Media Connections
The Connection between Taiwan’s New Immigrants’ Impressions towards Immigrant TV Programs and their Identity Construction
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pei Tsai
The study is based on interviews with 400 of Taiwan’s new immigrants from Southeast Asia and China-Hong Kong-Macao areas. Findings indicate that new immigrants have low satisfaction rate towards current TV programs for new immigrants/ immigrant workers in Taiwan. In follow-up focus group discussion, new immigrants found TV representations of new immigrants too monolithic, mostly successful stories of new immigrants running restaurants, thus creating a stereotype that new immigrants are only good at cooking. Alternatively, negative immigrant experiences such as divorce or domestic violence could also be presented, as well as information of social and legal assistance for new immigrants. TV programs should include success stories in which immigrants have integrated with local culture. They can also encourage people to treat new immigrants better by inviting families to talk about their experiences. It should be clear that new immigrants are indeed helpful to Taiwanese society in many ways. Presenting current developments of immigrants’ home countries and avoiding stereotypical images is also recommended. Taiwanese audience can also watch these programs learn more about the immigrants’ mother countries. Broadcasting a range of positive immigrant stories may improve understanding, pride, and success.
Perceptions of Distant Lands: An Analysis of Spanish Online News About Thailand
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chadchavan Sritong
Online news plays an important role in our modern international society. People from different countries effortlessly access other countries' movements by reading online news, including two far away countries like Spain and Thailand, whose citizens know little about each other. This study aimed to discover and discuss how Spanish people perceive Thailand through Spanish online news about Thailand. Various types of news were collected from six online news agencies that published news about Thailand in 2017. The data collection was done online using a main keyword “Noticia(s) de Tailandia 2017” (Thailand news 2017, in English translation) for searching. The findings show that the six news agencies published ninety-six articles about Thailand in 2017, which were classified into six types: forty-two political news, thirteen crime news, five accident news, four sport news, three natural disaster news and twenty-eight general news. These ninety-six new stories revealed that those agencies mainly transmitted controversial political issues in Thailand to their compatriots, which is the biggest interest of Spanish-speakers toward Thailand. This may be due to having the similar political historical backgrounds including military dictatorship as well as being constitutional monarchy countries. Whereas, others types of news shared only a small aspects in Spanish news websites.
There Is No Us and Them: Narratives of Migration and Border Crossing in Shadow Theatre and Picturebooks
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cristina Pérez Valverde, Fernando Perez-Martin
In this paper we analyze the construction and representation of border crossing and other migration experiences in several multimodal art forms, in particular the shadow play Ghosts of the River (ShadowLight Productions) and the picturebook Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote by Duncan Tonatiuh. Relying on Martha Nussbaum’s theories on the empathic and ethical role of fiction, we delve into the possibilities offered by these visual texts to raise social awareness and commitment about current human and political issues. The manner in which the experiences of migrant children are portrayed will play a prominant role in our analysis. Likewise, we will offer a revision of the different study guides and pedagogical resources designed to work with these texts at schools.
