Reaction Paper 7: Contraflow in Global Media

Chapter 6 of the textbook addresses ‘contraflow in global media’, or in other words the non-Western mass production and export of communication content (e.g. Brazilian telenovelas; Indian film industry…). The concept I will focus on here is the one of ‘cultures of diaspora’. It is defined in the textbooks as the results of the physical displacement of communities, which carry with them their own cultures and traditions. This mass movement of communities has been conceptualize by Appadurai under the name “ethnoscape”. The texbook presents some examples, such as populations of “South Asians in Britain, North Africans in France, Turks in Germany, and Latin American in the United States”(p.207).

Indeed, it is becoming more and more complicated to associate a single culture to a geographical area. Waves of immigration and the globalization of the workplace through the rise of multinationals companies, have led to multiculturalism and multilingualism becoming a new norm. Because of this, diaspora communities feel the need to keep touch with their homeland culture and this is where global media intervenes. These communities have become targets of media conglomerates from their original culture type. Per example, communities of North Africans in Europe constitute a major part of Arabic channels’ audimat (e.g. Middle East Broadcasting Centre).

In my opinion, I think that the question of diaspora communities is at the heart of today’s politics and actualities. I also think it is very representative of the decline of a traditional perspective on culture, and the rise of a much more nuanced and transnational approach to culture and more generally to identity

Because diaspora cultures exist as a result of communities feeling the need to stay connected to their origins, they are strongly related to the idea of identity. When a family born in France from Moroccan origins consumes media content produced by the Middle East Broadcasting Centre, it is because they identify as Arabs, maybe in some cases more than they identify as French people. However, as the textbooks points out, this identity is still mixed to the host culture, which results in hybrid cultures and dual identities.

Rather than people belonging to one culture or the other, I think that the world is increasingly heading towards a model of globalization in which more and more hybrid cultures are becoming dominating. These hybrid cultures, as space is also increasingly ‘shrinking’, are in my point of view, less and less related to space related characteristics.