Abstract

Ethnic media are an under utilised resource in the provision of settlement information to migrants and refugees. Drawing on seven interviews from a pilot study conducted in South Australia, this paper investigates the role of ethnic media in providing targeted communication and detailed settlement information to its audiences and demonstrates the importance of such media in fostering a relationship between settlement service provision and migrant communities. The findings of this research suggest that ethnic media and communications networks can indeed play an important role in positive migrant settlement. In engaging with ethnic media, settlement service providers should consider a tailored and granular approach, with print, broadcast and digital all playing a role depending on the specific needs of the community.

Introduction

Research on migrant and refugee settlement has been shaped by a concern with employment, education, housing and health as measures of successful settlement. This has been deemed achievable through the facilitating mechanisms of social connections and ties, different forms of social, cultural and human capital, and general feelings of well-being and safety (Ager & Strang, 2008; Fozdar & Banki, 2017). Mediated communication can also be an important facilitator and enabler of migrant settlement, one which has thus far garnered little scholarly attention (Lindgren, 2015; Veronis & Ahmed, 2015; Hebbani & Van Vuuren, 2015; Li, 2015). Specifically, this article focuses on migrant-controlled media and communications and its role in migrant settlement. These are media such as ethnic newspapers, radio and television, as well as migrant and ethnic community initiated and controlled websites and social media networks. These communication platforms may be formally organised through an external and overarching organisation (e.g. ethnic community broadcasting) or controlled by members of the ethnic communities in an informal way (e.g. social media networks).

This paper is based on data from in-depth interviews with seven migrant community leaders, focusing specifically on the role of media and communication in the settlement experiences of interviewees and their perceptions of the experiences of the members of their communities (Lindgren, 2015; Murray, 2015; Veronis & Ahmed, 2015). Although it is a small sample, the participation of recognised community leaders is important in light of their significant roles in advocating for their communities and acting as a bridge between said communities and government and public institutions (Elliott & Yusuf, 2014). The findings, along with existing research, suggest that ethnic media and related communication networks can play an important role in facilitating migrant settlement and therefore contribute to the overall well-being of migrant and refugee populations. The precise nature of this role depends on several factors. These include, but are not restricted to: the experience and time of migration; the demographic nature of the group in terms of age, gender and class; the related nature of their particular settlement needs; and their access, or lack thereof, to different communications technologies which in turn facilitate specific one-to-one and one-to-many communication practices (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015).

Research on the role of ethnic media in the lives of migrants, ethnic minorities and culturally and linguistically diverse groups (CALD), is both implicitly and overtly shaped by the political culture of the time, as are the preferred labels given to the settlement process. Earlier research which emphasised strong integration and assimilation (Park, 1922) has given way to a softer approach, focusing on integration as an exchange of fluid cultural practices between home and host cultures (Zhou & Cai, 2002). Here ethnic media tend to be seen as a resource, one used in conjunction with other resources, including mainstream and global media, in a migrant-controlled settlement process (Gillespie, 2006; Viswanath & Arora, 2000).

This shift in academic research towards an appreciation of the role of migrants and their descendants in managing their own integration is echoed in political changes to the management of ethnic diversity. Multiculturalism, as both overt policy and as implied political culture, has played an important role in shaping ethnic media around the world. In Australia, a political concern with the maintenance of ethnic minority languages, traditions and cultures emerged in the 1970s with the introduction of a policy of multiculturalism and the official establishment of the country’s leading multicultural broadcaster, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). It was also during this time that community radio appeared, giving ethnic minorities a platform on which to produce their own programs that had previously been restricted to the commercial media sector (Griffin-Foley, 2006).

Approaches to the settlement process have also undergone changes. Increasing calls for an understanding of the subjective experiences of settlement (Colic-Peisker, 2009) reflect dissatisfaction with a bureaucratic, top-down approach defined by broad scale policy (Losoncz, 2017a; 2017b). Looking at migrant controlled and designed media and communication necessitates a move away from a view of migrants as victims in need of settlement assistance, and a shift toward a focus on migrants as active users of communications networks who nonetheless face several structural blockages and disadvantages in their settlement work (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2003).

Migrant settlement and ethnic media

Migrant settlement can be measured and understood in a multitude of ways. Ager and Strang’s (2008) central work on integration posits four ‘markers and means’ that are widely held as indicators of successful settlement. These are employment, housing, education and health (Ager & Strang, 2008: 70). These four measures have influenced a significant amount of refugee and migrant settlement research in Australia and around the world (Fozdar & Hartley, 2013; Pittaway, Muli & Shteir, 2014). Some have added to this list, focusing on less tangible but just as important measures of successful settlement including feelings of belonging and strong social ties beyond and within migrant communities (Hunter, Amato & Kellock, 2015).

