‘I felt more like being at home when I had something like this’, expressed Rokas, our research participant in his late twenties. Rokas was referring to digital, COVID-related information in the Lithuanian language that was made accessible to him through communication technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of the interview, Rokas had been living in Iceland for five years but had difficulties understanding Icelandic. Like many others from Lithuania, he closely followed information on COVID-19 from the Icelandic government by reading frequent translations provided by the Lithuanian association in Iceland, which were posted on their Facebook group Islandijos lietuvių bendruomenės veikla (anonsai) (Activities [announcements] of the Lithuanian community in Iceland). This Facebook group is the largest group for Lithuanians in Iceland, with 6,766 members (as of 31 July 2024), a number higher than the population of Lithuanians in Iceland.
For a long time, the Nordic states had a special status internationally due to their emphasis on equality and a strong welfare state (Jensen and Loftsdóttir 2022; Keskinen et al. 2016). This has been eroded in the twenty-first century, partly due to criticism of their failure to acknowledge the discrimination and racialisation of migrants in general (Hübinette and Lundström 2011) and the racism against black or non-white Nordic people (McIntosh 2015), as well as people like Rokas from Eastern European countries (Daukšas 2013; Lapina and Vertelytė 2020; Loftsdóttir 2017). These exclusions take place through not only hostile acts but also everyday forms of racialisation and exclusion, as Marianne Gullestad (2006) importantly pointed out a long time ago. The twenty-first century has also brought new challenges with increased polarisation on a diversity of issues, including migration. Digitalisation has allowed migrants to engage in connectivity across space (Ponzanesi and Leurs 2014), where they use various technologies as a ‘social glue’, to use Steven Vertovec's terminology (2004: 220), as well as providing tools for hate groups and extremist groups that are opposed to them (Klein 2012). During the COVID-19 pandemic, new digital technologies seem to have blurred the public/private distinction for migrants and non-migrants alike (Vedder et al. 2021: 460), creating instead a different kind of participation in Nordic societies where sociality can be perceived as ‘digitally augmented’ (see introduction, this issue). Digital sociality can be seen as occurring through different forms of communication such as verbal interaction, through algorithms or other ways in which people express and represent themselves to others through digital media embedded in the internet, which is ‘part of a material culture that enhances cultural forms of relationships between people’ (Deslandes and Coutinho 2020: 3).
In this article, we explore the experiences of Lithuanian migrants, their sense of belonging in Iceland during a particular time period and the role of digital sociality in their lives. Earlier research on Iceland's economic boom and ensuing financial crisis in 2008 showed that many Lithuanian migrants felt a sense of exclusion and hostility. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic these notions were different. We suggest that the use of digital platforms has played an essential role in creating digital sociality among members of the Lithuanian community, being a factor in generating a feeling of belonging in Icelandic society. Digitalisation has shaped migrant lives, with borders having become digitalised in various ways. Digital technologies not only shape physical borders, but symbolic digital borders also play an important role in the lives of those who migrate (Loftsdóttir et al. 2023). Digital and communication technologies also played an indispensable role in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. It made remote working and studying possible, assisted with timely public-health responses, information and data exchange, both locally and internationally, and offered a means of communication for isolated individuals. Our analysis demonstrates that many Lithuanians engaged with Facebook's public space in seeking information on COVID-19 instead of or in addition to the more private official government site. We suggest that this is due to an increase in the opportunities to engage with others in entangled social and digital spaces, where people belong in different overlapping transnational social networks shared by migrants and non-migrants alike (Bilecen and Lubbers 2021) or different publics, as phrased by Sari Nauman and Helle Vogt (2022; see also Bratrud and Waltorp in the Introduction to this special issue). In these multiple overlapping publics, the boundaries between public and private are fuzzy and contested.
