Misunderstanding News Audiences by Eiri Elvestad Angela Phillips

Author:Eiri Elvestad, Angela Phillips [Eiri Elvestad, Angela Phillips]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781315444345
Google: KJdNDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Diasporic communities and global news

Diasporic communities are now more able to access news from their country of origin (Tufte, 2003; Zuckerman, 2013) and several scholars have pointed out how following the news from “home territories” is a way of negotiating a multi-identity for ex-patriot families and individuals. The Internet and other transnational media channels provide opportunities for linking back to the communities they have left behind (Christiansen, 2004, p. 201). However, this does not necessarily make these communities more global or cosmopolitan in their orientation: “Information may flow globally, but our attention tends to be highly local and highly tribal; we care more deeply about those with whom we share a group identity and much less about a distant ‘other’” (Zuckerman, 2013, p. 58).

A study of young adults from the Vietnamese diaspora in Norway showed how when access to satellite television from Vietnam became available, there was a change in their parents’ media exposure (Elvestad, 2007). When these young adults were growing up, soap operas and novels were used to keep up the Vietnamese identity in the families, while the Norwegian public broadcasters or local and national newspapers were their main medium for news. After 2004, many of the parents replaced the Norwegian public broadcaster with Vietnamese television channels (Elvestad, 2007). This study shows how the preference for homeland media is so strong that even after 20 years in a host country, if the possibility for tuning in to your homeland is there, some will be prepared to leave the local media frames of the new nation.

Several researchers have discussed how national broadcasting has played a pivotal role in creating a national “culture in common”. Aksoy (2006) highlights the symbolic power (and indeed expectation) of the national broadcaster as a producer of a sense of shared reality. However, not all people feel included in symbolic membership of the nation represented in its mediated culture, and Morley (2000) argues that the tie to “home” may be a response to feelings of alienation in their newly adopted country rather than a reflexive conservatism. The framing of immigrants or ethnic minorities in the national mainstream media can be exclusionary. A study of Danish ethnic minorities showed that racism, a feeling of being excluded from the flow of national news and lack of sufficient Danish language skills were all mentioned as reasons why Danish television news broadcasts are not their most prominent sources of news (Christiansen & Sell, 2000). As Christiansen (2004, p. 201) points out:

When immigrant or diaspora populations are excluded, as targets for nation-wide public service television, it can both reinforce their general feeling of exclusion from their present society, and reduce possibilities of pursuing their own interests as minorities. Instead, the transnational social space presents itself as an opportunity for developing enduring relations and acquiring relevant information and news.

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