Ethnic Media in the Digital Age

Sherry S. Yu, Matthew D. Matsaganis, Sherry S. Yu, Matthew D. Matsaganis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138486485
• eBook ISBN: 9781351045292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

Ethnic media are media produced for, and frequently by, immigrants, ethnic and linguistic minority groups, and indigenous populations. These media represent a sector of the broader media industry that has seen considerable growth globally, even while many mainstream, legacy media have struggled to survive or have ceased to exist, largely due to the emergence of new communication technologies. What is missing in the literature is a careful examination of ethnic media in the digital age. The original research, including case studies, in this book provides insight into (1) what new trends are emerging in ethnic media production and consumption; (2) how ethnic media are adapting to changing technologies in the media landscape of our times; and (3) what enduring roles ethnic media perform in local communities and in an increasingly globalized world. The ethnic media that contributors discuss in this book are produced for and distributed across a variety of platforms, ranging from broadcasting and print to online platforms. Additionally, these media serve numerous immigrant, ethnic, and indigenous communities who live in and trace their origins back to a variety of regions of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania.

Part I
Changes

Emerging Ethnic Media Forms and Their Roles in the Digital Age

1 The Disrupting Tempest

A Case Study of Young Minority Female Media Producers

Wajeeha Malik and Alison N. Novak

Introduction

In a 2015 interview with CNN, The Tempest creator Laila Alawa reflected on the success of her 2-year-old online news outlet and its mission to “normalize the conversation of what it means to be a woman typically perceived as ‘other’” (O’Brien, 2015). The site boasts 250 global contributors, 40% of which identify as Muslim. Her goal is to provide a digital space for women to share their own experiences and interpretations of issues, current events, or policies. To Alawa, these voices are typically silenced or isolated in traditional media such as newspapers and television. In contrast, digital spaces allow women from non-Western backgrounds to share their voice and ideas.

By using Cover’s approach to digital media and minorities, this case study examines The Tempest as a digital news site that contributes to and facilitates intercultural exchanges, cultural dialogues, and ongoing tensions between traditional and digital media production. Through a discursive case study approach, this study also identifies three discourses that answer how contributors to The Tempest discursively construct their journalistic identity and practices.

Ethnic Media in the Digital Age

Cover (2012) argues that the digital era produces a new definition of communication and intercultural dialogue. Digital spaces, such as blogs, social media, and mobile media, have shifted the ways that different ethnic groups communicate both internally and externally (Cover, 2012; Rigoni, 2012). Thus, it is advised to look at how these spaces proliferate and how they mediate cultural messages and exchanges (Rigoni, 2012).

In particular, digital news sites allow for nontraditional voices to facilitate the spread of news and information across cultural boundaries and in a globalized digital space (Moring, 2013). Whereas traditional print news struggled to include minorities, women, and cultural outsiders, the online space offers nearly endless opportunity for these voices to be included in news because of new publications catering to these voices as both authors and members of the audience (Castañeda, Fuentes-Bautista, & Baruch, 2015). As a result, shifts in news media discourses occur, often featuring the inclusion of minority interests and demands (Castañeda et al., 2015; Rigoni, 2012).

Carson, Muller, Martin, and Simons (2016) further added that online digital spaces often welcome journalists from diverse ethnic backgrounds as they position themselves to be more inclusive and alternative to traditional news media. This inclusivity allows the journalists to challenge the white-normative discourses and narratives that are often found in those media (Carson et al., 2016).

Digital media and online journalism offer a new space that recognizes and values ethnic labor in media production (Prieger, 2015). Online news sites represent and publish news at the intersection of ethnic identities, ones that were often deemed unimportant or unworthy in traditional media environments (Prieger, 2015). Schneider (2003) notes that the recognition and publication of minority journalists’ work in online spaces has led to a proliferation of digital news sites that are owned and operated by non-Western individuals. These sites often popularize their noted oppositional stance to traditional journalism practices, as well as their ability to facilitate the exchange of information across ethnic groups (Dolber, 2016).

However, ethnic media websites also have a unique set of challenges. For instance, Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman (2015) note that although digital media often improve the ability of cultural groups to gain attention in a cluttered mass media market, there are also possibilities of misinterpretation and misunderstandings within these spaces. For example, because humor is often culturally defined, satirical news or political humor often challenges meaning-making and mutual understanding. (Boxman-Shabtai & Shifman, 2015).

Despite this notable difference from (or oppositional stance against) traditional news media, it is important to note that tensions between traditional and digital news outlets emerge as they compete for the same advertising budgets and public attention (Novak, 2016). Economically, online news sites are viewed as a threat to traditional print media, which encourages publications to position themselves as opposites of each other (Boczkowski & Peer, 2011; Ottosen & Krumsvik, 2012; Schmitz Weiss & Higgins Joyce, 2009).

Minority Women in Journalism

Women of color endure the double burden of gender and racial discrimination. Media are often regarded reflecting dominant social norms and values (Lasswell, 1948; Tuchman, 1978). Therefore, the representation of minority women in news media requires critical examination since historically, women and people of color have been poorly represented in American media (Luther, Lepre, & Clark, 2011). Such representation of minority women is both a historical and contemporary problem. In her analysis of newspaper coverage during and after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Calloway (2009) found that black women were rarely quoted and their experiences were infrequently covered by news reports, despite the fact that women tend to disproportionately suffer more than men during natural disasters. These women were thus rendered invisible and voiceless during a major crisis.

Other minority women are also unfairly represented in news media. In his examination of visual representation of Muslim and Arab women in American newspapers, Falah (2005) found that the imagery of Muslim and Arab women was framed in a way that was in accordance with dominant, hegemonic ideologies that support U.S. government foreign policy: that is, Middle Eastern countries should be feared and are worthy of American sympathy. Falah (2005) found photographs that underscored the American foreign policy agenda of saving Muslim women from oppressive structures. Other photographs, depending on the nationality of the women depicted, represented Muslim women as political and military fanatics who are radicalized by Islam. The visual element of Falah’s (2005) study also hinges on the predominance of depicting Muslim women as veiled. Historically, women have borne the representational burden of modeling, maintaining, and transmitting the moral ordering of a society, which often includes ways of dressing (Bennett, 1997; Masquelier, 2005). News discourse regarding Muslim women has historically centered on veiling practices, and this trend continues in contemporary news media (Al-Hejin, 2015; Chan-Malik, 2011).

The Tempest

Launched in early 2014, The Tempest began from a Twitter conversation using #breakthesilence to discuss the limited voice of millennial Muslim women in traditional media and journalism. Months later, The Tempest was created as a space for millennial women of diverse backgrounds (including Muslim) to share stories of personal identity, policy or civil issues, or cultural information. Founded by Syrian American Laila Alawa, she notes

The inception came with a question: why weren’t we hearing about the world and all of its intricacies from the vibrant, authentic and varied women from underrepresented backgrounds? Why is it so hard to push beyond what we’re expected to talk about, to what we truly want to discuss?

(The Tempest, 2016)

Alawa’s vision is to provide a space for millennial women to discuss and challenge their own representation within a larger media industry that frequently silences their voice. By using a digital space, women from around the world can interact and engage with each other to propel new narratives of their own identity.

The website currently features authors from over 15 countries such as Iran, Bangladesh, England, and Kenya. According to Alawa (2016), “The current media climate is broken, and people are searching for narratives they identify with. The Tempest was the resolution everyone was aching for: a forward-thinking, biting, sometimes-irreverent media platform, but run by women of marginalized voices.” To accomplish this mission, The Tempest invites readers from around the world to create articles (text, audio, and video), which are archived on their website, that reflect on young minority women’s experiences. The Tempest primarily captures its audience, and eventual contributors, through social media. As of March 2017, The Tempest has over 161,000 Facebook followers, over 90,000 Twitter followers, and more than 28,000 Instagram followers. While The Tempest runs a risk of becoming an echo chamber, the social media sites provide The Tempest with potential contributors to their site, as their followers share the publication’s articles within their respective social networks. These contributors hail from a variety of backgrounds, from women with no professional credentials to experienced activists. In fact, some of the articles are also published anonymously.

As a popular online outlet for millennial women, the site encourages intercultural dialogue between its readers and authors. Women share personal stories, narratives, and histories, curated by The Tempest creators, as a way to articulate and address tensions that exist globally between cultures and ethnicities. The site connects millions of readers and boasts a daily readership of over 50,000 visits daily. Considering the variety of media platforms used to articulate The Tempest’s message, its impact on the news industry is noteworthy.

Methodology

By applying Cover’s approach (2012), this study examines The Tempest as a case study, analyzing its web content and associated social media components (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat) as well as podcasts. The discursive approach to case study research has been used in the study of how cultures are represented, positioned, and integrated into a set of texts (Davies & Harré, 1990; Gee, 2011). This approach allows researchers to study a set of texts holistically, rather than through breaking them apart into smaller sections (Gee, 2011). Gee’s discursive approach is useful: this holistic set of texts can then be analyzed for seven meaning-making tasks—patterns of significance, practices, identities, relationships, politics, connections, and sign systems/knowledge. These meaning-making tasks provide structure to the discursive approach, allowing researchers to draw larger findings regarding how a culture or group is related to a text.

For this study, the two researchers independently read a random sample of 300 articles on The Tempest, particularly looking at how the authors on the site position themselves within the larger socioeconomic media culture. To collect the random sample, links for the articles archived on the site since 2014 (close to 23,000 articles in December 2017) were extracted, and then a set of 300 was randomly sampled by using numbers generated by a random number generator. Then, researchers looked for evidence of Gee’s (2011) seven meaning-making tasks. Ultimately, this case study sought to answer the following question: how do contributors to The Tempest discursively construct their journalistic identity and practices? For qualitative reliability, quotes are provided throughout the findings.

New Media Production

Many writers reflected on how The Tempest provided them with a space to exchange information and stories around the world. For some authors, the global nature of the site, including its ability to publish articles from the Other women, was applauded and reflected upon. For authors, The Tempest often represented one of the first places they read articles about their own ethnic backgrounds or non-Western views of their ethnicity. For example, in an article about Desi representation on television, the authors, Naseem and Mungloo, noted that the television media have failed to accurately portray Desi girls of Pakistani and Bangladeshi culture. In contrast, series produced in a digital environment seem to “have succeeded in integrating authentic cultural portrayals of minorities into meaningful and entertaining storylines”. For the authors, if traditional television media failed to produce authentic representation of Desi culture, digital media, where Desi women can contribute and build their own storylines, may be a solution to this problem. Discursively, this comment refers to Gee’s “identities” meaning-making task because it asks the audience to consider how the role of the Other has been conceptualized in traditional media.

Contributors also focused on the role of digital journalists in contemporary challenges over labor practices. In a 2016 piece, one author (Ennen) reflected that the trending campaign #SupportPOCpods reminds users that although the 21st century has produced a lot of positive changes for the ability of ethnic journalists to contribute to online information sharing, there is still a lot of work needed to be done before there is accurate ethnic representation, fair and equal wages, and mutual respect between groups.

Tempest Authorship

Largely, each author provided some reflection on subjectivity within their news production process. Each article suggested that the authors experienced frustrations with the traditional news media environment, which encouraged them to develop digital practices to help challenge the misrepresentation of minority groups. In doing so, they subjectively positioned themselves as the Other, or outside the normative journalistic identity (white, heteronormative). Their calls for reader support for The Tempest as well as the production of challenging narratives reinforced this discourse throughout the 300 articles examined.

Throughout reflections on the socioeconomics of the digital space, many contributors broke journalistic norms of objectivity and provided readers with a reflection on their own experiences on the site. For contributors, The Tempest provided a digital space where authors could write and share ideas that they felt were unwelcome in more traditional mediated spaces. In one article (by Kader) on encouraging African American female athletes to become fashion icons, she questioned the current position of the male-dominated sporting and athletic field as it was structured and approved of by the media indus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Ethnic Media in the Digital Age: New Research from Across the Globe
• PART I Changes: Emerging Ethnic Media Forms and Their Roles in the Digital Age
• PART II Adapting to a Changing Media Environment
• PART III Continuities: From the Pre-Digital to the New Media Landscape
• Epilogue: The Future of Ethnic Media in the Digital Age
• Index