Are Digital Diaspora Communities Politically Engaged Online?

This blog entry is an update on our ongoing research into digital diaspora communities and how they are using social medias and technologies to engage with their country/culture of origin and within their new host/home country. In this quick snapshot we endeavor to partly answer the question of digital diaspora’s levels of political engagement in the host country and country/culture of origin.

The answer would seem to be “depends”. It would seem to depend on a number of factors which include; size of diaspora community in a given nation, number of generations, political atmosphere in the country of origin and the political climate and structure within the host nation.

Generational Engagement
In host countries where a diaspora community is fairly well established with at least three generations existing, we find that the second and third generation will tend to be more vocal in political issues relating to their country of origin from first generation arrivals. This tends to change when a diaspora community has recently (within a 10 year period) seen rapid growth due to conflict or humanitarian crises in the host nation. The recently displaced will tend to become more vocal within their host nation.

The Citizenship & Power of Influence Equation
Where a diaspora community is established for two to three generations and the majority of the community has either dual citizenship or adopted the citizenship of their host nation, diaspora communities would appear to feel more stable in protests and political engagement. For example, the Tamil community in Toronto, Canada, is well-established and with a large number being Canadian citizens, they hold significant voting power in two federal political ridings. They were active in urging Canadian government support and policy changes regarding Sri Lanka during the civil conflict period.

Applicability to Host Nation Political Influence
It is rather hard to participate in a protest when you are 3,000 miles away. Diaspora influence politically is most often through influencing host nation foreign policy. For their country of origin it is usually a support role through remittances, but also by providing materiel where possible and “hosting” revolutionary or anti-government content. We know that during the failed “Green Revolution” of 2009 in Iran that less than 10% of the “tweets” coming from Twitter actually originated in Iran. Of the 92% or so outside Iran our research indicates less than 40% were by Iranian digital diaspora. Perhaps the revolution wasn’t tweeted after all?

More Questions Than  Answers
Digital diaspora are politically active but as the graph indicates below, they are focused on other topics as well. This graph indicates time periods where there was little political unrest or major political events taking place in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and Haiti. We do note a significant spike in digital diaspora activity just before and  during a crisis period. Which begs the question “do digital diaspora contribute to creating or driving activity back in their country of origin?” We are working on that, but have no definitive answer at this point. We took a sample size of 1,500 individually identified diaspora in Canada, USA and England analyzing text in English and native languages with our AI Engine and human analysts.

Methodology
Complete details can be found here on our page providing details about our digital diaspora project. For more information or questions you may have, please see our contact page or email giles-at-mediabadger.com.

This information and content is Copyright 2011, MediaBadger Public Affairs Ltd. (Canada) and MediaBadger Ltd. (UK). Content may be linked to or otherwise shared with attribution.

The Role of Social Media Research in Foreign Policy

The role of social medias in the Arab Spring is being intensely analysed (and we’re among those analyzing) and was perhaps the crux point of governments and other organizations seeing the value of social medias in civil society change. The failed green revolution in Iran in 2009 was arguably the opening gambit of social medias role in political change. Whether social media played a pivotal role however, is up for debate.

Revolutions aside, social medias offer more opportunities to governments, IGO‘s, NGO’s and multi-national corporations for knowledge, context and understanding  of civil society than has been possible before. No longer is social media usage purely for entertainment value – and those that think it is, may be missing critical insights.

We have conducted a number of research projects into social media for public sector and private sector clients on foreign policy issues. Through these projects (and our in-house research) we’ve come to gain a very deep appreciation, as have our clients, into the value social medias can play. Among them are;

Citizen Views & Opinions in Recovering States: A prime example here is Haiti. After the cholera outbreak in 2010, many Haitians and Haitian diaspora took to social media channels to discuss the issue. Chief among them was the evolution of a mythology or conspiracy theory that the UN was out to poison them. This is certainly not the case. But such views become valid perceptions and create communications gaps and strained relationships between those giving and receiving aid. Research into social media can identofy such issues and enable improved communications.

Trade Negotiation Issues: One of our recent research projects helped a government to identify why its attempts to communicate with the business community in a foreign country weren’t going so well. Our research showed that the target business community was referring to the bilateral trade agreement in a completely different way – simply because of a cultural issue of language. By taking an innovative step in looking at online chatter, the government was able to change its communications tactics and better engage the audience more effectively.

Domestic Views on Foreign Policy: Citizens at home have their views on their governments activities in foreign countries; especially when it comes to conflicts where military personnel are at risk. Understanding the views, opinions and mood of citizens at home can help a government to develop effective communications to its citizens and understand if the engagement in a foreign country may cause significant unrest in the civil population.

