Papers by Donya Alinejad
Translation and Social Media Communication in the Age of the Pandemic, 2022
Global Perspectives
This article examines the ways in which experiences of homeland take shape through the use of soc... more This article examines the ways in which experiences of homeland take shape through the use of social media among first- and second-generation Kurdish migrants living in Milan and surrounding areas in the Lombardy region of Italy. Drawing on a short-term ethnographic study of social media practices carried out in spring and summer 2018, the paper presents and compares the uses of social media among two migrant generations and conceptualizes homeland as a mediated experience that takes shape through people’s everyday social media practices. This approach to homeland can account for the multiple ways in which the affordances of digital platforms and the subjective aspects of homeland are interconnected with one another through social media practices. The paper is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.
Social Media + Society, 2019
This article investigates how migrants experience “co-presence” with their loved ones through soc... more This article investigates how migrants experience “co-presence” with their loved ones through social media. On the basis of empirical investigation, the article engages with current debates about how social media shape emotional experiences. It draws on short-term ethnographic research of everyday social media practices among second-generation Turkish-Dutch migrants who grew up in the Netherlands and migrated to Istanbul in adulthood. The article focuses on transnational family intimacy within this migration phenomenon as an in-depth case study for understanding the role of social media platforms and mobile devices in producing emotional experiences of togetherness under conditions of long-distance, long-term separation. The author shows how social media platforms afford not only ambient, fast-paced, background communications—which have been emphasized in the literature, thus far—but also more direct, immersive, conversational modes of communication. The article argues that people’s practices of carefully shifting between these modes of social media communication produce their experiences of transnational emotional intimacy. The author develops the notion of careful co-presence through a discussion of how social media practices that produce intimacy reflect both discerning selectivity and emotional care. This argument builds on scholarship that has advanced practice-based approaches to understanding how emotion is mediated through digital media.
There is a methodological tendency in work on diaspora and digital media for quantitative investi... more There is a methodological tendency in work on diaspora and digital media for quantitative investigations to approach diaspora in static ways that contrast with theories of diaspora as a dynamic cultural formation. On the other hand, qualitative, ethnographic work tends not to engage with digital methods and quantitative data-driven investigation. In this article, we sketch this methodological and disciplinary disconnect and address it by proposing a model for understanding digitally mediated formations of diaspora that combines digital methods techniques with a sensitivity to ethical and theoretical discussions of migration and diaspora. Drawing on interpretive epistemologies and feminist research ethics, we present a case study analysis of a locally informed, Turkish–Dutch issue. We argue for a method that produces 'mattering maps'. This involves tracking and visualizing digital traces of an issue across web platforms (Google Search results, Facebook pages, and Instagram posts) and integrating this with an analysis of the face-to-face interview responses of a key issue actor.
Journalism, Audiences, and Diaspora
Global Networks, Jan 1, 2011
Critical studies in …, Jan 1, 2007
Article by Donya Alinejad
Global Networks, 2018
There is a methodological tendency in work on diaspora and digital media for quantitative investi... more There is a methodological tendency in work on diaspora and digital media for quantitative investigations to approach diaspora in static ways that contrast with theories of diaspora as a dynamic cultural formation. On the other hand, qualitative, ethnographic work tends not to engage with digital methods and quantitative data‐driven investigation. In this article, we sketch this methodological and disciplinary disconnect and address it by proposing a model for understanding digitally mediated formations of diaspora that combines digital methods techniques with a sensitivity to ethical and theoretical discussions of migration and diaspora. Drawing on interpretive epistemologies and feminist research ethics, we present a case study analysis of a locally informed, Turkish–Dutch issue. We argue for a method that produces ‘mattering maps’. This involves tracking and visualizing digital traces of an issue across web platforms (Google Search results, Facebook pages, and Instagram posts) and integrating this with an analysis of the face‐to‐face interview responses of a key issue actor.
Journal articles by Donya Alinejad
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2020
This collection brings together key themes that integrate the scholarship on migration, digital m... more This collection brings together key themes that integrate the scholarship on migration, digital media, and emotion. Drawing from a variety of conceptual, theoretical, and methodological traditions that cross-cut academic disciplines, the articles in this issue explore the emotional facets of digitally mediated migrant socialities in a variety of socio-cultural and geographic locales. These examinations raise important questions about how digital media ubiquity shapes global migration experiences and multicultural media publics at various scales. How are relations of intimacy and care at a distance articulated and experienced through social media? What does it mean to imagine home as a digitally mediated experience? In what unexpected ways are platforms reshaping migrant subjectivities? In this introductory article we address these and other questions, outlining how we believe the study of emotion can help us think more comprehensively about the digital mediation of migrants' social lives in the current media age.
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Papers by Donya Alinejad
Article by Donya Alinejad
Journal articles by Donya Alinejad