Complex Diasporic Identities in the Digital Age

A shared collective identity has been at the core of research on diasporas and their engagement in democratization processes. In the digital age, the internet has been found to facilitate the collective expression of diasporic identities on platforms such as online forums, which in a second step enables diasporans to engage a concerted action towards both in their host and their home countries. This viewpoint overlooks, however, the interaction that occurs between those abroad and those left home, as well as the complex individual identities characteristic for today's cyberactivism sphere. Today's “grounded cosmopolitans” negotiate multiple, sometimes conflicting identities. Looking at the example of the cyberactivist sphere in Tunisia, this paper attempts to assess how the complexity of identities impacts on individual online activists and how their transnational engagement is received by fellow activists in their home country.