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Communication and community -building: The role of ethnic media in the Chinese immigrant community of Los Angeles

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Communication and community -building: The role of ethnic media in the Chinese immigrant community of Los Angeles

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Content COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY BUILDING:
THE ROLE OF ETHNIC MEDIA IN THE CHINESE IMMIGRANT
COMMUNITY OF LOS ANGELES
Copyright 2004
by
Wan-Ying Lin
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
August 2004
Wan-Ying Lin
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UMI Number: 3145235
Copyright 2004 by
Lin, Wan-Ying
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am most indebted to Professor Sandra Ball-Rokeach, a distinguished scholar and
lifetime mentor. Without her guidance and support, in the ups and downs of my life,
this dissertation would not have come into existence. I am also thankful to
Professors Tom Hollihan, Leland Saito, and Janelle Wong for their advice at
different stages of this work. This dissertation is also a product of years of
academic training that I received at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication,
where Professors Bill Dutton, Chris Weare, Marita Sturken, Jane Fulk, Peter
Monge, Margaret McLaughlin, and Titus Levi showered me with encouragement
and enlightenment. Special thanks go to Linda Alexander and Hayeon Song for
their friendship and timely assistance in polishing this work. Also, I would like to
extend my appreciation to my comrades, Yu Yuan, Joo-Young Jung, Yong-Chan
Kim, Jack Qiu, Hongmei Lee, Namkee Park, Elizabeth Gutierrez Hoyt, Antonieta
Mercado, and other members of the Metamorphosis Team for their collegial
support. Certainly, this dissertation cannot be completed without the devotion from
my family - Chin-Lung Yang, who is always there for me; my brother, Tze-Luen,
who offers encouragement and expert troubleshooting assistance around the clock;
and my lovely sister, Wan-Huei, who always cares and always listens. Finally, I
dedicate this dissertation to my parents - Shih-Chun Lin and King-Fong Lee - for
their unconditional love and support all the way from Taiwan. I love you all.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS....................................................................................................... ii
LIST OF T A B L E S........................................................................................................................ v
LIST OF F IG U R E S................................................................................................................... vii
A BSTR AC T................................................................................................................................ viii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION......................................................................................1
1.1 The Rise of Ethnic M e d ia ............................................................................................5
1.2 Chinese D iasporas in Transfo rm ation.............................................................. 10
1.4 Structure of the D issertation........................................................................... 15
CHAPTER TWO: COM M UNICATION A N D COM M UNITY BUILDING IN
M ODERN IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCES: A COMMUNICATION
INFRASTRCTURE APPRO ACH ..........................................................................................16
2.1 Communication a n d Im migration.........................................................................16
2.2 B uilding Communities within the Communication Infrastructure...20
The Communication Infrastructure A pproach.......................................................... 21
Storytelling Neighborhood..............................................................................................24
2.3 Positioning Ethnic M edia in the Communication Infr astr uc tu r e 29
From Immigrant M edia to Ethnic M edia....................................................................29
The Emergence o f Geo-Ethnic M edia..........................................................................31
2.4 Su m m a r y...........................................................................................................................34
CHAPTER THREE: ETHNICITY A N D PLACE-BASED COM M UNICATION
EXPERIENCES: THE CHINESE DIASPORA IN C O N T EX T .................................. 37
3.1 Chinese D iasporas on the Ris e ...............................................................................38
The Chinese Diaspora: Historical E volution.............................................................39
N ew W aves o f M igration................................................................................................ 43
3.2 Geo-Ethnic D ifferences in the D iasporic Experiences............................. 44
Differences in the Place o f Origin.................................................................................45
Differences in Settlement Patterns................................................................................47
Differences in Socioeconom ic Characteristics.......................................................... 50
Divergent Chinese Diasporic Identity..........................................................................51
3.3 Connecting the Chinese D iaspora: Ethnic Chinese M edia in Focus ...53
Renaissance o f Ethnic Chinese M edia.........................................................................55
Telling Stories: N ew s Close to “Home” .....................................................................59
N ew s that Connects Here and There............................................................................ 61
3.4 Global D iaspora in Local Context: A F o cu s on Los A n geles..............63
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iv
Ethnic M edia in Los A ngeles’ Chinese Immigrant Com m unities...................... 65
Print M edia...........................................................................................................................67
Electronic M edia................................................................................................................68
3.5 Su m m a r y...........................................................................................................................69
CHAPTER FOUR: M ETHODOLOGY................................................................................72
4.1 Research Questions and Hy po th eses................................................................ 72
Ethnic M edia in the Communication Infrastructure................................................ 72
M edia Dependency R elations........................................................................................ 75
Storytelling into Community B u ild in g....................................................................... 76
4.2 D ata Collection.......................................................................................................... 78
Telephone Survey...............................................................................................................79
M edia Census and Interview s........................................................................................ 82
Content A n alysis................................................................................................................ 82
4.3 Su m m a r y........................................................................................................................... 85
CHAPTER FIVE: R E SU L T S..................................................................................................87
5.1 D escriptive A n a l y sis..................................................................................................87
5.2 Ethnic M edia Connections......................................................................................91
Different Types o f M edia Relations............................................................................. 93
Ethnic Communication and Demographic Variables.............................................. 95
5.3 M edia D ependency Re l a t io n s..............................................................................106
Consumers’ G oals........................................................................................................... 106
Producers’ G oals..............................................................................................................108
5.4 Storytelling into Community B u il d in g........................................................ 110
N ew s Close to H om e.......................................................................................................I l l
Geo-ethnic Stories............................................................................................................115
M edia Organization Characteristics and Geo-ethnic Stories..............................118
5.5 Su m m a r y.........................................................................................................................119
CHAPTER SIX: D ISC U SSIO N ...........................................................................................121
6.1 Ethnic M edia in the Communication Infrastructure..............................121
Connecting to the Communication Infrastructure.................................................. 123
Ethnic M edia Connections Am ong Different Groups...........................................124
N ot all Asians are “Chinos,” Not all Chinese are from China........................... 127
6.2 M edia D ependency Rela tio n s..............................................................................128
6.3 Storytelling into Community B uilding: V isions a nd Realities 129
6.4 Policy Im plicatio ns.................................................................................................. 134
6.5 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 136
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................... 139
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 The Chinese Diaspora At A Glance.......................................................... 40
Table 3.2 The Changing Asian Population Of Monterey Park, 1970-2000............66
Table 4.1 Chinese Population In Monterey Park And Neighboring Cities 79
Table 5.1 The Profile Of The Chinese Sample In Greater Monterey Park............. 88
Table 5.2 Overview Of Ethnic Print Media In Greater Monterey Park.................. 90
Table 5.3 Intensity Of Ethnic And Mainstream Media Connections Of Chinese
Residents In Greater Monterey Park.......................................................... 92
Table 5.4 Scope Of Ethnic And Mainstream Media Connections Of Chinese
Residents In Greater Monterey Park.......................................................... 93
Table 5.5 Non-Connectors In Greater Monterey Park..............................................93
Table 5.6 Ethnic Vs. Mainstream Media Connections Between Internet
Connectors And Non-Connectors.............................................................. 94
Table 5.7 Correlations Between Different Communication Variables................... 95
Table 5.8 Correlations Between Scope Of Media Connections...............................96
Table 5.9 Correlations Between Intensity Of Ethnic Media Connections And
Demographic Variables............................................................................... 97
Table 5.10 Correlations Between Scope Of Ethnic Media Connections And
Demographic Variables............................................................................... 98
Table 5.11 Ethnic Chinese Newspaper Readership At A Glance............................99
Table 5.12 Ethnic Chinese Television Audience At A Glance.............................. 100
Table 5.13 Ethnic Chinese Radio Audience At A Glance......................................101
Table 5.14 Demographic Differences Among Residents From China, Taiwan,
And Hong Kong In Greater Monterey Park.............................................104
Table 5.15 Ethnic Vs. Mainstream Media Use By Chinese Immigrants From 106
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Table 5.16 Major Sources Of Community Information For Chinese Residents
In Greater Monterey Park.......................................................................... 107
Table 5.17 Major Sources Of Product Purchase Information For Chinese
Residents In Greater Monterey Park.........................................................107
Table 5.18 Major Sources Of Relaxation For Chinese Residents In Greater
Monterey Park............................................................................................ 108
Table 5.19 Ethnic Media And Mainstream Media Dependency Relationships.... 109
Table 5.20 Major Editorial Goals Of Ethnic Media In Greater Monterey Park ...110
Table 5.21 Profile Of Sampled Stories In Ethnic Chinese Print Media................ 112
Table 5.22 Geographic Mapping Of Stories In Ethnic Chinese Print Media 113
Table 5.23 Comparisons Of Home Country, Local, And Transnational Stories
In Ethnic Chinese Print Media..................................................................114
Table 5.24 Geo-Ethnic Mapping Of Stories In Ethnic Chinese Print Media 116
Table 5.25 Comparisons Of Regular, Home Country, And Geo-Ethnic Stories
In Ethnic Chinese Print Media..................................................................117
Table 5.26 Geo-Ethnic Scores By Types Of Media Organizations.......................118
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 Map Of The Greater Monterey Park Area............................................13
Figure 2.1 The Communication Infrastructure.......................................................24
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ABSTRACT
Ethnic media are central to immigrants’ lives. Drawing upon
communication infrastructure theory, this study positions ethnic media in an overall
communication environment where immigrants, community organizations, and
ethnic media form a storytelling network and act upon community problems
collectively. The author examined immigrants’ dependency relationships with
ethnic media and the extent to which ethnic media work as essential storytellers in
building community in Los Angeles’ Greater Monterey Park area, where one of the
largest ethnic Chinese enclaves is located. The data were collected by multiple
methods, including a telephone survey of 321 households, interviews with 30
ethnic media producers, and a content analysis of 34 issues of ethnic newspapers.
The findings revealed the central role that these media played in immigrants’ lives
relative to other communication channels including interpersonal conversation,
mainstream media, and new media. It was found that first-generation immigrants
generally depended more on ethnic media than their second-generation counterparts.
Older Chinese residents also spent much more time connected to ethnic media than
did young adults. In addition, residents who had lived in the neighborhood for five
years or longer, but still connected highly to ethnic media, showed a lower sense of
belonging than those longer-term residents who depended less on ethnic media.
Moreover, Taiwanese-origin residents spent more time on ethnic media than
Chinese immigrants from Mainland China and Hong Kong.
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The content analysis revealed that more than half of the stories analyzed
were concerned with home countries, whereas local news comprised only 8 percent
of the total. Geo-ethnic stories, which are culturally and locally relevant stories that
are promoted by this study, accounted for only 6 percent. Given that Chinese
immigrants relied primarily on ethnic media for community information and that
local content comprised only a small percentage of coverage in the ethnic press, the
vision of “storytelling into community building” has yet to become a reality.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1
Population movement across international borders has been phenomenal for
the past few decades since we entered the age of accelerated and intensified
globalization. According to the United Nations, there was an increase from 75
million to 150 million international migrants between 1965 and 2000. Recent
events and social indicators have also suggested that many societies are becoming
increasingly multicultural due to this population mobility. In the United States,
there are about 27 million foreign-born residents, and about sixty percent of them
entered the country in the last two decades (Foner, Rumbaut, & Gold, 2000). In
some multicultural cities such as Los Angeles, there is not a single ethnic group
that represents more than half of the population. Fuelled by international
immigrants, more than half of the greater Los Angeles population is now composed
of distinct ethnic minorities.
Migration has taken place throughout human history, but today the global
dimension of migration, the rising numbers, and changes in technology call for a
reexamination of migration. Coming from various cultural, social, and economic
backgrounds, new immigrants in the U.S. since the 1970s present challenges that
immigration studies have to meet. In addition to a reconsideration of diasporic
experiences along with the global dimension of migration and changes in
technology, what is needed in existing immigration research led by sociologists,
anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists, is the centrality of
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2
communication to immigrants’ adaptation processes. Scholars engaged in
intercultural studies have posited that adaptation is essentially a communication
process. The ways in which migrants negotiate the changing world around them is
reflected in their everyday communication behaviors (Ball-Rokeach, Gibbs, Jung,
Kim, & Qiu, 2000; Drucker & Gumpert, 1998; Jeffres, 2000; Y. Y. Kim, 1976,
1978, 2002; Shah, 1991; Walker, 1999).
In fact, the nature of immigrants’ adjustment lies in the exchange and
interaction between immigrants and their host community as well as among the
immigrants themselves. In the pre-modem era, immigrants’ lives were
geographically bound and their connections to their homeland, often across the
ocean, were extremely costly and prohibitive. Newcomers nonetheless had a need
to interact and exchange information, increase their knowledge about the host
culture, and thereby adapt to the new society. In the past, they had to depend on
interpersonal networks and exchanges with fellow migrants from the same place of
origin living in the same locality to serve their needs. Since the 19th century, they
started to rely on the printing press to communicate among themselves and between
home and the host country. These days, immigrants’ experiential horizons have
further been expanded due to technological advances and socio-economic
transformations in a globalizing world (e.g., Giddens, 1990; Sassen, 1998).
In particular, improved transportation and communication technologies
have made it possible for immigrants to traverse national, cultural, and ethnic
borders. Ethnic media, once marginalized, have undergone a rapid expansion and
transformation and are becoming sophisticated in both their operation and content
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(Karim, 1998; Tsagarousianou, 2002; Wilson, Gutierrez, & Chao, 2003). Since
migrants’ communication activities are now extended to a transnational scale,
diasporic identity has become more fluid and dynamic, rather than fixed and static,
in the era of globalization. The communities where immigrants have “imagined”
(Anderson, 1991) and belonged have developed into a place where “glocalization,”
“hybridization,” and “in-between-ness” take place (Ang, 2001; Hall, 1990; Ma &
Cartier, 2003; A. Ong, 1999; Sinclair, Yue, Hawkins, Pookong, & Fox, 2001;
Srebemy, 2003).
Of particular interest is the Chinese diaspora in transformation. The patterns
of Chinese migration represent one of the world’s most impressive and complex
cases of the phenomenon of diaspora (Ang, 2001; Ma & Cartier, 2003; Sinclair et
al., 2001). The countries of origin, socioeconomic backgrounds, and the settlement
patterns of Chinese migrants in the past decades have been much more diverse than
those of a century ago. To a greater or lesser extent, they use Chinese-language
media to attend to the happenings in the community as well as maintain their links
and orientation to a cultural world outside the nation of their residence (Lam, 1980;
Lee & Tse, 1994; Lum, 1991; C. Lum, 1998; M. Zhou & Cai, 2002).
This dissertation project thus seeks to examine the process of the global
production and local consumption of overseas Chinese media products and services,
through which Chinese migrants reconstruct their identities through mediated life
experiences. To that end, this dissertation will draw upon Communication
Infrastructure Theory (CIT) to look into the overall communication environment
whereby people choose from a range of available media to fulfill their goals (Ball-
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4
Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001). According to CIT, ethnically targeted media are
crucial not only in connecting immigrants to their home countries, but also serve as
information sources for their neighborhood happenings, mobilizing them to talk
about and act on collective problems in their community. Thus, by telling locally
and culturally relevant stories, ethnic media have the potential to help build
communities and advance their democratic role in civil society.
CIT was developed by the research team of the Metamorphosis Project in
the Communication Technology and Community Program at University of
Southern California. Directed by Sandra Ball-Rokeach, the Metamorphosis Project
has been investigating social transformation of different urban communities under
the forces of globalization, new communication technologies and population
diversity. Building on their efforts, this dissertation will focus on ethnic Chinese
media in the multicultural Greater Monterey Park area of Los Angeles, where
Chinese immigrants have played a significant role in local economic development
and have been increasingly active in local politics. The findings are expected to
bridge the gap between the fields of immigration and communication, of which the
interaction has been minimal, and contribute to current diasporic literature where
the role of media has not been adequately examined. This project will also provide
suggestions for policy makers and media practitioners in terms of advancing quality
journalistic practices in civil society.
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1.1 The Rise of Ethnic Media
Historically, each wave of immigration brings with it the need for
specialized media. The Jewish, Irish, Italian, German, and Greek newspapers in the
U.S. since the beginning of the 20th century are among those that attest to the
importance of the immigrant media. Robert Park, in his classic work, The
Immigrant Press and Its Control (1922), studied several dozen non-English
newspapers in more than forty languages. The immigrant press was suggested as a
powerful institution that served to keep the mother language from disintegrating;
however, its main function was to help immigrants assimilate into the host society
(Park, 1922).
A number of sources have noted that there were about 800 foreign language
newspapers in the late 1880s. During the peak years of their development between
the 1900s and the 1930s, more than 1,300 ethnic newspapers were available (Miller,
1987). The mortality rate of these papers was high, however, largely due to the
shrinking pool of the newcomers and thus a limited market. It was estimated that
the number of non-English newspapers had dropped under 700 by 1960.
Nonetheless, the increase in immigration to the United States since the late 1970s
as a result of relaxed immigration policies and war displacement, has led to a
renaissance of ethnic media as well as rejuvenation of research in this field. The
Ethnic Press in the United States provides a historical analysis of 27 foreign-
language newspapers that flourished during the boom of ethnic media after the
1970s (Miller, 1987). Scholars who contributed to this volume attest to the
importance of the press, through which they were able to trace historical and
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sociological developments, examine social structure, and analyze groups' customs,
which were often quite different from those of the mainstream society. In particular,
the German and the Jewish press were identified as having the largest circulation
among the foreign-language newspapers in the U.S.
In addition to the print media, electronic media such as radio and television
followed suit and provided programming in either the native tongue of a particular
group or in English to serve the needs of ethnic communities. In recent years, some
immigrant groups have even become among the earliest adopters of newer
communication technologies such as the Internet and the Direct Broadcasting
System (DBS), using them for their cross-border information and entertainment
needs. In her study, Karim (1998) contended that the pizza-sized receiving dishes
installed on the roofs of immigrants’ homes served as a symbol of community self-
assertion.
In April 2002, New California Media, a group that represents over 400
ethnic media organizations, made public the results of a survey of 2,000 minority
Californians. The survey is the first of its kind to measure ethnic media's reach,
penetration and influence. The results revealed that ethnic media, including
television, radio and newspapers, were central to immigrants’ lives. In their
findings, ethnic media reached more than 80 percent of the state's 17 million
minority residents, including Hispanics and Asians (Chan, 2002). More recently,
the annual report of The State o f the American News Media was released by the
Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research institute affiliated with the
Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The report is an inaugural
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effort to collect as much original and aggregate data about the state of news media
as possible. Much of this data was previously unavailable or scattered among many
different sources. In this report, ethnic media have been identified as one of the few
sectors that are seeing general audience growth in the U.S., whereas English-
language newspapers have suffered from steady circulation decline since the 1990s
(The State o f the American News Media, 2004).
Scholarly work on the role of ethnically targeted media was led by Robert
Park and associates at the Chicago School as early as the 1920s (Park, 1922, 1929,
1937; Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1925). In their investigation, these foreign-
language media largely served first-generation arrivals and thus gradually declined
in number and importance after immigrants and their children learned English and
assimilated into the mainstream society. Immigrant institutions including the media
were viewed as helping newcomers integrate into the larger society. In the process
of accepting new culture, immigrants lose their original cultural traits (e.g., Gordon,
1964; Stewart, 1954). This straight-line theory considers assimilation as a linear
and inevitable process, which has been criticized as inadequate to explain the new
immigration trend since the late 1960s (e.g., Fong, 2001; Novak, 1971, 1973;
Postiglione, 1983). For one thing, assimilation as a belief or goal may help explain
many aspects of the dominant-minority relationship between the mainstream
society and the immigrant group; but in reality not all groups seek assimilation, and
not all groups who seek assimilation attain it. For another, the question whether the
assimilation process is linear remains in all cases (Parrillo, 1994).
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In the wake of the recent immigration influx since the 1970s, scholars have
argued that immigrants' adaptation process in the host country and their ongoing
ties with the countries of origin were not explained by crude versions of the
assimilation paradigm (Fitzgerald, 2002; Foner et al., 2000; Gans, 2000; Hindman,
Littlefield, Preston, & Neumann, 1999; Y. Y. Kim, 1978; Riggins, 1992; F. A.
Subervi-Velez, 1986). In addition, the term “immigrant media” is no longer
adequate. Rather, “ethnic media” as the subject of study is a more useful concept
and has a longer life through its appeals to the subsequent generations of
immigrants (Miller, 1987; Wynar & Wynar, 1976).
As a partial rejection of the assimilation model, scholars who propose the
pluralism model argue that even though some ethnic qualities such as language use
decline from one generation to the next, other ethnic traits are maintained and
strengthened. For instance, fourth-generation Mexican Americans retain certain
aspects of Mexican culture, such as involvement in large and local extended
families. In other words, pluralism leads to sustained ethnic differentiation and
continued heterogeneity among groups that nonetheless participate in the host
society. Thus, exposure to ethnic media serves dual functions. First, ethnic media
contribute to the preservation of the cultural identity of ethnic groups due to its
provision of country-origin news; second, they facilitate immigrants’ adaptation
process by providing local news and information they can use in the host society
(Chaffee, Nass, & Yang, 1990; Jeffres, 1999; Johnson, 2000; C. Lum, 1998; F. A.
Subervi-Velez, 1986; Zhang & Hao, 1999).
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Even though the pluralistic reality among current immigrant groups and
remnants of past immigrant groups have been recognized, critics also point to the
static nature of the model, which fails to take into consideration that cultural
practices do change over time, with or without population movement (Parrillo,
1994). In addition, the model does not consider the interaction between ethnic
media and other institutions that together may have an impact on immigrants’
adaptation process.
Recently, scholars have developed communication infrastructure theory
(CIT) to explicate the relationships between all communication modalities
including ethnic media in an overall environment (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). The
theory assumes that individuals in a society will actively seek out resources to
achieve their goals. According to CIT, which evolves from media system
dependency theory (MSD), media and communication in the contemporary age
provide essential information resources that will implicate individuals’ goal
attainment. They constitute “an information system central to the adaptive conduct
of societal and personal life” (Ball-Rokeach, 1998, p.9). The information resources
are generated in the course of the storytelling practice through neighborhood
discussion and through storytelling agents such as community organizations or
local media. In the immigrant community, a strong communication infrastructure
manifests itself in a lively conversational environment where neighbors talk to each
other over the backyard fence about their neighborhood, community organizations
encourage their members to talk with each other about their shared neighborhood
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experiences, and ethnic media inspire both residents and community organizations
to “storytell their neighborhood” (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001).
1.2 Chinese Diasporas in Transformation
A communication infrastructure approach allows researchers to investigate
the storytelling capacities of media in different ethnic communities. In particular,
the Cl perspective can be applied to a Chinese residential area of Los Angeles
where the number of ethnic media is soaring (W.-Y. Lin, Song, & Mercado, 2004).
