Session 3: Cyber-Subcultures
5th Global Conference
Friday 12th March – Sunday 14th March 2010
Salzburg, Austria
Stresses Upon An Emergent Imagined Community: Results and Insights from the Emirates Internet Project
Harris Breslow
Department of Mass Communication, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
This paper addresses the use of new media in the production of historical knowledge and the preservation of national identity and memory within the framework of an interactive multimedia academic research database and archive. One method for the preservation of national historical knowledge and identity is the integration of multiple sources and forms of information within an interactive multimedia archive; the more sources and media within the archive, the more complex the overall informational effect, and thus the more deeply and complex the experience of national identity and memory. We will demonstrate this in the following ways.
1. A demonstration and discussion of a prototype of the Digital Emirates Project, an interactive multimedia database and archive based on an historical timeline, and allowing for the real time interaction of maps, still photography, video, research archives and academic and popular databases.
2. The delivery, through the database, of a project concerning the uses and depiction of roadway roundabout art as historical markers, communal symbols, and cultural icons. This paper argues that roundabout art plays a complex role in the reproduction of local and national Emirati culture, and that the most effective way to discuss, describe and display the complex conjunctural functions of roundabout art is through the use of a new medium, such as the Digital Emirates Project.
3. In order to demonstrate the potential of the software as a repository for multiple sources/types of information we will also demonstrate the delivery of a second academic project, “The Changing Space of the Arab City”. The project’s thesis is that changes to the nature of urban space have fundamental effects upon the national cultural formation within which the changes occur. This project uses Dubai as a case study and will be discussed within the framework of the Digital Emirates Project.
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The Role of Online Communities in Social Networking among Polish Migrants in the UK
Renata Seredynska-Abou Eid
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Migration is a global phenomenon; however, in the European Union (EU) moving across the borders seems to easier due to legislation and continuous uniting processes that take place in all member countries. In 2004, after the enlargement, the EU experienced a mass movement of Eastern European citizens to the west in search for better paid jobs and so called ‘better life.’ The latest Polish immigration to the United Kingdom (UK) has outnumbered any other migration wave to Britain. The volume of Polish immigration has surpassed any political expectations and any realistic calculations in the United Kingdom.
Social networking creates a ‘home away from the homeland’ for many immigrants while cyberspace provides numerous opportunities for members of the immigrant community to share thoughts, exchange ideas, and seek advice about any issue. Polish identity emerges from a relatively monolithic socio-cultural structure; therefore, keeping expatriate ethnic identity might be of high importance to some migrants in the multicultural host country. In the internet era, computer-mediated public spheres seem to develop rapidly and widely. Online forums, blogs, news rooms, chat rooms, photo galleries, and personal websites offer endless opportunities to share information of any kind.
This paper, focusing on contemporary Polish immigration to the UK, explores the role of computer-mediated communication in establishing migrant communities in the target country. The function of a national space created in the virtual world while staying away from home is examined in terms of validity, usefulness, and importance for establishing relations with compatriots. Although the analysis focuses only on one national group of immigrants, the issue of cyber-communication is complex and fluid; therefore, the impact of the online environment on migrant communities is multi-layered and not entirely predictable.
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Migrants Adolescents Self Making through Emerging Communication Practices
Federica de Cordova, Eleonora Riva and Nicoletta Vittadini
Department of Psychology and Cultural Anthropology – University of Verona, Department of Geography and Environmental Human Sciences – University of Milan and Department of Media Communications and Performing Arts – Catholic University of Milan, Italy
This article analyses peer to peer communication practices mediated by digital technologies. Particularly, the forms of this kind of communication have been in depth analysed within adolescents of foreigner origins living in Milan.
Aims of the research were:
1) outlining communication and socialisation practices technologically mediated (such as the use of cellular phone to exchange photos, videos etc. or the participation in social network), typical of the target group;
2) highlighting the role of these new communication practices in shaping peculiar relationship between migrants and indigenous culture, in terms of integration/differentiation processes;
3) defining if and how such behaviours enable a space of creativity, self-determination and cultural mediation between multiple belongings;
4) identifying any strategy of identity constructing in transnational terms.
The sample was collected in two high schools in Milan (Italy) and consists of 20 subjects, male and female, age between 15 and 19 years old. All of them attended Italian school from the first class of secondary school at least.
Data were gathered through individual interview, focus group and virtual shadowing. The last method offered the possibility to get multimedia items produced by subjects themselves, that have been analysed too.
Data were analysed according to qualitative methods; results are presented and discussed from the point of view of flow theory, acculturation processes and transnationalism. Results outline specific communication behaviours in which socialisation processes can bring about change in the traditional categorisation Italian/foreigner. The consequence is a new symbolic space for self representation and construction of identity.
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