Diasporic Media Usage as Sites for Creation of Identities– A Study Report

Historically and etymologically, a diaspora is a dispersal of people from one country into many, notably the Jewish and Armenian Diasporas of past centuries and, in modern times, the great flows of people out of China and India and into the rest of Asia and the world. For centuries, humans have embarked sometimes wilfully and sometimes forcibly on transnational migrations, thereby creating a process of Diasporas linked by social characteristics like ethnicity, language, religion and culture. Analysing these varied diasporas in today's global context highlights a very interesting point; i. e. the innovative use of transnational networks of communication as sites of both expressing and creating their identities. The social implications of such diasporic mediascapes are what this paper will seek to understand. Diasporic groups have often sought media as means of not only seeking connection to their homelands, but also as sites to create and assimilate their identities. The creation of Diasporic websites provides platforms to alumni associations, forthcoming cultural events and festivals to the availability of online versions of newspapers from their countries of origins; Diasporic media has further enhanced intercontinental connections, which has made these diasporic groups, and the diasporic media as sites for genuinely cosmopolitan citizenship would be a logical human outcome of globalisation This paper seeks to understand the multi-faceted dynamics of media and diaspora by undertaking the case study of the Middle Eastern diasporic television in Los Angeles, which has resulted in the minority and ethnic television video. The paper also studies the case of Kurdish satellite television channel - Med TV, which used media as site for creating political and cultural movement against Turkey, while having its office in London.