Author: Miriam del Carmen Cárdenas Torres
Programme: Doctoral Programme on the Information and Knowledge Society
Language: English
Supervisor: Dra. Agnès Vayreda Duran
Faculty / Institute: Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)
Key words: Cyber-transnationalism, virtual communities, citizenship cyber-transnational practices, Internet, Mexico
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Abstract:
This thesis investigated a particular case of collective and transnational communication, arising from a web page created by a United States resident, who migrated from San Martin de Bolaños, Jalisco, México. It is a qualitative, in-depth and longitudinal study. It's starting point dates back to 2003 when these technologies were still very incipient in his home town and ends in 2012. The main contributions of the thesis are divided into two major themes. On one hand, the creation of a transnational virtual community that formed a parallel society to the real one, and that developed according to its own dynamic. Furthermore, it is argued that it also became a public space; that is, a politicization and conflict field that had certain consequences outside its strict social space. It is concluded that informal transnational citizenship practices took place since they were developed in virtual spaces and under no institutionalized mechanisms. In this sense it is claimed that these practices were democratizing, since they fought for the realization of citizenship rights, and expressed contents, values and democratic aspirations. However, they lacked the institutional component by which these practices would have helped the construction of democratic processes. Finally, this thesis, based on data from fieldwork, provides a different view to definitions on transnationalism present in academic literature. Instead, it proposes the term cyber-transnationalism, which seems better suited to our case study, in order not to give greater weight to any citizen (those who migrated or those who did not), since all were complementary and equally necessary.