Keeping the family together through new media
Posted By Admin on December 25, 2011
Keeping the family together through new media
Posted on 22/11/2011
University of Leicester
Imagine a life in which you have to live away from your children, maybe for several years.
Ask yourself how you could keep the ties close between you, watch them growing up, and continue to be a daily part of their lives.
This is the reality for many migrant workers in Britain today , but ground-breaking research about to be published by a University of Leicester expert in media shows how new media are transforming the way parents and children separated by migration can continue to care for one another.
In her book, Migration and New Media – Transnational Families and Polymedia, Mirca Madianou, with co-author Daniel Miller, reveals how new media has come to be at the heart of family relationships.
Mirca Madianou’s research looks at the long-term separation between migrant mothers and their children from the Philippines where migration is critical to the economy.
She has talked to both migrant mothers and their left-behind children who keep in touch through new media such as Skype, social networking sites, mobile phones and email and her study builds up an understanding of how relationships are maintained through new media and how they are changing.
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