Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    Virtually local : social media and community amongst Polish nationals in Dublin
    (Emerald Group Publishing, 2009-05) ;
    Purpose - This paper examines the impact of social media (including social networking technologies) on migration strategies and integration, focusing on the use of new technologies for information seeking and dissemination, as well as personal communication. Methodology - Twenty-six Polish nationals resident in Ireland were interviewed, using semi-structured interviews, in 2008. Findings - Results indicated a significant use of new social media, especially social networking technologies based in Poland and largely used by Polish language speakers. The use of social networking technologies enabled “media rich” and resilient social groups to develop, founded on the latent monitoring of activities characteristic of face-to-face, geographically delimited communities. The resulting social groups incorporated friends and relations based in Poland, Ireland and throughout the world. These networks tended to minimize integration into Irish society, as most Polish nationals interacted only with other Polish people, whether resident in Ireland or elsewhere. Originality - This research demonstrates that new technologies are having a significant impact on patterns of migration. New social media are changing the character of international migration, with an emphasis on mobility rather than assimilation. Where foreign nationals previously tended to integrate into the societies where they resided, migrants are now more likely to be peripatetic mobile workers. Furthermore, while these migrants often no longer live in physical ghettos, they now live in “virtual” ghettos or enclaves, as they use new technologies to create separate lives within the wider society in which they work and live.
    Scopus© Citations 50  854
  • Publication
    Migration, Community and Social Media
    (University de Deusto, 2012-03-09) ;
    New information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been linked with the “annihilation of space” so that distance no longer limits communication and interaction between people, the exchange of goods, services and information amongst people, or the movement of people from one locality to another. The result, it is often suggested, is the emergence of new forms of society. Whatever debates may have developed regarding the accuracies of such claims, people vary in the extent to which such claims might apply to them. Those living in small communities who interact largely with neighbours they see daily may feel little impact of any “death of distance” (Cairncross 1997: ii). On the other hand, the lives of individuals who feel connected with people or places at a distance may be greatly altered as a result of new technologies. There is little doubt that individuals, who due to limitations imposed by distance, previously would have had little possibility of contact with each other, can now communicate and maintain social relations. Thus, the social capital debate (Portes & Landolt 1996; Putnam 2000) has been extended to include “network capital” (Larsen & Urry 2008). In most cases, individuals use multiple modes (face to face, email, texting, and so on) to communicate with each other (e.g., Boase et al. 2006; Lenhart et al. 2007; Slater & Tacchi 2004).
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  • Publication
    Migrants' information practices and use of social media in Ireland : networks and community
    (ACM, 2011-02-10) ;
    Migrants, having left their home society and community, often depend on electronic modes of communication to maintain contacts with distant friends and relations. Their practices illustrate the affordances provided by social media when face to face communication is not available. This paper describes the information and communication practices of Polish and Filipino nationals in Ireland, based on interviews with over sixty-five migrants in 2009. Migrants display increased dependence on the Internet as an information source and use various electronic media to maintain significant contacts with friends and relations in their home societies. Social media (including Web 2.0) practices have an impact on long distance relations that previous technologies have not had, due to differences in the way these technologies are utilized. Social media usage is a passive monitoring that complements the active communication of first generation technologies; this monitoring creates a background awareness and presence in terms of which active communication takes place, which facilitates bonding as well as bridging capital. This enables resilient and durable transnational links, while also facilitating greater mobility for migrants.
    Scopus© Citations 28  526