Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Almost 60 million Americans regularly get their news and other information from ethnically targeted television, radio, newspapers, and websites (Allen, 2009). However, there is little research on ethnic media producers. Data collected in group discussions with media producers serving a variety of immigrant populations in Los Angeles were analyzed to investigate how they negotiate and develop their professional identities.Husband’s (2005) work on ethnic media newsrooms as communities of practice provided an explanatory framework for how respondents managed professional constraints resulting from their managers’ priorities and limited institutional resources. Moreover, though, we found that respondents were deeply influenced by ecological forces beyond their workplaces – specifically, by their encounters with mainstream media producers and organizations, mainstream society institutions, and the ethnic communities they serve. How respondents negotiated challenges to their professional identities sheds light on changes in the US media landscape and civil society.

Keywords

Communities of practice ethnic media immigration mainstream media media ecology media organizations professional identity professionalization race/ethnicity

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adoni

Caspi

Cohen

(2006) Media, Minorities and Hybrid Identities. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Akst

(2003) New Americans fresh off the presses. Carnegie Reporter 2(2). Available at: http://carnegie.org/publications/carnegie-reporter/single/view/article/item/65/ (accessed 1 June 1 2012).

Alba

Nee

(2003) Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Allen

(2009) Ethnic Media Reaching Record Numbers in the U.S. Available at: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8bb0c256d866e8e99e74fc734d5cef67 (accessed 9 June 2009).

Awad

(2011) Latinos/as and the mainstream press: The exclusions of professional diversity. Journalism 12(5): 515–532.

Bagdikian

(2004) The New Media Monopoly. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Bailey

Georgiou

Harindranath

(eds) (2007) Transnational Lives and the Media: Reimagining Diasporas. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bailey

Waldinger

(1991) Primary, secondary, and enclave labor markets: A training systems approach. American Sociological Review 56: 432–445.

Ball-Rokeach

(1998) A theory of media power and a theory of media use: Different stories, questions, and ways of thinking. Mass Communication & Society 1(1): 5–40.

10.

Browne

(2005) Ethnic Minorities, Electronic Media, and the Public Sphere: A Comparative Approach. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

11.

Burkitt

Husband

McKenzie

Torn

(2001) Nurse Education and Communities of Practice. London: ENB.

12.

Castañeda

Nichter

Muramoto

(2008) Enabling and sustaining the activities of lay health influencers: Lessons from a community-based tobacco cessation intervention study. Health Promotion Practice 11(4): 483–492.

13.

Chien

(2007) Chinese media denied access to Clinton fundraiser. New America Media. Available at: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=6e28ab2ec53b123327d9f38aa3100c30 (accessed 3 February 2009).

14.

Cottle

(ed.) (2000) Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries. Buckingham: Open University Press.

15.

Deuze

(2005) What is journalism? Professional identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered. Journalism 6(4): 442–464.

16.

Elias

(2008) Coming Home: Media and Returning Diaspora in Israel and Germany. Albany: SUNY Press.

17.

Glaser

Strauss

(1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: Aldine.

18.

Hafez

(2004) Journalism ethics revisited: A comparison of ethics codes in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Muslim Asia. Political Communication 19: 225–250.

19.

Howley

(2005) Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

20.

Husband

(2005) Minority ethnic media as communities of practice: Professionalism and identity politics in interaction. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(3): 461–479.

21.

Jankowski

Prehn

(2002) Community Media in the Information Age: Perspective and Prospects. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

22.

Josephi

(2007) Internationalizing the journalistic professional model: imperatives and impediments. Global Media and Communication 3(3): 300–306.

23.

Kaniss

(1991) Making Local News. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

24.

Katz

Matsaganis

Ball-Rokeach

(2012) Ethnic media as partners for increasing broadband adoption and social inclusion. Journal of Information Policy 2: 79–102.

25.

Kitzinger

(1995) Qualitative research: Introducing focus groups. BMJ 311(7000): 299–302.

26.

Lave

Wenger

(1991) Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

27.

Levi

(2002) Mission-driven Media: Not Just Survival, but Success. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.

28.

Light

Sabagh

Bozorgmehr

Der-Martirosian

(1994) Beyond the ethnic enclave economy. Social Problems 41(1): 65–80.

29.

McChesney

(2003) The new global media. In: Held

McGrew

(eds) The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Cambridge: Polity, 260–268.

30.

Matsaganis

Payne

(2005) Agenda setting in a culture of fear: The lasting effects of September 11 on American politics and journalism. American Behavioral Scientist 49(3): 379–392.

31.

Matsaganis

Katz

Ball-Rokeach

(2011) Understanding Ethnic Media: Producers, Consumers, and Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

32.

Merritt

Rosen

(eds) (1994) Public Journalism: Theory and Practice. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation.

33.

Molina-Guzmán

(2006) Competing discourses of community: Ideological tensions between local general-market and Latino news media. Journalism 7(3): 281–298.

34.

Murray

Ahadi

(2007) Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Media in BC. A Report to the Canadian Heritage Western Regional Office. Study No. 45193670. Vancouver, British Columbia: Simon Frasier University.

35.

New America Media (2012) About NAM. Available at: http://newamericamedia.org/about/

36.

Ojo

(2006) Ethnic print media in the multicultural nation of Canada. A case study of the black newspaper in Montreal. Journalism 7(3): 343–361.

37.

Park

(1922) The Immigrant Press and Its Control. New York: Harper.

38.

Pickard

(2010) ‘Whether giants should be slain or persuaded to be good’: Revisiting the Hutchins Commission and the role of media in a democratic society. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 27(4): 391–411.

39.

Portes

(1987) The social origins of the Cuban enclave economy in Miami. Sociological Perspectives 30(4): 340–372.

40.

Riggins

(1992) Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

41.

Subervi

(2004) NAHJ Survey of News Professionals Working at Spanish-Language Media Companies in the United States: Advance Report. Austin, TX: National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

42.

Taylor

Bogdan

(1998) Introduction to Qualitative Methods. New York: Wiley.

43.

Waldman

(2011) The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age. Available at: http://www.fcc.gov/info-needs-communities (accessed 15 December 2011).

44.

Wilkin

Ball-Rokeach

Matsaganis

Cheong

(2007) Comparing the communication ecologies of geo-ethnic communities: How people stay on top of their community. Electronic Journal of Communication 17(1–2). Available at: http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/017/1/01711.HTML

45.

Zhou

Logan

(1989) Returns on human capital in ethnic enclaves: New York’s Chinatown. American Sociological Review 54(5): 809–820.

How ethnic media producers constitute their communities of practice: An ecological approach 1

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References