Creating and inhabiting virtual places: Indian immigrants in cyberspace

Abstract

The Internet is often appropriated by groups seeking to preserve, develop and celebrate their identities across space. Using an online survey of a group of immigrants to the United States from India as well as their American-born children, this article reveals that the Internet is utilised for overcoming separation at intra- and international scales, for creating a variety of transboundary networks and for constructing a sense of identity in virtual place. Yet the results also suggest that those individuals who use websites related to Indian culture, society, politics, history and news are distinct ‘communicationally defined’ sub-populations with regard to sex, generation and citizenship status. Indeed, ‘indices of traditionalism’ demonstrate key differences in the types of users of these virtual places.