Introduction

When I began thinking about this study, I was focused on exploring the increasingly collectivist structures of new media technologies and how they impact global culture. I was already fascinated with Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities model for understanding identity and community, and felt that the influence of media on an imagined communal identity in comparison to an individual identity would be a good entry point (1991). As I began looking at transnational identity, I found that not only are the group and individual identities inextricably linked, but that media is a core component of both.

As Olga Bailey et al. observe, imagination and mediation influence each other while becoming increasingly interlinked to processes of globalization (2007, 3). Individual media consumption and production choices and patterns become the ways in which we express our identities, both as individuals and in relation to various groups. Throughout this work, my goal has been to describe how expressive media-based acts are used to construct a public narrative of self that is based on individual choice and agency.

This study explores how online tools like branded social networks (BSNs), photo and video communities, and email and IM services help people around the world manage their relationships, impacting conceptions and formations of cultural practice and identity across time and space. The study focuses on uncovering and exploring a set of digital practices around identity expression and construction as they emerge online and off. As global populations cross regional boundaries in ways never before possible, complex hybrid identities have emerged as particularly vibrant global sites of meaning. Transnationals—some who have moved with the intention of establishing a new life in another country, others who have moved for a specific goal and plan to later return to their home countries and families—rely heavily on social networks, both online and offline, to form and maintain relationships with multiple communities and cultures. This study focuses on transnational communities at the local, national, and global level to study individual and collective identity in the global space.

To examine how transnational identity manifests online, I conducted a quantitative survey investigating transnationality and media use among US residents. Designed as a proxy for collecting data from a wide variety of continents and countries, the survey provides a snapshot of trends in transnational media use, highlighting connections between aspects of respondent backgrounds and media practices. Respondents were drawn from people who currently live in the United States and identify at least one home country (defined in the survey as “country of origin and/or a country you have lived in for long enough to feel at home”) other than the US.

The discussion of digital identity practices uses critical social research to investigate collective identity online, exploring emerging structures of meaning and repertoires of action found on the branded social networks that house the greater part of the global population online. This section draws on a variety of literature and visual analyses to describe diverse aspects of branded social networks from definition to demographics, and visual layout to structures of meaning-making. I also investigate how these structures create repertoires of action that members use or repurpose as needed to express communal or collective identities.

The ethnographic portion of the study focuses on recently arrived individuals established in New York who have significant networks of family and friends in other parts of the world to explore how they use online media networks as they go about their daily activities of managing their communal and personal identities. My fieldwork was based at the International Center of New York, a community center where immigrants, refugees, students and other newcomers to the United States come to practice English and learn about American culture, and investigated not only which types of media networks members (including both temporary visitors to the US and immigrants) used to connect to their various communities, but which aspects of their identities were most valued as expressed by their daily choices of media consumption and use.

Ethnography in Media-Based Communities

As Shaun Moores writes in Interpreting Audiences, the study of media consumption has taken “an ethnographic turn” since the 1970s (1993, 1). Postmodernism, by calling into question the very notion of fixity, has presaged the death of pure holism in anthropology. The move away from believing that it is possible to achieve a complete understanding of a culture in its totality has been a long time in coming, beginning with James Clifford and George E. Marcus in the 80s, and currently still in the process of developing into a new discourse that recognizes its role as a “partial truth” (Clifford and Marcus 1986, 192; Moores 1993, 4). But when studying the role of media in culture, it is a particularly important frame to keep in place, as we have shifted away from studying the other to studying ourselves. In moving towards a new ideal, it is still possible to strive for a certain type of holistic understanding that can emerge from what S. Elizabeth Bird sees in The Audience in Everyday Life as “the attempt to see [specific] questions and issues in context and linked to other aspects of the culture” (Bird 2003, 7). This can be seen as the objective in and of itself. Bird points out that ethnography has moved away from methodological “purity” and towards a strategy of efficacy; choosing the method to suit the particular project rather than striving for comprehensive data collection in the service of a totality of understanding.