The increased dependence on digital technologies has been accompanied by pressing questions of the asymmetry of accessibility to technology, digital surveillance, and how these affect particular social groups. Scholars have stressed that, while digitalisation has brought many positive benefits to migrants’ lives, it has also provided a ‘space of polarisation’ (Wilding and Winarnita 2022: 287), where digitalisation can both create new spaces of creativity and reinforce already existing dynamics of exclusion or create new ones (Ponzanesi and Leurs 2022: 106). Mirca Madianou (2020) suggests that the use of digital technologies during the pandemic amplified social inequalities, especially of minority groups. She also points out that surveillance was normalised through contact tracing apps. As discussed later in this article, several of our interlocutors reflected on the ambiguity of digital technologies in regard to surveillance, but the analysis also hints at what has been labelled ‘overexposure’ (Deslandes and Coutinho 2020), that is, a form of surveillance that takes place in digital spaces where users are able to observe various intimate pieces of information about other users. We emphasise the ambiguity of these technologies and the multiplicities of affects, stressing that social media and other digital platforms create both public and private spaces that engage with public spheres (see Papacharissi 2002). We see these spheres as multiple (Pfister 2018) and view the engagement of public spaces with them as unpredictable and in no way singular.
The data for this analysis are based on qualitative methods, namely interviewing and media analysis. The research prioritises semi-structured interviews but also involves fieldwork participation. The first author started fieldwork for this part of the research in 2021, which consisted of participation in digital and in-person events in addition to discussion forums, with Facebook being a large part of the digital community in Iceland. As this period of the fieldwork took place during the pandemic, the digital part of the research became quite important. We, the authors, are participants in Icelandic society but belong to different networks and communities, as the first author originates from Lithuania and the second from Iceland. We thus shared particular environments with our interlocutors during COVID-19, which we describe in this article. In total twenty-three in-depth interviews were conducted by the first author with research participants from southern, western, and northern Iceland. The study employed a combination of random and snowball sampling methods and introduced convenience sampling at a later stage to increase the sample from the north of the country after the early data indicated that geographic residence had had an impact on the experiences of Lithuanians in Iceland during the pandemic. The largest number of research participants were found on Facebook's social media site. A large number of individuals with Lithuanian surnames passively or actively present in various Facebook groups and pages for people in Iceland were randomly picked and, through messages, invited to participate in the study. Using social media platforms to find interlocutors provides investigators with accessible ways to reach participants with diverse backgrounds and to assess their eligibility for the study based on publicly shared personal data (Gelinas et al. 2017). Publicly accessible data to determine a participant's eligibility was only resorted to with the convenience sampling when looking for participants in the north of Iceland. As a result, all Lithuanians who are part of the Facebook group called ‘Foreigners in AKUREYRI’, Akureyri being the largest town in the north of Iceland, were invited to participate via personally sent messages. This decision was made due to the very small Lithuanian population in Iceland's northwestern and northeastern regions.
The interviews sought to capture research participants’ experiences during the period from January 2020 to February 2022. While in the early 2000s most migrants from Lithuania were seen as economic migrants in Iceland, our interlocutors reflect well on how migrants often have different and intersecting motivations for migrating. While more than half of our interlocutors, or sixteen out of twenty-three, came to Iceland to earn money, seven came for a variety of other purposes, such as further study, family reunification, or having Icelandic partners they had met abroad and deciding to relocate. The positionality of our interlocutors in Icelandic society and their experience of being a part of that society therefore cannot be reduced to their status as migrants, as this is entangled with their more diverse connections and relationships with the country.
The data were processed as follows. First, the interviews were manually transcribed by the first author using Express Scribe Transcription Software. Later, the transcribed interviews were uploaded into the ATLAS.ti computer-assisted qualitative data software, where the first author was carefully re-reading the interviews and coding the data line by line. Once the coding was done, the codes were categorised, and the main themes were identified. In the final stage, we, the authors, jointly discussed and chose the themes to be included in this article. The data from the themes were repeatedly discussed by both of us throughout the writing process.
We start our discussion with a brief overview of recent Lithuanian migration to Iceland and then focus more closely on the sense of belonging during COVID-19 and the use of digital technologies by our research participants.
