Nigerian Diaspora and the Online Construction of Identities: Visualisation and a Changing Self

“The movement of large masses of people across national boundaries, technologies that deliver modern instantaneous communication, the culture of simulation, and globalisation in all its forms are some of the forces determining the contemporary context of identity (Paul Gilroy, 1997: 303)” This paper focuses on the changing individual and collective identities of Nigerian Diaspora members, by revealing the different identities that result from the migrants’ use of the Internet. The paper situates the transformation of the Nigerian diaspora members’ identities within the context of the growth of the Internet and its role as a tool for a people experiencing new political and economic challenges. The relative freedom and limitlessness of cyberspace encourages equally boundless online activities of diaspora members. The boundlessness combines with its low cost and easy access to help form new identities or the firming up of old ones. Some of the new identities may simply be limited to life online, as they could have little or no offline relevance. These may therefore be online identities. The paper reasons that online identities can occur where, for instance, the many online debaters do not find corresponding roles offline. The construction assume a new dimension, as is more common, where participants online roles are recognized offline, like in the case of those, as shall be shown, who have become popular as webmasters, and newsgroup moderators.

Urban encounters: juxtapositions of difference and the communicative interface of global cities

This article explores the communicative interface of global cities, especially as it is shaped in the juxtapositions of difference in culturally diverse urban neighbourhoods. These urban zones present powerful examples, where different groups live cheek by jowl, in close proximity and in intimate interaction — desired or unavoidable. In these urban locations, the need to manage difference is synonymous to making them liveable and one's own. In seeking (and sometimes finding) a location in the city and a location in the world, urban dwellers shape their communication practices as forms of everyday, mundane and bottom-up tactics for the management of diversity. The article looks at three particular areas where cultural diversity and urban communication practices come together into meaningful political and cultural relations for a sustainable cosmopolitan life: citizenship, imagination and identity

First Looks: CATaC '98\ud

The First International Conference on Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication (CATaC’98), and its affiliated publications, seek to bring together current insights from philosophy, communication theory, and cultural sciences in an interdisciplinary dialogue. The synthesis of disparate scholarly ideas will shed greater light on just how culture impacts on the use and appropriation of new communications technologies. Beyond the individual contributions themselves, some of our most significant insights will emerge as we listen and discuss carefully with one another during the conference itself. As a way of preparing for that discussion, I offer the following overview of the CATaC papers and abstracts, along with a summary of the insights and questions they suggest

High Tech or High Risk: Moral Panics about Girls Online

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected We argue that the current moral outrage and national panic over the risks of victimization faced by girls on the Internet has nothing to do with risks faced by girls on the Internet. Based on historical, cross-cultural, and discourse analyses, we draw four conclusions. Each and every time a new communication technology is introduced, it spurs very public fears on the part of parents and educators, putatively about the effects of that technology on girls' (sexual) innocence. The statistics show that predatory behavior on adolescent girls has a certain profile that has either not changed over the decade since the Internet became popular, or has improved over time. The Internet dangerously unfetters girls' spaces and risks changing our image of what girls can do, and where they can go. This challenges the social order. Girls' masterful use of the Internet also challenges the view that technology is dangerous and an inappropriate interest for girls, and in this sense the moral panic around girls online is a way of policing the relationship between girls and technology

Making The Policy-Makers: Askesis, Or To Continuously Work On Oneself

This paper uses a Foucauldian discursive approach to shed light into how organisational actors are ‘made’ to act as strategists, incorporating into their work practices the demands and expectations of what it means to be a strategist in a specific context at a specific time. It draws on a Foucauldian understanding of governing and self formation to explore the ways in which actors work on themselves in order to act meaningfully as strategists. I argue that, rather than organisational identities being static or finished, organisational actors actively say and do things in their continual attempts to attain a more complete, acceptable and congruent identity. In contexts with high degrees of uncertainty and heavily power- and conflict-laden relationships, both discourses of how strategy is made and the practices involved in it can be seen as exercises (askesis) which strategists actively perform to better embrace their responsibility of rendering the future governable for others. The paper brings together the literatures on identity and on strategic practices to show the dialectic relationship between them

Introduction: a Frame for the Discussion of Learning Cultures

In this chapter the authors identify a gap in research on culture in online learning and offer a frame for the discussion of the best-known frameworks available for cultural analysis outside the online world. They go on to describe the developments driving the need to problematize 'learning cultures' for the online world, such as the growth of multiculturality, the expansion of transnational e-learning and new media communication practices

From contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric: Why intercultural rhetoric needs to reframe the concept of culture

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00