International Communication Industries

1. International Communication Industries Week 11 Diasporic Media

2. Lecture Structure • Diaspora and the role of Diasporic Media • Identity Stuart Hall • Hybridity Homi Bhabha • Ethnoscapes and Mediascapes Appadurai • Australia and Diasporic media Case Study: SBS • Diaspora and Social Media

3. Defining Diaspora • [Greekdiaspor,dispersion, fromdiaspeirein,to spread about:dia-,apart; seedia-+speirein,to sow, scatter; seesper-in Indo-European roots.] • Dispersal or scattering of people belonging to one nation. • “Archetypically, it has referred to such a dispersal of the Jews after the Babylonian and Roman conquests of Palestine in the eighth to sixth centuries BC, and latter to the classical Greek and Armenian diasporas” (Sinclair and Cunningham 2000, p.10-11).

4. Common Understanding of Diaspora • The term is most often used to describe powerless transnational ethnic communities. • Most definitions of diaspora emphasise the marginal status of groups that live in a country different from lands of their ethnic origin and yet they continue to maintain strong emotional and cultural links to their homeland. • This understanding emphasises sentimentality and nostalgia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC_2rCh88g4&feature=related

5. As Imagined Communities • Diasporas are frequently described as imagined communities (Anderson 1983) • For those that understand diaspora as an imagined community the nation is understood as deterritorialised. Instead of people being linked through a geographic location and a strong emotional link to this particular landscape which excludes those outside that territory, there are mythic and linguistic links to ancestral homeland which invoke nostalgic reminiscences

6. Diasporic Media • The imagined community leads to a demand for cultural products to maintain and celebrate links with the homeland. “The dispersed settlements of transnations also exchange symbolic goods and services, including media content, among each other, thus sustaining global networks” (Karim 2003, p.3) • In order to maintain these transnational diasporic communities there needs to be a constant resonance of cultural practices.

7. Diasporic Media Categories of diasporic media: • Ethnic: produced locally • Transnational: produced by homeland and exported • Exilic: produced outside homeland Diasporic media and nostalgic myths of home: recreation of home with language, customs, art forms, and arrangement of ideas and objects being placed, through the use of media, into the space that the diaspora occupy.

8. Global English • Transnational group’s non dominant position is a key indicator of status as ‘diaspora’ • Important to point out here that English speaking Anglo Saxen diaspora are not treated as ‘diaspora’ because their language and cultures have privileged places in transnational media

9. Contemporary Diasporas • Diaspora doesn’t always equal exile • Contemporary diasporas include ‘economic migrants’ • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_TP3G06jCI

10. Diaspora and Class Relations • Economic migrants: ‘Entrepreneurial middlemen minorities’ versus ‘proletarians’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWRoQLh48Ys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTFReQNvs2Q

11. Diaspora and Identity • Stuart Hall writes that: “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact … we should think of identity as a “production”, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.” (1990, p. 22). Interestingly, Stuart Hall believes that identity is necessary in order to say anything. This does not mean that identity is static but rather that in order to make a statement one has to hold a position from which to speak. Understanding identity in this way allows us to see that identity is political. It is a necessary fiction for political strategising.

12. Diaspora and Identity Identity is like a bus! Not because it takes you to a fixed destination, but because you can only get somewhere – anywhere – by climbing aboard. The whole of you can never be represented by the ticket you carry, but you still have to buy a ticket to get from here to there. In the same way, you have to take a position in order to say anything, even though meaning refuses to be finally fixed and that position is an often contradictory holding operation rather than a position of truth (Hall 1995, p. 65-6). The position that one takes when one speaks as part of a diasporic community: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qncJwdNPyX0

13. Diaspora and Hybridity • The term hybridity has been most recently associated with Homi Bhabha. • He argues that all cultural systems and statements are constructed in what he calls the ‘Third Space of Enunciation'. • Thinking about this third space of enunciation (in other words a third space in which to speak) acknowledges that diasporic communities exist neither in the homeland nor in the host country and it acknowledges that diasporic communities are imagined communities.

