Interculturality and communicative rationality: young migrants and their relationships in the online social networks in Spain

Abstract

Do social network sites promote intercultural relationships between young migrants? Does this type of interaction have an influence on the creation of their digital identity? In order to answer these questions, we will analyse part of the results obtained in the fieldwork carried out in the project “The Social Relations of the Young Migrants in Internet from the Intercultural Perspective” (CSO2011-24376). The Habermasian concept of communicative rationality has been used as the most convenient logic for the creation of intercultural communicative interactions. This theory has been applied in our analysis of the SNS interactions observed in 13 focus groups consisting of young migrants and non-migrants in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao. This analysis is based on the four different social actions described by Habermas (strategic action, normatively regulated action, dramaturgical action and communicative action), and then the dimensions and indicators have been extracted in order to identify the interactions in the online social networks. This paper shows that the youth’s online communicative practices tend to be mainly dramaturgical. Through their online practices, they try to create a digital identity and empower their own representation as well as the others’. Thus, they do not respond to a communicative rationality of interaction that encourages intercultural communication.