Community Connections
Community Radio: An Alternative Media Platform for Asian Migrants in New Zealand
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Netra Bahadur Timilsina
The study analysed three Asian migrant communities and their use of the community radio as an alternative media platform. Community radio is described as ‘radio by the people for the people’ where the voices heard are usually ignored in mainstream media. Scholars believe that alternative media mainly originated from dissatisfaction of audiences with mainstream media. Social margins, subcultures, ethnic or other minorities, who get minimum space in mainstream cultures, seek alternatives and create their own if not found. This study particularly analysed the use of the community radio platform by migrant Nepalese, Filipinos and Iranians living in Christchurch, New Zealand. These three communities are producing and broadcasting weekly radio programmes on Christchurch-based access radio station Plains FM. These three communities’ radio programmes are among the 47 ethnic languages radio programmes that 12 access radio stations produced in New Zealand in 2017. To analyse the use of radio by Asian migrants, the researcher observed the production processes and conducted focus groups and one-on-one interviews with audience members and programme producers. The study found that the migrant communities have desirable access to information, education and entertainment through their radio programs. Though those segments of audiences have easy access to mainstream media, they find their radio programmes more authentic and intimate. Community radio works as a platform for sharing, making sense of community identity and uniting a different segment of migrants. This study explores new way to analyse how migrants use the community radio as alternative platform to fulfil their mainstream media needs.
Breaking through Barriers to Entry: TIME: The Kalief Browder Story
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Steven Pope
As a case study, TIME: The Kalief Browder Story exemplifies one success story of how a social change documentary can make its way into the concentrated cable/broadcast media industry. This report analyzes the production foundations of TIME to determine how the documentary recounting Kalief Browder's time spent in solitary confinement made its way past concentrated barriers to entry. Following the production analysis, this article also includes a brief synopsis of how the production foundations of TIME resulted in well-rounded storytelling unseen in commodified entertainment. The main finding from this report argues that the community backing and alternative support for the documentary lead to the successful creation and dissemination of TIME. From this, the praxis of the research suggests that in order to increase the amount of socially meaningful media in the cable/broadcast industry audiences must be incentivized to donate to their community media production companies. One possible solution proposed to incentivize audience would be to provide tax deductions or write offs for audiences who donate to their community media projects or alternative media outlets.
Social Media and Filipino Migrants in Central Italy: Nandoon na ang lahat
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John Rafael
This study highlights social media utilization by Filipino migrants in central Italy and underlines the effects controlling one’s image to their online networks has on their migrant livelihoods. Ethnographic research was done through participant observation, open-ended, semi-structured interviews,and focus group discussions of twenty-five Filipinos, namely in the areas of Rome, Siena, and the Rieti province. The project delineates both the extent of social media use and its importance in Filipino-Italian migrant livelihoods, utilizing Harvey and Myers’ critical hermeneutic framework, which recognizes the lack of neutrality in evaluating narrative data, as the basis of analysis. This work shows that Filipino migrant social media use goes beyond recreation and networking - it reaffirms a positive transnational imaginary. Different factors, including the degree of social media utilization, digital literacy, and affiliation to their Filipino culture, vary the degree such production and perpetuation of the imaginary takes place. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that upholding this imaginary attempts to curb Italian xenophobic tendencies towards foreigners, most notably by displaying similar or analogous cultural values and traditions. Such attempts of cultural production serve to recognize and accept these migrants in society by the host culture. The lens through which this phenomenon is examined additionally highlights social media as a coping mechanism for the separation from loved ones, difficult work experiences, and other factors faced by Filipino immigrants in Italy.