14. Arjun Appadurai Appadurai (1996) suggests that there are five dimensions of global "scapes," that flow across cultural boundaries in contemporary global society These scapes are the building blocks that Appadurai calls “imagined worlds”– defined as the multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe. These different scapes are also used to stress different streams or flows along which cultural material may be seen to be moving across national boundaries. Appadurai identifies these scapes as ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes.

15. Ethnoscapes and Mediascapes Ethnoscape is the landscape that comprises of the shifting of people around the world. This includes immigrants, refugees, guest workers, exiles, tourists. It also includes other moving groups/individuals that form an essential feature to the politics between nations. With the shifting of ethnoscape, geography or country of origin is becoming of a lesser indicator of cultural mark. Mediascape is the distribution of the capabilities to produce and disseminate information and the large complex repertoire of images and narratives generated by these capabilities. The flow of images and information through print media, television, and film. Appadurai refers to both the capability to produce and distribute information (television stations, newspapers, magazines, film production studios) in mass quantities and he also refers to the images of the world created by these media.

16. Ethnoscapes and Mediascapes • Diasporic communities the result of ethnoscapes and are maintained through mediascapes. • In mediascapes the lines between the 'realistic' and the fictional landscapes we see are blurred, so that the further away these audiences are from the direct experiences portrayed, the more likely they are to construct 'imagined worlds'.

17. Australia and Diaspora • Australian Citizenry, proportionally constitutes one of the largest immigrant populations in the world, second only to Israel. Approximately 40% of Australians were either born overseas or are members of families in which one or both parents were born overseas. • This is the case despite the fact that anxieties concerning threat to national culture has dictated immigration policy for much of the twentieth century. This is most apparent in the ‘White Australian’ policy. The 'White Australia' policy describes Australia's approach to immigration, from federation until the latter part of the 20th century, which favored applicants from European countries. • The abolition of the policy took place over a period of 25 years. • Following the election of a coalition of the Liberal and Country parties in 1949, Immigration Minister Harold Holt allowed 800 non-European refugees to remain in Australia and Japanese war brides to enter Australia. • Over subsequent years, Australian governments gradually dismantled the policy, with the final residues being removed in 1973 by the new Labor government. • In response to the number of migrants from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds increasing, initiatives that emphasised complete absorption and assimilation became clearly untenable.

18. Australia and Diasporic Media: SBS • There was a need to provide services to linguistically and culturally diverse diasporic communities. SBS • SBS is the most visible product of state sponsored multicultural support for diasporic communities • SBS went to air in the 1980’s as a policy initiative, by the early 1990’s it had developed into a broad ranging, mainstream television institution. Providing international and multilingual current affairs, documentary, and film, in addition to an increasing amount of Australian programming, for consumption by the entire national audience. • However, the shape of SBS has changed dramatically since its inception. Many see the increase in English language programming like South Park, Skins, Shameless, and documentary films as marking a clear shift away from its original mandate. For those critics, SBS has moved away from being a multicultural broadcaster, and is instead reaching towards a ‘white’ cosmopolitan audience. http://www.sbs.com.au/television

19. Diaspora and Social Media • Blogs and Facebook http://www.nupolis.com/public/blog/222599 • New players in international affairs http://fesmedia.org/african-media-news/detail/datum/2011/04/15/nigerian-diaspora-seeks-credible-elections-using-social-media/ • Multiple loyalties (no more one nation – one people) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LtG4Ed87n8&feature=watch_response_rev http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecHqmm2InZU

20. Concluding comments • the formation of diaspora communities is enabled by global media, just as extensive media networks have been developed by various transnational groups. • Diaspora media spaces enable the negotiation of culture and politics in both ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries, creating transnational communities an imaginings. • These allow for collective conversations both within and beyond nation-states and the formation of hybrid identities.