The role of ICTs in the process of maintaining and creating diaspora

Wikipedia has defined "virtual mobility" as "The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to obtain the same benefits as one would have with physical mobility but without the need to travel". We should acknoledge tha the Internet revolution is transforming the world of communications and like any other revolution; it impacts different groups in different ways. The increasingly important role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the process of maintaining and creating diaspora is considerable. So accelerated movements of technologies, finances, and cultural migrants have generated an understanding of place and community that can no longer be considered in purely local terms.
Appadurai discusses how electronic media, in the context of mass migrations has created: …a new order of instability in the production of modern subjectivities…as Pakistani cabdrivers in Chicago listen to cassettes of sermons recorded in mosques in Pakistan or Iran, we see moving images meet deterritorialized viewers. (Appadurai, 1996, p.4) Appadurai also argues that nation can be formed in cyberspace, and often cyberspace serves as the sole means of providing a sense of aspiration and hope to placeless migrant populations. So it is clear that the complex association between diasporic groups and ICTs has led to a concept of e-diasporas that actively utilize ICTs to achieve community-specific goals.
Appadurai elaborates on the “imagined community” to explain that the production of locality is most directly affected by three factors – the nation-state, diasporic flows, and electronic and virtual communities – which are themselves articulated in variable and sometimes contradictory ways that depend on the cultural, class, historical, and setting within which they come together (Appadurai, 1996). Migrants therefore exist in a world of “in-betweenness,” negotiating cultural forms and identities at the crossroads of the nation-state and global diasporas.

Appadurai (1996) explains that along many lines, globalization is constructed via the deterritorialization and place-lessness of many forms of human exchange and communication. He terms these processes “-scapes”, arguing that there is a decentering of movements of humans, images, finances, technologies (Appadurai, 1996). Appadurai (1996) argues that in many social locations throughout the world, especially those characterised by media saturation and migrant populations, ‘moving images meet mobile audiences’, disturbing the stability of many sender-receiver models of mass communication. These situations facilitate “works of imagination,” in which imagined worlds and imagined selves can be created within diasporic communities, both in local contexts and across national boundaries (Appadurai, 1996). The traditional notion of immigrant communities in isolated, localized pockets in different parts of the world therefore simply does not hold true in an age of accelerated media, information production, and ICTs. Instead, the global and local interact at levels of increasing complexity and fluidity.

References:

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
"Diasporic Information Environments: Re-Framing Immigrant-Focused Information Research" in: polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/srinivasan/Research/Proofs/SrinivasanPyatiJASIST7.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special

Crosscultural Communication and Olympic Games

Crosscultural Communication
and the Olympic Games
Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
On the other hand it is said that for more than 100 years the Olympic Movement has conceived of itself as promoting culture, human development, international education, and peace through sport. Founded mainly by writers, educators, scientists, and scholars, the Olympic Movement's understanding of “culture” has shifted over the years among the fine-arts conception, the idea of general moral cultivation, and the anthropological understanding of total and distinctive ways of life. What hasn't changed is the commitment, in the words of the 1995 charter, to “symbolizing the universality and the diversity of human cultures” through the Olympic Games, thereby serving intercultural understanding and détente.
In the developing world the Olympic Movement has typically attracted attention for its historical, cultural, and political content long before the emergence of any national sports heroes at the Games. For example, nations in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Central Africa have regarded appearance in the Olympic opening ceremonies parade as a critical ritual of recognition and incorporation in the global system of nation-states and as one of the very few opportunities to attract even a small measure of public and media attention from the rich countries. These are matters of human dignity and cultural presence in most cases, not illusions of economic development or North-South income transfer.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games and the IOC, wrote in 1934, “To ask the people of the world to love one another are merely a form of childishness. To ask them to respect one another is not in the least utopian; but in order to respect one another, it is first necessary to know one another.” In fact during the Olympic games intercultural information is generated and exchanged through the host city bid competition, intensive world press scrutiny of each Olympic host culture, the gigantic broadcast audiences for the opening ceremonies with their world and local cultural performances, the real or fanciful associations of certain cultures with certain sports in the athletic program, the face-to-face interactions among festival-goers, and the formal arts programs of the Cultural Olympiad that accompanies every Games.
So we can see that even by the use of our athlete competitions we have the chance of presenting our culture to the world. Especially when it comes to the world cup the number of audiences increases to the most. Consequently our athletes and footballers should always keep this image of chance in their minds to do their bests to enter these competitions from one hand and be good representors of our culture from the other hand.



Some parts extracted from: "Encyclopædia Britannica Online
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