Lithuanians’ Migration Trajectories: Past and Present
Emigration from Lithuania was near to impossible during the Soviet occupation but became more accessible only with the transitional period following the restoration of Lithuania's independence in 1990. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lithuania's economy transitioned from being centrally planned to open and market-based. The transition period was characterised by economic hardships, which brought increased levels of unemployment, unstable employment, and a sense of insecurity that influenced emigration (Dužinskas and Jurgelevičius 2014; Kuzminskaitė 2003, as cited by Thaut 2009). Migration from Lithuania for labour purposes in the 1990s can be seen as a way to mitigate the risks (Thaut 2009). When Lithuania was about to join the the European Union (EU), privatisation had already started and market reforms had been initiated. Unemployment was exceptionally high, and salaries low. Thus, unemployment and wage differentials motivated Lithuanians to make use of the possibilities that came with EU membership in 2004 (Thaut 2009). Until 2004, the most attractive destination for Lithuanians was the United States, but soon after Lithuania's accession to the EU, the UK, Ireland, and Germany became the three main countries of destination for Lithuanian labour migrants (Valiūnienė et al. 2017).
The Nordic countries also received a significant share of foreign workers from the new EU member states. The statistical data discussed by Jon Horgen Friberg and Line Eldring (2013: 12–32) show that more than 330,000 workers from the new EU member states accessed the Nordic labour markets between 2004 and 2011. Significantly, Poland was the top sending country in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, and Norway), followed by Lithuania in second place. Estonia was the top sending country in Finland, followed by Poland, and in Sweden, Poland was the top sending country followed by Romania. Norway became tempting for Lithuanian specialists after the economic crises of 2009 in Lithuania, while a significant share of unqualified employees chose the UK (Valiūnienė et al. 2017). In the meantime, the numbers of Lithuanian immigrants in Sweden were nowhere close to the numbers who moved to the UK or Ireland for two main reasons: the language barrier (it was less challenging to work in the Anglophone countries), and Sweden's highly regulated labour market (Genelytė 2018). For some migrants, it was more appealing to move to countries where all the information concerning their welfare was accessible in English. However, the English language is widely and increasingly used in the Nordic countries too. In Iceland, for example, more and more information on the official governmental sites is accessible in English as well as in Polish (to meet the needs of the biggest foreigners’ group). Generally, in Iceland, the English language replaced Danish as the main foreign language towards the end of the twentieth century (Arnbjörnsdóttir and Ingvarsdóttir 2018). Recently, the number of news agencies in Iceland, including the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service ‘Ríkisútvarpið’ or RÚV for short, began to provide a certain level of news in English on a weekly and daily basis in the form of news articles, videos, or podcasts. Nevertheless, it seems that during the COVID-19 pandemic, information regarding the rules and regulations in English was either not frequent enough or unable to answer all the questions. Of course, the very important fact that should not be overlooked is that not all Lithuanian labour migrants in Iceland are able to understand English.
While Iceland has never been homogeneous, there was a low rate of foreign-born population in the second half of the twentieth century, with migration to the country largely coming from other Nordic countries (Loftsdóttir 2017). Conspicuous shifts in Iceland occurred after the European Economic Area (EEA) came into force in 1994 and again after Iceland became part of the Schengen Area in 2001, triggering an influx of labour migrants from EU countries. In 2006, the Icelandic labour market became accessible to citizens of these new EU member states (including Lithuania) (Loftsdóttir 2017). By chance, at the same time as the Icelandic labour market opened for Lithuanians and Poles, it was undergoing a shortage of workers (Skaptadóttir 2015). While the influx of labour migrants from eastern Europe was beneficial for the country's economy, acknowledgement of their economic contribution was affected by negative public and political discussions (Loftsdóttir 2019; Wojtyńska et al. 2011). This negative discussion made it difficult for people from Poland and Lithuania to feel a sense of belonging in Iceland, even during times of economic prosperity.