In fact, there has been a growing interest in the study of Chinese diasporas in view
of the significant presence of Chinese migrants on the global scale since the late
1960s (Chamey, Kiong, & Yeoh, 2003; Ma & Cartier, 2003; Wang & Wang, 1998).
Increasing Chinese influence is felt in many multicultural cities such as New York,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston. Outside the U.S., a rapid influx of
Chinese people and capital are also found in Sydney, Australia, and in Vancouver
and Toronto, Canada.
Several reasons explain the fast-growing Chinese immigrant populations
during the past decades. First, the relaxed U.S. immigration policies as manifested
in the Immigration Act of 1965 and the progression of “multicultural” policies
starting in the 1970s in Australia and other Western countries have opened the door
for international migrants, including the Chinese. Second, post-war geopolitical
shifts and instability in the Pacific Rim are also important considerations. Since the
separation of sovereignty across the Taiwan Straits after World War II, the
government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has threatened to use force to
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reunify Taiwan, which is independently governed by the Nationalist Party (or
Kuomintang) but is considered as a renegade province by the PRC. Under constant
military intimidation from the PRC and political instability in Taiwan,
paradoxically amidst economic prosperity, there has been massive out-migration
from the small island, averaged more than 10,000 a year since the 1980s (Williams,
2003). The movement of Hong Kong people, on the other hand, started in the 1980s
and peaked just years before Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 (G. Lin,
2003). Last but not the least, increased globalization of capital and production as
well as improved transportation and information technology has also facilitated the
formation of the Chinese diaspora worldwide (Fong, 1994; Li, 1997; Ma, 2003;
Saito, 1998; Sinclair et al., 2001).
Hence, in contrast to those who came during the Gold Rush a century ago,
the composition of Chinese immigrants today is drastically changed. While old
immigrants were mostly male laborers who came from Southeast China in the late
19th century, new Chinese immigrants are often well educated and come from
diverse economic and class backgrounds. These new immigrants also represent
different national and ethnic origins, thus reflecting the international scope of the
Chinese diaspora (Horton, 1995). They speak Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese,
and other dialects, and do not represent a homogenous group. According to U.S.
census reports, the Chinese immigrant population exhibits a clear form of
heterogeneity in birthplaces, including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and
other Southeast Asian countries.
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Statistics show that many immigrants’ preferred destination in the U.S. is
the metropolitan area, and Chinese migrants are no exception (INS, 2001). Many
choose to reside in big cities such as Los Angeles. In fact, census data indicate that
330,000 Chinese reside in Los Angeles County, and the Chinese have emerged as
the largest Asian group not only in Los Angeles but also in the U.S. (Allen &
Turner, 2002; Census Bureau, 2001; Watanabe, 2003). In particular, the Chinese
settlement in the Greater Monterey Park area, which is approximately ten miles east
of the Los Angeles Civic Center, has attracted scholarly attention in the areas of
sociology, political science, history, and other disciplines (e.g., Ball-Rokeach et al.,
2000; Fong, 1994; Horton, 1995; Saito, 1998). Monterey Park and its neighboring
cities including Alhambra, San Gabriel, Rosemead, San Marino in the San Gabriel
Valley (see Figure 1.1) make up one of the largest Chinese enclaves on the globe -
outside China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, or the so-called “Greater China” region.
This spectacular ethnic enclave integrates residential areas with a range of Chinese
businesses and professional services, making immigrants feel particularly at home.
The Chinese presence in the San Gabriel Valley illustrates vividly the local
expression of globalization in its cultural, social, and economic dimensions (Allen
& Turner, 2002; Fong, 1994; Horton, 1995).
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Figure 1.1 Map of the Greater Monterey Park Area
San Gabriel Mountains
* A ilW >
M O N K A
SOUTH
CENTRAL
C E R R IT OI
PacificOcean
Friewiys
H j | M onttrty P»rk MILES
Source: Prepared by the Urban Research Section of Los Angeles County.
Figure adapted from Horton (1995).
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14
1.3 Research Inquiry: Ethnic Chinese Media in Focus
The very first overseas Chinese-language newspaper, The Golden Hills ’
News, was launched in 1854 when the Gold Rush in California attracted tens of
thousands of peasants from China, and a Chinese community was established in
San Francisco. The text for this newspaper was handwritten with the Chinese
brush. But however unsophisticated, inexperienced, and undercapitalized this and
many other ethnic newspapers might have been, they nevertheless offered a
reflection of a group experience. According to Wilson and colleagues (2003), most
of the ethnic newspapers were founded at a time of crises that were not being
experienced by the White. In the case of The Golden Hills News, it appeared when
white media were actively ridiculing the Chinese, and when the Chinese became
victims of legal discrimination and oppression.
Has the role of ethnic media changed with the new waves of immigration
since the 1970s? It is the purpose of this dissertation project to answer the above
inquiry and to further understand the relationship between local consumption and
global production of ethnic media in contemporary immigrant communities. In
particular, this project seeks to address the following questions: What is the
communication infrastructure where diasporic Chinese connect and communicate?
What are the roles that ethnic media play in the Chinese immigrant community? Do
ethnic media help immigrants maintain ties to the home country and simultaneously
build connections to the newly adopted society? And to what extent do immigrants’
modem communication experiences enable or constrain their capacity to build
communities in the host society?
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15
To answer these questions, this dissertation will utilize the data collected by
the Metamorphosis Project, of which the author has been a part, in the context of
Greater Monterey Park. Three datasets are of particular interest for this study. First,
a telephone survey of Chinese residents reveals immigrants’ communication
practices and goals. Second, interviews with ethnic media producers and editors
provide insight on editorial policies and operation. Third, a content analysis
unearths the storytelling capacities of ethnic Chinese media in fulfilling their roles
at the turn of 21st century.
1.4 Structure of the Dissertation
In the next chapter, the author will take a communication infrastructure
perspective to theorize the relationship between communication and community
building and to highlight the role of ethnic media in ethnically diverse communities.
Chapter Three will explicate the historical evolution of the Chinese diaspora since
the 19th century and examine the within-group differences among new Chinese
immigrants. The author will then discuss the ways in which ethnic Chinese media
connect diasporic communities and storytell migrants to form their identities. The
diasporic experience will be case studied in the local context of Los Angeles, as
important manifestation of global forces. Chapter Four will introduce a set of
research questions and hypotheses and detail the methodology. Findings and a
discussion of results will be reported in Chapters Five and Six.
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16
CHAPTER TWO
COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY BUILDING IN MODERN
IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCES:
A COMMUNICATION INFRASTRCTURE APPROACH
Migration has taken place throughout human history, but today, the global
dimension of migration, the rising numbers of migrants, and changes in technology
call for a reexamination of migration. One of the central themes in migration
studies has been the process of the immigrant’s adaptation. The continuous learning
that takes place in the individual throughout the adaptation process occurs in and
through communication. Through communication, individuals come to involve and
solve collective problems and build communities. In this chapter, I will first discuss
the relationship between communication and immigration along the lines of the
assimilation-pluralism debate, and then propose a hybrid model of the two as a
result of transnational practices in a globalizing world. I will then highlight the role
of ethnic media in response to the forces of globalization from a communication
infrastructure perspective, and introduce the concept of geo-ethnic media, which
engage in locally and ethnically significant storytelling practices that are essential
to community building and civic functions in contemporary multicultural
communities.
2.1 Communication and Immigration
Communication and immigration are two rich, multidisciplinary areas of
study. A review of the social scientific literature on immigration, however, reveals
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17
minimal interaction between the two disciplines and a lack of linking media
developments as an integral and changing dynamic in the immigration process
(Bean, 2003; Foner et al, 2000; Hirschman, DeWind, & Kasinitz, 1999; Portes,
1999; Rumbaut, 2000).
Existing approaches to immigrant adaptation on the micro level mostly
examine individuals’ information-seeking behavior, interpersonal networks,
personal traits such as language competence and listening skills, and other social
psychological factors. For instance, Gudykunst and associates focused on two
psychological factors, uncertainty reduction and anxiety reduction, as central to
explaining individual differences in adaptation. That is, in a new culture, strangers
experience uncertainty and anxiety when communicating with hosts. They need to
be able to understand hosts’ attitudes and feelings, and to be able to predict hosts’
behavioral patterns. Whenever strangers try to figure out why hosts behave the way
they do, they are engaging in explanatory uncertainty reduction (Gao & Gudykunst,
1990; Gudykunst, 1995, 1998).
On the other hand, macro-level inquiries on immigrants’ adjustment
processes have traditionally been the norm among anthropologists and sociologists.
These researchers generally have treated individuals as abstract entities forming
social categories, classes, or strata and have focused on such adaptation phenomena
as “assimilation.” In the assimilation model, individuals are assumed to adopt the
majority norms and integrate into mainstream society in social, economic, and
political aspects. In the process of accepting new cultural practices, however,
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18
individuals lose traditional cultural traits. This generally is considered an inevitable
process.
The assimilation theme has dominated many sociological studies since the
early twentieth century. However, the model has been called into question since the
1960s when the “new ethnicity” movement began, prompted by the civil rights
movement. In addition, as it largely ignores the cultural and individual differences
that these immigrant groups may retain over time, the model falls short of
explaining the new, multiethnic immigrants in urban communities since the 1970s.
As Novak contended:
There is no such thing as homo Americanus. There is no single
culture here. We do not, in fact, have a culture at all - at least, not a
highly developed one, whose symbols, images, and ideals all of us
work out of and constantly mind afresh; such “common culture” as
even intellectuals have is more an ideal aspired to than a task
accomplished (Novak, 1973, p. 18).
Scholars have thus promoted a pluralist model, and maintain that ethnic
groups are more likely to flow into the mainstream culture without losing their own
cultural roots and ethnic identity (e.g., Johnson, 2000; Y. Y. Kim, 1976, 2001;
Novak, 1973; Postiglione, 1983; Riggins, 1992; F. Subervi-Velez, 1986; Zhang &
Hao, 1999). This body of research emphasizes that, while participation in
mainstream communication channels is necessary, the expectation is that one
would retain aspects of one's own culture. While some ethnic characteristics such
as the use of one’s mother language may decline from one generation to the next,
others are maintained and even strengthened. Pluralism thus leads to sustained
ethnic differentiation and continued heterogeneity among groups that still
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19
participate in the dominant society. Implicit in the pluralistic model is a shared
emphasis on the significance of an individual’s acceptance of the host cultural
practices along with the retention of one’s own cultural heritage (Y. Y. Kim, 2002).
The trend toward pluralistic conceptions of adaptation has gained
momentum along with a marked increase in empirical evidence (e.g., Johnson,
2000; Y. Y. Kim, 1976, 2001; Riggins, 1992; F. Subervi-Velez, 1986; Zhang &
Hao, 1999). Nonetheless, the bipolar models of assimilation and pluralism, or the
debate between integration and ethnic retention, have been called into question
recently. What have been increasingly observed in new immigrant groups are
combined, or blended, characteristics that take form through transnational practices.
In other words, by “keeping feet in both worlds,” (Levitt, 2003) new immigrants
have developed a new, hybrid group identity that is not “either-or” but “in-
between” the poles of assimilation and retention - a sense of identity that “has
much to do with travel” (Sinclair et al., 2001, p.89) and is “fluid, ambiguous, and
contingent upon historical experience” (Kurashige, 2002, p.4). The hybridity is a
result of the flows of ideas, behaviors, and social capital as well as the convergence
of “bi-local” traits (Waldinger & Fitzgerald, 2003) between sending and receiving
countries under the force of globalization. And transnational activities do not
preclude immigrant groups from adapting to the host country (Levitt, 2001;
Morawska, 2003; Sanchez, 2000).
To understand the role of ethnic media in constructing this hybrid identity
and the ways in which media practices may need to be changed in a globalizing
world, the author proposes to look into the inquiry from a communication
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20
infrastructure perspective to investigate individual immigrants’ connections with
ethnic media in the overall communication environment, and the extent to which
they come to involve and solve collective problems and build communities through
communication.
2.2 Building Communities within the Communication Infrastructure
Residential places are part of a much larger fabric of association and
identity that merges geographic with other spaces such as ethnic or cultural spaces
(Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). They are where people experience the conditions of
everyday life, and where people feel efficacious to pursue shared objectives,
improving the health of civil society. Hence, community is viewed as the basic unit
in realizing democracy (Friedland & McLeod, 1999; Hollander, Stappers, &
Jankowski, 2002; Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2002; Putnam, 1995, 2000; Shah,
Schmierbach, Hawkins, Espino, & Donavan, 2002).
Nonetheless, the recent popularity of electronic networks has opened the
door to the “virtual community” (Rheingold, 1993) where social interactions take
place across geographical boundaries. However, some participants subscribing to
online mailing lists or newsgroups may experience it as community whereas others
may not (e.g., Ito, 1997). The key lies in whether these communities are
“imagined,” as Benedict Anderson (1991) has argued. He proposes that, all
communities that go beyond the primal face-to-face are imagined, a process
enabled by mass media. Influenced by Anderson, a few scholars such as Baym
(1998) have proposed that communities, online or offline, are shaped by a range of
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21
preexisting structures. Participants strategically utilize and exploit the resources
those structures can offer in their communicative interaction to imagine themselves
as a community. Recently, Communication Infrastructure Theory has been
developed to explain the ways in which the media system interact with other
storytelling agents in the communication context and help residents “imagine” the
community in an urban setting (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). The next section will
detail the communication infrastructure approach and the role of ethnic media will
be highlighted.
The Communication Infrastructure Approach
With a focus on residential areas, Ball-Rokeach and associates develop
Communication Infrastructure Theory (CIT) and look into the health of
individuals’ communication behavior and their residential communication
environment to understand people’s sense of belonging and the community ties that
bind (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). The communication infrastructure perspective
provides a specific way of understanding the relationship between community-level
communication opportunities and the possibility of civil society. Defined as “the
storytelling system set in its residential communication environment” (p.396), the
communication infrastructure shapes the ways in which residents connect to each
other, the media system, and their surroundings by providing an environment that
either facilitates or constrains their connections. Just as individuals have to rely
upon access to financial resources built in an economic infrastructure to set up a
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22
successful business, residents depend upon access to a supportive communication
infrastructure to build their sense and reality of community.
CIT builds upon the assumptions of media system dependency (MSD)
theory (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1998; DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach, 1976). According to
MSD, media power lies in control over certain information resources that
individuals require to achieve their goals. CIT goes beyond MSD to a more
inclusive consideration of all communication modalities, including mainstream
media, local media, and interpersonal communication. In other words, the
communication infrastructure approach extends the scope of MSD and moves the
focus onto the interplay between interpersonal and mediated storytelling systems
and their contexts. Individuals in CIT are actively working to achieve their goals by
connecting to various available communication resources in their communities
(Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Jung, 2003; Y.-C. Kim, 2003).
There are two basic components of a communication infrastructure: the
communication action context and the storytelling system.
Communication action context
According to Ball-Rokeach and associates (2001), the term communication
action context was drawn from Habermas (1984), who developed the notion to
underscore the importance of the “preconditions of rational discourse in the public
sphere” (p.396). The use of the term is somewhat different in CIT, as researchers
aimed to unearth discourse preconditions for imagined communities, i.e.,
storytelling in a specific neighborhood. The communication action context can
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23
enable or constrain communication along a dimension of openness or closed-ness.
An open action context encourages people to engage each other in communication,
whereas a closed context discourages such experiences.
The storytelling system
Storytelling is a communication process where storytellers - large and small
media, organizations, individuals, and the like - interact with one another to
produce and exchange stories that are essential resources for building and
maintaining communities (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Y.-C. Kim, Ball-Rokeach,
Cohen, & Jung, 2003). Stone (1998) maintains that storytelling is not a luxury to
our lives. Stories are intrinsically related to our life experiences. Through stories,
our past experiences and actions are recapitulated. Through stories, our identity is
constructed and reconstructed.
The storytelling system, in essence, is a connective web of storytellers that
cuts across different levels of analysis. Distinctions among the different levels are
made in terms of their primary storytelling referent and their imagined audience. At
the most macro level, large organizations such as media, political, religious, and
other central institutions serve as “macro agents” that possess storytelling
production and dissemination resources. The stories they tell are primarily
concerned with a region, the nation, or even the world. At the intermediate or meso
level are smaller, and often overlooked, local media and community organizations
that serve as linkages between macro- and micro-level agents. Their stories are
more focused on a particular part of the city or certain residents in an area. Lastly,
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interpersonal networks, i.e., the residents themselves, constitute the third micro tier
of the storytelling system. Although they tell stories about many things far from
their neighborhoods, micro agents nonetheless carry the most concrete burden of
“storytelling” their neighborhood.
Figure 2.1 The Communication Infrastructure
Childcare
Resources
Work
Condition
Healthcare
Resources
Ethnic
Diversity
Goods &
Services
Area
Appearance
Street
Safety/Fear
S t o r y t e l l i n g
N e t w o r k
Law
Enforcement
Transportation
Schools
Public Spaces
(Libraries, parks, etc.)
C o m m u n i c a t i o n A c t i o n C o n t e x t
Storytelling Neighborhood
According to CIT, civil society is most likely to emerge when storytelling
systems are integrated. That is, when multilevel storytellers talk to one another
about, and thus imagine (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001) the community, then there is an
infrastructure that people can take advantage of to build civil society (Ball-Rokeach
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et al., 2001; Y.-C. Kim, 2003). In particular, meso-level storytelling agents play
crucial linkage roles in this regard. For instance, community organizations and
local media can get people to talk about their neighborhood, relaying neighborhood
stories to mainstream media, or even setting the agenda for public policy makers.
As Ball-Rokeach (2002) asserts, when a new person or family arrives in a “strong
storytelling neighborhood,” they are likely to find it easier to acquire a sense of
belonging because their neighbors know and talk about the history of the place,
local media provide a readily available primer on current events, and local
organizations are available to join and participate in.
A strong storytelling neighborhood exhibits an integrated storytelling
network, in which three key storytellers - residents, community organizations, and
local media - are not isolated but link up with each other. An integrated storytelling
network has a greater capacity than each of the storytellers can offer individually.
As Kim (2003) emphasizes, one of the unique features of CIT is that “it focuses not
only on the strength of each neighborhood storyteller but also on the strength and
the quality of their network” (p.21). For residents who live in an area with a strong
storytelling network, neighbors talk to each other over the backyard fence about
such things as neighborhood schools, childcare, or street safety. Community
organizations offer a site for neighborhood discussion and encourage their
members to share knowledge about resources in the neighborhood such as health
care. Local media, on the other hand, not only report the activities and concerns of
community organizations, but also stimulate neighborhood conversation by
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26
covering neighborhood problems or opportunities that may affect the welfare of the
residents.
This storytelling practice is a vital component of actual democratic practice.
Despite that the emphasis has traditionally been given to formal deliberation and
discourse, research of late suggests that ordinary conversation about either political
or personal topics at home or at work can have serious ramifications in the political
arena. In their proposed “conversation model of democracy,” Wyatt and colleagues
(2000) challenged what is traditionally meant by “talking about politics.” In the
formal sense, the phrase is too narrowly focused on the workings of governments,
bureaucratic institutions, campaigning, and courthouses. It does not consider the
impact of ordinary conversations that occur in everyday life on the wide variety of
topics that may have broader political relevance in the lives of the public, such as
education and crime. Hence, scholars have argued that there really might not have
been a decline in civic engagement during the past few decades as Robert Putnam
(1995; 2000) has suggested. Rather, new forms of political interest and engagement
are emerging, which they refer to as “lifestyle politics” (Bennett, 1998, 2000).
Lifestyle politics takes a variety of forms, but in general, it is more personal and
local in scope and relevance. People may have doubts about the governments, but
they continue to talk about lifestyle issues such as health and childcare, crime and
public order, job security and benefits, and the control and content of education.
Hence, the outcome of a strong storytelling neighborhood is that residents
are able to build upon the mobilization capacities of their storytelling network, and
are thus more likely to participate in collective actions to improve their
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communities. Kim (2003) investigated the relationship between communication
infrastructure and civic engagement in urban communities and empirically tested
the storytelling neighborhood model. An integrated connection to a storytelling
network was found to be the strongest predictor of neighborhood belonging,
collective efficacy, and civic participation. In addition, in an examination of the
civic action following the September 11 terrorist attacks, researchers found that
people who were more engaged in a storytelling neighborhood were more likely to
participate in public responses to the attacks (E. L. Cohen, Ball-Rokeach, Jung, &
Kim, 2002; Y.-C. Kim, Ball-Rokeach et al., 2003). These researchers found that
mainstream media played a more important role than small-scale local media as a
factor of civic action in such a nationwide crisis. However, the contribution of
mainstream media to promoting civic actions was made most effective when people
also had strong ties to interpersonal storytelling in their communities. Namely,
residents’ integrated connections to the community storytelling network are key to
participation in civic actions.
While local media has a long history in the U.S. and many have noted its
importance in community building (Chaffee & Choe, 1981; Emig, 1995; Finnegan
& Viswanath, 1988; Friedland & McLeod, 1999; Hindman, 1999; Jankowski,
2002; Janowitz, 1952; Jeffres, Atkin, & Neuendorf, 2002; L. W. Jeffres, J. Dobos,
& J.-W. Lee, 1988; McLeod et al., 1996; McLeod, Scheufele, & Moy, 1999), Kim
and associates (2003) found only a minimal role local media played in promoting
civic actions in the September 11 events. In fact, in their storytelling models tested
on several immigrant groups in Los Angeles, Ball-Rokeach and colleagues (2001)
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28
found a major disconnection in the Asian study sample. That is, those media that
targeted at local Korean and Chinese residents did not connect to interpersonal
neighborhood discussion at the micro level, nor did they link to mainstream media
at the macro level. The missing link to an integrated storytelling network may well
undermine residents’ storytelling capacities into community building.
Hence, the complex dynamics through which local media contribute to a
storytelling neighborhood and help residents “imagine” their communities are key
to a healthy civil society. However, it is unclear whether ethnic media today are
truly local media in the wake of global economic, political, and social activities? In
fact, since the late 1960s, ethnic media have been viewed as serving primarily two
functions - that is, to contribute to ethnic cohesion and cultural maintenance on the
one hand, and to help members of minorities integrate into the larger society on the
other (Johnson, 2000; Y. Y. Kim, 2001; Riggins, 1992; F. Subervi-Velez, 1986).
Therefore, this project argues that it is essential for these media to provide the
immigrant and minority groups with geographically and ethnically relevant
information, which will be referred to as geo-ethnic storytelling throughout the
chapters. By engaging in this storytelling practice, geo-ethnic media can potentially
assist immigrants to adapt to the host community and fulfill their democratic roles.
