Reconsidering Ethnic Media Research: An Argument for a Diasporic Identity Framework

• In Event: News, Politics, and Stereotyped Portrayals

Abstract

Since Robert Park’s (1922) foundational work on the ethnic press, the assimilation-pluralism paradigm has dominated research on ethnic media. Ninety years later, with changes in the audiences and environment of ethnic media, it is appropriate to consider new theoretical directions. This article proposes that dialogue happen between ethnic media and diasporic media research to advance future scholarship. Ethnic media research would provide direction in better conceptualizing media of ethnic groups/diasporas, and diasporic media research would address the limitations of the assimilation-pluralism framework and its inability to incorporate globalization, transnationalism, and hybridity. Diasporic media research can address these weaknesses by re-imagining assimilation and pluralism as not two ends of a pole but unified aspects of diasporic identity. This essay proposes that ethnic media be conceptualized as specific to media produced by a diasporic or indigenous ethnic population within the host society and that future research engage a diasporic identity framework. By reconsidering ethnic media research, future scholarship will advance in productive directions.

Author

• David Chison Oh, Ramapo College of New Jersey