Ethnic media

Ethnic media is media fashioned with the particular ethnic minority multinational or ethnic minority community in mind.

Definition

Academic Yu Shi tenders an operational definition for ethnic media: “Ethnic media are often regarded as media by as well as for ethnics in the host country with content in ethnic languages." Shi also adds, ethnic media “can be published by big ethnic media groups and by small organic ethnic communities”, as well.

Practitioner Inga Buchbinder of New America Media adds, “Our organization defines it nearly as a publication, if that’s news, television, radio, online, print, magazine--any classification of publication that caters to a particular ethnic community. And it could be in-language…or it could be bilingual that reaches a very particular community.”

In addition to news, television, radio, online, print, and magazine outlets that qualify as ethnic media, academic John D.H. Downing adds musical culture and forms of religious expression to the ethnic media mix. Downing finds, “these may, along with Linguistic communication and dialect, act as a media force somewhere between shock absorption and psychic validation in the often-fraught atmosphere between the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities.”

Downing finds that ethnic media tends to circulate, “within at least three different sectors, namely, indigenous nations and communities, recent migrants…and settled subordinate ethnic groups.”