Virtual coexistence in a Persian diasporic weblog community

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of weblog technology among a group of Iranian immigrants residing in Australia. It focuses on the formation of a virtual community among the bloggers and the way they use their weblog network to provide and seek support in and from diaspora. The paper starts with an overview of virtual communities and the conditions that need to be met for any online group to be considered a community. This is followed by the communicative characteristics of weblogs that allow for community formation. The discussion then moves specifically to the examination of the existence of a sense of community (SOC) among the Persian bloggers in the Australian diaspora by highlighting different communication features of these weblogs and analysing their social networks. The paper concentrates on the performances of the bloggers and their interactions with each other, and the way they use their weblogs to create an ethnic virtual community. The findings illustrate the importance of weblogs in forming close-knit networks for this group of Iranians in the diaspora.