ABSTRACT
Transnational families have become the site of much investigation regarding how long-distance intimacy is digitally mediated. This chapter engages with this growing area of work by presenting a discursive analysis of meaning-making around uses of social media to stay in touch with loved ones abroad. Through a dual-sited analysis of intra-EU migration from Romania, we emphasize how social media use is experienced in relation to people’s narratives about migration. In the cases we analyze, this involves Romanian mothers’ narratives about their cultural reproduction efforts in a relatively new diaspora, and narratives about the cultural memory of mass migration among children who stayed behind in Romania when their parents or siblings migrated abroad. From both these vantage points, we trace people’s narratives as forms of “social discourse” about migration experiences. We show how sense-making around long-distance social media use becomes integrated with collective memories of migration, transnational imaginations, and formations of cultural diaspora. Hence, the experience of transnational intimacy is mediated not only through social media practices, but also through migration narratives. This emphasis on the mediation of experience through narrative representation contributes to media anthropological discussions about how to understand processes of mediation.
