We study the shear momentum diffusion and related modes of a strongly coupled (2 + 1)-dimensional conformal field theory at finite temperature and chemical potential, using a dual holographic description. We consider a space-time filling charged black brane solution of Einstein's gravity in (3 + 1)-dimensional asymptotically Anti-de Sitter space coupled to a U (1) gauge field via a Dirac-Born-Infeld action. In addition to temperature and chemical potential, the holographic model has two other parameters: the tension of the brane, and the non-linearity parameter controlling the higher-derivative terms of the U (1) field. By varying the parameters, one can, in particular, interpolate between the Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS background and the background of probe branes embedded into AdS space. We find analytically the retarded two-point functions of the shear (transverse to the direction of spatial momentum) components of the energy-momentum tensor and the global U (1) current of the (2 + 1)-dimensional field theory in the hydrodynamic approximation. We also find numerically the location of the poles of the correlators (quasinormal modes) for a wide range of the parameters, focusing on the effects of the back-reaction and non-linearities. We show, in particular, that the shear diffusion constant agrees with the hydrodynamic form for a wide range of parameters, including temperature and backreaction.