The shift toward digital environments has introduced a range of new and transformed ideas and concepts. Digital communities and digital diaspora as one type of such communities are among those concepts that entered discussions of scholars in the field of communication and media studies with the advances in technology development – the theories of deterritorialized and imagined communities, the social capital theory, and the theory of social media as hybrid communication spaces, are just some of the theoretical paradigms applied to the problem of the digital diaspora. Although the body of literature researching the issue continues to grow, the nature of diasporic online interactions is still a subject of debate. Is digital diaspora a form of diasporic community enhanced by digital technologies that allow its members to connect online as an alternative to face-to-face interactions, or is it a stand-alone entity whose essence differs from the conventional understanding of diaspora as the idea of people living outside of their native land and connecting based on their cultural and ethnic similarities while living in their host country?
On the one hand, the concept of digital diaspora reflects the attributes of the traditional meaning of the term “diaspora” that is transitioned from offline reality to virtual reality contexts – the digital diaspora is a community that interacts using digital technologies. This point of view requires the analysis of the environments where the community is functioning, as well as the study of the effects the digital environments may have on diasporic communion. On the other hand, the nature of diaspora as groups of people who have been dispersed from their homeland and share everyday experiences in their host countries (both physical and virtual) may require a more complex approach.
One detail that intricates the concept of digital diaspora is the expansion of digital technologies and access to the internet worldwide that extends the boundaries for communication immensely, allowing even those living in their home countries to participate in diasporic communities. The complexity is evident when looking into the composition of online diasporic communities and the immigrants’ online participation on social media.
In October 2022, as a Brooklyn College graduate student, I conducted an independent study, the primary concern of which was to investigate how users understand the idea of digital diaspora and how their perception affects their online practices. The study consisted of two phases. First was a digital ethnographic observation focused on the content of the published or shared posts in the three largest public groups of Ukrainian immigrants in the USA on Facebook, “Ukrainian Diaspora in [the] USA” with 35.0 K followers at the beginning of the study and 35.4 K at the end; “Ukrainian American Community” with 5.9 K followers at the beginning and 6.5 K at the end of the study period; and “Ukrainian Immigrant” with 12.4 K followers at the beginning and 12.5 K at the end. During the observation from October 1, 2022, to October 31, 2022, a total of 1777 posts were created and shared in the three groups, not including those pleading for the help of a “sponsor” needed to get travel authorization to the US under the so-called “U4U” program, permitting the resettlement to the US of 100 000 Ukrainian refugees. The process of receiving a travel authorization to the US includes an official attestation with USCIS of an American citizen or permanent resident to financially support a Ukrainian refugee, implicating that the sponsor for a refugee will be responsible for the refugee’s wellbeing. The program was named “Uniting for Ukraine” (its abbreviation is “U4U”).
Those posts intending to find a sponsor were not included in the content analysis since it would require separate research related to the consequences of the ongoing war. Still, as my study was conducted in October-November 2022 during another intense phase of the war, the leading topics of the posts published on Facebook Ukrainian immigrant public groups were on the war in Ukraine or contained connected to the war content, including the Ukraine news, analytics, and opinions on the war in Ukraine, fundraisers, and donations to help Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian army, and memes on the war which once again had demonstrated one of the most important facets of digital diaspora: the attention of immigrants to their home country.
Interesting, however, was the fact that many posts were published by users from Ukraine who were not immigrants: some were initiating fundraisers. Some promoted their business in Ukraine, which, using the pros of globalization, could extend the numbers of their clientele beyond Ukraine, where the businesses were located. Others shared cultural content such as folk songs or fragments of Ukrainian literature. Furthermore, as the results of the second phase of my study confirmed, almost twenty percent of the Facebook groups’ members were not immigrants.
Although the focus of my study was not on the essence of the digital diaspora but on the digital practices of a diaspora sample, its results highlighted the question of what the concept of the digital diaspora should signify since it has to deal not only with the digital dimensions but with the elements of the imagined communities that are not deemed as part of the traditional idea of diaspora and might even contradict the meaning of the term: are those users never living their home countries part of digital diaspora as well.
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