Borders between webdiaspora and the migrant self: five discursives typologies of communicational ecosystem

Abstract

This article aims to share and deepen discursive typologies of migrants who act like digital influencers, or candidates for this job position, especially for their performance in vlogs on Youtube. The text intends to list and analyze elements, approaches and preponderant reflections in these initiatives. Such characteristics were identified and constructed in a doctoral research, whose objective was to map, classify and establish “patterns” of a broad media ecosystem based on the migrant self, far from the causal methods and metrics that this may suggest. Before discussing each of the typologies as: reverse ethnography, media hybridization, purchasing power, reaction and universe of work, the methodological choice by which this typological framework was allowed to be observed and constructed is explained and, finally, it is discussed how the presence of migrants in search of personal visibility, or a migrant self, reshapes the webdiaspora field that permeates the analytical hyphen of communication-migration.