Journal of Global Diaspora & Media - Current Issue

This article explores Ava Homa’s novel, Daughters of Smoke and Fire (2020), examining how the Islamic government of Iran has stifled religious and linguistic minorities within the constructed national identity. Amidst this context, authors like Homa challenge the Aryan race as the foundation of Iranian national identity, striving to carve out a diasporic space within Iranian–Canadian literature that embraces Iran’s marginalized ethnicities, with a particular focus on Iranian–Kurdish identity.

Journalists covering traumatic events grapple with their profound psychological impact. This strain is even more challenging for diasporic journalists, who report on conflicts from their homelands, amplifying the professional burden and the weight of the work-related trauma. While the literature underscores the critical role of diasporic journalists, limited information exists about their work-related trauma experiences and coping mechanisms, especially in protracted conflicts like the one in Syria. Combining an online survey of 64 Syrian diasporic journalists with in-depth semi-structured interviews, conducted with seventeen participants, this ethnographic research uses a mixed-method approach. The findings suggest the distinctive work-related trauma experiences of the Syrian diasporic journalists, stemming from emotional proximity to conflict, guilt and survivor complex, blurred professional–personal boundaries, the challenge of dual battles and the ongoing nature of the conflict. The work highlights activism and hyper-productivity as coping mechanisms, driven by a sense of responsibility; religion, religious practices and community belonging also emerge as significant coping strategies.

Online interaction represents a pivotal shift experienced by teenagers from Arab-Bedouin society in recent years. This study investigates the nature of these interactions as perceived by Arab-Bedouin teenagers living in Israel and their counterparts in the Arab world. To gain a comprehensive understanding, we conducted personal interviews with 25 young individuals, exploring their contacts with Arab-Bedouin youth. The findings reveal that social networking sites have facilitated a significant formation of relationships, characterized by an expanded social circle, discussions on topics like sex and love, entertainment and casual conversations. Furthermore, Arab-Bedouin youth attributed the deepening of connections with peers from the Arab world to shared aspects of religion, language, identity and Arab culture, which fuelled their interest in forging social ties. Given the substantial influence of social networking sites, it is advisable for the education system to spearhead a training initiative that guides Arab-Bedouin youth in the optimal use of social media. This includes incorporating language content and modern communication technologies into the Arab educational framework and leveraging social media.

This article presents the methodological approach and findings obtained during the first phase of the research project Conflict.NET.¹ The focus is on the ‘narratives in conflict’ that are emerging from the interactions between different types of Somali migrants, in order to understand why and how Nairobi, Kenya, became an important creative cultural hub for the Somali Creative Diaspora interested in challenging the mainstream narratives on cultural identity, migration and other relevant topics. In this article, I argue that these creative media makers have similar agendas and have been able to cross platforms and become mainstream.

The Ethiopian government has been struggling to regulate online content due to the decentralized nature of the internet. However, during protests, Ethiopians used information and communication technologies (ICTs) to organize grassroots political movements, ultimately leading to significant government reforms in April 2018. Despite this progress, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been used to spread false information campaigns, targeting young, educated and tech-savvy Ethiopians who have used social media to become political players and grassroots activists, with positive and negative results. One such instance was on 23 October 2019, when Jawar Mohammed, a US political activist of Ethiopian origin, posted on Facebook to his over 1.76 million followers that Ethiopian security forces were plotting to attack him. This caused violent protests by his supporters, leading to the deaths of 86 Ethiopians. The Ethiopian cabinet drafted a law against online hate speech on 9 November to address the situation. To investigate the impact of social media activism on democracy in Ethiopia, this article analysed the Facebook posts of three Ethiopian activists residing in the American Diaspora from 23 October to 9 November 2019. The study employed Treem et al.’s three-dimensional framework for a theory of communication visibility and Van Dijk and Hacker’s definition of digital democracy as theoretical frameworks. Based on the research, social media activism has complex dynamics on democracy in Ethiopia, and it has become clear that misinformation and hate speech can quickly spread through social media, leading to devastating consequences. Therefore, we recommend that policy-makers form and implement comprehensive and effective policies to tackle online hate speech and ensure that social media platforms are not used to spread misinformation. By analysing media frames activists use, policy-makers can develop targeted interventions to help mitigate social media activism’s impact on Ethiopians.