HIÁNYZÓ ÍZEK, ZÚGÓ FÜLEK, KIESŐ JÁRATOK
MISSING FLAVOURS, BUZZING EARS, MISSING FLIGHTS

THE “HUNGARIANS IN BERLIN” FACEBOOK GROUP AS A MARKETPLACE

Author(s): Jenő Bódi
Subject(s): Media studies
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: Hungarians in Berlin; communication platforms; emergence of social media;
Summary/Abstract: My study briefly presents the results of a research project comparing two communication platforms of the Hungarian diaspora in Berlin. MagyarOnline.net’s forum “Hungarians in Berlin – chatting” was launched in 2004 and was particularly active for about two years, with almost two thirds of the posts being written during this period; from the end of 2006, the number of posts from users had already decreased, but it became clear that the online spaces of the Hungarian diaspora in Berlin had moved to a new platform, Iwiw. After 2012, long before theclosure of Iwiw in 2014, online groups of Hungarians living in Berlin appeared on Facebook, such as “Berlin Calling” in 2012, or the group I analysed, “BerlinHungarians”, which was launched in March 2014. This transformation of the media environment, the emergence of social media, coincides with the period of liberalization of employment in Germany and the sudden increase in migration, from Hungary to Germany (Blaskó–Gödri 2014). My analysis is part of a research project that aims to explore the interconnections between the city, migration and media through the example of the Hungarian diaspora in Berlin. Zsolt Szijártó’s study emphasizes, based on his empirical research among Hungarians in Berlin, that social and political changes have led to changes in each of the three aspects mentioned above every 10-12 years or so: new media have appeared, urban culture and its representation have changed, and migration has affected new groups due to changes in the political environment (Szijártó 2018). At the beginning of the investigation of these two online communication platforms, I was primarily interested in whether, in the specific cultural context of the Hungarian diaspora in Berlin, the migration of user-generated content from one platform to another could be observed or whether different content, although related to the diaspora, could be created on the different platforms.

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