A communication infrastructure approach sensitizes the critical roles of geo-ethnic
media in terms of what stories they are telling, and how these stories would enable
or constrain community imagination and building. The next section will discuss
these media’s roles in the context of the communication infrastructure.
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2.3 Positioning Ethnic Media in the Communication Infrastructure
Ethnic media have existed for centuries. According to Robert Park (1922),
the author of The Immigrant Press and Its Control, one of the earliest studies that
explored the use of the immigrant press in Chicago, the soil for a foreign language
newspaper was a natural association with language. He maintained that the foreign
language press "preserves old memories [and simultaneously is] the gateway to
new experiences" (p.449). Social psychologists have also posited that ethnic media
are popular among immigrants because they are less stressful communication
channels compared to intense face-to-face interactions (e.g., Epstein, Botvin,
Dusenberry, Diaz, & Kemer, 1996; Gao & Gudykunst, 1990). Lacking
communication competence in their host language, many immigrants tend to seek
out and rely heavily on ethnic community assistance. The relatively stress-free
ethnic communication experiences allow newcomers to delay or avoid confronting
more stressful communication activities involving members of the host community.
In addition, since communication activities involving interpersonal relationships, in
particular face-to-face encounters, are high in intensity, the inherently
unidirectional media experience that characterizes their relationship with ethnic
media offers a more passive and private mode of communication, especially for
newcomers with inadequate communication competence.
From Immigrant Media to Ethnic Media
For social scientist scholars, the ethnic press is undoubtedly the best source
for an understanding of the world of non-English-speaking groups in the U.S., as
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they provide insight into immigrants’ background, expectations and concerns, and
evolution of individual communities (Miller, 1987; Wilson & Gutierrez, 1995). The
phenomenon of newspapers published in the U.S. for the benefit of particular
immigrant groups first appeared in the 18th century. These mostly non-English
publications reached their peak between the late 19 century and the 1930s (Miller,
1987). Unfortunately, the mortality rate of the immigrant press was extremely high.
Between 1884 and 1920, approximately 3,444 new papers were founded in the U.S.
while 3,186 went out of business. In other words, approximately 93 out of every
100 new papers failed to stay afloat (Park, 1922). The sharp decline of these
publications after the 1930s was a result of the shrinking pool of newcomers
primarily due to world wars and restricted immigration laws. However, post-war
displacement and international geo-political shifts as well as relaxed federal
immigration policies of the U.S. since the 1960s have sparkled new waves of
immigrant groups and a concomitant increase in the number of “their media” (Fong,
2001; Lam, 1980; Miller, 1987).
Researchers such as Wynar and Wynar (1976) have argued since then that
the term “immigrant media” is no longer appropriate in the wake of the revived
immigration flow because it narrowly appeals to new arrivals only. Rather, the
subject of “ethnic media” is more useful as it applies to those who continue to live
within the context as well as subsequent generations who identify with their
heritage. More importantly, Wilson & Gutierrez (1995) maintain that references to
European immigration and integration models of the past are no longer sufficient to
explain the demographic and communication trends in the U.S. after the 1970s.
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When the waves of European immigrants entered New York's Ellis Island more
than a century ago, the foreign language media existed to serve the new arrivals and
were transitional in nature. They mainly served the needs of first-generation
immigrants and had less appeal for their children and grandchildren who acquired
English proficiency. While it appears that older immigrants prefer content
exclusively related to their cultural backgrounds, younger ones often demand a
broader variety.
The Emergence o f Geo-Ethnic Media
In line with Ball-Rokeach and colleagues (2001), this study promotes a geo
ethnic storytelling practice for media that target at particular ethnic group(s), a
practice that aims at covering locally and culturally relevant stories. By engaging in
this storytelling practice, geo-ethnic media can potentially assist immigrants to
adapt to the host community and fulfill their democratic roles.
The concept of “geo-ethnicity” was introduced by Kim and associates (Y.-C. Kim,
Jung, & Ball-Rokeach, 2002) in recognition of the importance of the interplay of
the temporal, geographic, and ethnic factors in studying immigration.
According to Kim et al. (2002), geo-ethnicity is a concept that
contextualizes ethnicity in a specific locale. In their investigation in seven
multiethnic urban communities, Kim and associates discovered that ethnicity or
geographic location alone was not sufficient in explaining some immigrant groups’
distinctive communication patterns in a multicultural society. They then
empirically tested and found unique interaction effects between ethnicity and
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32
location, i.e., geo-ethnicity, on individuals’ neighborhood engagement (Y.-C. Kim
& Jung, 2003) and Internet connectedness (Y.-C. Kim, Jung, & Ball-Rokeach,
2003). As a multi-dimensional concept, geo-ethnicity takes into consideration the
temporal, geographic, and ethnic factors in studying immigrant groups in a
multicultural context. The ethnic community is considered as an important
contextual factor that either enables or constrains the ways in which new media are
introduced to an existing communication environment. In line with communication
infrastructure theory (CIT), these researchers resist the claim that places no longer
matter under the force of globalization. Rather, they consider residential
communities as important building blocks for civil society. This material base
provides the situation in which, and the conditions and resources of which,
communally directed communication is engaged and identity constructed
(Shepherd & Rothenbuhler, 2001).
The significance of geographic location and cultural factors exhibits itself
in ethnic media content as well. As illustrated earlier, these media serve dual roles
in contemporary multiethnic communities; that is, if doing their job, ethnic media
can facilitate immigrants’ adaptation and to help with their cultural retention
(Johnson, 2000; Y. Y. Kim, 1978; Riggins, 1992; F. A. Subervi-Velez, 1986; M.
Zhou & Cai, 2002). They do so by announcing community events, covering
minority social activities, and publicizing minority business advertising. They also
preserve native culture and identity by maintaining the language and promoting
ethnic pride. At times, they also provide comfort and respite from negative images
in mainstream media (Wilson et al., 2003).
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It is along those lines that this dissertation project promotes geo-ethnic
storytelling for media that target at certain ethnic groups in multicultural residential
communities. Geo-ethnic storytelling is a practice that aims to produce culturally
relevant and locally vital information for immigrants in the host society. By
engaging in geo-ethnic storytelling in part or in full, geo-ethnic media to varying
degrees are able to stimulate neighborhood discussion among residents, and to
facilitate exchange with community organizations, which are often resource poor,
thus leading to an integrated storytelling network with ethnic media linked to other
storytelling agents.
There are two major components of geo-ethnic storytelling. First, geo
ethnic stories are culturally relevant to a particular ethnic group. Second, geo
ethnic stories are geographically bound and are concerned primarily with what is
happening in the community. Hence, geo-ethnic media may report home country
stories like other ethnic media that do not have a specific spatial referent, but they
go beyond that to make their stories relevant to the local residents in the immigrant
community. In addition, geo-ethnic media can act like truly local media to perform
civic functions, but they do more than local media, addressing the concerns of a
particular ethnic group in a residential area, serving their specific needs in the
benefit of their group identity.
Therefore, geo-ethnic media are pivotal in residents’ adaptation process
because they form a critical part of the storytelling network. They connect people to
events and issues of community life that may engender feelings of allegiance and
ties to the community. They stimulate the flow of information through personal
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networks and thereby encourage both group discussion and individual reflection.
Geo-ethnic media not only play a democratic role in promoting conversation and
mobilizing people toward concrete civic actions in the host society, but they also
help localize global experience in the practices of everyday life. Geo-ethnic
storytelling is thus critical to the community building.
In addition, a geo-ethnic storytelling focus will sustain media organizations
in the long run when subsequent generations of immigrant groups acquire English
proficiency and develop connections to their residential communities. As
mentioned earlier, the niche of geo-ethnic media is to report ethnically targeted
stories as well as locally relevant stories, which are often missing in the resource-
rich mainstream media. By covering stories culturally and geographically close to
the immigrant groups, geo-ethnic media will not only expand their audience base,
but sustain their growth and development. In addition, geo-ethnic media can take
advantage of new venues that advanced communication technologies such as the
Internet can offer to reach more diasporic audiences in the increasingly global
ethnic economy.
2.4 Summary
In this chapter, two models - assimilation and pluralism - that explain
immigrants’ adaptation process were discussed. The assimilation model
emphasized the aspect of immigrants’ integration into the mainstream society and
was popular in the early 1900s. Due to relaxed immigration policies and geo
political shifts in the international arena, a revived flows of new arrivals since the
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35
late 1960s have dramatically changed the composition of the immigrant population
in the U.S. The author thus proposed a third model to explain the new, hybrid
group identity that immigrants have developed through transnational practices.
These new, blended characteristics of new immigrants are not “either-or” but “in-
between” the poles of assimilation and ethnic retention.
The roles of ethnic media in response to these global transformations and
the ways in which they help immigrants “imagined” their communities were
discussed in the communication infrastructure perspective. Communication
infrastructure theory (CIT) provides a specific way of understanding the
relationship between community-level communication opportunities and the
possibility of civil society. Defined as “the storytelling system set in its residential
communication environment,” the communication infrastructure shapes the ways in
which residents connect to each other, the media system, and their surroundings by
providing an environment that either facilitates or constrains their connections.
According to CIT, ethnic media forms an integral part of the storytelling network
that can stimulate residents’ neighborhood discussion and relay neighborhood
stories to mainstream media which often overlook local issues. That is, ethnic
media play important linkage roles between micro-level and macro-level
storytelling agents.
It is along those lines that this dissertation project promotes geo-ethnic
storytelling for media that target at certain ethnic groups in multicultural residential
communities to provide with geographically and ethnically relevant information.
By engaging in this storytelling practice, geo-ethnic media can assist immigrants to
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adapt to the host community and fulfill their democratic roles. In addition, a geo
ethnic storytelling focus will provide a niche for media organizations to expand
their audience base as well as sustain their development in the long run.
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37
CHAPTER THREE
ETHNICITY AND PLACE-BASED COMMUNICATION EXPERIENCES:
THE CHINESE DIASPORA IN CONTEXT
Diasporas are inherently geographic. They are geographic expressions of
human interaction across global space, and diasporic practices are always localized
and manifested in geographically dispersed institutions, identities, links, and flows.
Often times, being preoccupied with “social construction of space,” some
immigration scholars have not clearly articulated the geographical character of
diasporas both in the contexts of exit and of reception, however. Many also tend to
treat the immigrant groups as a monolithic body or as homogenous. This
dissertation project argues otherwise, and contends that there are ethnic variances
as well as spatial differences in diasporic migration.
This chapter examines the ethnicity and place-based, or geo-ethnic,
differences that manifest themselves in the historical and sociological significance
of the ethnic enclave, a token of distinct cultural expression in a specific locale. The
Chinese migrants are a case in point, in light of their fast-paced growing population
in the U.S. and their rising importance in local economic development and politics.
Internationally, the economic growth in the Pacific Rim since the 1970s has
brought with it increased attention to the overseas Chinese, a group that serves as
exemplars of an economically successful diaspora. Furthermore, events such as the
transfer of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997, and the election
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38
of a non-Kuomintang (KMT), or the Nationalist Party, government in Taiwan in
2000, have helped sustain this attention.
This chapter will begin with a discussion of the rising Chinese diasporas on
the global scale, and then investigate the diversity among its subgroups in terms of
their countries of origin that manifest different political regimes and socioeconomic
conditions. The historical evolution of Chinese-language media overseas and how
mediated life experiences have helped immigrants imagine the diasporic
community will then be addressed. Finally, the author will investigate the
communication infrastructure in Los Angeles, the research site of this project,
where large numbers of new Chinese immigrants have settled.
3.1 Chinese Diasporas on the Rise
Diasporas are not a novel phenomenon but have a long history that virtually
mirrors the history of human geographical mobility. The word diaspora comes from
the Greek verb speiro (to sow) and the preposition dia (over), as scattering in the
sowing of grain (R. Cohen, 1997). Initially related to the experience of the Jews,
the word refers to migration and also connotes the loss of homeland, uprootedness,
oppression, a collective memory of the homeland, and a strong desire to return to it
one day (R. Cohen, 1997). Stuart Hall has played an influential role in popularizing
the term diaspora. According to Hall, this concept provides with a way of
rethinking the issue of black cultural identity (Hall, 1990).
The diaspora experience as I intend it here, is defined, not by
essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary
heterogeneity and diversity... Diaspora identities are those
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39
which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves
anew, through transformation and difference (p.235).
This emphasis on difference was picked up by Cohen (1997), who
constructed five different forms of diasporic communities: Africans and Armenians
as victim, Indians as labor, British as imperial, Chinese and Lebanese as trading,
and Caribbean as cultural. While he acknowledged that some diasporas take dual or
multiple forms and others change over time, Cohen did not discuss further on the
changing forms of diasporic communities. Scholars have pointed out that there are
missing components in Cohen’s typology, such as gender and class. Anthias (1998)
adds that, in light of different factors that give rise to diasporic movements at
different times for different destinations, differences within diasporas may well be
as great as those between them, but these within-group differences are often not
addressed. In the following section, the particular case of Chinese diasporas will be
discussed and differences within this particular diasporic experience will be
analyzed.
The Chinese Diaspora: Historical Evolution
Recent statistics indicated that a total of 33 million overseas Chinese are
distributed in almost every country of the world (Ma, 2003). In the U.S., increasing
Chinese influence is felt in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley and Orange County,
in the northern California cities of San Francisco and San Jose, in New York City's
boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, particularly Flushing, in Houston, Texas, and
in Orlando, Florida. Outside the U.S., recent examples of a rapid influx of Chinese
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people and capital are found in Sydney, Australia, and in Vancouver and Toronto,
Canada (Wang & Wang, 1998). Table 3.1 provides a glance at the Chinese diaspora
on the global scale.
Table 3.1
The Chinese Diaspora at A Glance*
Area Number of
Chinese Overseas
% of Total Overseas
Chinese Population
Asia** 25,515,000 77.7%
North America 3,643,000 11.1%
United States
Canada
2,723,000
920,000
Middle America 274,200 0.08%
South America 821,500 2.5%
Europe 1,937,900 5.9%
Oceania 528,200 1.6%
Africa 120,300 0.4%
Total 32,840,100 100%
Notes: * These are 1997 figures adapted from Ma (2003).
** This refers to Asian countries outside the “Greater China,” i.e.,
China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
The Chinese diaspora is essentially trade-based, according to Cohen and
many a number of other scholars. Merchants who move and settle in one place as
well as those who continue to move back and forth between home and host
countries have resulted in an interrelated net of commercial communities that form
a trade network, or trade diaspora (R. Cohen, 1997). What have not been
adequately addressed are the seemingly homogeneous social networks that span the
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space of the diaspora. In fact, the Chinese diaspora is constituted in more than one
form. It can be characterized as trading and refugee/victim diasporas. The complex
dynamics within this particular diaspora cannot be adequately explained by
traditional straight-line immigration or push-and-pull theories (Foner et al., 2000;
Fong, 2001; Levitt, 2003; Omi & Winant, 1994; Sanchez, 2000; Waldinger, 2001).
Conventional models of migration, based solely on European ethics, tend to see
immigration flows as a natural, open, and spontaneous process, as migrants are
pushed away by the difficult economic, social, or political conditions in their home
country, and are then pulled to another country where these conditions are more
favorable. This line of theory provided the most common explanation for the
immigration patterns in the U.S. prior to 1965, the year that the Immigration Act
was passed. Since then, it has been argued that this theory is incomplete and
historically static in explaining the new waves of immigrants particularly from Asia
(Fong, 2001; Lopez-Garza & Diaz, 2001; P. Ong, Bonacich, & Cheng, 1994; Saito,
1998; Vo & Bonus, 2002).
Historically, the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the
early to mid- 19th century. Attracted by the Gold Rush, Chinese migrants, mainly
from South China, filled in the labor pool that was needed for mining and railroad
construction. Most of them were young males who settled on the west coast,
particularly in California. By 1880, the Chinese population in the U.S. had reached
more than 100,000, and accounted for 10 percent of the total population in
California. Soon, however, hatred toward the Chinese immigrants was generated
because of social tension and economic competition. For one thing, the Chinese
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42
culture was considerably different from that of white European Americans, and the
differences were used as an excuse by whites to blame the Chinese as unassimilated.
For another, the cheap Chinese labor resulted in intense job competition with
whites and the immigrants became scapegoats during periods of economic
recession (Saito, 1998; Tsai, 1986). The tension between the Chinese immigrants
and whites was later extended to the legislative front. In a report issued in 1878, the
House Committee on Education and Labor singled out the Chinese as “undesirable
citizen[s]” due to their negative effect on labor, their debilitating effect on society,
and their inability to assimilate (Chinese Historical Society of America, 1994).
Before long, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was signed by
President Chester Arthur in 1882. The Act began with the statement that “in the
opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to
this country endangers the good order of certain localities” (U.S. Congress 1882,
211). This was the first and the only federal law to exclude an entire group of
migrating people solely based on their race and class. As a result, the Chinese
population in the U.S., including the American-born Chinese, dropped to less than
62,000 by 1920, almost half the number in 1880 (Li, 1997).
In place for a total of 61 years, the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally
repealed in 1943, when China became an ally of the U.S. during World War II. In
his letter to Congress, President Roosevelt revealed that, “by the repeal of the
Chinese Exclusion Laws, we can correct a historic mistake” (cited via Li, 1997).
However, even then, the immigration quotas gave entry to only 105 Chinese
immigrants per year, as opposed to 2,000 for immigrant groups from Europe. The
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43
repeal was thus considered a measure of war expediency rather than a positive
attitude shift on the part of the U.S. government and the American public.
Nevertheless, the Chinese population had increased steadily since then and reached
more than 236,000 by 1960.
New Waves o f Migration
The immigration policy was amended again in the mid-1960s, when the
Naturalization and Immigration Act of 1965 ended the discriminatory quotas
favoring Europeans over Asians and people of color. The maximum for Chinese
immigrants was then extended from 105 to 20,000. Yet, as was the case with the
repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1965 Immigration Act did not represent
the articulation of a coherent policy. Instead, the Act was a compromising response
to different political pressures, including the decade-long civil rights struggle
against racism. It was also a reaction to the desire of business and political elites to
give the U.S. a favorable non-racist, free-market image in a post-war expanding
economy (Horton, 1995).
The relaxation of U.S. immigration policy was no doubt critical for the new
waves of Chinese immigrants since the late 1960s. Another equally important
contributing factor for the new migration lies in the shifting geopolitics in the
international arena. When the Communist Party took over mainland China in 1949,
the defeated Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), retreated to Taiwan, and for
decades, many Chinese people, including government officials, businessmen,
scholars, and scientists, fled to the U.S. to seek political asylum. Nonetheless, in
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44
1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon visited China and initiated direct contact with
the mainland. The U.S. further established a diplomatic relationship with the
Communist-governed People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979 and terminated its
formal ties with the KMT government in Taiwan. Due to these overtures being
made toward China, the people of Taiwan felt abandoned by the international
society, and the PRC government vowed to reclaim Taiwan’s sovereignty by all
means necessary, including military attacks. Hence, even though the U.S. had
guaranteed Taiwan’s safety and security under the Taiwan Relations Act, political
instability and uncertainty, paradoxically amidst economic prosperity, fueled
massive emigration out of the island (Horton, 1995; Li, 1999).
The migration from Hong Kong also constituted a substantial portion of
new Chinese settlers in the U.S. This migration was largely attributed to changes in
global political regimes as well. Many immigrants bom on the Chinese mainland
were in fact refugees from the PRC, and they migrated to the U.S. from their points
of exile in Asia, mostly Hong Kong and Taiwan. More important, the number of
people leaving Hong Kong increased after the Sino-British Joint Declaration was
signed in 1984. The rapid upsurge of emigration was quite dramatic and reached its
climax by 1994, just three years before the transfer of Hong Kong back to Chinese
rale in 1997 (G. Lin, 2003).
3.2 Geo-Ethnic Differences in the Diasporic Experiences
Space and place are fundamental structural elements of diasporas. Spatial
networks constitute diasporas with selected places serving as anchoring points. As
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Ma (2003) argued, “diasporas are functional spaces, characterized by the movement
of people, capital, goods and information between homeland and hostland or
among the places where a diasporic population has settled” (p.8). However, place is
not independent of social agents and social processes. The power of place lies in
the interactive patterns between social agents and processes within a local context
(Y. Zhou, 1998). Seen in this light, past research on the urban Chinese in the U.S.
that treated Chinese enclaves as homogeneous communities is already outdated.
Compared to previous Chinese immigrants, new settlers from the 1970s onward are
more highly educated, more diverse in economic and class backgrounds, and they
speak different languages or dialects such as Mandarin, Taiwanese, or Cantonese.
Thus, they do not represent a homogeneous ethnic group. The following discussion
will focus on the ethnic and geographical differences within the Chinese immigrant
group in terms of their countries of origin, settlement patterns, and socioeconomic
characteristics.
Differences in the Place o f Origin
As discussed earlier, Chinese immigrants in earlier waves of migration
came from predominantly southern China during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Newer waves of Chinese population movement, on the other hand, exhibit a
regional migration pattern, emigrating to what is commonly referred to as the
Greater China, and then re-migrate to other parts of the world. Many immigrants
bom in mainland China, primarily from three provinces in South China
(Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang), were in fact refugees from the Communist
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People’s Republic of China (PRC) and migrated to the U.S. from their points of
exile in Asia. Hong Kong and Taiwan were the preferred destinations for those in
this regional migration group, and they also dominated the more recent migration
streams to North America and Australia. While people in Hong Kong are
predominantly Cantonese from the Guangdong Province, Taiwan had traditionally
been the destination choice of migrants from Fujian before the Chinese mainlanders
retreated to the island with the KMT government in 1949.
Many official statistics have not been able to capture the above- mentioned
variance within the Chinese immigrant group, however. According to the
Immigration and Naturalization Service (2001), the statistics on immigrants’
country of last residence does not distinguish between China and Taiwan, except
for noting that, “Beginning in 1957, China includes Taiwan” (p.20). What people
report as their place of birth may provide a better picture. Among the Chinese
immigrants admitted for legal residence during 1991-2000, 424,573 (70%) were
bom in Mainland China, 106,353 (18%) in Taiwan, and 74,042 (12%) in Hong
Kong. However, these figures underestimate the influence of the Hong Kong and
Taiwan-based immigrants who have spent most of their lives there rather than in
their place of birth, i.e., China, before moving on to the U.S. (Horton, 1995; INS,
2001). In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau, for the first time in history, created the
category of “Taiwanese” for race. Even though this was not an option before 2000,
it is nonetheless an important change that recognizes the diversity in their national
and ethnic origins of Chinese newcomers to the U.S.
