(BE)Longing Media: Minority Radio Between Cultural Retention and Renewal

Abstract

The article promotes the growing body of research concerned with the impact of television watching and the uses of other media on the cultural orientation and loyalty of migrant groups. Since diasporas are by definition re-imagined communities, their survival depends on their ability to provide a space for conflicting claims of belonging and their willingness to reconcile those differences, and the media provide that kind of multiple narratives and discourses. The article examines radio as that part of diasporic media that for most minority groups in Europe is the most accessible. Specifically, it is focused on Radio MultiKulti, a public service station targeting Germans and all ethnic minorities in Berlin, and BeurFM, a private station targeting only North Africans in Paris and some other French cities. The author sees in their programming an opportunity not only for cultural survival, but also for cultural renewal and, in German case, for promoting understanding between different immigrant groups and the German majority population.