise we are lost”] is the motto of this often provocative project and an invitation to its readers. “Migration” is movement and mobility, whereas “Archive” is preservation, so how to construct an archive of migration on moving ground?While my primary interest is to explore and connect the concepts of digital diaspora and digital archive, I will try to give concrete form to my theoretical findings on this nexus by analysing the above-mentioned blog, which is a cultural and political initiative directed by Tunay Önder and Imad Mustafa that was founded in 2011.