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47
Differences in Settlement Patterns
The formation of ethnic enclaves clearly illustrates the significance of
place-based qualities of the migration pattern. This settlement pattern is especially
salient in the Asian immigrant experience, particularly for the Chinese. Historically,
Chinatowns, which served as a form of early enclaves in many cities, were
established as a collective response to hostility and exclusion from the mainstream
society. The hostility was believed to be a result of both social and economic
factors. Early Chinese immigrants were considered as sojourners who only came to
the U.S. to work and would eventually return home after they had made enough
money. It was believed that they had little incentive to assimilate to the host
society. Moreover, white workers saw the Chinese as threatening their well-being
because the Chinese were willing to work for low wages in order to secure
temporary employment (Fong, 1994; Li, 1997). Seen in this light, Chinatowns were
virtually considered as ghettos, which are “involuntary spatial concentrations of
those at the bottom of a hierarchy of power and wealth” (Marcuse, 2000). Early
Chinese immigrants lived in ghettos because they had “very little choice,” or
options were “limited or nonexistent” (Jordan & Rowntree, 1990, p.301). Ghettos
were often situated in devastated downtown areas where inexpensive housing was
available. By the 1940s, more than 90 percent of the Chinese in the U.S. were
urban dwellers clustering mostly in Chinatowns (Fong, 1994).
Increasingly, the formation of enclaves has become popular among later
immigrants as well, rich or poor. In contrast to ghettos, recent incarnations of
ethnic enclaves represent voluntary residential clustering or concentration by
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members of an ethnic group. This has characterized recent immigration trends since
the 1970s. The popularity of ethnic enclaves is often a result of an internal pull
factor to seek ethnic solidarity and economic interest. As the “port-of-entry” for
new immigrants, the ethnic enclave serves to ensure individual and collective
livelihood by providing housing and labor markets, social services, and cultural
nourishment (Allen & Turner, 2002; J. Lin, 1998). Geographically, these ethnic
enclaves, or “ethnoburbs” for ethnic suburbs (Li, 1997, 1999), are largely suburban
ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas.
Following major transformations in cities and suburbs since World War II, affluent
newcomers with some English skills and advanced education do not need to settle
in older, central cities. They may choose to move into better housing in suburban
neighborhoods, and they may also choose to live some distance from their place of
work, with mobility provided by new transportation and communication
technologies.
In view of the new settlement patterns, some researchers claim that new
Chinese immigrants establish in “Chinatown no more” (Chen, 1992), others look at
the formation of suburban enclaves as “new Chinatowns” (Kwong, 1996) or
“satellites of Chinatowns” (J. Lin, 1998), such as Flushing in New York, Monterey
Park in Los Angeles, Sunset and Oakland in San Francisco, and Argyle in Chicago.
The City of Monterey Park in Southern California was touted as the first “suburban
Chinatown.” Its Chinese population is large enough and affluent enough to have
had significant influence on local economics and is also increasingly making its
presence felt in local politics (Fong, 1994; Horton, 1995; Saito, 1998).
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In their investigation of several central cities and suburbs, Allen and Turner
(in press) found that the proportion of groups living in enclaves varies across
metropolitan areas, and that some enclaves are stronger than others. For instance,
Dominicans in New York, Puerto Ricans in Chicago, and Central Americans in
Washington have strong enclaves, whereas Filipinos have much weaker enclave
strength compare to other Asians. Variations are also visible within groups. More
than 70 percent of Korean enclave residents in Chicago, for example, live in
suburbs, compared to 51 percent and 36 percent who live in suburbs of Los
Angeles and New York, respectively. For the Chinese, the difference is even more
remarkable. Almost 88 percent of Chinese in Los Angeles reside in suburban
enclaves, compared to only 8 percent and 2 percent in San Francisco and New York.
Statistics from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services provides
additional supportive evidence in regard to varying ethnic population distribution.
In the fiscal year of 2001, the number of China-born immigrants who were given
permanent residency was slightly greater in New York (6,862) than in Los Angeles
(5,383). In contrast, Taiwanese mostly reside in Los Angeles County (2,673) and
are heavily concentrated in the San Gabriel Valley cities of Monterey Park,
Alhambra, and Rosemead, over San Jose (1,725) and New York (484). Marketing
research also reveals that the Chinese in New York are much different from those
in San Francisco, and in many ways divergent from the Chinese in Southern
California as well, just as the Caucasian markets are different in those regions (De
Simone, 2002). Such ethnicity and place, or geo-ethnic, differences can be
explained through the group’s settlement histories.
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50
Differences in Socioeconomic Characteristics
Chinese immigrants exhibit significant differences in social and economic
status, ranging from the low-skilled coolies or laundrymen of the 19th century to
well-educated businessmen and investors, and from disadvantaged inner-city
dwellers to suburban residents with higher income levels and higher rates of
homeownership. Hong Kong and Taiwan are among the major departure points for
the new wave of migrants. Aside from the large number of students going overseas
to pursue advanced studies, the majority of immigrants are no longer sojourners but
ostensibly settlers.
Researchers have used a Downtown versus Uptown model to examine the
intra-ethnic group dynamic in New York City (Kwong, 1996; Sowell, 1981).
Within an ethnic group, those who live in downtown areas are usually poor, less
educated, and spatially concentrated; on the other hand, “uptown” suburban
residents are better off, professionally trained, and live in ethnically mixed
communities. As Kwong contends, the Chinese today are composed of two distinct
groups. More than 30 percent of the Chinese population is what he refers to as
“Uptown Chinese,” who are professionals with a higher income than the national
average, whereas another 30 percent are classified as “Downtown Chinese” who
spoke little English and worked for low wages in dead-end jobs. Researchers have
considered this type of “bimodal” distribution of economic status highly
geographical (Li, 1997). To further examine the spatial immigration pattern, Yu
Zhou (1998) conducted a comparative study of Chinese ethnic economies in Los
Angeles and New York. In New York, low-wage, low-skill sectors such as garment
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and restaurant industries remain dominant. In Los Angeles, a significant share of
the Chinese ethnic economy is based on high-value added and high-skilled
occupations, such as trade, computer manufacturing, and producer services.
Another important development in new immigrant communities is the
transformation of the social structure. The once “bachelor society” of the past has
gradually been replaced by that of reunited families due to both internal and
external factors. On the one hand, the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965
enabled the predominantly male Chinese labor migrants to apply for immigrant
status for their parents, spouses, children, and siblings. On the other hand, the out
migration of Taiwanese was a result of Taiwanese government’s relaxed
restrictions on international travel since the late 1970s after several decades of
martial law in place.
Divergent Chinese Diasporic Identity
Novel social phenomena arose with the new wave of migration. For
instance, after establishing residence and/or citizenship in the host country, the
heads of households may return home, leaving their families at the destination
where children can be educated in a less stressful environment than is possible in
Hong Kong or Taiwan. These heads of households often end up regularly fling
back and forth across the Pacific Ocean. They are called “astronauts” (kong chong
fei ren). In cases where both parents return to continue the work in their home
country, the children left in the host country are known as “parachute kids,”
because they are “dropped o ff’ to survive in a new country. These phenomena are
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52
manifestation of diasporas as transnational communities (Ma, 2003; A. Ong, 1999;
Sinclair et al., 2001).
The concepts of Chinese identity in modem diasporic communities are thus
changing. In an era of increasing globalization, enhanced mobility and
communications have increased the opportunities for staying in contact with family
members and communities in distant locations. Contemporary studies of diaspora
have suggested that highly mobile people have “fluid,” "hybrid," “flexible,”
“bifocal,” “in-between,” or "situational" identities, in which they draw on values
from multiple places and communities, and are simultaneously tied to different
places in different countries (Ang, 2001; Cartier, 2003; G. Lin, 2003; Ma, 2003; A.
Ong, 1999; Sinclair et al., 2001; Srebemy, 2003; Valle & Torres, 2000).
As Aihwa Ong (1999) suggests, cultural forms have not been homogenized
across the world despite the widespread diffusion of markets, media, travel, and
communication under the force of globalization. For the Chinese, the flexible
attitudes they have toward citizenship and identity in the transnational context have
both instmmental and symbolic values. It is in part their response to, or strategies
for, sustaining their roles as key players in the booming Asia Pacific region, and
also for finding greater social acceptance in host countries. As she observes,
Chinese entrepreneurs are not merely engaged in profit
making; they are also acquiring a range of symbolic capitals
that will facilitate their positioning, economic negotiation, and
cultural acceptance in different geographical sites. (1999, p. 18)
In addition to the evolving Chinese identity, the meaning of “Chineseness”
is also changing. Not only do subsequent generations of immigrants feel
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53
ambivalent about being Chinese, but even first generations show resistance to
regard themselves as Chinese. Horton (1995) demystified the notion of
“Chineseness” in his analysis of the diverse composition of Chinese immigrants in
Monterey Park.
Not all Asians are ‘‘Chinos. ” Locally, Latinos sometimes use
the word “Chinos” for all Asians, but one word does not
capture the diversity of the Chinese, let alone the Asian,
immigrant population in the San Gabriel Valley.. .Not all
Chinese are from China... Chinese newcomers are extremely
diverse in their national and ethnic origins... and not all
Chinos and Asians are rich. (Horton, 1995, p.21, 24)
In a similar vein, Ien Ang (2001) challenged an increasingly aggressive
construction of a global Chineseness and instead argued for a theorizing of
“together-in-diffetfence” in contemporary multicultural societies. Sinclair and
associates (2001) in their study of Chinese media use in Australia found that
Taiwanese respondents’ views on national identity appeared to be dominated by the
issue of whether Taiwan is really China, rather than the issue of whether they are
entirely Taiwanese or Australian. In contrast to the markedly Taiwan-centric
worldview from the Taiwanese respondents, the Hong Kong respondents simply
showed negligible concern for national identity.
3.3 Connecting the Chinese Diaspora: Ethnic Chinese Media in Focus
Ethnic media are critical in the construction of diasporic identity; thus, their
historical evolution is the focus of this section. The development of Chinese-
language media overseas goes hand in hand with immigration patterns. Back in the
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middle of the 19th century, as more and more Chinese migrants attracted by the
Gold Rush settled in California, a Chinese community was established in San
Francisco, the principal port of entry. To meet the needs of the growing Chinese
population, a number of diverse institutions sprang up, including places of worship,
clubs and associations, hospitals, and newspapers. The very first Chinese-language
newspaper, The Golden Hills ’ News, was founded in San Francisco in 1854. The
mission of The Golden H ill’ s News, according to its publisher, was to “enhance
residents’ civil and political knowledge” that was “of infinite importance to the
Chinese” (Lai, 1987, p.28). The newspaper was bilingual, and the Chinese portion
was handwritten with the Chinese brush and ran in vertical columns from right to
left, on a sheet approximately 22 inches by 15 inches, folded along the width to
form four tabloid-sized pages.
There were a handful of journals that followed suit as the Chinese
population in San Francisco grew to more than 20,000 in the 1870s and the city
emerged as the center for economic, political, and cultural activities for the Chinese
migrants. When the Chinese further migrated eastward and established
communities in big cities in the Midwest and the East Coast, several newspapers
came into being in New York, Boston, and Chicago. Unfortunately, most of the
publications were short-lived, primarily due to the small Chinese population in the
U.S., many of whom were illiterate. Low budgets and slim profits also proved to be
problematic. To make matters worse, the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion
Act in 1882 further curbed the development of Chinese newspapers in both size and
scope.
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55
Renaissance o f Ethnic Chinese Media
The renaissance of the Chinese media in the past few decades has been
attributed to a combination of internal and external factors. First, the passage of the
Immigration Act of 1965, which lifted migration restrictions, led to an expansion of
the potential market for Chinese media due to the influx of large numbers of
Chinese immigrants, many of whom are well educated. Second, the changing
market conditions under the force of globalization in the 1980s and the
advancement of information and communication technologies made it possible for
local communities to receive the indigenous news and entertainment programs
produced and disseminated by the well-established commercial media centers in
Hong Kong and Taiwan. As a result, several hundred Chinese-language
newspapers, including dailies, weeklies, biweeklies, and magazines, and dozens of
electronic media outlets, were available in the U.S. as well as other parts of Chinese
diasporas at the turn of the 20th century (C. Lum, 1998; Zhang & Hao, 1999; M.
Zhou & Cai, 2002). Increasingly, once marginalized ethnic media are becoming
sophisticated in terms of operation and content. They are also in direct competition
with mainstream media in a number of cases (Karim, 1998). For instance, in
Vancouver, where almost half of the residents are ethnic minorities, the total
circulation of the city’s 46 ethnic newspapers, including two Chinese dailies, is
larger than the combined circulation of its two main English-language papers. The
perceived economic strength of Canada's Chinese community has also pushed the
mainstream media to produce regular Chinese editions.
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In the U.S., according to marketing statistics and figures released by several
media organizations, Chinese print media have been flourishing since the late
1970s, and their electronic equivalents since the 1980s. In the market of print
media, three major dailies dominate the Chinese communities nationwide. The first
is World Journal (or Chinese Daily News in its Los Angeles edition), a subsidiary
of Taiwan’s United Daily News Corporation. It publishes between 64 and 128
pages daily and is by far the largest Chinese-language daily newspaper in the U.S.
It also has a strong presence in the global Chinese community as well. The paper
was launched in New York in 1976 and now has a total circulation of 300,000, with
five metropolitan editions in the U.S. The second major newspaper is the Sing Tao
Daily, which is part of the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao Newspaper Group. It was
first established in San Francisco in 1975 and later set up its international news
centers in New York and Los Angeles, with a U.S. circulation of 180,000. Another
important Chinese newspaper is the China Press, a publication that is primarily
sponsored by the Communist Chinese Government. It was founded in New York in
the early 1990s, and its San Francisco and Los Angeles editions were set up in
1994, with a total circulation of 120,000 {Asian Media Guide, 1998; Sing Tao
Daily, 2004; World Journal, 2004; Zhe, 2003). In addition to the three major
newspapers, there are more than a dozen other dailies and tens of weeklies in
metropolitan areas. In their survey, Min Zhou & Guoxuan Cai observed that
smaller community papers had a circulation typically between 5,000 and 10,000,
most of which were distributed for free (M. Zhou & Cai, 2002).
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Electronic media were not introduced to the Chinese community until two
decades ago, but they have been developing at a fast rate. New and better-financed
Chinese television stations arrived in New York in the early 1980s and in Los
Angeles in the late 1980s and 1990s. These media brought with them from Hong
Kong and Taiwan a high standard for news and entertainment experiences. By and
large, Chinese commercial media in Hong Kong and Taiwan have a much longer
history and are therefore much more developed than their counterparts in the
Chinese immigrant communities in the U.S. (M. Lum, 1998).
Chinese Television Network (CTN), one of the major television networks
that together serve more than three million Chinese viewers nationwide, was
established in 1994. Headquartered in Hong Kong, CTN is now owned by the
China Times News Group of Taiwan after changing hands several times during the
past years. Its programming features headline news, drama, popular music, and
variety shows. It is televised via cable channels as well as satellite dishes for its 24-
hour broadcast (Chinese Television Network, 2004). Another key player in the
Chinese television market is TVB, USA. TVB was established in 1984 as a Chinese
cable station - the Jade Channel - providing the Chinese communities with 24
hours of programming in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese in Los Angeles and
San Francisco via the cable network and throughout the U.S. via the satellite (TVB-
USA, 2004). Yet another increasingly important television network is ETTV, which
launched its operation in 2003. In less than a year, it has already reached more than
600,000 viewers in the U.S., with 10 channels that feature news, drama, children’s
programming, and a locally produced “worldwide call-in” talk show.
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58
Headquartered in Taiwan, ETTV is a subsidiary of the multinational media
enterprise, Eastern Broadcasting Co. In his inaugural speech, Brian Cheng,
President of ETTV America Corp., declared that “We are here to stay,” and that
ETTV would be headed toward “becoming a mainstream medium” {ETTV, 2004).
In addition to the major players in the Chinese television market, there are more
than a dozen local television stations in U.S. metropolitan areas where sizable
Chinese populations are located and continue to grow. Most of them serve the West
Coast, reflecting recent Chinese immigration patterns and the geographic
concentration of the Chinese immigrant population.
Chinese-language radio broadcasting is also a fairly recent phenomenon,
characterized by the regional predominance of either Mandarin or Cantonese.
While KVTO reaches Cantonese-speaking audiences in San Francisco, KAZN is
the leading Mandarin-speaking station in Los Angeles. Established in 1984 and
incorporated by the Multicultural Broadcasting Inc., KAZN is America’s first and
only 24-hour Chinese-language radio station. With the launch of their website -
www.aml300.com - their programs can now be accessed by the Chinese
community nationwide as well as worldwide. In all, there were more than a dozen
Chinese radio stations in the U.S., mostly serving Los Angeles, San Francisco, and
New York, at the turn of the 21st century {Asian Media Guide, 1998).
Since the commercialization of the Web in the 1990s, both traditional and
new Chinese-language media have strived to take advantage of the Internet to better
serve Chinese communities around the world. Major dailies and electronic media
have already set up their websites to expand their audience base and to allow
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readers and viewers access to information around the clock. Pure online media are
also able to find their niche by attracting those who are mostly younger and who
live in rural areas where newspapers and stations are not readily available (Zhang
& Hao, 1999). As one of the most popular online media sites for overseas Chinese,
SINA.com has 94.8 million registered users worldwide. Initially developed by
Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and targeted at the Taiwanese
immigrant community, SINA.com later merged with a Beijing-based company and
built up four localized websites maintained by local teams in China, Taiwan, Hong
Kong, and North America. This leading Chinese-language online medium offers
news, entertainment, community information, and e-commerce opportunities to the
global Chinese community (SINA.com, 2004).
Telling Stories: News Close to “ Home ”
Ethnic Chinese media, like mainstream media, deliver news that concerns
Chinese migrants in the host society. One of the most distinct features of news in
the Chinese media is the tendency to tell stories close to home. Although the major
Chinese dailies all provide the most up-to-date satellite news from home countries,
they also cover local Chinese community news in various regional editions. Most
of the ethnic television news and entertainment programs are syndicated from Asia.
Compared to television, Chinese radio stations produce a relatively higher
proportion of their programming locally, including news updates, traffic reports,
financial market news, lifestyle issues, and entertainment (M. Zhou & Cai, 2002).
But most of the news on the radio is related to home countries as well.
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The homeward tendency in ethnic media content is no novel phenomenon.
As many empirical studies of the migrant experience have found, news from or
about “home” has special status and value. It is a privileged form. For Chinese
migrants, in particular, there exists a historical significance of this emotional
attachment to jia (home) or hsiang (hometown). Pan (1991) argued that, “For
commitment to one’s native place, one’s ancestral home, few people could beat
Chinese” (p.21). This special attachment is in part associated with filial duty, one
of the golden rules in traditional Confucian teachings. To an even larger extent, the
constant link to home is a reflection of the sojourner mentality among old Chinese
immigrants. For them, who planned to return home one day, it was vital to the
group’s coherence and commercial survival (R. Cohen, 1997).
The desire for access to knowledge about “home” reveals migrants’ longing
for information about “there.” News generates very specific relations in space
between here and there. Studies of the relationship between media and everyday
life point to the central role of news in ordering the lived experience of time. In
their interviews, Sinclair and associates (2001) demonstrated how home country
news was central to migrants’ lives. Chinese viewers in Australia described how
they delayed going to work in the morning in order to find out what happened at
“home” yesterday. They needed this information, this sense of ritualized
summation of the day over “there,” even if it was experienced in another place and
time. It provided a strong sense of temporal and spatial connection with home, a
sense of “dual dailiness,” a doubling of time that allowed people to remain
connected to “experiences of everydayness,” both here and there (p.53).
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The tendency to tell stories about home explains why ethnic Chinese media
has been divided along political lines ever since the launch of the first newspaper in
San Francisco. Indeed, a preoccupation of the early Chinese press in the U.S. had
been to promote political interests "back home," such as gaining political sympathy
and support from overseas Chinese (M. Lum, 1998). At the turn of the 20th
century, a line was drawn between the pro-reform movement for restructuring the
Manchu government and the pro-revolution movement for overthrowing the
Manchu government and establishing a republic. After the Communist took over
the mainland in 1949, the media were divided mainly between the pro-Taiwan and
pro-China camps.
The party line is no longer obvious today. The three major Chinese dailies,
for example, share similar missions; that is, to provide readers with the fastest and
most reliable news coverage, and to help overseas Chinese keep in touch with their
homeland as well as to provide linkages between their Chinese readers and
mainstream America. Differences still exist, however, in their editorial focus.
World Journal focused on political, economic, and social developments in Taiwan,
whereas China Press maintains direct contact with the Mainland Chinese
government and promotes Sino-American economic exchange and the unification
of Mainland China and Taiwan {Asian Media Guide, 1998).
News that Connects Here and There
As indicated in their mission statements, ethnic Chinese media strive to
serve as an information bridge between Chinese immigrants and their host society.
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62
In addition to reporting news from mother countries and advocating Chinese
values, tradition, and culture, they inform immigrants about events that take place
within their communities and about available social services. As the old Chinese
saying goes, you grow roots where you landed (luo di sheng gen). New migrants
who are mostly settlers no longer isolate themselves as early immigrants did. Even
those who may hold dual citizenships want to expose themselves to information
about the host society for both emotional and practical purposes (A. Ong, 1999).
Despite their attempts to bridge between Chinese immigrants and the host
society, the extent to which ethnic Chinese media are able to do so is an empirical
question. Like all other ethnic media, the problems that confronted the early
Chinese press and still face the majority of small community media today are a
consequence of lacking an economic base substantial and diverse enough to
maintain the independence and quality needed to serve the community as an
impartial information conduit. The early Chinese press operated on a very small
scale and about half of the papers were run by small family businesses. Staff was
too limited to engage in investigative reporting, and not all reporters came to their
jobs with prior training in the field. News articles were sometimes translations from
the English-language newspapers, or rewrites of articles from home country
publications (M. Lum, 1998).
Newer and better-financed media since the 1970s have been striving to
enter the niche market, however. In contrast to broadcasting that is driven by the
logic of maximizing “mass” audiences across differences, narrowcasting by ethnic
media specifically targets minority markets, or the fragmented audience. In their
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63
examination of the Chinese media environment in Australia, Sinclair and associates
(2001) argued that,
“While broadcasting generally denies difference,
narrowcasting exploits it, often fetishising a notion of a
singular or ‘special’ identity determined by a fundamental
essence: ethnicity, race, sexuality or whatever” (p.43).
They drew upon postcolonialism, maintaining that cultural products such as
television services attest to the formation of transnational networks of media
circulation and (re)production between “home” and “host” sites. These narrowcast
institutions thus have a special place in the immigrant community. It is not simply a
space of representation for cultural maintenance and negotiation, but also a space of
consumption, a space where “otherness” circulates as a commodity (p.44).
