Whether exclusively in cyberspace, or engaged in the physical world, as the organizations featured in this book demonstrate, digital diasporas: 1) create hybrid identities, potentially inclusive of liberal values; 2) manifested in communities and organizations with various types of social capital and generated benefits; which in turn, 3) may support integration and security in the host society and peace and socioeconomic development in their homelands. The Internet facilitates each of these outcomes. In support of hybrid identities, it provides dialogical space, a forum for storytelling, tools for issue framing, and a context for nonhierarchical norm development and experimentation with liberal values. The Internet fosters: bonding social capital, by providing a safe space for anonymously sharing trauma and identity struggles; bridging social capital, by assembling sub-groups from the diaspora and across host societies; and bridging-to-bond social capital, by bringing together dispersed and isolated diaspora groups to enable bonding. The Internet contributes to mobilization by facilitating shared identity, issue framing, and confidence building; acting as an organizing/networking tool; and providing a vehicle for information and referrals.

As demonstrated by MyCopticChurch and TibetBoard, the storytelling and sharing the Internet affords provides logistical and community forums for disseminating information about the homeland faith and/or culture; and for reinforcing and/or recreating that identity in ways that can make it more relevant and sustainable across generations in diaspora. As Thamel.com illustrates, diasporans can also use the Internet as a tool for linking and participating in homeland relationships, festivals, and economic growth.