-
Abstract
- LANGAA RPCIG
- Chapter
- Additional Information
ix Abstract In my thesis I have examined the meaning of New Media for transnational migration, and how the use of New Media is interrelated with negotiations of sociality. Bringing these two views together, I have examined how the mediality of New Media effects on transnational sociality. I have thereby addressed the topic from the perspective of non-migrants, of urban youth in Bamenda, in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. As a counter perspective, I have integrated the views of Cameroonian migrants in Switzerland. New Media of communication and information offer a broad range for users in order to pursue an ideal of connectedness, to social others and life chances, which are constitutive regarding their adopting of New Media technologies. Social liveness emphasizes the possibility of a connected presence, or a quality of interaction in New Media of communication. Liveness, therefore, has different dimensions, as a potential, as a sensory experience , and as work or effort invested in mediated social ties. Likewise, liveness can be reversed or avoided, and liveness is a matter of degree and intentionality of New Media users. Negotiations of liveness in mediated transnational social ties have a decisive effect on notions of sociality and solidarity. Transnational relationships are framed by conditions, the most important examples of which are physical dislocation and differing lifeworlds . As well they are superimposed by strong imaginaries of great potentials abroad. Notions of an ideal sociality are re-evaluated – and super elevated - vis-à-vis the perception of slippages, which are likely to be experienced in mediated social interaction. These slippages in mediated communication derive from limited social and emotional cues, as well as an often only partial understanding of migrant’s life conditions abroad. From the perspectives of the migrants, exaggerated expectations and claims towards them lead to their adopting of strategies of New Media use, which seem to oppose those of non-migrants. Uses of New Media are then strongly related to dealing with these tensions in transnational social ties between migrants and non-migrants. Such negotiations are likely to come to the fore in practices of New Media use, in which notions of sociality are revised according to the x mediated conditions of social interaction. These are then evaluated in modes of conduct in New Media social interaction. This conduct is related to the media’s specific mediality and conditions of New Media use in the Cameroonian context, such as financial constraints, limited computer literacy and habits of media use, as well as imagined potentials for liveness. ...