3.4 Global Diaspora in Local Context: A Focus on Los Angeles
Chinese residents in Monterey Park and its neighboring cities in Los
Angeles County serve a microcosm for the changing nature of immigration to the
U.S. since the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. Ten miles east of the Los
Angeles Civic Center, the city of Monterey Park has a population of 60,000,
constituted by more than 60 percent of Asians and recognized as America’s first
suburban Chinatown (Fong, 1994). Chinese newcomers to Monterey Park are not
analogous to the historically oppressed male laborers who came in the mid-19th
century. They are men and women generally much better educated and more
affluent than either their Chinese predecessors or their white counterparts (Fong,
1994).
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Prior to the 1970s, Monterey Park, a middle-class area, was home to
Mexican Americans from nearby working-class East Los Angeles and to Japanese
Americans drawn from the east and west sides of L. A. It also became a migration
destination for a number of Chinese from the Chinatown area located near
downtown Los Angeles and just eight miles west of Monterey Park. The migration
of Asian and Latino minorities to suburbs such as Monterey Park was the combined
result of postwar economic mobility and the increasing erosion of discrimination in
the housing policy. By 1970, the city was almost evenly divided among Anglos
(25%), Latinos (39%), and Asian Americans (35%) (Horton, 1995).
Starting from the early 1970s, Monterey Park’s social and cultural
landscape experienced another ethnic transformation. This second evolution was
primarily a result of the immigration of Chinese and other Asians rather than the
out-migration of local minorities. The 1965 Immigration Act set the stage for large
numbers of Chinese to come to the U.S. In fact, more than 96 percent of all Chinese
immigrants in the San Gabriel Valley immigrated to the U.S. after 1965 (Horton,
1995). Global geopolitical shifts contributed to this change. As discussed earlier,
when the U.S. drew closer to mainland China and withdrew its official recognition
of Taiwan's independence in the late 1970s, many mainland Chinese in Taiwan,
fearful of both Taiwanese nationalism and mainland communism, started to see
Monterey Park and the San Gabriel Valley as a good place to live and invest.
The media in Los Angeles as well as in Asia had a strong impact on the
population movement to the greater Monterey Park area as well. As early as the
1970s, advertisements about its residential opportunities and commercial
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65
investment potential appeared in the mass media in Taiwan and Hong Kong. As a
result, people began to refer to Monterey Park as the “Chinese Beverly Hills” or
“Little Taipei.” Quite a number of interviewees in Li’s study said that they had
heard about Monterey Park well before migrating to the U.S. (Li, 1999).
Taken together, the impact of the new waves of migration on the ethnic
balance of Monterey Park and neighboring cities was drastic (see Table 3.2). By
1990, Asian residents had become the majority, constituting almost 60 percent of
the total population, while the number of Anglos declined sharply from 25 percent
a decade ago to 12 percent, and the Latino population dropped from 39 to 31
percent. The composition of the Asian population also shifted, with the younger
Chinese newcomers now decisively replacing older native-born Japanese
Americans as the largest Asian group (Horton, 1995). The picture remained the
same in 2000. Asian Americans were still dominant (62%), with the Chinese
population leading other Asians, followed by Latinos (29%) and non-Hispanic
whites (7%). Also, approximately 82 percent of foreign-born Monterey Park
residents reported that their place of birth was Asia.
Ethnic Media in Los Angeles ’ Chinese Immigrant Communities
While a handful of scholars have conducted ethnographical studies in
Monterey Park on its demographic and political transformation, few have dealt
with the role of ethnically targeted media as important building blocks for civil
society. In very few instances, media coverage of political conflicts within the
immigrant community was addressed (e.g., Horton, 1995); nevertheless, studies
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66
Table 3.2
The Changing Asian Population of Monterey Park, 1970-2000
(Groups as Percentage of Asian Population)
Ethnic Group 1970 1980 1990 2000
Japanese 61.4 39.9 17.4 11.9
Chinese 29.2 40.9 63.0 66.7
Filipino 6.4 4.3 3.1 2.3
Korean 1.5 6.2 3.5 1.8
Vietnamese — 4.6 7.8 8.4
Other 1.5 4.1 5.2 8.9
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Sources: Horton (1995), Census 2000.
on ethnic media as mobilizing storytelling agents of everyday life were largely
absent. As discussed in the previous chapter, ethnic media in a strong storytelling
neighborhood play a democratic role of encouraging conversation and civic
engagement. That is, in a communication infrastructure where various storytellers
help one another to imagine and talk about community, residents will have a better
sense of belonging, feel more empowered to solve collective problems, and are
more likely to participate politically (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Y.-C. Kim, 2003).
Recent work by the Metamorphosis Project, an ongoing study that utilizes
multi-methods to investigate immigrant communities in Los Angeles, has taken on
the task of exploring the complex communication infrastructure in the Chinese
immigrant society. Directed by Sandra Ball-Rokeach, the Metamorphosis Project
has conducted a media census since 2000, during which more than 350 print media
outlets have been identified, and among them, 44 publications are available in
Greater Monterey Park. The researchers also interviewed 156 ethnic media
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67
producers and senior editors across seven ethnic communities in Los Angeles
County in 2001. Of those, 30 publishers and editors in Greater Monterey Park were
interviewed. The following section details the media profile in this region.
Print Media
From church newsletters to more sophisticated ethnic publications, a total of
44 Chinese print media outlets have been identified in the Greater Monterey Park
area. Seventy-four percent of them are newspapers, 20 percent are magazines, and
the remaining 6 percent are newsletters and other types of publications. The
publications are predominantly (88 percent) in Chinese. Only one is published in
English, one provides a bilingual edition (Chinese/English), and several others are
available in other Southeast Asian languages such as Vietnamese or Thai. In terms
of their publishing schedule, there are ten dailies (31 percent of the total) in this 30
square-mile area. More than a third (38 percent) of them are weeklies, 22 percent
appear monthly, and the rest of them vary in terms of publishing schedules.
Moreover, 90 percent of these publications can be obtained at a cost of one dollar
or less, and 40 percent of them are distributed for free.
With regard to the history of ethnic Chinese press, more than 90 percent of
them were established after 1975, with the average being 19 years old. The
circulation varies from 5,000 to 150,000, and the subscription base ranges from 250
to 45,000. In terms of the size of the media organization, 70 percent of these papers
are operated by 10 people or less. The number of employees ranges from a single
person working alone in a small paper to 200 in an established media organization.
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68
Additionally, in terms of their geographic reach, 40 percent of the papers are
circulated in other parts of the country, and some of them even have readers in
other parts of the world.
Electronic Media
With regard to electronic media, there are a total of 10 channels that air all-
Chinese programs on network and cable television in the Greater Monterey Park
area. The stations are mostly based in Taiwan and Hong Kong and are largely
funded by corporations from these areas. The major television network is KSCI, or
Channel 18, a multi-language TV station serving ethnic audiences in Southern
California. KSCI was founded in 1977 and now reaches 5.3 million households.
They provide news, sports, drama, and entertainment programs that are produced
and aired in 14 different languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese.
Other Chinese channels are available only through cable and/or satellite.
According to the 2003 ISA viewership survey, Chinese Television Network (CTN)
and TVB/Jade station are the two most watched channels, followed by Sky Link
TV and Taipei International Satellite TV, Inc. Sky Link TV is the first fully
digitized Chinese television station that is based in the U.S., headquartered in
Rosemead, California. Established in 2001, Sky Link TV was invested and
operated by people from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. Its programming features
syndicated news from home countries as well as news, talk shows, financial
analysis, and health stories that are locally produced. Their programs are aired both
by cable television and Direct Broadcast Satellites (DBS), with an estimated
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600,000 total subscribers. Taipei International Satellite TV was founded in 1999
and is a joint venture of five major media corporations in Taiwan, including TTV,
CTV, CTS, BCC Radio, and CEN. They provide news, drama, variety shows,
movies, and other entertainment programs that are predominantly syndicated from
Taiwan. Two other channels air news programs from CCTV, mainland China’s
national broadcaster. Channel 4 is its international service, which in many ways is a
“propaganda exercise” (Sinclair et al., 2001, p.47). Channel 4 is aimed at diasporic
audiences and, through satellite leasing, is able to reach almost every part of the
world. Channel 9 provides services similar to Channel 4, but is broadcast in English.
With regard to Chinese radio stations in Los Angeles, the synergy between
KAZN AM1300 and KMNY AM 1600, owned by the Multicultural Radio
Broadcasting Inc., makes it possible for the 24-hour radio station to reach a larger
Mandarin-speaking audience. KMRB AM1430, on the other hand, is the only
station that serves Cantonese listeners in Los Angeles.
3.5 Summary
This chapter began with the historical evolution of the rising Chinese
diaspora starting from the 19th century. Since the Immigration Act of 1965 ended
the discriminatory quotas favoring Europeans over Asians and people of color, the
Chinese population in the United States has experienced phenomenal growth.
Unlike older immigrants that came with the gold rush a century ago, new waves of
Chinese immigrants have diverse backgrounds and are generally better off. They
come from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other Southeast Asian
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70
countries, and do not represent a homogeneous ethnic group. They tend to settle in
well-off suburban neighborhoods rather than cluster in the often disadvantaged
inner-city Chinatowns. These ethnicity and place-based differences thus give rise to
a hybrid, divergent Chinese diasporic identity.
Ethnic media are critical in the imagination and construction of diasporic
identities. The renaissance of overseas Chinese-language media in the U.S. reflects
the demand of new arrivals since the 1970s as well as the advancement of
information and communication technologies in the age of globalization. Currently
there are three major daily newspapers in this country, serving more than hundreds
of thousands of Chinese readers. Electronic media have been developing at a fast
rate since the late 1980s and many have been able to provide 24 hours of
programming. One of the most distinct features in these Chinese media is the
tendency to cover news about home countries. The extent to which they are able
and geared to cover more news and services at the community level and thus bridge
Chinese immigrants and the host society, however, remains an empirical question.
The Chinese immigrant communities in Monterey Park and its neighboring
cities in Los Angeles County, i.e., the research site of this project, serve a
microcosm for the changing nature of immigration to the U.S. Even though a
handful of scholars have conducted ethnographical studies of this site, studies on
ethnic media and the overall communication environment are absent. Recent work
by the Metamorphosis Project at USC was the first attempt to be able to identify 44
print media outlets and 10 channels that air all-Chinese programs on network and
cable television in this area. New communication technologies such as online
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71
Chinese media have also taken off since the mid-1990s. Traditional print and
electronic media have quickly taken advantaged of the Internet and migrated their
contents online.
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CHAPTER FOUR
METHODOLOGY
72
To investigate the role of ethnic media in the communication infrastructure
of one of the largest Chinese ethnic enclaves, this chapter will first propose a set of
research questions and hypotheses and then describe how data were collected
through multiple methods to answer the research inquiry. Measures of each
proposed concept will also be discussed.
4.1 Research Questions and Hypotheses
The research inquiry is proposed in line with three major themes: (a) the
role of ethnic media in the communication infrastructure, (b) residents’ dependency
relationships with ethnic media in relation to media producers’ major goals, and (c)
ethnic media as essential storytellers in community building.
Ethnic Media in the Communication Infrastructure
In California, some 53% of residents identify themselves as members of an
ethnic group, making those minorities in a sense, a majority. One result has been an
explosion of media to serve them. A survey conducted by New California Media
revealed that more than half of the ethnic groups surveyed preferred primary-
language media over English-language media. Also, they responded more to
native-language service ads than English-language ads (Chan, 2002). In view of the
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73
centrality of ethnic media in an increasingly multicultural society, this study seeks
to answer the following questions:
RQi : How central are ethnic media to Chinese immigrants in Greater Monterey
Park, relative to interpersonal communication, mainstream media, and new
media in the communication infrastructure?
(a) What is the intensity and scope of their connection to ethnic media?
(b) What are the factors that are associated with their connection to ethnic
media?
Most empirical studies suggest that first-generation immigrants often rely
on ethnic media more than subsequent generations because ethnic media generally
speak their language, offer a space for ethnic solidarity, and provide information
they may need to adapt to the host society (Y. Y. Kim, 1976, 1978; Lee & Tse,
1994; W.-Y. Lin, 2003; F. A. Subervi-Velez, 1986; Walker, 1999). O'Guinn, Faber,
and Meyer (1976), on the other hand, found that preference for Spanish-language
radio among Mexican Americans was positively related to age.
In addition to generation history and age, some researchers have factored in
residential tenure. That is, ethnic media help with an immigrant's adaptation in the
initial phase of the process. Lee & Tse (1994) discovered that the new immigrants
in their study consumed significantly more minutes and a higher percentage of
ethnic media than did long-time immigrants. This use declined over time, however,
as Kim (1978) suggested. Additionally, in Walker’s investigation into the media’s
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74
role in the adaptation of first-year Haitian immigrants in Miami, he found that new
arrivals often naturally turned to the media for information that they could not find
elsewhere. However, he also suggested a possible negative effect on adaptation if
immigrants depended on ethnic media for too long (Walker, 1993,1999). Hence, a
relatively strong relationship between immigrants and ethnic media tends to
discourage the longer-term development of immigrants’ participation in the host
culture’s social processes (Lam, 1980; Walker, 1999; Yang, 1988). Thus, this study
hypothesizes the following:
Hi-i: First-generation Chinese immigrants have greater connections to ethnic media
than the second generation and beyond.
H 1-2 : Age is positively associated with residents’ connections to ethnic media.
H 1.3 : Residential tenure is negatively associated with residents’ connections to
ethnic media.
H 1- 4 : Longer-term residents with greater ethnic media connections tend to have
lower levels of belonging to their neighborhood than their counterparts with
less ethnic media connections.
Moreover, since the Chinese diaspora is so complex and differences exhibit
in places of origin, migration patterns, and socioeconomic characteristics, this study
hypothesizes that a difference will also be observed in the media practices across
subgroups from different countries of origin.
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75
Hi_5 : The connections to ethnic media are different among Chinese immigrants
from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Media Dependency Relations
To understand the relationships between media content consumers and
producers, the study seeks to address the following questions:
RQ2: What are the major goals of Chinese immigrants when they consume ethnic
media content? To what extent are ethnic media producers’ major goals in line
with those of their consumers?
More often than not, different types of media serve different functions and
fulfill different goals of their audiences. Many have noted local newspaper
readership, rather than television viewership, as contributing to community
integration (Emig, 1995; Finnegan & Viswanath, 1988; Janowitz, 1952; McLeod et
al., 1996; Stamm & Fortini-Campbell, 1983). Lee & Tse (1994), on the other hand,
discovered that television was used most heavily by immigrants for both
information and entertainment purposes, as it has the richest set of communication
cues and therefore relieves the pressures that strangers might feel in dealing with
the host environment. Hence, people’s connections to media tend to be goal(s)
specific. This study thus expects to observe differences in the goals of media
consumption across different types of media.
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H2 : Chinese immigrants establish dependency relations with different media to
attain different goals.
Storytelling into Community Building
Researchers have concluded that feelings of attachment, identification, and
involvement in a community are associated with communication, through reading
the newspapers, talking with neighbors, and the like. As discussed earlier, media
that target an ethnic group can play an important role in the immigrant community
and serve as building blocks for strengthening civil society. Literature also suggests
that if residents live in a place long enough, own a home, send their children to a
local school, or work, shop, and attend church in the local area, they tend to
become more settled in and feel greater levels of belonging to the community.
Hence, local content in ethnic media is essential to engaging new arrivals into the
unfamiliar, host society (Edelstein & Larsen, 1960; Emig, 1995; Finnegan &
Viswanath, 1988; Jankowski, 2002; L. Jeffres, J. Dobos, & J.-W. Lee, 1988;
McLeod et al., 1996; McLeod et al., 1999; Stamm, Emig, & Hesse, 1997;
Viswanath, Finnegan, Rooney, & Potter, 1990; Wyatt et al., 2000).
On the other hand, there has been a homeward tendency in ethnic media
content, and case studies have demonstrated that home country news can be a
significant part of many immigrants’ lives (M. Lum, 1998; Sinclair et al., 2001).
Furthermore, transnational flows of ideas, labor, and capital have made news
possible to connect “here” and “there,” so immigrants may maintain cultural ties
and build connections to the adopted society simultaneously (M. Lum, 1998;
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77
Sinclair et al., 2001; Srebemy, 2003; Sun, 2002). This study thus seeks to learn the
extent to which the ethnic press in one of the largest Chinese enclaves in North
America today covers home country stories and transnational news.
Most important of all, this study promotes a geo-ethnic storytelling practice
that serves to address the concerns of a particular ethnic group and attend to the
issues and events in the immigrant community. Hence, this study is eager to
explore the extent to which geo-ethnic stories are told in ethnic media.
RQ3: What types of news stories are produced in ethnic newspapers?
(a) To what extent do ethnic media cover transnational news that connect
home and the host country?
(b) To what extent do ethnic media cover home country and local stories? To
what extent do ethnic media cover geo-ethnic stories that are central to
community building?
In addition, the characteristics of media organizations will be further
investigated to reveal whether they may have an impact on the content. The
emphasis is placed on the print media, as the press has proved to have the strongest
impact on civic participation (e.g., McLeod et al., 1996; Viswanath et al., 1990).
H3 : Ownership location, history, size, and circulation of the media are associated
with the extent to which geo-ethnic stories are produced.
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78
4.2 Data Collection
The data employed in this dissertation are a part of the Metamorphosis
Project’s efforts, which has studied ten major residential areas within 10 miles of
the Los Angeles Civic Center. Los Angeles, being one of the most culturally
diverse cities in the world, challenges the traditional urban experience and notions
of association and identity. In particular, its ethnic Chinese presence is one of the
largest in California as well as in North America (Allen & Turner, 2002; Census
Bureau, 2001).
The residential area of interest for this study is Greater Monterey Park of
Los Angeles County, located within ten miles east from the Civic Center. An
ethnically diverse, young, and middle-class area, this community consists of
Monterey Park, Alhambra, and portions of Rosemead, San Gabriel, San Marino,
and neighboring cities in the San Gabriel Valley. In the 1970s, this area,
surrounding the city of Monterey Park, was developed into a major service and
cultural center for Chinese residents, and touted as the “Chinese Beverley Hills”
(Allen & Turner, 2002; Fong, 1994; Horton, 1995). Table 4-1 shows the proportion
of Chinese population in Monterey Park and its neighboring cities.
To answer the above research questions and test the hypotheses, multiple
methods employed in this study include a telephone survey of the residents, a
media census conducted in this area, interviews with media producers and senior
editors, and a content analysis of the ethnic press.
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79
Table 4-1
Chinese Population in Monterey Park and Neighboring Cities
City Chinese Population % of the City’s Total
Population
Alhambra 28,437 33.1%
Monterey Park 24,758 41.2%
Arcadia 18,041 34.0%
Rosemead 15,678 29.3%
San Gabriel 13,376 33.6%
San Marino 5,260 40.0%
Source: Census 2000.
Telephone Survey
The survey was administered by telephone using random digital dialing
(RDD) in the preferred language of the respondent’s choice, including English,
Mandarin, and Cantonese. A total of 321 adults, 18 years or older, responded to the
survey. Included in the study sample were people from the PRC (N=176, or 55%),
Taiwan (N=72, or 22%), Hong Kong (N=48, or 16%), and other Southeast Asian
countries (N=25, or 15%). The response rate was 27 percent when calculated most
conservatively by dividing the number of completed interviews by the number of
theoretically eligible phone numbers. But the completion rate, or the percent of
eligible respondents who completed an interview, was relatively high (56%),
despite the fact that the phone interview was 40 to 47 minutes long. Although there
are sample biases, due to the response rate, they appear to be within the normal
ranges for a survey of this complexity (Keeter, Kohut, Groves, & Presser, 2000).
The survey was implemented and completed by December 1999.
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80
To obtain demographic information, respondents were asked about their age
on their last birthday, and household income last year (in ranges staggered from
less than $20,000 to more than $100,000). Age was then broken into five categories.
The highest grade or year of school completed was used to indicate educational
level, ranging from eighth grade or less to a graduate degree. For gender, male is
coded as “1” and female as “0.” Immigration history was measured by the
generation of a respondent’s first family member to immigrate to the United States.
Residential tenure is a continuous measure of years of neighborhood residence.
Home ownership is a dichotomous measure, with owners being marked as “1” and
renter as “0 .”
Intensity o f media connection was measured by hours spent on Chinese
media in a typical week. For each of these media types, respondents were given
categories from “a few minutes to one hour,” “two hours,” “three hours,” “four
hours,” “five hours,” to “six or more hours.” Scope o f media connection was a
summation of the types of media available to the respondent. This was assessed
through a two-step procedure. First, respondents reported whether they had spent
any time connected to ethnic newspaper, television, or radio in the prior week. The
answer was coded as “1” if yes, and “0” if no, in each respective medium. Second,
the number of affirmative connections was added up to create a scope variable that
reflects the breadth of their connectedness. The measure ranges from 0 to 3.
To measure residents’ media dependency relations regarding their goals of
understanding, orientation, and play, respondents were asked to choose from a
variety of media the most important one for them to “stay on top of what is
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81
happening in the community,” “get information to make decisions about the
products they buy,” and “relax and have fun.”
Neighborhood belonging is measured by the “belonging index” developed
by Ball-Rokeach and associates (2001). The 8 -item belonging index captures
subjective and objective attachment to one’s neighborhood. The index includes
equal numbers of items measuring subjective and objective dimensions. The
specific items are listed below:
(a) Do you strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree or strongly
disagree with the statement (respondents to choose on a 5-point Likert scale):
1. You are interested in knowing what your neighbors are like.
2. You enjoy meeting and talking with your neighbors.
3. It’s easy to become friends with your neighbors.
4. Your neighbors always borrow things from you and your family.
(b) How many of your neighbors do you know well enough to ask them to
(respondents to specify a number):
5. Keep watch on your house or apartment?
6 . Ask for a ride?
7. Talk with them about a personal problem?
8 . Ask for their assistance in making a repair?
The Cronbach alpha test for index scalability is .78.
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82
Media Census and Interviews
A media census was carried out between 1999 and 2000 in seven ethnic
communities, including Greater Monterey Park, and the compiled media list has
been updated since then. The list of media organizations was obtained from
different sources including directories, the yellow pages, and the Internet. These
organizations range from mom-and-pop businesses to sophisticated commercial
operations. Copies of publications were collected from the bookstore, grocery
stores and restaurants, the public library, and on the street. Two primary selection
criteria for the publications were ethnicity and geography. Media that target certain
ethnic group(s) and/or certain residential area(s) were selected. There are a total of
44 publications available in Greater Monterey Park as of 2003. Earlier in 2000, 30
media producers and senior editors were interviewed. The interview consisted of
twenty questions, ranging from basic demographic information to their editorial
policies. In particular, interviewees were asked about the type of publication, how
often it was published, the price of each issue, ownership of the news organization,
numbers of subscriptions and circulation, demographic characteristics of readership,
targeted geographic areas for coverage, number of employees, sources of revenues,
and its distribution. Editorial staff members were also asked about the major goals
of the publication, major types of stories covered, and major sources of the stories.
