Digital media and the affective economies of transnational families

Abstract

Digital media are widely recognised as essential to the maintenance of transnational families. To date, most accounts have focused on the role of digital media practices as producing and sustaining transnational relationships, through, for example, the practices of ‘digital kinning’. In this article, we extend that body of work by drawing attention to the specific role of the emotions that are circulated through digital media interactions and practices. We use data from ethnographic interviews with older migrant adults to consider how people who fled civil wars and resettled in Australia bridge the distances between ‘here’ and ‘there’. Our analysis draws attention to the circulation of affect, arguing that it is the capacity of digital media to circulate emotions and support affective economies that gives substance to and defines the surfaces and boundaries of transnational families, and constitutes the mutuality of being that underpins familyhood at a distance.

Motherhood online: Issues and opportunities for discourse analysis

“…Against this backdrop of continued fascination, debate and contestation, 'motherhood online' has developed as a distinct interdisciplinary field with a gendered focus. Although there is growing research interest in related spheres, including explorations of digital media in relation to fatherhood (Ammari & Schoenebeck, 2015;Thomas et al, 2018) and transnational families (Madianou & Miller, 2012;Wilding et al 2020), in this collection we focus squarely on motherhood online. This is a field that continues to yield important scholarly and sociocultural insights, through research that highlights the complex interaction and interrelation between gendered social practices, identities and communities on the one hand, and new technologies, affordances and social media on the other.…”

A theory of a theory of the smartphone

“…An example that has already been cited is the recent volume Digital Media Practices (Hjorth et al, 2020), which explores quite similar terrain, especially with regard to other arguments we make in The Global Smartphone book regarding the relationship between care and surveillance. There are similar parallels with work on older adults as transnational in the 'digital kinning' approach of Baldassar and Wilding (2019), Wilding et al (2020) and no doubt many other contemporary studies.…”

Role of Digital Skills in Refugee Integration

“…In another perspective on safety, Udwan et al (2020) and Wilding et al (2020) described refugees' ability to reassure themselves of their loved ones' safety abroad through daily transnational digital connections, which in turn, engendered a sense of safety within the refugees and helped them perform their other life functions. Finally, two studies noted the benefit of online education in providing one form of stability in refugees' otherwise precarious life circumstances (Bock et al, 2020;O'Connell & Lucić, 2020).…”