The Digital Methods and Migration Workshop brings together researchers from the human and social sciences to address this question: What software do we have or need to map the networked spaces of contemporary diasporas?

The means we will employ are defined as “digital methods” by Richard Rogers (2009) of the University of Amsterdam: “I would like to suggest inaugurating a new era in Internet research, which no longer concerns itself with the divide between the real and the virtual. … The issue no longer is how much of society and culture is online, but rather how to diagnose cultural change and societal conditions using the Internet” (p. 8)
Rogers distinguishes earlier work on “cyberspace,” and subsequent work on “virtual society,” from his proposed “digital methods”: “For the third era of Internet research, the digital methods program introduces the term online groundedness, in an effort to conceptualize research which follows the medium, captures its dynamics, and makes grounded claims about cultural and societal change. Indeed, the broader theoretical goal of digital methods is to rethink the relationship between the Web and the ground.” (p. 8)

The challenge we will address with digital methods is stated by Dana Diminescu (2008), principal investigator for the E-Diasporas Atlas: “Today’s migrants move through digital as well as geographical spaces. Communities of diaspora are dispersed geographically but connect, collaborate, communicate, and cohabit digital spaces. The new routes and spaces of migration require a new epistemological approach and a reconsideration of the topic and conceptual tools previously employed to understand the concept and conditions of diaspora.” (p. 1)

Consequently, we will address Rogers’ general goal for the specific case of migration and diaspora: What means are required to map the relationship between the Web and the ground of diaspora?

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