Content Analysis
A content analysis was conducted in 2004 to investigate ethnic media’s
storytelling capacities. Two issues of each available general-interest publication in
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83
the Greater Monterey Park area, including dailies, weeklies, and bi-weeklies,
published within a six-month timeframe (from September 2003 to February 2004)
were selected. A total of 17 newspapers were obtained at the time of collection and
34 separate issues (two of each paper) were included in this analysis. Two coders,
blind to the purpose of the research, were hired and trained to perform the coding
task. They were both graduate students at the University of Southern California
whose mother tongue is Chinese and who are also fluent in English.
Two hundred articles were first selected and coded to calculate the
intercoder reliability. The kappa measure of agreement was used to assess the
reliability. The values of kappa obtained were satisfactory, with an average of .819,
considered excellent agreement beyond chance (SPSS Base 10.0 Applications
Guide, 1999). Areas of disagreement were identified and resolved. Once the
intercoder reliability was established, a total of 4,102 news articles were content
analyzed.
The unit of analysis in this study is the news article. The articles were coded
for newspaper type (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or other), language of the paper
(Chinese or Chinese/English bilingual), placement of the news story (page and
section), story type (news, opinion, photo, bulletin board, or other), source of the
story (staff writer, wire services, other media, or other), and story topic (politics,
religion, economics, entertainment, education, arts and culture, crime, health,
immigration, everyday life, sports, travel, consumer information, people, and other).
Most important of all, the concept of “geo-ethnic stories” was defined in
terms of ethnicity and geography. By identifying whether “this story refers to the
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ethnic group targeted by the newspaper” and “where the story takes place,” the
researcher was able to capture the interaction between ethnically focused stories
and different levels of “localness.” A ladder of “localness” was developed to
classify news stories by their geographical location. At the very bottom of the
ladder is the neighborhood-\Qve\ story, which covers the happenings in the
community or in the city. A county-level story refers to issues and events that
concern the residents of Greater Los Angeles. A regional-level story covers issues
and events that take place in Southern California. Outside the local area, a state-
level story is concerned with statewide events, agencies, and policies in California.
A national-level story refers to domestic issues and events in the 50 states of the
United States. Finally, an international-level story includes coverage of issues and
events that impact two or more countries, including home countries. Besides the
geographical location, a “transnational” story was measured by identifying whether
a story concerns “both home and host country issues” regardless of where it takes
place.
Different levels of geo-ethnic stories were assigned different scores. The
highest score, 3, was assigned to geo-ethnic stories at the neighborhood level,
followed by stories at the Greater Los Angeles level, with a score of 2, and stories
scored at 1 at the Southern California regional level. Stories that were not geo
ethnic stories received a score of zero.
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85
4.3 Summary
To investigate the communication infrastructure in one of the largest
Chinese ethnic enclaves in North America, and to highlight the roles of ethnic
media and their storytelling practices, this study proposed three sets of research
questions and hypotheses:
Ethnic Media in the Communication Infrastructure
RQi : How central are ethnic media to Chinese immigrants in Greater Monterey
Park, relative to interpersonal communication, mainstream media, and new
media in the communication infrastructure?
(a) What is the intensity and scope of their connection to ethnic media?
(b) What are the factors that are associated with their connection to ethnic
media?
Hj.i: First-generation Chinese immigrants have greater connections to ethnic media
than the second generation and beyond.
H u : Age is positively associated with residents’ connections to ethnic media.
H 1- 3 : Residential tenure is negatively associated with residents’ connections to
ethnic media.
H 1- 4 : Longer-term residents with greater ethnic media connections tend to have
lower levels of belonging to their neighborhood than their counterparts with
less ethnic media connections.
H 1- 5 : The connections to ethnic media are different among Chinese immigrants
from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
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Media Dependency Relations
RQ2: What are the major goals of Chinese immigrants when they consume ethnic
media content? To what extent are ethnic media producers’ major goals in line
with those of their consumers?
H 2: Chinese immigrants establish dependency relations with different media to
attain different goals.
Storytelling into Building Communities
RQ3: What types of news stories are produced in ethnic newspapers?
(a) To what extent do ethnic media cover transnational news stories that
connect home and the host country?
(b) To what extent do ethnic media cover home country and local stories? To
what extent do ethnic media cover geo-ethnic stories that are central to
community building?
H 3 : Ownership location, history, size, and circulation of the media are associated
with the extent to which geo-ethnic stories are produced.
Multiple methods were used to address the above inquiry. Those included a
telephone survey of 321 households, a media census that identified 44 print media
outlets and 10 television channels in this area, interviews with 30 media producers
and senior editors, and a content analysis of 4,102 news articles in the ethnic press.
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CHAPTER FIVE
RESULTS
87
5.1 Descriptive Analysis
The Greater Monterey Park area is located 7.6 miles from the Los Angeles
Civic Center. This thirty-square-mile area includes the cities of Monterey Park,
Alhambra, and portions of Rosemead, San Marino, and San Gabriel. It is an
ethnically diverse, young, and middle-class area.
Residents Profile. A total of 321 households in Greater Monterey Park
responded to our telephone survey in 1999. Included in the sample were people
originating from the People’s Republic of China (N=176, 55%), Taiwan (N-72,
22%), Hong Kong (N=48, 15%), and other Southeast Asian countries (N=25, 8 %).
Seventy-two percent of the sample were first generation immigrants, with less than
half having (46%) resided in Los Angeles for more than 10 years, and more than a
third (37%) having lived in the area for 3 years or less. The reported average
household income of the respondents was $30,950. Forty-one percent had at least a
college degree, and 46 percent owned their homes. The primary mode of travel for
the majority of the Chinese respondents (85%) was car, as opposed to public
transportation. They also had a very low unemployment rate (5%). Compared with
Census 2000 estimates of the demographic characteristics of all Asian groups, the
sample is older, with a mean age of 43 years old, but otherwise very similar. Table
5.1 provides a demographic profile of the sampled Chinese residents in Greater
Monterey Park.
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Table 5.1
The Profile of the Chinese Sample in Greater Monterey Park
_______________________ (N=321)_______________________
Age (mean) 43
Gender (% female) 51
Household Income (mean $) 30,950
^ $35,000 57%
^ $75,000
1 2 %
Level of Education
^ High School 40%
^ College Grad.
41%
Years in Neighborhood
< 3 Years 37%
> 10 Years 25%
Years in Los Angeles
< 3 Years 2 1 %
> 10 Years 46%
% First Generation 72%
% Own Home 46%
Ethnic Media Profile. Regarding the Chinese print media in the Great
Monterey Park area, 74 percent of them are newspapers, 20 percent are magazines,
and the rest are tabloids or newsletters (see Table 5.2). The publications are
predominantly (8 8 %) in Chinese. Only one is published in English, one is bilingual
(Chinese/English), and two others are published in Southeast Asian languages such
as Vietnamese or Thai. In terms of their publishing schedule, there are 10 dailies,
which compose almost a third of the total, in this 30 square-mile area. There are
also 12 weeklies (38%) and 7 monthlies (22%). The rest are published on a
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89
different schedule. As to the price, in general, 90 percent of these publications can
be obtained for a dollar or less, and 40 percent are even distributed for free. In
terms of distribution, more than half are subscription based, although they are also
available on bookstands (43%), or are given away free at supermarkets, grocery
stores, and restaurants (38%). The subscription base ranges from 250 to 45,000,
and their circulation varies between 5,000 and 150,000. In particular, 17 percent of
the papers have a circulation of 1 0 , 0 0 0 or less, and almost half have a circulation
under 50,000. The largest newspaper, the Chinese Daily News, on the other hand,
has a circulation of 150,000.
In terms of the history of the media organizations publishing these papers,
more than 90 percent of them were established after 1975, with the average
organization being about 19 years old. Almost half of them (46%) were established
during the 1990s. The organizations vary in size, but the majority of them (92%)
have a staff of 100 people or less. More than 60 percent of the agencies have under
10 employees. Regarding their ownership location, 40 percent of these print media
are located in Greater Monterey Park and another 40 percent in Greater Los
Angeles. Two are based in other parts of California and New York. A handful of
them (3%) are headquartered in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. Also, almost 40
percent of the newspapers are circulated in other parts of the world as well.
In the survey, newspaper publishers and editors were also asked about the
sources of their revenues, although more than a third of them chose not to reply.
Among those who responded, however, more than 90 percent said they relied on
advertising, and ten media organizations even quoted advertising sales as the only
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Table 5.2
Overview of Ethnic Print Media in Greater Monterey Park
Type
Newspaper 23 (74% )
Magazine
6 (20% )
Other (tabloid, newsletter, etc.)
2 (6% )
Language
Chinese
29 (88% )
English
1 (3% )
Chinese/English
1 (3% )
Other
2 (6% )
Period
Daily
10 (31% )
Weekly
12 (38% )
Monthly
7 (22% )
Other
3 (9% )
Price
Free
12 (40% )
^ $1
15 (50% )
>$1
3 (10% )
Circulation
Up to 10,000
5 (17% )
Up to 20,000
8 (28% )
Up to 50,000
14 (48% )
UP to 150,000
2 (7% )
History
Since 1990s
1 3 (46% )
Since 1980s
10 (36% )
Since 1970s
3 (11% )
Since 1920s
2 (27% )
Ownership Location
Greater Monterey Park
12 (40% )
Los Angeles
12 (40% )
U.S. (outside L.A.)
2 (7% )
Asia
4 (3% )
Foreign presence
No 17 (61% )
Yes America
1 (21% )
Asia
4 (11% )
Europe
5 (7% )
Employees
Up to 10
16 (64% )
UP to 100 7 (28% )
Up to 200 2 (8% )
Sources of Revenue
Advertising
23 (92%)
Subscriptions 13 (54% )
Newsstands 9 (38% )
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91
source of revenue. In addition, fifty-four percent of these media organizations
reported subscription-based proceeds. Only one agency depended totally on
subscriptions for their income. Thirty-eight percent also relied on newsstands sales,
although these sales only accounted for less than a third of their total revenues.
Table 5.2 summarizes the major characteristics of ethnic print media in Greater
Monterey Park. Figures were based on the media census and the interview data,
with some missing values in several of the categories.
5.2 Ethnic Media Connections
How central are ethnic media to Chinese immigrants in Greater Monterey
Park, relative to interpersonal communication, mainstream media, and new media
in the communication infrastructure? In terms of the intensity of their connection to
ethnic media, residents were found to spend an average of more than 9 hours per
week on ethnic media regardless of type of media (e.g., newspaper, television, and
radio), compared to only 2.6 hours spent on mainstream media. Residents in the
sample used the Internet approximately 6-7 hours per week. However, they did not
communicate with neighbors frequently. The mean score for the question about
how often they engaged in discussion with other people in the neighborhood was
only 3.3, on a ten-point scale, with 1 being never having the discussion and 10
being having the discussion all the time. Regarding specific type of ethnic media
connection, TV appeared to be the most popular medium, with an average of 3.8
hours’ weekly consumption. The Chinese respondents also spent 2.8 hours reading
newspapers, and 2.4 hours listening to the radio each week. In comparison, they
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92
spent much less time on English-language mainstream media. On average they
spent 1.3 hours per week watching mainstream TV, less than an hour listening to
English-language radio, and they barely read mainstream newspapers. Table 5.3
summarizes the difference in residents’ connections to ethic media and mainstream
media.
Table 5.3
Intensity of Ethnic and Mainstream Media Connections of Chinese
Residents in Greater Monterey Park
(Hours per week)
TV Newspaper Radio Total
Ethnic Media 3.8 2.8 2.4 9.0
Mainstream Media 1.3 0.3 1.0 2.6
With regard to the breadth of their media connections, almost half (49%) of
the Chinese residents had access to all three types of ethnic media, i.e., television,
newspaper, and radio. Twenty-eight percent of them had connection to two types of
media, whereas 13 percent had only one ethnic media connection. It should be
noted that 1 0 percent of the residents did not have connection to any type of ethnic
media at all. On the other hand, only 16 percent of the residents accessed all three
types of these mainstream media. More than half had connections to either one
(27%) or two (38%) types of mainstream media, whereas almost 20 percent of
them did not access to any type at all (see Table 5.4).
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93
Table 5.4
Scope of Ethnic and Mainstream Media Connections of Chinese Residents
in Greater Monterey Park
Ethnic media connections
0 1 0 %
1 13%
2 28%
3 49%
Total 100%
Mainstream media connections
0 19%
1 27%
2 38%
3 16%
Total 100%
Different Types o f Media Relations
Overall, the majority of Chinese residents were connected in varying degrees
to both ethnically targeted as well as mainstream media. But 40 percent of them did
not engage in interpersonal communication at the neighborhood level. Forty-seven
percent of them did not have access to the Internet as of 1999. Table 5.5 reveals
those non-connectors in the Greater Monterey Park area.
Table 5.5
Non-connectors in Greater Monterey Park
(As of 1999)
Media Type
Percentage of those who do not
have connections
Ethnic Media 1 0 %
Mainstream Media 19%
Interpersonal Communication 40%
The Internet 47%
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94
In particular, differences exist between those Internet connectors and non
connectors in terms of their ethnic and mainstream media connections. Table 5.6
shows that non-Internet connectors spent significantly more time on ethnic media
than Internet surfers (F=62.406, df=l, p< .001). In contrast, Internet connectors
spent more time on mainstream media than non-connectors (F= 53.022, df =1,
p< .001) even though the consumption levels were both low.
Table 5.6
Ethnic vs. Mainstream Media Connections between Internet
Connectors and Non-connectors
(Time in Hours Per Week)
Internet connectors Non-connectors
Ethnic media**
Newspaper 2.24 3.54
Television 3.10 4.67
Radio 1.65 3.58
Mainstream media**
Newspaper 0. 51 0. 01
Television 0. 57 0. 99
Radio 1.41 0.48
** p< .001
A correlation analysis on the intensity of communication variables (see
Table 5.7) indicated that time spent on ethnic media was negatively related to that
that of mainstream media (r= -.373, p< .001), whereas the time spent on
mainstream media correlated positively with the time spent online (r= .220, p< .01).
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95
Table 5.7
Correlations between Different Communication Variables
English media
Chinese media -0.373
**
Interpersonal
-0.070
Online
-0.041
English media 0.058 0.220
**
Interpersonal discussion -0.040
Online
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level
A correlation analysis on the scope of media connection variables also
revealed a similar pattern. Connections to ethnic Chinese newspaper, television,
and radio were positively correlated with one another. But connections to all three
types of ethnic Chinese media were related to Internet connection in a negative way.
On the other hand, connections to mainstream TV, newspapers, and radio were
positively correlated with Internet connection. Interpersonal neighborhood
discussion was found to relate positively to mainstream newspaper connection
(r= .129, p< .05) but negatively to Chinese newspaper connection (r= -.124, p< .05)
although the strengths of both relationships were minimal (see Table 5.8).
Ethnic Communication and Demographic Variables
What are the factors associated with Chinese residents’ ethnic media
connections? A correlation analysis was conducted to examine the
interrelationships between ethnic media connections and residents’ demographic
characteristics. As is apparent in Table 5.9, immigration generation was negatively
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Table 5.8
Correlations between Scope of Media Connections
(2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
(1) Chinese newspaper connection 0.359 0.370 -0.147 -0.057 -0.163 -0.124 -0.199
** ** ** ** * **
(2) Chinese TV connection 0.374 -0.120 0.088 -0.207 0.011 -0.238
** * ** **
(3) Chinese radio connection -0.189 -0.071 -0.078 -0.005 -0.257
** **
(4) English newspaper connection 0.185 0.251 0.129 0.433
** ** * **
(5) English TV connection 0.253 -0.018 0.192
** **
(6) English radio connection 0.040 0.378
* *
(7) Interpersonal communication 0.097
(8) Internet connection
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level______________________________________
related to time spent on all three types of ethnic media connections (newspapers,
television, and radio), whereas age was positively related to them. In addition, the
time spent on Chinese TV and radio was negatively correlated with educational
level, and the connection to Chinese radio was negatively related to income,
although the correlation coefficients were fairly small. Residential tenure was
slightly related to age but did not correlate with any type of ethnic media
connection. Also, time spent on ethnic media did not seem to differ by country of
origin as well.
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97
Table 5.9
Correlations between Intensity of Ethnic Media Connections and
Demographic Variables
(2)
(1) Chinese newspaper 0.431
**
(3)
0.431
**
(4)
-0.251
**
(5)
0.425
**
(6)
0.046
(7)
-0.006
(8)
-0.050
(9)
-0.015
(2) Chinese TV 0.410
**
-0.187
**
0.277
**
-0.045 0.020 -0.065 -0.193
**
(3) Chinese radio -0.180
**
0.349
**
0.026 -0.054 -0.121
*
-0.187
**
(4) Immigration generation -0.361
**
0.023 -0.048 0.010 0.005
(5) Age 0.198
**
-0.017 -0.037 -0.127
*
(6) Years in neighborhood 0.110
*
0.253
**
0.045
(7) Country of origin 0.096 0.028
(8) Annual Income 0.327
* *
(9) Educational level
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level.
Table 5.10 shows correlations between the scope of ethnic media
connections and demographic variables. The results are similar to those for
intensity of ethnic media connections. For one thing, connections to ethnic Chinese
print and electronic media were positively correlated between themselves. For
another, three types of Chinese media connection were all negatively related to
immigration generation but positively correlated to respondents’ age.
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Table 5.10
Correlations between Scope of Ethnic Media Connections and
Demographic Variables
(2)
(1) Chinese newspaper 0.359
**
(3)
0.370
**
(4)
-0.225
**
(5)
0.299
**
(6)
-0.052
(7)
0.069
(8)
-0.046
(9)
0.017
(2) Chinese TV 0.374
**
-.162
**
0.187
**
-0.031 0.068 -0.093 -0.078
(3) Chinese radio -0.213
**
0.276
**
0.041 -0.002 -0.072 -0.142
*
(4) Immigration generation -0.361
**
0.023 -0.048 0.010 0.005
(5) Age 0.198
**
-0.017 -0.037 -0.127
*
(6) Years in neighborhood 0.110
*
0.253
**
0.045
(7) Country of origin 0.096 0.028
(8) Annual Income
(9) Educational level
0.327
**
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level.
In addition to correlation analyses, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was
conducted to examine the degree to which connections to ethnic media differed
across demographic variables. Table 5.11 through 5.13 show the differences in
connections to ethnic Chinese newspapers, TV, and radio, respectively, by
immigration generation, age, residential tenure, and country of origin. For ethnic
newspaper readership (see Table 5.11), first generation immigrants, on average,
spent more than 3 hours a week reading Chinese newspapers, whereas second
generations spent less than two hours per week. The difference is significant at the
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99
0.001 level (F=21.217, d f=1, p< .001). The factor of age is significant as well.
Seniors (55 years or older) read Chinese papers for 4.1 hours per week, more than
double the time spent by younger people (F= 17.957, df = 4, p< .001). With regard
to residential tenure, those who had lived in the area for less than five years spent
an average of 2.7 hours on Chinese papers, compared to 3 hours for those who had
lived there longer than five years, although this difference is not statistically
significant. Ethnic media connections vary with residents’ country of origin as well.
Immigrants from Taiwan spent an average of 3.6 hours per week reading Chinese
newspapers, compared to 2.7 hours and 2.3 hours of their counterparts from China
and Hong Kong, respectively (F= 7.661, df = 2, p< .01).
Table 5.11
Ethnic Chinese Newspaper Readership at a Glance
(Time spent in a week)
Generation** First 3.2 hours
Second 1.9 hours
Age** 55 or older 4.1 hours
40-54 3.4 hours
30-39 2.3 hours
25-29 1.6 hours
18-24 1.4 hours
Residential Tenure 5 years or less 2.7 hours
Longer than 5 years 3.0 hours
Countrv of Origin* Taiwan 3.6 hours
China 2.7 hours
Hong Kong 2.3 hours
* p< .01
** p< .001
On the other hand, residents’ connection to ethnic Chinese television varies
significantly by immigration generation, age, and country of origin (see Table 5.12).
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100
Ethnic
Table 5.12
Chinese Television Audience at a Glance
(Time spent in a week)
Generation* First 4.1 hours
Second 3.1 hours
Aee** 55 or older 4.5 hours
40-54 4.4 hours
30-39 3.5 hours
25-29 3.8 hours
18-24 2.4 hours
Residential Tenure 5 years or less 3.9 hours
Longer than 5 years 3.7 hours
Country of Origin Taiwan 4.1 hours
China 3.7 hours
Hong Kong 3.7 hours
* p< .01
** p< .001
First generations spent more than 4 hours per week viewing ethnically targeted
television programs, compared to 3 hours by second generations (F= 11.328, df = 1,
p< .01). Seniors watched more Chinese TV than their younger cohorts. Those who
were more than 40 years of age spent about 4.5 hours per week on Chinese TV,
whereas those under 25 years old spent only 2.4 hours (F= 7.477, df = 4, p< .001).
Residents who had lived in the area longer showed a slightly greater tendency (3.9
hours/week) to watch ethnic Chinese television program than newcomers (3.7
hours/week), although the difference is not statistically different. Regarding
residents’ country of origin, Taiwanese-origin residents spent more than 4 hours a
week on Chinese TV, followed by 3.7 hours by Chinese-origin and Hong Kong-
origin residents. However, the difference is again not statistically different.
The profile of ethnic radio listeners was similar. First generations (F= 10.488,
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101
df = 1, p< .01) and older residents (F=l 1.138, df = 4, p< .001) tended to listen to
Chinese radio programs more than second generations and younger people. In
addition, residents who had lived in the neighborhood longer than five years were
found to spend more time on Chinese radio than new arrivals, and Taiwanese-
origin residents listened to the radio slightly more than Chinese-origin and Hong
Kong-origin immigrants, but those differences are not significant (see Table 5.13).
Table 5.13
Ethnic Chinese Radio Audience at a Glance
(Time spent in a week)
Generation* First 2.9 hours
Second 1.8 hours
Age** 55 or older 3.5 hours
40-54 3.1 hours
30-39 2.3 hours
25-29 1.2 hours
18-24 1.1 hours
Residential Tenure 5 years or less 2.5 hours
Longer than 5 years 2.6 hours
Country of Origin Taiwan 2.8 hours
China 2.6 hours
Hong Kong 2.1 hours
* p< .01
** p< .001
Generation of Immigration
As indicated by the above analysis, immigration history was found to
negatively correlate to both the intensity and scope of ethnic media connections. In
other words, first generations had more intense and greater scope of ethnic media
connections than second generations, other socioeconomic variables controlled.