Peace Operations: Today’s peace operations in fragile states in or just coming out of conflict are delicate and far more complex than they used to be. Citizens in fragile states are also more connected to the Web than is often realized; through both broadband access and mobile devices. In fact, the use of social medias via mobile devices is quite significant – enough for viable research. Monitoring and analyzing citizens commentary can help understand citizen views, identify areas at risk for aid delivery and more.

There are more areas where such research can have an impact. Often, online research is a complement to traditional methodologies such as interviews and focus groups, providing a layer of insight not possible before.

Digital Activism: The Message Map

With the advent of so many communications channels today via the Web and mobile networks, creating, executing and delivering a message by digital diaspora groups or social activists, protestors etc., is increasingly easy and very low cost. Consciously or not, and in most cases it is a conscious plan, there is a method to the seeming madness.

In our research, we’ve plotted out the most common route a group will take to push their message. The map below shows this process. In many cases an activist group or social group has an idea of the channels to leverage (i.e. they will establish a Facebook group or a blog/microsite to be the “focal point” of the message) then they will distribute the message across other digital channels such as Twitter. Simultaneously, they will address traditional methods of attracting industrial news media such as international news broadcasters, radio and print publications. Using digital media channels however, they can drive an issue much faster and set the news agenda when they garner a large following with uptake of the message. This was shown in Egypt when Twitter was actively engaged by the protesters on January 25, 2011; The first “hashtag” for the protests was #Jan25 and the second most popular was #Egypt. The volume went viral rapidly in the wake of the Tunisia uprisings. Although it was only part “organized” a form of “digital mob mentality” (a blog on that to come) took over. The noise was loud enough that news media began to pick up the story.

While we aren’t, for obvious reasons, unveiling our entire look at process in the case of using digital media channels to communicate activism, this map can provide some key insights to the process that follows. Even as the Egyptian government disconnected Web access, people found a way around using mobile networks (we’ll have another map on that shortly.)

Social Media Use by Diaspora of Fragile Nations

Increasingly diaspora of various nations are leveraging social media tools and services. For the most part, this has been to connect with their home country. To foster their connection, whether they have recently moved to a new host nation or are 2nd or 3rd generation connecting their cultural roots. Beyond fostering sociocultural connections and discovery, there is a growing indication of diaspora wanting to engage in helping their country of origin politically and/or economically.

Just yesterday Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan declared the Nigerian diaspora would not be allowed to vote in the upcoming 2011 election. The claim is that there is not enough time to organize the process, which in part may certainly be a significant reason. In part, this decision came as a result of the Nigerian government realizing the level of organization and activity online in social networks by Nigerian diaspora.

Almost every fragile nation of the Global South has some form of diaspora activity online today. Even though their home country may have limited Internet availability and then that mostly only available to the Elites in the country. That hasn’t served to limit diaspora activity however.

A diaspora is a group of people. Social media tools and services enable the easy formation, communication and management of groups. So it is understandable they’ve begun to leverage these tools. Sadly, some have used these tools to foment anger and hatred.

But increasingly, diaspora are using these tools to gain influence and traction in the political and administrative process of their country or region of origin. Notably however, of the 40 diaspora social media services we looked at, all but one had both English and their native tongue supported.

We see two reasons for this; 1) some 2nd or 3rd generation diaspora don’t speak their mother tongue and 2) these diaspora want to ensure the predominantly English speaking Global North countries can see what is being said. There is an underlying motivation and that is if that country is in the midst of receiving aid, the hope is that a donor nation or the UN or AU body engaged in their home country will understand the “strength” of the diaspora and that they may be able to influence aid.

Haiti, Social Media and Being Connected

As was demonstrated in Haiti’s earthquake crisis this year, Social Media can play a key role in evaluating crisis issues. Already fibre connections have been restored (many thanks to NetHope and their work) and there are Internet Cafe’s popping up in the tent cities people are still living in.

Think about that for a moment: people are still living in tents, yet they want to be connected to the world.

To me, this says loud and clear how critical Social Media tools have become on a societal level to citizens. These free tools are connecting families and relief agencies, enabling family ties to remain close in desperate situations. That’s powerful.

And from our research, prices are not ridiculously expensive for access. High, yes, but not much more so than pre-earthquake.

The most popular use of these tent city Internet cafe’s is of course, Social Media tools.

A large portion of Haitian Diaspora live in Montreal, Canada and then in France. Interestingly though, for donor nations, France is third for aid support behind the U.S., Canada and UK. And France is a former colonial government.

Haiti was a fragile nation before the earthquake, although just about at the tipping point of impressive recovery, now once again a very fragile nation. On the upside is that there is no threat of conflict from another nation.

Social Media tools are drawing our world ever closer, creating a level of global fragility we’ve never known. It is also enabling families to stay connected unlike ever before, and when getting access to communicating with family over having a house is a priority, well it shows the heart of humanity and our need to be connected to one another.