According to Statistics Iceland, 395 Lithuanian nationals were registered in Iceland in 2004, when Lithuania joined the EU; by 2008, when the financial crisis hit Iceland, this number had already reached 1,458. Lithuanian population in Iceland continued to grow after the economic crash, and in 2019, the number of Lithuanian citizens in Iceland reached 3,701, increasing to 4,604 in 2024 (Statistics Iceland 2024). These numbers demonstrate that the Lithuanian population continued to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lithuanians in Iceland and Digital Intensity
In this section of the article, we discuss the sense of sociality and belonging our interlocutors felt by participating in multiple overlapping communities within Iceland, in which they participated through digital platforms. Iceland became part of the global COVID-19 pandemic when the first case was reported on 28 February 2020, after an Icelandic citizen in his forties returned with the infection from northern Italy (Department of Civil Protection 2020). An Alert Phase was immediately declared by the Chief Epidemiologist and the National Commission of the Icelandic Police to employ measures for safety and security in the country. Various stages of preventative restrictions were put in place, but Iceland avoided having to enforce a lockdown. Intense COVID-19 tracing and testing with assistance from the company deCODE genetics Iceland helped to prevent a lockdown and allow tourism to the country (Ólafsson 2021). As the tourism sector is crucial to the Icelandic economy, to boost tourism the country's borders were thrown open to non-essential visitors from thirty-one European countries on 15 June 2020 and on 16 July an additional twelve countries (Scudellari 2020). Iceland's local strategies and the development of a COVID-19 vaccine by a handful of international vaccine manufacturers helped to increase the number of foreign visitors in Iceland in 2021 to 698,181 (Icelandic Tourist Board 2022). All COVID-19-related public restrictions in Iceland were lifted at midnight on 25 February 2022 (Directorate of Health 2022).
During the whole period of the pandemic, a strong emphasis was placed on daily press conferences by the national government. On 27 February, one day before the first reported case, Chief Epidemiologist Þórólfur Guðnason, together with Iceland's Director of Emergency Management Víðir Reynisson, and the Director of Health Alma Möller, held the first of these public COVID-19 press conferences. These were followed by daily briefings that eventually became the Icelandic authorities’ predominant means of communication guiding both the public and the media (Ólafsson 2021). These three experts held the daily briefings at 14:00 every day, which were broadcast on RÚV television channel and radio, as well as being made accessible online. Occasionally, they invited other experts to give information on specific issues. Much of the media reporting elsewhere was shaped by the information that appeared there. These daily broadcasts were watched every day by many, reflected in how the three experts came to be referred to casually as the ‘trio’. We observed in our daily lives how during this time people around us often referred to these individuals as if they knew them personally, indicating the importance of these daily broadcasts in creating cohesion and a sense of meaning during times of isolation and insecurity. Additionally, the Directorate of Health and the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management set up a website, covid.is, where the latest statistics on COVID could be found; this was updated constantly in the light of new data (Ólafsson 2021: 240–243). Politicians were much less visible and only appeared at press conferences when there were special announcements that involved political decisions such as imposing harsher restrictions or lifting restrictions.
In the quote at the beginning of our article, Rokas shared his feeling of being more ‘at home in Iceland’. Here he was referring to this daily reporting by the ‘trio’ and their guests, which, even though it was in Icelandic, he and many other non-Icelandic speakers accessed through the Lithuanian association's translated posts on Facebook. While covid.is provided information translated into eleven languages, including Lithuanian, Lithuanians still followed and expressed their need for information that had been posted on the Facebook group by the Lithuanian association. Among the possible reasons for this are that often the translated information was only an extract (Askham 2020), and also there may be a lack of awareness about items in the Lithuanian language being available on covid.is. The interview data also suggest that, regardless of Icelandic language knowledge and the number of years they had spent in Iceland, many Lithuanians were still more interested in turning to the Lithuanian association's Facebook posts for multiple reasons having to do with digital sociality and a sense of belonging, where they could express themselves and debate matters in their native language and engage with other people at times when face-to-face interaction was at a minimum. This Facebook group provided an opportunity for many Lithuanians to remain updated in a timely fashion with the latest COVID-19 regulations and restrictions in Iceland, to discuss those regulations in comments sections together with other Lithuanians, and later to share and discuss that information with other migrants and non-migrants outside the Facebook group, whether in private or shared households, or at workplaces.
