This paper studies the appropriation of virtual spaces by the Bolivian youth in the Diaspora. I study virtual rooms as leisure spaces where old and new meanings of identity, and relationships based on a sense of community can be pursued. One of the central questions in this paper is however these new contexts are new places for diasporic identities, or new social identities through online as well as offline communities? What kind of identities and interactions are produced and reproduced through new media? By describing the new media and its contents I try to understand processes of cultural production as ways of creating ‘alternative cultures’ and new media spaces. These spaces may be seen as important centres of meaning for diasporic groups.

In the paper I try to show how the Bolivian diasporic communities of youngsters are created as ‘alternative public spheres’. Issues such as how relationships between the local and global music cultures and new as well as old identities are articulated on the Internet are examined. I also try to show how contemporary social and political issues and changing identities are juxtaposed in complex collages. The central arguments of this paper maintain that the participants in these diasporic groups are continually discovering and rediscovering a dominated culture as well as creating different forms of diasporic communities in different virtual leisure spaces.

Ethnographic methods are used in the project. Participant observation of relevant websites where different forms of popular culture and popular music may be staged are carried out to study questions of identity, origins and belongingness through case studies about internet communities

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