Significant differences were found in each respective type of medium (newspaper,
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102
television, and radio), and first generation immigrants generally depended much
more on ethnic media than their second-generation counterparts. Thus, the first
hypothesis, Hj.P First generation Chinese immigrants have greater connections to
ethnic media than the second generation and beyond, is supported.
Age
Age proved to be a key factor that is associated with residents’ ethnic media
connections. From the correlation analysis, age was found to positively correlate
with both intensity and scope of ethnic media connections. The results from the
ANOVA revealed that older Chinese residents spent much more time on ethnic
newspapers than did young adults (see Table 5.11 ~ 5.13). The hypothesis, H 1.2 :
Age is positively associated with residents ’ connections to ethnic media, is thus
supported.
Residential Tenure
Residential tenure was not found to correlate with either intensity or scope
of media connections (see Table 5.9 and 5.10). Longer-time residents spent less
time on ethnic Chinese TV than did new arrivals, but they spent more time on
ethnic Chinese newspapers and radio. Also, these differences were not statistically
significant. Hence the hypothesis, H 1.3 : Residential tenure is negatively associated
with residents ’ connections to ethnic media, is not supported.
To examine whether residential tenure mediated the effect between the
levels of belonging and each of the ethnic media connections, ANOVA was
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103
performed. In general, the differences in the belonging scores between heavy users
and low users of ethnic media were not statistically significant. However, after
controlling for the residential tenure variable, significant differences in the
belonging scores between heavy users and low users of ethnic television and radio
were found among residents who had lived in the neighborhood for 5 years or
longer. That is, longer-term residents who spent more time watching ethnic
television channels had a lower sense of belonging than those who did not watch
much of it (F= 4.486, df = 1, p< .05). Similarly, longer-term residents who listened
to more ethnic radio programs scored poorly in the belonging composite variable
than those who did not listen too much (F= 5.234, df = 1, p< .05). In the case of
ethnic newspapers, heavy consumption was associated with lower belonging scores
for longer-term residents; however, the difference only approached, but did not
reach, a statistically significant level. Thus, the hypothesis, H j.p Longer-term
residents with more ethnic media connections tend to have lower levels o f
belonging to their neighborhood than their counterparts with less ethnic media
connections, is supported in the cases of ethnic television and radio connections but
not ethnic newspaper connections.
Country of Origin
Chinese residents in Greater Monterey Park from different countries of
origin exhibit various socioeconomic characteristics. Table 5.14 shows some
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104
Table 5.14
Demographic Differences among Residents from China, Taiwan,
and Hong Kong in Greater Monterey Park
China Taiwan HK
Age*
18-24 16% 10% 36%
40-54 25% 33% 21%
55+ 25% 29% 28%
Income**
< $20,000 37% 21% 26%
>$100,000 5% 16% 3%
Education
8th grade or less 15% 6% 13%
Graduate degree 7% 19% 13%
Immigration generation
First 59% 76% 35%
Second 27% 18% 26%
Years in neighborhood
Less than a year 17% 10% 10%
More than 10 years* 18% 38% 18%
Proud of neighborhood
Very proud 13% 20% 5%
Not at all proud 18% 13% 29%
Ease of leaving neighborhood
It takes a lot 32% 23% 35%
It takes nothing at all 25% 27% 18%
Belonging score (1-40) 15.5 16.0 16.3
News importance (1st mention)
National news 42% 30% 44%
California news 10% 5% 15%
Los Angeles news 18% 16% 23%
Neighborhood news 11% 13% 10%
Country of origin news** 19% 36% 8%
Home computer history...
Less than 1 year 21% 2% 19%
More than 6 years 23% 49% 26%
Internet connection 49% 60% 67%
* Significance is at the 0.05 level.
** Significance is at the 0.01 level.
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105
variations among immigrants from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Although the
three groups were similar in many ways, Hong Kong-origin immigrants tended to
be younger, Taiwanese-origin immigrants tended to be more affluent and better
educated, and Chinese mainlanders’ presence in the area was relatively recent. In
addition, immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan had fairly high Internet
connections. Taiwanese immigrants also had a longer home computer history. They
stayed in the neighborhood longer and were very proud of their neighborhood.
However, they considered home country news much more important than did the
other two groups.
In terms of their media connections, residents’ consumption of English-
language mainstream media was minimal compared to that of ethnic media. On
average, they spent less than 20 minutes per week reading English newspapers, and
slightly more time watching mainstream TV (1.3 hours) and listening to
mainstream radio (1.0 hour). The difference in time spent on mainstream media
was not significant among the three groups. On the other hand, Taiwanese-origin
residents consistently spent more time than the other two groups across different
types of ethnic media. They generally read more ethnically targeted newspapers,
watched more Chinese TV programs, and listened to Chinese radio programs more
often than their counterparts from China and Hong Kong. But a statistical
significance was only found in their connection to ethnic Chinese newspapers (see
Table 5.15). Thus, the hypothesis, Hj.s: The connections to ethnic media are
different among Chinese immigrants from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, is
partially supported.
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106
Table 5.15
Ethnic vs. Mainstream Media Use by Chinese Immigrants from
Different Countries of Origin
(Number of hours in a week)
China Taiwan Hong Kong Mean
Ethnic media
Newspaper* 2.7 3.6 2.3 2.8
Television 3.7 4.1 3.7 3.8
Radio 2.6 2.6 2.1 2.5
Mainstream media
Newspaper 0.2 0.4 0.4 0.3
Television 1.3 1.3 1.4 1.3
Radio 1.0 1.0 1.2 1.0
* p< .01
5.3 Media Dependency Relations
The goals of understanding, orientation, and play of Chinese residents in
their media consumption versus those of Chinese publishers in media production
were examined respectively.
Consumers ’ Goals
When asked to choose the two most important ways in which they stayed on
top of what was happening in the community in order to fulfill their goal of
understanding, 68 percent of the Chinese residents gave credit to television and 57
percent chose the newspaper. Only a quarter of the respondents listened to the radio
to fulfill their information needs, followed by 17 percent through interpersonal
channels and 16 percent using the Internet (see Table 5.16).
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107
Table 5.16
Major Sources of Community Information for
Chinese Residents in Greater Monterey Park
Television 68%
Newspaper 57%
Radio 25%
Talking with other people 17%
The Internet 16%
* The total percentage exceeds 100% because respondents were asked to choose
two most important media.
When it comes to fulfilling the goal of orientation, measured by the decision
to make purchase, Chinese residents mostly depended on the newspaper (40%),
whereas 35 percent of the respondents relied on television. Twenty-seven percent
chose to talk with family or friends when making a buying decision, compared to
16 percent who turned to the Internet to get product information before buying (see
Table 5.17).
Table 5.17
Major Sources of Product Purchase Information for
Chinese Residents in Greater Monterey Park
Newspaper 40%
Television 35%
Talking with other people 27%
The Internet 16%
* The total percentage exceeds 100% because respondents were asked to choose
two most important media.
For relaxation purposes, 42 percent of the respondents chose to stay
together with family and friends to fulfill the play goal. Thirty-seven percent
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108
watched television to relax, 13 percent turned to the newspaper, and 5 percent
turned to the Internet to have fun (see Table 5.18).
Table 5.18
Major Sources of Relaxation for
Chinese Residents in Greater Monterey Park
Stay together with family or friends 42%
Television 37%
Newspaper 13%
The Internet 5%
* The total percentage exceeds 100% because respondents were asked to choose
two most important media.
In short, Chinese residents turned to television and the newspaper to fulfill
their understanding and orientation goals. Television, next to interpersonal channels,
was also able to attain residents’ goal of relaxation. The hypothesis, H 2 Chinese
immigrants establish dependency relations with different media to attain different
goals, is thus supported.
Additionally, respondents were asked to choose between mainstream media
and media specifically targeting the Chinese community for their goal attainment,
and the majority of them chose ethnic media over mainstream media. Table 5.19
details the differences.
Producers ’ Goals
On a scale of 1 to 5, print media producers and editors were asked to rank
the importance of their roles in fulfilling the goals of understanding, orientation,
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and play for their audiences - that is, “How important is it to help people
understand what is happening in Los Angeles (or their smaller communities)?”
“How important is it to give people practical guidelines for living in Los Angeles
(or their smaller communities)?” and “How important is it to entertain people?”
More than two thirds of the respondents (68%) considered it “very important” or
“important” to fulfill their readers’ goal of understanding. Sixty-four percent of
them considered it important to orient their readers, whereas only 54 percent of
them believed that it is important to entertain their readers (see Table 5.20). The
order of importance in addressing respective goals ranked by media producers is
accordance with that of their consumers, who selected the newspaper as the
primary source they used to fulfill their goals of understanding and orientation.
Table 5.19
Ethnic Media and Mainstream Media Dependency Relationships
Medium Community Product Relaxation and
Type Information Purchase Fun
Newspaper
Mainstream
23% 25% n.a.*
Ethnic
77% 75% n.a.*
TV
Mainstream
36% 50% 28%
Ethnic
64% 50% 72%
Radio
Mainstream
20% 21% 27%
Ethnic
80% 79% 73%
* Note: Numbers are not available because newspapers do not serve as a
major way to fulfill the play goal.
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110
Table 5.20
Major Editorial Goals of Ethnic Media in Greater Monterey Park
Understanding Orientation Play
Very important (5) 50% 43% 25%
Important (4) 18% 21% 29%
Neutral (3) 14% 18% 25%
Not important (2) 4% 11% 11%
Not at all important (1) 14% 7% 11%
Mean 3.86 3.82 3.46
5.4 Storytelling into Community Building
What is the nature of the stories in ethnic newspapers? What types of topics
do they cover? To what extent do they tell stories about immigrants’ home
countries, and to what extent do they cover stories that concern the local
community? Also, to what extent do they cover transnational stories that connect
both home and the host countries, and to what extent do they cover culturally and
locally relevant stories, or geo-ethnic stories, that are central to building
communities?
In the total of 4,102 stories analyzed in this study, the majority of the stories
were from dailies (86%), followed by weeklies (6%) and bi-weeklies (8%). Stories
were published predominantly in traditional Chinese characters (76%), whereas 21
percent of them were in simplified Chinese, and 3 percent were bilingual
(Traditional Chinese/English). In terms of story type, they were mostly news or
feature stories (84%). Photo stories consisted of 7 percent of the total. Bulletin
boards accounted for 5 percent of the stories, and editorials or opinions, 3 percent.
With regard to story source, the stories in these papers were primarily written by
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staff writers (60%). Wire services were also important sources for some
newspapers (15%). Seventeen percent of the stories did not have proper
acknowledgement of their sources as indicated by the absence of a byline. With
regard to story topic, political and economic issues were the two major topics in
ethnic Chinese newspapers (20% each), followed by stories about everyday life
(e.g., car accidents, social phenomenon, etc.) and entertainment news (10% each).
Stories about health and arts/culture each comprised 7 percent of the stories. Six
percent were about sports, and five percent were crime stories. Table 5.21 provides
the profile of sampled stories.
News Close to Home
Table 5.22 summaries the geographic location of news stories. Two thirds
of the stories (N= 2,748) analyzed in this study were international news, the
majority of which (N= 2,103) were concerned with home countries. Seventeen
percent was national news, and issues and events at the state level (California)
accounted for 3 percent. On the other hand, local news comprised 8 percent of the
total — this includes stories that address Southern California, Greater Los Angeles,
and the neighborhood. In the case of different levels of local stories, regional-level
stories, i.e., stories addressed at the Southern California level, comprised less than
one percent. Five percent of the stories were at the Greater Los Angeles level, and 3
percent were at the neighborhood level. Six percent of the stories were not location
specific. In addition, a total of 243 stories that addressed both home and the host
country, or transnational stories, accounted for 6 percent of the total.
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112
Table 5.21
Profile of Sampled Stories in Ethnic Chinese Print Media
Newspaper Type
Daily
86%
Weekly
6%
Bi-weekly
8%
Language
Traditional Chinese 76%
Simplified Chinese 21%
Traditional Chinese/English 3%
Storv Tvpe
News/Feature 84%
Photos 7%
Editorial/Opinion 5%
Bulletin Boards 3%
Other 1%
Story Source
Staff writers 60%
Wire services 16%
Other media outlets 2%
Other sources 5%
Not available 17%
Story Topic
Politics 20%
Economics 20%
Everyday Life 10%
Entertainment 10%
Health 7%
Arts and Culture 7%
Sports 6%
Crime 5%
Consumer Information 3%
Education 3%
People 2%
Religion 2%
Immigration 2%
Other 1%
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113
Table 5.22
Geographic Mapping of Stories in Ethnic Chinese Print Media
International level 67.0% (N=2,748)
National level 16.5% (N=677)
i State level 3.2% (N=132)
i Regional level 0.3% (N=13)
r ■ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....
County level 4.5% (N=185)
Neighborhood level 2.8% (N=l 14)
Not location specific 5.7% (N=233)
T otal 100% (N=4,102)
A cross-tabulated analysis was conducted to compare stories at local levels -
neighborhood, county, and regional levels combined - and home country stories
(see Table 5.23). Home country news predominantly appeared in dailies (94%),
whereas 20 percent of local stories were found in weeklies (13%) and bi-weeklies
(7%). In terms of language, local stories were produced more in newspapers
published in traditional Chinese characters (87%) than was the case for home
country stories (68%). Also, more bulletin boards items (27%) were found in local
stories than in home country news (2%). In addition, local stories were mostly
written by staff writers (83%) and used fewer wire services or other sources. There
were also fewer local news articles (6%) without bylines as opposed to 14 percent
of home country stories with no acknowledgement of sources. With regard to topic,
5 percent of local stories were about immigration issues, which were largely absent
in home country news stories.
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114
Table 5.23
Comparisons of Home Country, Local, and Transnational Stories in
Ethnic Chinese Print Media
Home Local Transnational
Newspaper Type
Daily 94% 80% 83%
Weekly 3% 13% 7%
Bi-weekly 3% 7% 10%
Language
Traditional Chinese 68% 87% 82%
Simplified Chinese 29% 11% 17%
Traditional Chinese/English 3% 2% 1%
Storv Type
News/Feature 85% 70% 86%
Photos 8% 2% 3%
Editorial/Opinion 5% 0% 5%
Bulletin Boards 2% 27% 2%
Other 0% 1% 4%
Storv Source
Staff writers 67% 83% 72%
Wire services 11% 9% 12%
Other media outlets 2% 0% 2%
Other sources 6% 1% 3%
Not available 14% 6% 10%
Storv Topic
Politics 20% 10% 39%
Economics 23% 8% 35%
Everyday Life 11% 13% 2%
Entertainment 14% 7% 2%
Health 5% 4% 4%
Arts and Culture 9% 18% 5%
Sports 4% 5% 2%
Crime 5% 3% 1%
Consumer Information 1% 14% 0%
Education 2% 8% 4%
People 2% 3% 1%
Religion 2% 2% 0%
Immigration 0% 5% 3%
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On the other hand, transnational stories that connect both home and the host
country also were distinct from home and local stories in a number of ways. First,
most of the transnational stories (83%) appeared in daily newspapers. Similar to
local stories, 17 percent of transnational stories were also published in weeklies and
bi-weeklies, and the majority of them (82%) were printed in traditional Chinese
characters. However, transnational news did not contain many bulletin board items
(2%) compared to the high percentage of bulletin board information in local stories
(27%). With regard to bylines, transnational stories presented a similar picture to
both local and home country news, in which staff writers were responsible for the
majority of the stories (72%). Dramatic difference appeared in the topics between
local and transnational stories. While local stories were more diverse in terms of
the topic, transnational stories were predominantly about politics (39%) and
economics (35%), rendering other story topics insignificant. Also, while consumer
information is important at the local level, this type of topic constituted less than
one percent in transnational stories. In addition, entertainment news (which was
important in home country stories) and everyday life issues (which were important
in local stories) were hardly transnational.
Geo-ethnic Stories
Geo-ethnic stories concern culturally and locally relevant issues and events.
In the sample, stories that are specifically addressed to the targeted ethnic group,
i.e., Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong-Kong-origin readers, comprised 61 percent of
the total number of the stories in this study. In consideration of the interaction
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116
between ethnicity and location, Table 5.24 maps out the percentage of geo-ethnic
stories at the neighborhood (2.8%), county (3.2%), and regional (0.2%) level. In
other words, geo-ethnic stories comprised only 6.2 percent of the total stories
analyzed in this study, across all three local levels. Of these, most were at the
Greater Los Angeles level (3.2%).
r Table 5.24
Geo-ethnic Mapping of Stories in Ethnic Chinese Print Media
Ethnically targeted Not ethnically targeted i
International level 86.2% (N=2,170) 36.4% (N=576)
National level 5.4% (N=136) 34.2% (N=541)
State level 1.2% (N=29) 6.5% (N=103)
Regional level 0.2% (N=4) 0.6% (N=9)
County level 3.1% (N-79) 6.7% (N=106)
Neighborhood level 2.8% (N-70) 2.8% (N=44)
*Note 1: Geo-ethnic stories are presented in the shaded area.
Note 2: Stories that are not location-specific comprised 1.2% (N=30) and 12.8% (N=203),
respectively.
In addition to the small percentage, geo-ethnic stories exhibited different
characteristics that distinguished them from all stories and home country stories. As
Table 5.25 shows, geo-ethnic stories were primarily news or feature stories (74%).
The focus on news and features was the same among all stories (84%) and home
country stories (85%). However, almost a quarter of the geo-ethnic stories were
bulletin board items, while these items were only 3 percent of all stories and 2
percent of home country stories. In terms of story source, 90 percent of geo-ethnic
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117
Table 5.25
Comparisons of Regular, Home country, and Geo-ethnic Stories in
Ethnic Chinese Print Media
All Home country
stories stories
Geo-ethnic
stories
Storv Tvpe
News/Feature 84% 85% 74%
Photos 7% 8% 1%
Editorial/Opinion 5% 5% 0%
Bulletin Boards 3% 2% 24%
Storv Source
Staff writers 60% 67% 90%
Wire services 16% 11% 1%
Other media outlets 2% 2% 1%
Other sources 5% 6% 1%
Not available 17% 14% 7%
Storv Topic
Politics 20% 20% 11%
Economics 20% 23% 8%
Everyday Life 10% 11% 13%
Entertainment 10% 14% 3%
Health 7% 5% 5%
Arts and Culture 7% 9% 22%
Sports 6% 4% 3%
Crime 5% 5% 1%
Consumer Information 3% 1% 13%
Education 3% 2% 7%
People 2% 2% 5%
Religion 2% 2% 3%
Immigration 2% 0% 7%
stories were written by staff writers. In contrast, newspaper staff only wrote 60
percent and 67 percent of regular stories and of home country stories in the sample,
respectively. Geo-ethnic stories were also less likely to appear without
acknowledged sources (7%) compared to 17% of the regular stories and 14% of the
home country stories. In terms of story topic, geo-ethnic stories were most often
about arts and culture (22%), followed by stories about everyday life (13%),
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118
consumer information (13%), and politics (11%). Compared to all stories and home
country stories, geo-ethnic stories involved less entertainment news (3% versus
10% and 14%) and economics (8% versus 20% and 23%), but were concerned
more with immigration (7% versus 2% and 0%) and education (7% versus 3% and
2%) issues.
Media Organization Characteristics and Geo-ethnic Stories
Geo-ethnicity scores were calculated and compared by media organization
characteristics through ANOVA. Subtle differences existed among stories produced
by media organizations that were different in size, circulation, history, and
ownership location (see Table 5.26). However, none of these differences was
statistically significant. The hypothesis, H 3 : Ownership location, history, size, and
circulation o f the media are associated with the extent to which geo-ethnic stories
are produced, is thus not supported.
Table 5.26
Geo-ethnic Scores by Types of Media Organizations
History Mean
Since 1990 1.85
Since 1980 1.72
Before 1979 1.76
Circulation
^ 10,000 2.07
10,001 -50,000
1.69
> 50,000
1.83
Owner location
Locally owned 1.82
Not locally owned 1.81
Size
1-10 1.74
11-99 1.80
^100 1.88
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119
5.5 Summary
This chapter presented major findings from a telephone survey of 321
households, interviews with 30 ethnic Chinese media producers, and a content
analysis of 34 issues of Chinese newspapers in Greater Monterey Park. The results
revealed a significant presence of ethnic Chinese media in the communication
infrastructure. There are 10 daily newspapers, almost a third of the total
publications, in this 30 square-mile, middle-class area. As to the price, the majority
(90%) can be obtained for a dollar or less. Their circulation varies between 5,000
and 150,000, but most of them (93%) are small businesses, with a circulation under
50,000. In terms of their history, more than 90 percent were established after 1975.
The data revealed the central role that these media played in immigrants’
lives, relative to other communication channels including interpersonal
conversation, mainstream media, and new media. Ethnic media not only served as
the major source of community information, but also helped oriented immigrants’
behaviors and performed entertainment functions. In general, Chinese residents
spent an average of 9 hours a week on ethnic media, thrice the time than that of
mainstream channels. Ethnic television is the most preferred medium, compared to
ethnic newspaper and radio. In relation to their demographic characteristics, first-
generation immigrants generally depended more on ethnic media than their second-
generation counterparts. Age was also a key factor associated with residents’ ethnic
media connections. Older Chinese residents spent much more time connected to
ethnic media than did young adults. In addition, residents who had lived in the
neighborhood for five years or longer, but still highly connected to ethnic media,
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120
showed a lower sense of belonging than those longer-term residents who depended
less on ethnic media. Moreover, Taiwanese-origin residents spent more time on
ethnic media than Chinese immigrants from Mainland China and Hong Kong.
The content analysis revealed that more than half of the stories analyzed
(51%) were concerned with home countries, whereas local news comprised only 8
percent of the total — this includes stories that address the regional (Southern
California), the country (Greater Los Angeles), and the neighborhood level. In
addition, a total of 243 stories that addressed both home and the host country, or
transnational stories, accounted for 6 percent. Home country stories were different
from local stories in terms of the story type, story source, and story topic. While
bulletin board items were rarely found in home country news, these items
accounted for more than 25 percent of local stories. Also, more than 80 percent of
local stories were written by the staff, compared to 67 percent in the case of home
country stories. Moreover, political and economic issues dominated home country
stories, whereas local content was more diverse in its topic and concerned more
about arts and culture, consumer information, and everyday life. On the other hand,
transnational stories were dominated by topics of politics and economics like home
country stories, but these stories appeared more in weeklies and bi-weeklies like
local stories. Geo-ethnic stories, which are promoted by this study, comprised only
6 percent, however. These stories were less likely to appear without acknowledged
sources, involved less entertainment news and economic issues, but were
concerned more with issues of immigration and education, compared to all other
stories.