We always say that the Lithuanian Community [association] in Iceland only organises events, but when the pandemic started, we discussed having to change our path slightly. Because events stopped and the Lithuanian Community [association] sounds for people as something like help. So, we tried to help as much as we were able to; I do not know if that help was significant at all, but for sure, people were contacting us asking us to provide some information. We had to reorganise ourselves slightly.
As already noted, the content of the pandemic-related information in the Lithuanian language uploaded on the Facebook group Islandijos lietuvių bendruomenės veikla (anonsai) came from these daily press briefings. The Icelandic government's representatives strongly emphasised to the general public that they should keep themselves well informed on the general situation, especially when there were strong peaks in the number of those infected. Thus, there was a strong emphasis that the public should constantly be checking for new information regarding the situation, and the Lithuanian association provided an easier means for Lithuanian-speaking people to do so and to engage with other Lithuanian speakers on the ongoing issues. The importance of this service was highlighted by some of our interlocutors, as they stressed how challenging it can be to find information in general when coming to Iceland and in particular how predominant the English language is.
Reflecting back on the importance of the Facebook site, Jūratė, a woman in her mid-sixties who has lived in the southern part of Iceland since 2007, talked about her sense of belonging in the shared reality in Iceland during that time, when people were anticipating the next meeting of the ‘trio’. Jūratė explained waiting for the translation from the association to be posted on their Facebook group in the following words: ‘Yes, and I was always waiting for her [Neringa] to post. When there were those press release meetings in the beginning of the pandemic, then I was just waiting for her to provide all the information in the Lithuanian language.’
A similar stress on the importance of this information was stated by other research participants such as Paulius, in his early thirties, who has lived in Iceland for nine years: ‘Yes, I was reading [Lithuanian association's posts]. I always read them . . . Extremely [helpful]! You know everything about how many are infected and what is . . . how the situation is with flights.’
Jūratė also explained that the issue is not that she does not understand Icelandic, but rather that she was uncertain she was understanding it correctly: ‘Now I read the Icelandic news more, but I still read everything . . . It is not that I can understand every word in Icelandic. If I translate a word, it gives me one meaning, but then I read the whole sentence, and it means a totally different thing.’ Saulė, a woman in her early thirties, similarly emphasised the importance of having the information in her native language due to her being insecure about her knowledge of Icelandic: ‘For me that information is [was] great! It helped me so much, actually. Because I do not know the Icelandic language much, even though I attended two courses.’
Ovidijus stressed the value for Lithuanians as a community when asked what the translated information meant for Lithuanians in Iceland: ‘Yes, I think it is very good because it happens sometimes that some really miss home, and this is [a space] that allows you, at least for a short time, to forget that you are abroad. I think it is very nice to communicate with people from the same country.’ Ovidijus, who is in his early thirties, has lived in the southern part of Iceland with his Lithuanian wife since 2018. He has thus stayed in Iceland for a shorter time than some of the others, thus was possibly seeking more support from the Lithuanian community in Iceland while belonging to multiple communities.
The Facebook group of the Lithuanian association in Iceland is not area-specific. Information advertised there regarding the Lithuanian school, Catholic masses in Lithuanian, and hikes outside Reykjavik is potentially relevant to Lithuanians all around the country. However, the majority of events organised, such as Lithuanian markets, Lithuanian film screenings, and various Lithuanian celebrations and other types of gatherings, are most accessible for people within Reykjavik's metropolitan era where most Lithuanians are based. During the pandemic, when physical events were not supposed to take place, the Lithuanian association had a better chance of equally engaging with Lithuanians scattered in other parts of the country through their organised digital events, as well as well as by providing them with relevant information in regard to the pandemic.