Bird writes that a “third generation” in reception studies is becoming the “anthropology of mass media” that Spitulnik defined back in 1993: an interdisciplinary approach that “acknowledges the very real problems associated with trying to separate text/audience from the culture in which they are embedded” (2003, 5). The goal of this new approach, Bird writes, is to “draw connections between media/audience and the larger culture,” and she highlights the utility of what I would call micro-ethnographies in achieving this. Bird describes this tightly focused form of inquiry as “small-scale explorations of individuals’ processes of meaning-making can take us in directions that are quite different from conceptions of the static audience” (6).

Because the power of media exists in the spaces between, it is crucial to retain a view of media users as active participants rather than passive observers. We must focus on the interplay between screen and eye, speaker and ear, monitor and reader. It is in these techno-social relationships that imagination makes it mark, shaping how users engage with social tools (Raffi 2008, 2). This may seem like an obvious point, but it is one that brings us to why media is an essential component of imagined communities, and what that means for designing and carrying out research in media studies. The next section discusses the methods chosen for this project in more detail, describing their objectives, design, and relative merits.

I’d like to include one final note about the attempt to study media and technology during a time when both are evolving at breakneck speeds. Utopian and dystopian visions of the world in general and technological developments in specific abound. In its analyses, this work aims to avoid these traps. It is too easy, when contemplating the possibilities of networks and connectivities to see a vision of a more perfect world, or when considering how smaller groups with agendas will use these technologies to further their causes, to glean a grim prophecy embedded within. But my aim is to focus on nuance while linking back to the big picture, avoiding the rosy pronouncements and sweeping generalizations that are so alluring to embrace. As such, this study avoids overstatements as much as possible when presenting conclusions and recommendations in favor of filling in details in some of the grey areas of global communication.

METHODOLOGY

Quantitative Survey

To begin exploring how media and transnationality intersect, I started by defining my population of study – who are these transnationals, and what do they do online? I chose to conduct a quantitative survey as a useful way to give some contours and depth to the community. By gathering data from a wide variety of people, I uncovered characteristics of transnationals online and identified trends in media use and adoption among this audience. The results provide an interesting lens for discussing transnationality online and present a wide spectrum of directional findings which suggest areas of particular interest for further research.

To develop the survey, I relied on the work of Tim Phillips, which I discuss in more detail in the next chapter’s discussion of imagined communities. The survey went through two distinct iterations based on a workshopping of the first version I conducted at the International Center. The process had a significant impact on how I modified the survey as an experience for respondents from a diversity of cultural backgrounds as well as the potential scope of the results, as I discuss in my survey findings in chapter 3.

The survey targeted transnationals aged 18 years of age or older who currently reside in the US but identify themselves as originating from a different country. In the interest of expediency, I chose to field the survey solely online. The survey was programmed in Survey Monkey and fielded over a two-week period in February and March 2010. The survey used a snowball sampling method, being distributed through an announcement on email and online social networks including Facebook and Twitter with a request to forward to other contacts, relying on personal networks to distribute the link to the survey to a sizeable population. Additionally, an announcement was posted on a general message board with a large and distributed membership (members live in many different countries but is primarily focused on popular culture and all conversation is conducted in English). Inquiries were also sent to several message boards that serve primarily immigrant and transnational populations. However none responded or posted the survey announcement.

Of the 189 respondents who completed the survey, 146 were qualified and are included in the reported findings (fig. 1.1). The 43 respondents who were excluded from the report either did not live in the United States or lived in the US and reported no home country other than the US. Respondents were recruited through three distinct outreach efforts: an email announcement, a general message board announcement, and short announcements posted to three branded social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s then recently launched Buzz platform). Over half were gathered through the email announcement to roughly 200 personal contacts, which included a sizeable group of people who did not qualify to take the survey. The text of the announcement included a request to forward to friends and family who were qualified. Through email responses I received to my request, I estimate that at least another 100 people received the email announcement. Over a third were recruited through an announcement posted to a general message board with a large global audience. Popular topics on the board include humor, pop culture, and current events. The final 10% were recruited through link distribution on the branded social networks mentioned above.

