Page - 151 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Augie Fleras | Ethnic and Aboriginal Media in Canada 151 directed at the distinctive needs and concerns of immigrants, while others target native-born minorities, and still others address different demographics within each category. This plethora of ethnic media suggests the need for a comparative structural framework along the lines proposed by Donald R Browne (2005), albeit intended for analysis of ethnic electronic media: 1. types of outlets and levels of service (licensed, unlicensed, radio, TV, presses, internet), 2. policy (by government or advertisers or community members), 3. financing (advertising, licensing fee, government grants donations, subscriptions), 4. primary audience (accessible to everyone or minority audiences; target group within the community) 5. programming type (information, education, entertainment 6. links with community (language used, staffing) 7. operational goals (links with ancestral homelands, preservation of language and culture, pride in community, information source, combating negative stereotypes) Few would dispute the relevance of these dimensions in theorizing ethnic and aboriginal media. However valid such an assessment, this paper focuses primarily on the role of ethnic media in facilitating the integration of new Canadians. These media are shown to represent an exercise in social capital that bonds as it bridges by connecting the ‘here’ with the ‘there’ by way of the ‘in between’. No one should be surprised by the bridging role of ethnic media in crossing borders. Nor should there be surprise by the bonding and buffering dynamic of ethnic media, thanks to information flows that are community- based, culturally-sensitive, communication-responsive and locally-relevant. Ethnic media provide social capital in paradoxical ways. As Robert Putnam pointed in his landmark book, Bowling Alone, the quality of peoples lives and the life of society/community depends on establishing reserves of social capital. And yet the more ethnically diverse a community, Putnam (2007) more recently concedes, the less likely are people to connect or to display trustworthiness. The potential loss of social capital puts the onus on ethnic media to neutralize this disconnect and distrust, in part by providing both the bridging capital between different groups (ties to people unlike you), in part by way of bonding capital within one’s own group (ties to people like you). To one side, ethnic media play an intermediary role by connecting community