ABSTRACT
Migration has long interested anthropologists, who have analyzed the motivations that prompt a social group to relocate from one place to another. Media migration may be defined as a phenomenon in which people stop using one site and adopt another or others to express the self and engage in sociality. Media migration is distinct from the practice of habitually swapping out different types of available media to accomplish goals. Rather, media migration tends to be more permanent and constitutes a break—practically, socially, or emotionally—from prior media. This chapter will investigate patterns in media migration that occurred among a group of socially motivated YouTubers, some of whom decreased their focus on YouTube and moved to Twitter in part to stay connected with other YouTube participants. At stake in this analysis is understanding the motivations for migration, including how interactive sites are structured, and to what extent media sites and participatory environments are perceived as facilitating or complicating public self-expression and sociality.
