Community Ethnic Media Analysis

The future of community ethnic newspapers depends on the future of the community it serves, migration and second and subsequent generations accessing it. Most present-day migrants arriving in Australia have sufficient knowledge of the English language, thus its former role of interpreting and translating a new culture and that of social integration is now less important. With the advent of digital communication technologies, little is known at this point how they will affect community ethnic newspaper production and consumption. Technology is transforming the way news is perceived, read, and experienced, thus the future of the press rests on of various factors. These factors include: (1) the rising cost of print media, (2) declining first generation
Nevertheless, community ethnic media has had to reconsider their audiences’ ecologies, as consumers of all ages are choosing media that resonates more closely with their interests and style. For ethnic media audiences,’ globalisation and the global awareness of interconnectedness has increased the benefits of multilingualism and the thirst to connect with other places and people (Georgiou, 2001). If community ethnic media considers these linguistic, technological, and identity shifts, these elements could provide opportunities for the creation of new content that reflects their globalised audience. Hence, the future of ethnic media relies on their reflection and representation of their diverse
It discussed how an individual’s access to community ethnic media also creates a sense of being ‘here’ and ‘there,’ as their desire to reconnect back to their native and heritage country is strong enough to traverse barriers of a larger transnational community, which is also lived and imagined.
This chapter has noted that the growth of ethnic media is linked to processes such as migration, globalisation, and technological innovation, yet migrant communities remain largely invisible and under-represented in mainstream media. This chapter showed how theories and idea such as Habermas’ (1989) public sphere, Kessler’s (1984) dissident press, and Anderson’s (1991) notion of an imagined community are useful for understanding the emergence and diverse roles community ethnic media. This chapter addressed Caspi and Elias’ (2011) twelve criteria outlining whether community ethnic media is ‘by’ or ‘for’ the community. It found that these criteria are useful in illustrating that media ‘by’ the community plays a salient role in disseminating local and transnational news and information to a community that is overlooked by mainstream media. It also reviewed how its diverse roles not only contribute to the community’s visibility in the