Several other Facebook groups exist for Lithuanians residing elsewhere in Iceland. However, as Laurynas, who lives in the north, explained, he follows the Lithuanian association's group even though the events are mostly accessible for Lithuanians in Reykjavik because it is the most active one, while the group he found designated for Lithuanians in his part of Iceland ‘is barely existing. Technically, I have not seen anyone post there for four months.’ This was echoed by Ovidijus, who claimed that ‘Everything [events organised through Lithuanian Facebook groups] is organised in Reykjavik.’
Well, about what is happening in Iceland [in relation to the pandemic] [I found out] from the Icelandic news media, RÚV news or website, or the other two sources. Then, when it comes to [the pandemic] situation in Lithuania, I read on the Lithuanian websites, or watched Lithuanian news, or ‘Panorama’ or something else. I have that Emigrants TV [Internet Protocol Television (IPTV)].
Yes, I [watch Lithuanian TV] through a computer, but I buy . . . They stream, I think, from England. Probably there is a bigger population of Lithuanians or something, so they can leak it. I know it was a bit more difficult [to get it] in Iceland. My friend's mother used to buy with a Lithuanian [bank] card. When you buy with a Lithuanian card somehow you do not have problems.
Actually, I might have started to call my family more [frequently]. Well, we call one another through WhatsApp, so I might have started to call more regularly and more often. . . . I used to call my parents at some point and that's it. Now, I just call everyone because, even if they were not able to meet one another in Lithuania, you know, when there were these restrictions. Then, you know, I knew what life was like.
In Milda's experience, ‘Messenger and WhatsApp are more convenient’ for communication now that her grandson [in Lithuania] is growing up. She is interested in seeing him and communicating with him, which she can do through video calls. Such a case as Milda's is one example of how technology takes part in shaping (removing, constructing, or shrinking) physical borders, as video calls allow one to establish and nurture bonds through visual communication and share experiences in real time between ‘young children and grandparents . . . when they are physically separated’ (Strouse et al. 2021: 552). Milda also explained that for the community of Lithuanians in Iceland Messenger is also important: ‘Messenger – we create a group on Messenger. So, whenever there is some question, we just drop them [there] and read them all, we all comment, yes, through Messenger.’
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the translated information provided by the Facebook group Islandijos lietuvių bendruomenės veikla (anonsai) seemed to have a special status in people's minds, and it was seen as crucial by those who were at different stages of understanding Icelandic. To refer once again to Rokas's expression of the feeling of ‘home’ that the broadcasts created for him, they reflect shared intimacies of migrants and non-migrants alike. As Başak Bilecen and Miranda J. Lubbers (2021: 845) stress, different transnational social fields are shared by migrants and non-migrants alike with realities that ‘are intrinsically connected with each other’. This means that through digital technologies migrants create connections in the countries where they live with migrants and non-migrants alike sharing the same space. Acknowledging shared realities can also apply to Jūratė, referred to earlier, describing her anticipation of having the information in translation. This is similar to what we, the authors of this article, observed in our daily lives among Icelandic speakers, where there was a great deal of anticipation for the next meeting to start and obtain the newest updates and information on the situation.
Those groups depress me. . . . For sure there were at least a couple of evenings when I was crying, and I was asking [name of the partner] how they get such salaries. Because . . . people say, ‘oh it's raining money here, you earn a lot doing almost nothing.’ Where? There was [no] such thing for me . . . I am educated, and I am working for the smallest salary in Iceland. Even now, it upsets me. You graduated, so what?
