Digital Platforms as Protective Media: Case Studies in Diaspora Literature from Syria to Ukraine

This article analyses three cases from diasporic print literature that show how diasporic individuals use digital platforms as ‘protective media’. Such media afford engaging with traumatic forms of violence and forced displacement, connecting with others across a safe distance, and mourning the victims of war. While this occurs in fleeting online public spheres, so called ‘digital diasporas’, authors like Aboud Saeed, Senthuran Varatharajah, and Katja Petrowskaja reflect on their digital lives in the more lasting medium of print literature. Their experience-based, if fictionalised narratives reveal often-overlooked similarities in digital practices shared across different diasporic groups. This comparative article broadens the notion of protective media to include a variety of spatiotemporal configurations and contributes a new understanding of digital diasporas as multiethnic assemblages.