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CHAPTER SIX
DISCUSSION
This final chapter revisits and discusses the findings in line with three major
themes: (a) the role of ethnic Chinese media in the communication infrastructure in
Greater Monterey Park, (b) Chinese residents’ dependency on ethnic media in
relation to media producers’ major goals, and (c) the role of ethnic media as an
essential storyteller in building communities. The author also discusses the
implications of the findings for policy makers and media practitioners. Limitations
of this study are identified and future research suggested.
6.1 Ethnic Media in the Communication Infrastructure
Ethnically targeted media are in many ways similar to local media. Most are
small, community-based mom and pop businesses. Serving primarily new
immigrants that arrived after the 1970s, ethnic media in Greater Monterey Park are
relatively young, with almost half of the print media and the majority of electronic
media established during the 1990s. The use of mother languages rather than
English is the rule, and most Chinese residents can access these media free of
charge. Increasingly, however, ethnic media in immigrant communities are
becoming sophisticated in their operation and content, and in some cases, they are
becoming multinational enterprises. These larger print-media organizations have
abundant resources, and can afford to publish newspapers on a daily basis. This
largely explains the phenomenal number of ten dailies in this 30 square-mile area,
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compared to only two dailies in the Latino community and three dailies in the
Korean community studied in the Metamorphosis Project (W.-Y. Lin et al., 2004).
Some of these Chinese papers, such as the Chinese Daily News and the Sing Tao
Daily, even have a substantial national circulation and are also available in
diasporic Chinese communities in other parts of the world.
Back in the early 1900s, Park (1922) identified the foreign-language
newspapers he studied as predominantly a commercial press. He cited statistics
such as the following: In 1920, German publications were 93% commercial, Italian
papers were 85% commercial, and Polish papers were 81% commercial. This is
still the case for the ethnic press in Greater Monterey Park today. Advertising
serves as the major source of revenue for these commercial print media, and almost
40 percent rely solely on advertising for their operation. Yet too much dependence
on advertising revenue has been one of the major factors contributing to the high
mortality rate of ethnic media, particularly when the economy is in a downturn.
Park (1922) also discovered a small portion of the foreign-language press of
his time were propaganda papers or journals. This phenomenon does not cease to
exist. For example, CCTV, the PRC’s national broadcaster which aims at diasporic
audiences, performs its propaganda exercise on Channel 4 (Mandarin) and Channel
9 (English). Through satellite leasing, their programs are able to reach the diasporic
Chinese audience not only in the Greater Monterey Park area but also in other parts
of the world.
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Connecting to the Communication Infrastructure
The findings revealed that ethnic media are the most important medium to
Chinese immigrants in Greater Monterey Park compared to other communication
channels including interpersonal conversation, mainstream media, and new media
in the communication infrastructure in Greater Monterey Park. Chinese residents
spent thrice the time on ethnic media than mainstream channels. Compared to the
other new immigrant groups examined in the Metamorphosis Project — including
Koreans, Latinos, and Armenians — the amount of time spent on ethnic media is the
highest for the Chinese residents of Greater Monterey Park (Ball-Rokeach, Cheong,
Wilkin, & Matsaganis, 2004). Note also that the Chinese spent the most time
reading ethnic newspapers than any other group, and more than double the reading
time of Latinos. This has a lot to do with their high literacy rate and above-average
educational background. However, it is arguable whether ethnic media have served
well to provide useful information that immigrants can use in the host country. The
content analysis showed that local news consisted of less than 20 percent of the
total news articles in the ethnic Chinese press, in contrast to more than 50 percent
of home country news.
Chinese residents in Greater Monterey Park were also among the early
adopters of new technology. Approximately 50 percent of Chinese respondents
were connected to the Internet as of 1999, leading all other new immigrant groups
studied in Los Angeles (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2004). They spent more than 6 hours a
week on the Internet, among the highest number of Internet hours reported across
all of the immigrant groups. Compared to Internet connectors, those non
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connectors among the Chinese residents at the time of data collection spent more
time reading ethnic papers, watching ethnic television programs, and listening to
ethnic radio. Moreover, although both groups did not consume much mainstream
media content, Internet non-connectors spent even less time on mainstream
channels than did their counterparts. A correlation analysis established a negative
relationship between ethnic media and Internet connection, but a positive
relationship was found between mainstream media and Internet connection. This
may be explained by consumers’ language proficiency. In the mid-1990s when
Internet use took off, the online world was almost exclusively an all-English
environment. For those Chinese residents with little English ability, they were not
able to access mainstream media, and were also less likely to hop onto the Internet.
With the exponential development of the Internet during the past few years,
however, the English language no longer dominates the online world, and for non-
English speakers, translation is no longer the problem it once was. Thus, current
investigation of the Chinese residents’ media behavior today may paint quite a
different picture compared to even a few years ago.
Ethnic Media Connections Among Different Groups
Immigrants’ age and generation history were found to significantly correlate
with ethnic media connection. In particular, age was positively correlated with
reading Chinese papers, watching Chinese television programs, and listening to
Chinese radio stations. The generation of immigration, on the other hand, was
negatively related to ethnic media connection, meaning that first-generation
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immigrants tended to spend more time than subsequent generations on ethnic media.
There was also a negative correlation found between age and immigration history.
That is, first-generation immigrants tended to be older, while subsequent
generations were relatively younger. This reflects the fact that heavy ethnic media
consumers were mostly seniors and first-generation immigrants.
Moreover, the gap between first and subsequent generation immigrants in
reading ethnic newspapers was very noticeable. Several reasons may explain this.
First, ethnic Chinese papers are published predominantly in Chinese. Among the
more than three-dozen ethnic papers in Greater Monterey Park there is only one
paper in English, and the other puts out a bilingual version (Chinese/English). This
largely constraints access to these papers for second-generation immigrants and
beyond due to their limited proficiency in their mother language (Alba, Logan,
Lutz, & Stults, 2002). Second, a large portion of ethnic media content is devoted to
home-country news. This may interest some second-generation readers who want
to stay in touch with their roots and maintain ethnic identification, but it may also
become a lot less appealing to the majority of subsequent generation immigrants.
Age proves to be a strong factor in immigrants’ ethnic media connection
regardless of medium type. Seniors 55 years or older spent almost three times of
the time than those between 18-24 years of age reading ethnic newspapers.
Although the young watched more ethnic Chinese television programs than reading
ethnic papers and listened to ethnic radio, the amount of time they spent doing this
was only about half that of those 55 years or older. On the one hand, younger
residents tended to be second generation or beyond, and were thus less appealed to
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126
what ethnic media can offer. On the other hand, research has showed that the young
population generally spends less time reading newspaper, regardless of language or
other factors.
In this analysis, residential tenure did not prove to correlate with any type of
ethnic media connection in a linear way. In other words, ethnic media use did not
decline over time as previous studies suggested (Y. Y. Kim, 1978; Lee & Tse,
1994). This finding has interesting ramifications. Suffice it to say that the majority
of ethnic media are still small, community-based in nature; in a few cases they are
becoming global enterprises. These new and better-financed media have entered the
Chinese immigrant community for more than a decade and have started to provide
a range of high quality of news and entertainment programs to meet the needs and
goals of their target audience. Ethnic Chinese newspapers that range from 4 to more
than 100 pages per issue, and electronic media that provide 24 hours of
programming, make available a variety of contents about politics, economics,
everyday life, sports, health, consumer information, immigration, and other
information they can use in their mother language.
However, after the residential tenure variable was controlled, this study
found a negative relationship between ethnic media connections and the levels of
belonging. This finding largely confirmed the claims made by Kim (2002), Walker
(1993, 1999), and Yang (1988) that ethnic media tend to discourage the longer-
term development of immigrants’ participation in the host culture’s social process,
despite of their positive impact on new arrivals’ adaptation processes.
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Not all Asians are “Chinos, ” Not all Chinese are from China
Chinese immigrants in Greater Monterey Park come from various countries
of origin, where political regimes, economic systems, and communication
infrastructure are drastically different. In terms of the political infrastructure, the
Communist PRC has been an authoritarian state, which controls all types of
resources including the media system. State-owned media are under tight scrutiny
and the government is now trying to contain new communication technology such
as the Internet.
Taiwan as a young democracy has enjoyed high degrees of freedom and has
had a commercial media system for more than a decade. Famous for its
manufacturing base for computing technologies, Taiwan has very high Internet
penetration rates and wireless phones. The movement of population and capital in
and out of this country is not only common but central to its trade-based economy.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, is in a transitional state. Its sovereignty was
returned from British control to China in 1997 and since then it has remained a
special administrative region. It is a highly capitalized city with excessive degrees
of economic freedom. Despite of a commercial media system in place, however,
journalists have felt increasing pressure from the PRC government even though
Hong Kong’s independence is conceivably guaranteed for 50 years under the Sino-
British treaty signed in 1984. To avoid getting into trouble and sustain its economic
development, media in Hong Kong sometimes engage in self-censorship for
politically sensitive issues.
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In light of these differences in their political, economic, and communication
infrastructures, this study attempted to explore their various media behaviors. The
findings revealed that they had many in common, although Taiwanese-origin
residents reported more time spent on ethnic media, particularly in the case of
newspaper. Home country statistics suggest that the literacy rates are relatively
higher in Taiwan and Hong Kong than that of mainland China. A free press in
Taiwan and associated media habits of Taiwanese-origin residents before their
migration may also be a factor (Lee & Tse, 1994).
6.2 Media Dependency Relations
Media dependency theory suggests that the media system controls
information resources that people will need to fulfill a variety of their goals (Ball-
Rokeach, 1985, 1998; DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach, 1976). The dependency
relationship may not be symmetrical, depending on the extent to which the media
possess the resource that implicates individuals’ goal attainment. This study
examined specific types of medium that were important for immigrants to achieve
their goals of understanding, orientation, and play. The findings supported the roles
of television and newspaper in fulfilling consumers’ understanding and orientation
goals, whereas the play goal was mostly achieved by interpersonal channels and
television. In particular, ethnically targeted media rather than mainstream media
were reportedly much better oriented toward meeting immigrants’ goals. However,
when it comes to making buying decisions, or fulfilling the goal of orientation,
mainstream channels seemed to be competitive with ethnic television. Mainstream
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TV was also important to more than a third of Chinese residents as their source of
community information.
Similarly, ethnic print media producers interviewed in this study also
considered their roles as important to fulfill their audience’s goals of understanding
and orientation rather than that of relaxation. This reflects in the content of the
ethnic press a relatively low percentage of entertainment news compared to other
ethnic print media such as the Latino and Korean papers.
6.3 Storytelling into Community Building: Visions and Realities
How well do ethnic media serve to help immigrants maintain ties to the
home country and simultaneously build connections in an unfamiliar newly
adopted society? This study found that stories that appeared in the ethnic
newspapers have a number of distinct properties, compared to mainstream media.
For instance, one of the important elements in weeklies or smaller community
newspapers is the bulletin board. Bulletin boards provide announcements on
upcoming events, including festivals, flea markets, cultural activities, and free
medical exams. They allow immigrants to keep up with what is happening in the
community and provide them with information they can use. They thus provide
good opportunities for residents to meet and engage in neighborhood discussion.
Unfortunately bulletin board items comprised only 3 percent of the total stories
analyzed in this study.
With regard to story source, almost 20 percent of the stories analyzed in this
study did not have a byline. This to a large extent is due to limited staff in most of
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the ethnic media organizations sampled. In fact, more than 60 percent of the print
media in our study areas have fewer than 10 employees. As a result, wire services
and other sources, including the Internet, provide the bulk of the stories that appear
in these publications. Nonetheless, the practice of not properly acknowledging the
source of a story may jeopardize the professional standards of journalism and hence
put public accountability and media’s democratic role at risk.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of stories that appear in ethnic
media is the tendency to spotlight home countries. This study found that more than
half of the stories in this study share this characteristic. The phenomenon can in
part be attributed to the production process. In fact, it has been a common practice
for some ethnic newspapers with a base in the home country to syndicate most, if
not all, of the stories from their hometown editions. The content in the ethnic
newspaper in the diasporic community thus overlaps with that of home editions,
except for an often small section of local content. This also explains a phenomenal
number of pages in some of the papers. For example, one issue of the Chinese
Daily News had 100 pages in the sample whereas the smallest paper had only 4
pages. For most community-based weeklies and bi-weeklies, even though they are
more diverse in content, home-country stories still comprise about a quarter of their
coverage. This to a large extent reflects that ethnic media publishers target
primarily first-generation immigrants. Previous studies reveal that, after subsequent
generations pick up the English language, they connect much more to mainstream
media rather than to ethnic media (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Lopez, 1996; Min &
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131
Hong, 2002). Privileging only home country news may be detrimental to ethnic
media’s sustainable development.
More importantly, a preoccupation with countries of origin may come at the
expense of immigrants’ ties to the local community. A comparison between home
country and local stories shows that news close to home (N=2,103) was almost
seven times of local news (N=312). Previous research has determined that local
content performs central integrative functions beyond agenda setting and framing
(McLeod et al., 1996). It stimulates the flow of information through personal
networks and thereby provokes neighborhood storytelling (Ball-Rokeach et al.,
2001). This study further established that local stories contained more bulletin
board items (27%), which serve to keep resident informed of community issues and
events and thus encourage them to storytell about the neighborhood, than all other
stories (3%). Local stories were also more diverse than all other stories in terms of
topic, with more coverage on arts and culture, consumer information, and everyday
life issues. In addition, local stories involved with more issues about education and
immigration than all other stories; that is, they provide more “news you can use”
for immigrants and their children.
Nonetheless, given that Chinese immigrants relied primarily on ethnic
media for the source of community information (see Table 5.19), local stories
comprised only 8 percent in the ethnic press. Meanwhile, almost no editorials or
opinions in all of the sampled stories were addressed on the local level. In contrast,
more than two hundred opinion pieces were about the political and economic
development back home.
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Hence, without a balance between home and local stories, the idea of
storytelling into community building may have yet to become a reality. With regard
to transnational news, such as musicians traveling between home countries and the
U.S. to give performance, or local advertisement about real estate investment
opportunities in home countries, these stories can potentially help immigrants
construct a new, hybrid identity and imagine a transnational community. However,
this study found only a small percentage of transnational stories (6%) in ethnic
newspapers, in which politics and economic issues (39% and 35%, respectively)
dominated the coverage.
Yet of particular importance is the inclusion of geo-ethnic stories, an ideal
storytelling practice that focuses on both culturally and locally relevant news in the
immigrant community. By telling geo-ethnic stories, these media encourage
residents to storytell their neighborhood and act on collective problems. Moreover,
due to the political culture in the regions where these residents emigrated, some of
which may not prepare recent immigrants for local political mobilization to
accomplish goals such as improving schools. Civic culture of the American form is
something that most new immigrants have to learn, and geo-ethnic media are one
of the important stimulators of this learning process. For example, geo-ethnic
media not only tell residents where to vote, but they also specify the location where
linguistic assistance is provided. Also, geo-ethnic media not only inform residents
of an upcoming seminar on senior’s health, for instance, but they also focus on the
health problems that occur most often in the Chinese community.
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This type of stories, which are often absent in mainstream media, may well
stimulate residents to further talk and share resources among themselves.
Researchers have argued that mainstream mass media do not enable citizens to
participate in political processes to the degree that they are provided more
mobilizing information (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; McLeod et al., 1996). This is
the market niche that geo-ethnic media can fill in.
In this study, however, only 6 percent of the stories analyzed were geo
ethnic stories. A further investigation revealed that geo-ethnic stories were found to
be distinct from all other stories and home country stories in their type, source, and
topic. Similar to local stories discussed earlier, geo-ethnic stories served bulletin
board functions more than did home country stories. They provided more
information immigrants can use, and were more proportionately distributed among
a range of topics, including arts and culture, consumer information, everyday life,
politics, economics, education, and immigration, rather than heavily leaned toward
political and economic issues only, as in the case of home country stories. In
addition, geo-ethnic stories were predominantly written by staff (90%) rather than
coming from other media outlets. The percentage of unacknowledged sources was
also very low among these stories.
Hence, the vision that geo-ethnic media content can connect individuals to
events and issues of community life that may engender feelings of allegiance to and
ties to the community, leading to an integrated storytelling network, has not come
true in the Chinese immigrant community. Two reasons may explain this. First, it is
partly because of limited staff and other resource constraints that pertain to all
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small ethnic media. Second, the fact that media publishers target primarily first-
generation readers also contributes to this phenomenon.
This study also attempted to explore the relationship between the coverage
of geo-ethnic stories and the characteristics of media organizations. A Chi-square
analysis, however, revealed no significant difference in geo-ethnic storytelling by
history, circulation, ownership location, and size of the press. Although there seems
to be a pattern that smaller, community-based print media covered more geo-ethnic
stories, the significance did not hold statistically. Several areas point to the
methodological inadequacy of the current study. First, the self-reported circulation
figures were not always reliable. Unfortunately, there has not been any official,
credible organization that collects and publishes this information about most of
these small, evanescent forms of media that come and go. Second, there is a need to
distinguish between media production and distribution sites. A local branch that is
responsible for distribution functions only may not necessarily link to a higher
coverage of local stories. Also, media owners’ location may not be as meaningful
as the site of the media content production when it comes to the relationship with
the ideal geo-ethnic storytelling practice. In addition, the ethnic background of the
owner and funding sources may be further investigated to better predict the
coverage.
6.4 Policy Implications
In line with studies on ethnic media since the 1970s, this dissertation project
found that ethnic Chinese media helped immigrants sustain ethnic identification in
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135
a multicultural context (Jeffres, 2000; Johnson, 2000; Y. Y. Kim, 1978; F. A.
Subervi-Velez, 1986). Nonetheless, the finding also suggested that these media
might have focused too much on the happenings in home countries, sometimes at
the expense of local issues and events. This may diminish awareness and interest in
local developments in the long term. A balance between home and local stories is
thus essential to ethnic media’s survival as well as immigrants’ adaptation.
Hence, there is room for public policy makers to address this issue as the
immigration to the U.S. continues at a fast pace. Canada has foreign content rulings
that require 40 percent of programming on ethnic channels to be locally produced.
In the U.S., the localism principle has been applied to television regulation for
decades, in attempts to achieve an acceptable level of diversity in program content,
and to fulfill broadcasting’s role as public servant, although “an acceptable level”
has never been established. Nonetheless, the U.S.’s localism policies do not apply
to cable television systems, let alone the free press in light of the First Amendment
(Botein, 1998). What the policy makers can do, however, is to encourage grassroots
efforts from the bottom up. For instance, the government may serve as liaison
between ethnic media and community organizations so that local issues can be
shared and community resources can be exchanged. Public advocacy groups and
academic researchers should be encouraged to constantly evaluate the media
content to alert them with their responsibilities in a democracy.
For media practitioners in the field, it is time to reconsider their existing
editorial policies and broaden their target readership base for the good of the
immigrant audiences they serve as well as for their own economic viability. Many
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136
of the small, community-based ethnic media may be resource constrained to hire
more staff for local coverage. By partnering with community organizations, where
residents gather and share stories about the neighborhood, ethnic media nonetheless
have the advantage to identify the issues and problems that concern the local
community, and may never have a shortage of news topics. And for those resource-
rich media organizations, today’s multicultural society actually benefits them to
recruit qualified reporters with multicultural backgrounds to engage in good
journalistic practices.
6.5 Conclusion
Research has established that communication is central to the community
building process. Feelings of attachment, identification, and involvement in a
community are associated with communication, especially in the forms of reading
the newspapers and talking with neighbors or friends. This dissertation project
contributes to this line of theoretical tradition and extends it to a multicultural
context in the examination of the communication and civic participation. This
project also addresses an important gap in existing immigration research, which has
provided little thick description of first-generation immigrants and their institutions,
largely because of language and cultural difficulties in conducting such research. A
study this complex in nature and broad in scope increases our understanding of the
often inaccessible immigrant institutions that are already entrenched in many cities
in the U.S. and around the world.
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Moreover, this dissertation project expands current diasporic studies by
investigating the role of ethnic media in the overall communication infrastructure
and the interplay of all major communication modalities in advancing civil society.
Of particular significance is the exploration of small community newspapers
including churches newsletters and freebies, which are often invisible in official
statistics and communication studies but are essential to residents’ everyday lives.
This study also empirically tested the transnational model of diasporic identity
enabled by ethnic media. This original work identifies the local consumption of
Chinese immigrants vis-a-vis the global production of ethnic media content.
In particular, geo-ethnic storytelling as key to democratic participation,
which is promoted in this study, is an innovative concept of its kind. Geo-ethnic
media content should connect the person to events and issues of community life
that may engender feelings of allegiance to and ties to the community. In addition,
being one of the institutions that span the boundaries of every level of community
life, ethnic media have the potential in fostering integration of citizens into their
communities and in providing vital information about the activities of local
institutions through an integrated storytelling network.
Moreover, this study is also able to depart from current political
communication studies on local media to a creation of a ladder of “localness” at
different geographical levels. In fact, the term “local” has received less scrutiny
than other key words in the journalistic profession such as “objectivity,” and
researchers have often referred to “local media” in an elusive manner (Pauly &
Eckert, 2002). The ladder of localness clearly defines the boundaries and makes it
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138
possible for future research to establish connections between different levels.
Hence, the construct will serve as a good basis for conducting further empirical
tests on the effects of the storytelling practice on community participation
particularly in multiethnic communities.
Limitations exist. First, a time gap of three years between the media
producers’ interview data and the content analysis cautions the author against
drawing any relationship between the content and the editorial practices. Future
researchers may consider collecting both datasets within a similar timeframe to
improve the correlation. It would also be interesting to examine the ethnic
background of the owners and the funding sources and connect this information to
the audience’s demographic characteristics. Second, two issues of ethnic
newspapers, including dailies, weeklies, and bi-weeklies, were sampled in this
study. Even though the researcher has made good faith effort to make sure there
were no major political events or disasters taking place during the selected period,
the inclusion of more issues would certainly ensure better probabilistic
representation. Nonetheless it will require an enormous amount of resources to
achieving this. Third, the findings of a small proportion of geo-ethnic stories in
ethnic Chinese media serve to alert media executives for their responsibilities in
civil society. However, it should not be taken to dismiss the effort of some ethnic
media producers who have strived to deliver better and quality news and
entertainment programs to their audience under budget constraints. Future research
is encouraged to qualitatively analyze the content of those geo-ethnic stories aside
from the quantitative values assessed in this work.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Lin, Wan-Ying (author)

Core Title Communication and community -building: The role of ethnic media in the Chinese immigrant community of Los Angeles

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag mass communications,OAI-PMH Harvest,sociology, ethnic and racial studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Ball-Rokeach, Sandra (committee chair), Hollihan, Thomas A. (committee member), Saito, Leland (committee member), Wong, Janelle (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-407065

Unique identifier UC11335932

Identifier 3145235.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-407065 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3145235.pdf

Dmrecord 407065

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Lin, Wan-Ying

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA