Anna Smoliarova1; 1 St. Petersburg University, Russian Federation
Discussion
According to the previous research, media for migrants and/or diasporic audiences might include their audiences into the public sphere of their home countries 1) as independent news outlets (Matsaganis, Katz & Ball-Rokeach, 2011; Geissler & Poettker, 2006) (2) or as engaged political actors in exile (Shumow, 2014). Contrary to the migrant/diasporic news media, Instagram blogs run by authors with migration background attract more diverse audiences including users from their home countries who are interested in how life in other countries goes on. These blogs became an influential and trustworthy source of information about the countries the bloggers reside in. Findings from my previous study had shown that from February to April 2020 Russian-speaking Instagram bloggers from China and Italy expressed harsh criticism towards the Russian and Belarusian governments and residents (Smoliarova et al., 2021). In this paper I explore the comment sections of these posts: whether the commenting users from Russia and Belarus did participate in the discussion about the measures against the pandemic? A deeper exploration of this case of the deliberation process contributes to our understanding of how the national public sphere (according to Dahlgren where the political will might be forming) corresponds with the borders of a nation state.
