Imagined Communities 2.0: Diasporas and the use of Social Media

Diaspora describes the dispersal of people from their land of origin to other countries. What is distinct about diaspora is that they maintain a link to their homeland and stay connected to those who have moved to other countries. In the globalized world, social media has allowed diaspora to cross borders and maintain a connection to their homeland. Social Media is instrumental to diaporas as it allows them to cross geographical and political boundaries in order to transmit and sustain their traditions. Diasporas who interact through social media are able to participate in an imagined community as a strategy to maintain “long-distance nationalism.” Social Media exemplifies the way in which communication technologies have been utilized by people to form social relationships but also to maintain those that already exist.

Anderson characterized national cultures as “imagined communities” as being “bonded discursively by a sense of deep, horizontal belonging to an imagined common origin and a mythical past, the imagi(nations) of deterritorialized people, even when scattered through different lands, may be marked correspondingly by “absentee patriotism and long-distance nationalism” (Sinclair, 19). The Article, “Imagined, Online communities,” does a great job explaining why and how social media can be theorized as an imagined community. He explains that while members within an online community may have never met, there still exists a sense of solidarity among them.

Appadurai noted that with “‘print capitalism’ a new power was unleashed in the world, the power of mass literacy and its attendant large-scale production of projects of ethnic affinity that were remarkably free of the need for face-to-face communication...” (Appadurai, 2). Print media was a new way of disseminating information that “made it possible for people to think about themselves and relate to other in new ways.” Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter have had similar effects as they have created new opportunities for diaspora to stay connected and share information, keeping them updated on the events taking place in their homeland. It is interested how powerful these online communities have become. Social networks such as Facebook and twitter exemplify globalization from below as they have allowed people to go against those who may have particular interests. For example, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, journalists were reporting stories that were inconsistent with the stories produced by citizens using social media. In this case, social media allowed people to inform each other and do their own reporting on the events in Haiti.