By participating in this Facebook site, like other digitalised spaces, people are opening up their private lives, but also observing the lives of others. As Suely Deslandes and Tiago Coutinho (2020: 3) argue, overexposure is ‘an intrinsic characteristic of digital sociality’ that materialises when lots of people watch over lots of other people. We see with Eglė that in her case she feels that her own life in Iceland is not as successful as others’ when she gazes into the experiences of others on Facebook. In this study, we have also observed an individual posting rather personal information on Facebook, only to be approached later by the media for an interview on that matter. This demonstrates clearly how the digital space leads to overexposure when people perceive themselves as sharing information with one particular public, which in fact overlaps with other publics. Nonetheless, Paulius and Eglė still felt the need to argue, when asked, that despite disputes and upsetting comments, Lithuanian Facebook groups are beneficial for digital sociality.
Discussion
Scholars have long emphasised the potential of digital technologies to maintain support for migrant belongings. In 2004, Vertovec (2004: 2019) reasoned that nothing aided global links between migrants and their families back home more than low-cost international calls. Not long after his research, given the immense speed of digital developments and improved accessibility, inexpensive telephone calls were complemented with digital telecommunication applications such as Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp, Viber, Messenger, Signal, Instagram calls, and others. Social media transform networks of people with migrant backgrounds by offering stronger ties with friends and family back home by allowing greater possibilities in creating contacts in diverse places that people did not necessarily seek before migrating (Dekker and Engbersen 2014), but also by allowing people to engage with different social publics with migrants and non-migrants alike (Bilecen and Lubbers 2021; Nauman and Vogt 2022; see also Bratrud and Waltorp in the Introduction to this special issue). Kaur-Gill highlights the role of social media sites as information intermediaries for migrants, providing them with a space for social support, detection of misinformation, knowledge exchange on employment opportunities, and other relevant information (2023: 31). We see in our research how Facebook and WhatsApp groups for Lithuanians in different parts of Iceland can be seen as enabling their participation in different publics (applying the idea of Nauman and Vogt 2022; see also Bratrud and Waltorp in the Introduction to this special issue) some involving Lithuanian groups in Iceland extend to Lithuania, others that can extend to Icelandic society. The term ‘digital sociality’ is important here in capturing how this space of translated information from the ‘trio's’ broadcasts should not be seen in isolation, as it was far from being only digitalised but was engaged with on different levels. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to self-isolate for brief periods, but at other times they could travel, for example, to visit family in Lithuania or engage in different ways with people in Iceland, such as during working hours, where they would work with other non-Icelandic or Icelandic people, or social gatherings when allowed. These were social settings in which people could share information and perspectives from these meetings that were such important events in most people's lives during this time, creating digital and non-digital fluid spaces.
Anton Vedder and colleagues (2021: 460) see the public/private distinction as constituted by social norms in society, which changed to some extent during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the boundaries between public and private are not always clear, it is necessary to keep in mind their fluidity. During the pandemic, the increase in video conferencing led to the ‘exposure of personal space’ (Vedder et al. 2021: 448), where people are on video calls relating to their public lives, such as those related to work or education, but are doing so in their private spaces. People often did not have any choice over what private physical spaces these were, meaning that their home environments were exposed or overexposed to others. This made precarities or privileges visible that people did not necessarily want to share with others, thus diffusing this distinction between public and private space. While we did not ask our interviewees about this issue in particular, the discussion by Vedder and colleagues (2021) reminds us of the different vulnerabilities that people experience through digital media. Such vulnerabilities were reflected in a different way in the voices of our interlocutors when describing Facebook groups as a space for conflicts and contestations, as they found themselves in interaction with individuals they had no interest in being in contact with, as was the case, for instance, with pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine individuals.