Respondents were offered an incentive to complete the study in the form of a contest awarding four $25 gift certificates to Amazon.com to random winners. Participants were assigned a number, and four winning numbers were generated using RANDOM.ORG’s true random number generator built and operated by Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. All respondents were asked general demographic questions along with a series of questions to identify media habits and frequency. The results are presented in a series of charts, tables, and maps that present key characteristics of the sample and describe variations found within the sample that indicate possible trends in media use and adoption.

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Critical Social Inquiry

In order to investigate collective identity at a global level, I decided to begin with branded social networks as one of the most dominant and influential communications technologies to emerge in digital culture in recent years. The investigation of global branded social networks was conducted through a critical social inquiry analysis of the sector’s development as described in the academic and popular presses as well as a comparative assessment of six of the largest branded social networks operating globally. To contextualize my shift in terminology from previous and commonly employed terms like social networking site, I included a brief introduction describing why I have chosen to adopt branded social network to set the stage for the rest of the discussion.

I researched the factors that have shaped BSNs and our understanding of them, including economic, cultural, and demographic imperatives through a survey of literature and then, drawing on the theories of collective action of sociologist Charles Tilly, developed a framework for interpreting collective identity expression activities through the structures and actions on BSNs. I then apply this framework to the current landscape of BSNs through a comparative look at six dominant BSNs and a series of case studies which give specific examples of how branded social network designs have delimited repertoires of action online. The BSNs included in the study were Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, and Bebo. While I originally intended to include a comprehensive overview of usage and demographic statistics of BSNs to be able to apply these structures of meaning in a geographically meaningful way, I ultimately abandoned this additional phase due to unreliable and inconsistent data. Instead, I include an extended discussion of the difficulty of tracking the fast-moving sphere of BSNs worldwide along with a brief sketch of key statistics that have defined the public perception of which networks dominate different regions.

Ethnographic Fieldwork

The micro-ethnographic approach I decided to employ was based on my background as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher. For several years, I worked intermittently in private language schools as a CELTA-certified trainer in teaching English as a foreign language in France and in San Francisco. In France, my students were French corporate employees who wanted to learn business English, while in San Francisco the classroom was composed of young adults from all over the world. Based on these environments, I knew that the small group discussions and one-on-one conversations of the EFL classroom encouraged cross-cultural exchanges in a safe setting. I felt that finding an EFL institute in New York would provide a perfect entry-point to meet transnationals who would be interested in sitting down for longer interviews.

Class Description

“Media, Entertainment and Culture.” This is a discussion class focusing on current events and new developments in media and entertainment. We’ll discuss movies, music, and other entertainment, and we’ll also talk about how and where we use media in our daily lives, and how individuals and cultures are adapting to new forms of media around the world. Students will learn how to express their thoughts on media, entertainment and cultural trends. Idioms and vocabulary specific to popular culture will be included.

Fieldwork activities included observation, micro-ethnographic interviews (with several recorded on audio or video formats) with several students, and classroom exercises and discussions in a TESOL class at the center. I also used the opportunity to workshop the online survey with ideal respondents, an experience I describe in chapter 3. A simple survey was distributed to the class on the first day as a classroom exercise, and results are included in two graphs to provide an overview of a typical classroom composition.

The results of the micro-ethnographies with specific students who agreed to participate in in-depth interviews are presented as a series of case studies which highlight specific themes that emerged as representative of larger groups of students. Research focused on building an understanding of what brought participants to New York, daily media usage patterns, and perspectives on using Internet-based social tools like branded social networks, blogs, and other new media for expressive activities related to their personal identities. For each microethnographic profile, I interacted with the subject on a weekly basis for at least one month, in some cases up to three months, and conducted at least one in-depth interview lasting on average two hours.