In this ground-breaking study M. I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online from a critical postcolonial perspective. With Internet access and social media uses accelerating in the Global South in-depth studies of just how non-western communities at home and living abroad actually use the Internet and web-based media are still relatively few. This bookâs pioneering use of virtual ethnography and mixed method research in this study of a longstanding âmedia diasporaâ incorporates online participant-observation with offline fieldwork to explore how postcolonial diasporas from the south Pacific have been using the Internet since the early ways of the web. Through a critical reconsideration of the work of Michel de Certeau in light of postcolonial and feminist theories the book provides insights into the practice of everyday life in a global and digital age by non-western participants online and offline. Critical of techno- and media-centric analyses of cyberspatial practices and power hierarchies Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these contemporary Pacific traversals suggest other Internet futures. These are visions of social media that can be more hospitable culturally inclusive and economically equitable than those promulgated by both powerful commercial interests and state actors looking to take charge of the Internet âafter Web 2. 0â. The book will be of interest to students of international politics media and communications cultural studies science and technology studies anthropology and sociology interested in how successive waves of new media interact with shifting power relations at the intersection of politics culture and society. First published in hardback in 2005. . Language: English