As noted earlier, Bratrud and Waltorp wonder to what extent social media and other digital platforms are the equivalent of the coffeehouses and salons of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries in the sense that they constitute private contexts of sociability. We suggest connecting this point to Zizi Papacharissi's distinction (2002: 11) between the public sphere and the public space as two complementary functions of the internet, suggesting that as a public space the internet offers a forum for political debate, while as a public sphere it works as a facilitator of democratic discourse. Thus, in a wider perspective, the Facebook group could be seen as a means or a gateway whereby people became a part of spheres of democratic discussion on matters pertaining to important issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, social media platforms such as Facebook groups served as public yet, to some extent, private spaces for the exchange of personal pandemic narratives, opinions, and discussion. These spaces thus facilitated discourses that were independent of official state institutions and that enhanced various aspects of civil society. Part of Bratrud and Waltorp's point is precisely to stress that, just like the coffeehouses, digital platforms can be sheltered from the state's authority, constituting in some sense ‘safe’ spaces in which people can discuss official matters and generate demands, and given that they are such alternative spaces, they can also provide ways to contest the larger public spheres that are governed by the authorities. Our analysis suggests that Facebook groups such as Islandijos lietuvių bendruomenės veikla (anonsai) can be positioned as such alternative public spaces, as a medium for contestations, agreements and disagreements over public matters such as COVID-19 rules and regulations or vaccinations.
The sources cited above discussing private and public aspects of digital spaces show how flexible the concepts of public and private are and how difficult it is to define them as long shown (e.g., Tholen 2016), where ‘private’ can be highly contextual, such as referring to being sheltered from other individuals or having emerged in a space of sociability that is separated from the state. Amy Shields Dobson and colleagues (2018) use the concept ‘intimate public’ to capture how the public and private can intermingle. This discussion also indicates how these digital spaces are never fully ‘private’ from different actors in multiple contexts; the content of Facebook groups is overexposed, as shown by our data, and it can be observed by various actors, whether the media, members of state institutions or others.
Our methodology of using Facebook to find some of our interlocutors reflects how the distinction between public and private can be seen as porous. In the introduction to this special issue, Bratrud and Waltorp argue that, by dint of digital technologies, individuals’ personal data that is visible to others is not totally public nor any longer private. An example of this is individuals who have joined either ‘private’ or public Facebook groups since members of those groups or, in the second case, anyone interested in the group can see who joined the group and when. Thus, while most of the personal data of an individual's Facebook account is usually kept ‘private’ and accessible only to that person's Facebook friends, a certain extent of personal data such as one's name, a profile picture and digital behaviour such as joining public Facebook groups is exposed publicly. Such digital behaviour might generate additional publicly accessible data built on assumptions. For example, if someone finds a Lithuanian person on the Facebook group called ‘Foreigners in AKUREYRI’, that person probably either already lives or used to live in Iceland, and very likely in Akureyri, or is considering relocating there, or maybe the person's friends or relatives are living there. The Facebook account of this individual, in Facebook terms, is ‘private’ since only Facebook friends can access it fully, yet it is not fully private since the presence of the account and its digital behaviour are visible to other Facebook users. While this visibility of digital behaviour brings up security concerns, we argue that in the case of Lithuanians in Iceland, their participation and presence in various Facebook groups for both foreigners and locals, as well as exclusively for Lithuanians, aid their digital sociality with other immigrants and locals by making it easier to be reached.
Conclusion
In this article, we have shown how digital technologies were important for Lithuanian nationals’ participation in Icelandic society at a time of intense polarisation in society, allowing people to participate in different publics. Even though the official COVID-related information was available on covid.is in several languages, including Lithuanian, many Lithuanians preferred to follow the translations of the Lithuanian association in Iceland accessible on their Facebook group, which shows the importance of digital technologies in providing a ‘social glue’, to use Vertovec's (2004: 220) terminology. The Lithuanian association's Facebook group changed its role from partly counteracting prejudice toward Lithuanians in Iceland toward creating a space for the digital sociality of migrants and non-migrants alike, which was especially important during the pandemic in Iceland. The Facebook group, alongside other digital media, allowed many individuals to engage with different publics for contestations, agreements, and disagreements with various public matters regarding COVID-19 rules and regulations or the question of whether to vaccinate or not. Participation in these overlapping public and private spaces can also be seen as important in taking part in shaping society's public spheres.
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