The changing ethnic news media landscapes: implications of technological convergence in multicultural Pakistan and Russia

ABSTRACT

Media representation of ethnic minorities and communities is important in multicultural societies that reflect ethnic cultural diversity. Therefore, the role of ethnic news media becomes crucial to give voices to marginalized communities, especially in the digital age when their cultural practices, issues and concerns can reach faster beyond the national territories. With technological advancements, ethnic news media practices are also transforming. Ethnic journalists, like their colleagues from mainstream news media, now use integrated digital tools to produce and disseminate news. However, quite less is known about how technology-driven changes are reshaping the ethnic news media landscape, and if such developments have any implications to strengthen the communicative power and representation of ethnic communities in culturally pluralistic societies. This study hence reflects upon the cases of Pakistan and Russia. Informed by the framework of technological convergence and cultural discourse studies (CDS), this study investigates the key implications of technological convergence in Pakistan’s and Russia’s ethnic news media. Moreover, this study primarily uses the qualitative method of in-depth interviews (face-to-face and online) and offers an inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data.

KEYWORDS:

• Technological convergence
• ethnic news media
• digital journalism
• Pakistani journalists
• Russian journalists

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Interdisciplinary Scientific and Educational School of Moscow University ‘Preservation of the World Cultural and Historical Heritage ’.

Notes on contributors

Sadia Jamil

Sadia Jamil PhD is an Assistant Professor and Director of Research at the School of International Communications, The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. She is the Chair of IAMCR's Journalism Research & Education Section.

Anna Gladkova

Anna Gladkova PhD is the deputy Dean of International Affairs at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She is the Chair of IAMCR's Digital Divide Working Group.

Elena Vartanova

Elena Vartanova PhD is the dean of faculty of Journalism at Lomonosov Moscow State University.