"Extant research on migrants’ media use and trust has delivered mixed evidence on whether, and in which ways, migrants stay loyal to their homeland news media and/or develop trust in host-society media, particularly when the narratives of the two types of media clash. To advance this strand of res
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earch, this study scrutinizes how an audience group with migration background, who lived the first part of their lives under authoritarian rule but then relocated to a democracy, negotiates trust in their multilingual, transnational news environments. Specifically, we conducted semistructured interviews with forty-two Russian-speaking first-generation migrants living in Germany in 2021. As we find, distinct understandings of the concept of “truth” played a pivotal role in how our participants negotiated trust in their transnational news environments. We distinguish broadly two understandings of “truth”: (1) “truth” as a category grounded in factual evidence and (2) “truth” as a nonevidence based category grounded in values, emotions, or identities. Illustrative for the second understanding, some participants felt a strong moral obligation to believe Kremlin-sponsored media as they perceived these organizations as representing their homeland, independently of whether their news coverage was factually accurate or not. The two understandings of “truth” also affected how and where participants sought for what they considered the “truth.” In the “Discussion” section, we argue that particularly the non-evidence-based truth-understandings formulated by our participants, and the ensuing truth-seeking strategies are conducive to the reach and persuasive impact of Kremlin-sponsored content among Russian speakers living abroad." (Abstract)
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"The escalating dangers journalists face globally have led to a marked increase in media professionals seeking safety away from their home countries. As a result, journalists are increasingly forced to choose between silence and survival, with many opting for the latter in the form of diaspora reloc
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ation. This article investigates the role of kinship in community building among diaspora journalists, highlighting how these networks impact their collaboration and resource mobilisation. Drawing from interviews (n*=*12) with reporters and editors from Latin America, Hong Kong, and the Middle East, this article examines diaspora journalists’ changing roles and proactive measures in establishing inclusive information and educational infrastructures, enhancing advocacy and empowerment for their communities. Findings demonstrate how journalists leverage kinship to connect with their audiences and guide their journalistic practices, editorial choices, and technological adoption. Findings further revealed that the role of diaspora journalists is evolving into one characterised by what this article terms “civic information workers.” These civic information workers are not only reporters but also intermediaries who provide vital data and insights that facilitate the everyday life and integration of diaspora communities into new societies, thus using journalism as a tool for civic empowerment." (Abstract)
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"Long before the COVID-19 crisis, Mexican Indigenous peoples were faced with organizing their lives from afar, between villages in the Oaxacan Sierra Norte and the urban districts of Los Angeles, as a result of unauthorized migration and the restrictive border between Mexico and the United States. B
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y launching cutting-edge Internet radio stations and multimedia platforms and engaging as community influencers, Zapotec and Ayuujk peoples paved their own paths to a transnational lifeway during the Trump era. This meant adapting digital technology to their needs, setting up their own infrastructure, and designing new digital formats for re-organizing community life in all its facets—including illness, death and mourning, collective celebrations, sport tournaments, and political meetings—across vast distances. Author Ingrid Kummels shows how mediamakers and users in the Sierra Norte villages and in Los Angeles created a transborder media space and aligned time regimes. By networking from multiple places, they put into practice a communal way of life called Comunalidad and an indigenized American Dream—in real time." (Publisher description)
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"Unruly Speech explores how Uyghurs in China and in the diaspora transgress sociopolitical limits with "unruly" communication practices in a quest for change. Drawing on research in China, the United States, and Germany, Saskia Witteborn situates her study against the backdrop of displacement and sh
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ows how naming practices and witness accounts become potent ways of resistance in everyday interactions and in global activism. Featuring the voices of Uyghurs from three continents, Unruly Speech analyzes the discursive and material force of place names, social media, surveillance, and the link between witnessing and the discourse on human rights. The book provides a granular view of disruptive communication: its global political moorings and socio-technical control. The rich ethnographic study will appeal to audiences interested in migration and displacement, language and social interaction, advocacy, digital surveillance, and a transnational China." (Publisher description)
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"Over one-million immigrants of Mayan descent live in the United States, but unlike other ethnic groups, Mayan diasporas struggle to create visibility, political and social capital, and acceptance through media. This case study used a qualitative methodology to analyze how Radio B’alam, the first
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Mam-language radio program in the U.S., emerged during a global pandemic to fill a community’s need for critical information. The study is grounded in the theoretical framework of geo-ethnic media and explores the roles of citizen journalists in decreasing information gaps and overcoming language barriers, while reaffirming the importance of radio in times of crisis." (Abstract)
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"[…] The studies presented here […] seek to explore two questions: how have Arab diasporic communities in Europe used Arab media in transnational political action formation since 2011? And how does the use of different media platforms stimulate or confine particular diasporic action, and what do
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es this mean for our understanding of mediatized diaspora? The project conducts a comparative study between the use and users of Syrian, Tunisian, Bahraini, and Egyptian regime-critical and politically mobilized media. The four Arab countries have been selected because they represent different patterns of immigration that are formed by colonial connections and current conflicts." (Introduction, page 2)
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"This book advances alternative approaches to understanding media, culture and technology in two vibrant regions of the Global South. Bringing together scholars from Africa and the Caribbean, it traverses the domains of communication theory, digital technology strategy, media practice reforms, and c
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orporate and cultural renewal. The first section tackles research and technology with new conceptual thinking from the South. The book then looks at emerging approaches to community digital networks, online diaspora entertainment, and video gaming strategies. The volume then explores reforms in policy and professional practice, including in broadcast television, online newspapers, media philanthropy, and business news reporting. Its final section examines the role of village-based folk media, the power of popular music in political opposition, and new approaches to overcoming neo-colonial propaganda and external corporate hegemony." (Publisher description)
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"With the rise of digital tools used for media entrepreneurship, media outlets staffed by only one or two individuals and targeted to niche and super-niche audiences are developing across a wide range of platforms. Minority communities such as immigrants and refugees have long been pioneers in this
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space, operating ethnic media outlets with limited staff and funding to produce content that is relevant and accessible to their specific community. Micro Media Industries explores the specific case of Hmong American media, showing how an extremely small population can maintain a robust and thriving media ecology in spite of resource limitations and an inability to scale up. Based on six years of fieldwork in Hmong American communities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California, it analyzes the unique opportunities and challenges facing Hmong newspapers, radio, television, podcasts, YouTube, social media, and other emerging platforms. It argues that micro media industries, rather than being dismissed or trivialized, ought to be held up as models of media innovation that can counter the increasing power of mainstream media." (Publisher description)
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"This book focuses on ethnic journalism in the Global South, approaching it from two angles: as a professional area and as a social mission. The book discusses journalistic practices and ethnic media in the Global South, managerial and editorial strategies of ethnic media outlets, their content spec
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ifics, target audience, distribution channels, main challenges and trends of development in the digital age." (Publisher description)
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"Alena Strohmaier diskutiert in diesem Open-Access-Buch die komplexen Konfigurationen von Diaspora, deren soziopolitische und kulturelle Aspekte und unternimmt eine theoretische Dimensionierung des Begriffs, indem sie diesen als sowohl räumliche als auch filmische Kategorie versteht. Als Bindeglied
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zwischen den beiden Theorietraditionen dient ihr dabei die Kategorie des Raums, die als ästhetische Kategorie gleichermaßen konstitutiv für filmische Artefakte ist, wie sie es als sozialgeografische für die Diaspora ist. Die Autorin zeigt am Beispiel des zeitgenössischen iranischen Diasporafilms, wie die Theorie des Films mit dem Konzept der Diaspora jenseits essentialistischer Vorstellungen von ethnischen, kulturellen oder religiösen Zugehörigkeiten zusammenzudenken ist." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Social media has, in a few years, turned the political landscape in Ethiopia on its head not only as a means of mobilising people, but also as a means of spreading rumours, hate speech and disinformation [...] What ultimately is happening is that digital media has made a more invasive, ultimately p
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ersonalised form of marketing possible, which is changing political and commercial communication as a whole and with it the media landscape [...] A number of core problem areas for social media emanate out of the digital technology shift and the emergence of social media that stakeholders need to deal with now and in the future. Among them are: Broadening access to the internet; Regulation: publishing responsibility, freedom of speech and democracy; Consumer protection: data privacy, disclosure of platform data handling and advertising; Copyright of inventions and content; Overall media finance when advertising revenues are migrating to primarily Facebook and Google (incl Youtube); Media literacy in the light of hate speech, disinformation and a completely new range of disruptive, conniving marketing that with it carries both great opportunities and massive losses." (Introduction)
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"This handbook attempts to fill the gap in empirical scholarship of media and communication research in Africa, from an Africanist perspective. The collection draws on expert knowledge of key media and communication scholars in Africa and the diaspora, offering a counter-narrative to existing Wester
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n and Eurocentric discourses of knowledge-production. As the decolonial turn takes centre stage across Africa, this collection further rethinks media and communication research in a post-colonial setting and provides empirical evidence as to why some of the methods conceptualised in Europe will not work in Africa. The result is a thorough appraisal of the current threats, challenges and opportunities facing the discipline on the continent." (Publisher description)
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"This edited collection argues that the connective and orientation roles ascribed to diasporic media overlook the wider roles they perform in reporting intractable conflicts in the Homeland. Considering the impacts of conflict on migration in the past decades, it is important to understand the capac
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ity of diasporic media to escalate or deescalate conflicts and to serve as a source of information for their audiences in a competitive and fragmented media landscape. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapters examine how the diasporic media projects the constructive and destructive outcomes of conflicts to their particularistic audiences within the global public sphere. The result is a volume that makes an important contribution to scholarship by offering critical engagements and analyzing how the diasporic media communicates information and facilitates dialogue between conflicting parties, while adding to new avenues of empirical case studies and theory development in comprehending the media coverage of conflict." (Publisher description)
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"Transborder Media Spaces offers a new perspective on how media forms like photography, video, radio, television, and the Internet have been appropriated by Mexican indigenous people in the light of transnational migration and ethnopolitical movements. In producing and consuming self-determined medi
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a genres, actors in Tamazulapam Mixe and its diaspora community in Los Angeles open up media spaces and seek to forge more equal relations both within Mexico and beyond its borders. It is within these spaces that Ayuujk people carve out their own, at times conflicting, visions of development, modernity, gender, and what it means to be indigenous in the twenty-first century." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter has focussed attention on recognising the specifc category of diaspora journalism as one of the key dimensions of diaspora formations and their ability to intervene in international politics in general and in conficts relating to their countries of origin in particular. We contend that
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diaspora journalism should be understood both as the more formal forms of news activities that replicate the structure, practices and professional ethos of mainstream journalism as well as the less formalised but no less potent journalistic practices of individual or collective diasporans across the world." (Conclusion, page 33)
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"Media, Diaspora and Conflict demonstrates a previously overlooked complexity in diasporic media by using the Somali conflict as a case study to indicate how the media explores conflict in respective homelands, in addition to revealing its participatory role in transnationalising conflicts. By illus
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trating the familiar narratives associated with diasporic media and utilising a combination of Somali websites and television, focus groups with diaspora community members and interviews with journalists and producers, the potentials and restrictions of diasporic media and how it relates to homelands in conflict are explored." (Publisher description)
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"Emerging literature highlights that in the Pacific, the use of participatory video (PV) is a new trend in research and community action. It can be employed as a tool to empower communities to have agency over their media outputs, meaning that they have full control of the content creation, producti
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on and distribution processes. But to date there is still a dearth of studies that fully explore its potential use in different contexts, especially within diasporic networks. To address this gap, a pilot project was undertaken where PV methodologies were tested in collaboration with a diasporic Pacific community group based in West Auckland, New Zealand. This report feeds back on the overall process of developing the pilot project." (Abstract)
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"The book brings together experts from Media and Communication Studies with Postcolonial Studies scholars to illustrate how the two fields may challenge and enrich each other. Its essays introduce readers to selected topics including »Media Convergence«, »Transcultural Subjectivity«, »Hegemony
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, »Piracy« and »Media History and Colonialism«. Drawing on examples from film, literature, music, TV and the internet, the contributors investigate the transnational dimensions in today's media, engage with local and global media politics and discuss media outlets as economic agents, thus illustrating mechanisms of power in postcolonial and neo-colonial mediascapes." (Publisher description)
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