Achieving successful settlement depends significantly on government policy and settlement service provision at a macro scale (Curry, Smedley & Lenette, (2017). Several authors have critiqued Australia’s settlement policy as inadequate, and as being based on an economic rationale that fails to account for the everyday challenges facing refugees and migrants (Curry et al., 2017; Fozdar & Banki, 2017; Losoncz, 2017a).This gap between top down service provision and migrant and refugee experiences of settlement needs to be filled with a bottom-up approach that takes into account the subjectivities of migrants and refugees (Colic-Peisker, 2009; Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2003). Fozdar and Banki (2017) point to the importance of what might be called second-level forms of settlement facilitation when they argue that:

… while legal, policy and program level structures theoretically support the initial settlement of refugees, practical constraints such as access, and the wider social and cultural environment, may limit positive outcomes in the short to medium term (2017, p.55).

Understanding settlement from the point of view of migrants and refugees enables a greater appreciation of the everyday challenges and opportunities that do not necessarily feature in broad policy debates.

Further, emphasising a subjective and active perspective to settlement experiences, Colic-Peisker and Tilbury (2003) distinguish between medicalised settlement processes and an approach focused more on the use of cultural and social capital, and in doing so ‘propose a four-element typology of refugee settlement styles’ as Weberian ideal types (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2003, p. 62). These are the ‘active’ styles of ‘achievers and consumers’, and the ‘passive’ styles of ‘endurers and victims’. Colic-Peisker and Tilbury locate passive forms of settlement within the medicalised tradition. Much like the present study, they focus predominantly on peoples’ subjective experiences of their settlement, and the way in which refugees actively achieve a sense of normalcy and ontological security in their new home through the achievement of social inclusion mediated by a sufficient level of social and human capital.

Like much of the literature on settlement, media and communications are at the very least a strong sub-text in this bottom-up approach. Forms of bonding, linking and bridging capital all rely on communication networks, as do broader understandings of the social and cultural environment in Australia, and subjective forms of belonging (Hunter, Amato & Kellock, 2015). Indeed, within Colic-Peisker and Tilbury’s (2003) framework, ethnic media and communication could be considered an ‘informal’ avenue for settlement provision. Their role need not be formalised around any stable structure, policy or set of professional norms, but could be more or less opportunistic and flexible resources in a bottom-up, migrant and refugee led process of settlement.

While there is widespread recognition of the important role of media and communication in the lives of migrants, research that focuses on media produced locally by migrant communities and its connection to specific settlement needs and experiences is less common. Research into ethnic and diasporic media in Australia demonstrates their role in connecting migrants to transnational networks, maintaining migrant cultures, languages and ways of life, negotiating new identities and communities, and adjusting to life in Australia (Couldry & Dreher, 2007; Hopkins, 2009). Cover (2012: 19), for example, suggests that ethnic media ‘serve three explicit purposes: the provision of local community information, the provision of news from ‘home’, and the provision of news and information from across the diaspora’. This research supports the view that the relationship between ethnic media and migration is better seen in terms of soft integration and acculturation, rather than hard assimilation (D’Heanens & Ogan, 2007).

Research that focuses explicitly on settlement and engages with settlement literature tends to be sparse. This is despite the history of ethnic print, broadcast and more recently digital media suggesting their important role in migrant and refugee settlement. The ethnic presses in Australia have helped migrants and refugees settle into Australian society and negotiate changes in identity, culture and society (Gilson & Zubrzycki, 1967). The early stages of what would become the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) were initiated in an attempt to reach non-English speaking migrants with news of the government’s new Medibank insurance scheme. More recently, the Australian Federal Government formally announced the ‘Speak My Language’ project, a scheme aimed at providing aged care support and information in languages other than English. The project will involve, at the time of writing, over 80 multicultural radio broadcasters, who will use their programs to deliver aged care information (NEMBC, 2017).

Migrant communities have also negotiated the digital landscape and have utilised social media as a more flexible and tailored form of settlement communication. Hebbani and Van Vuuren (2015) suggest that young Sudanese in Brisbane find established modes of media, such as SBS and community broadcasting, insufficient for their needs. Instead, they turn to digital and social media, over which they have more direct control. With little access to mainstream broadcasting channels, and faced with a hostile mainstream media environment, these participants utilise ‘tribal lines’ through, among other things, networked messaging, in order to negotiate their needs in Australia (Hebbani & Van Vuuren, 2015, p. 51). This research is reflected internationally, with studies demonstrating the importance of the networked nature of social media, particularly for migrants who lack stable ethnic media in their countries of settlement (Alencar, 2018; Dekker & Engbersen, 2014).

The relationship between ethnic media and migrant settlement was the focus of a special issue of the Canadian edition of the Global Media Journal (2015). Lindgren (2015) tracked the way in which the city of Brampton, a municipality with large South Asian population, undertook steps that made it increasingly feasible for ethnic newspapers, such as those published by the city’s large Punjabi community, to publish local city news. Although this approach did help alleviate the major obstacle to more major reporting in the ethnic press – the money, time and resources needed to produce original, local stories – there was no guarantee that the sector would embrace these news stories. As Lindgren (2015, p. 66) states, ‘ethnic news outlets are not in the business of duplicating the coverage of their mainstream counterparts’, but instead focus on specific issues related to their communities that are often ignored elsewhere. The effectiveness of an ethnic media engagement strategy rests on developing an understanding of the needs of particular communities, as well as the ability and the willingness of ethnic media to engage such a relationship.

In their study of multicultural media and municipal government in Ottawa, Veronis and Ahmed (2015) focused on the Chinese, Latin American, Somali and South Asian communities. They found that levels of engagement with media depended on factors such as age, language proficiency, socio-economic status and availability of different media. Although participants in Veronis and Ahmed’s study sought a closer connection between the City of Ottawa and ethnic media, there was a sense of dissatisfaction among their respondents regarding settlement information in ethnic media. As they say, ‘participants agreed that ethnic language media provide some useful information, but that it is not sufficient, and they ought to provide more’ (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015, p. 87). Additionally, interviews with ethnic media producers suggest that ‘they were rarely in contact with the city of Ottawa, suggesting that it is difficult for them to access important local information they could transmit to their communities’ (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015, p. 87). Ultimately, Veronis and Ahmed suggest that:

… governments, organisations, and other local stakeholders tap into multiple types of media sources in order to reach out to these diverse communities and their various members, and thus ensure that information about local services is made available to them. Specifically, it is important to develop communication strategies that combine traditional and digital media, as well as ‘community based’ media, including multicultural media, that usually are more accessible (i.e., free) (2015, p. 90).

Developing these strategies successfully can depend both on the willingness and ability of government and other settlement service stakeholders, as well as ethnic media and communities themselves. An advantage of ethnic media and communication networks is that they are able to target specific information to particular sectors of migrant communities. Benefiting from an intimate understanding of their audience, ethnic media producers are able to better understand the unique settlement challenges and opportunities that face the members of their communities. There is still a need for more work on the relationship between ethnic media and migrant settlement (Lindgren, 2015).

Comparative analysis of different migrant communities will foster a better understanding of the specific media uses of different groups in Australia. A better understanding is needed of how Australia’s many migrant communities engage with different media in their settlement processes. In particular, the specific connections between different forms of media and particular settlement challenges, opportunities and outcomes, and the ways these connections may change over time and across different demographic factors.

Methodology

This study is based on a set of interviews with seven community members and leaders representing Polish, German, Chinese, Greek, Filipino, Syrian and Bangladeshi community organisations in South Australia. These groups represent new, emerging and established communities in South Australia. They are diverse in terms of language, geography and religion, and therefore facilitate the comparison of media experiences across a range of demographic factors.

As of 2016, there are approximately 8,682 Greece-born residents in South Australia, 10,119 from Germany, 24,610 from China, 4,954 from Poland, 1,969 from Bangladesh, 12,465 from the Philippines, 806 from Syria (www.homeaffairs.gov.au). As the data will show, the nature of migration for each group shapes its reliance on and engagement with media. For the German, Polish and Greek communities, being relatively more settled in Australia means that ‘settlement’ concerns often relate to aged care and health, with some concern for assisting newly arrived migrants in their transition to Australian society. For Syrian and Bangladeshi migrants who are more recent arrivals, their concern is more focused on immediate settlement needs. This is particularly the case for Syrians, who arrived recently on humanitarian visas, and display the most concern with immediate settlement challenges. Among the Chinese and Filipino communities which have a migration span across the middle and late waves, there is a mixture of concern with more established settlement needs, such as a sense of community and understanding of Australian systems, and with immediate needs for housing and employment, particularly in regard to Chinese international students.

Interviewees were chosen based on their status as community leaders. Although the notion of ‘community leader’ is open to debate, I refer to my participants as community leaders due to their extensive involvement in running, supporting and sometimes establishing important organisations for their respective communities. There are two reasons to interview these participants. One is the recognised role of community leaders in in mediating between the community and external social institutions and forces (Elliott & Yusuf, 2014). The other is the knowledge and expertise that these community leaders have of their communities.

In the interviews, participants were asked a variety of questions relating to their use of ethnic media, and their understanding of the role of ethnic media in their communities, particularly in relation to migrant settlement and the development of relationships between independent settlement service providers, government departments with a stake in migrant settlement, and migrants. The questions included broad, grand-tour questions which encouraged participants to openly discuss their views of ethnic media in South Australia. They also included more specific probing questions, wherein participants were asked directly about the relationship between ethnic media and specific settlement experiences, challenges and outcomes.

The preliminary nature of the current research means that settlement will be treated in a broad way in this paper. Rather than impose specific pre-conceived notions of settlement outcomes on the interviews, participants were generally allowed to guide conversations, and as a result a range of settlement outcomes were discussed, such as housing, health care, education, employment and a sense of belonging (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2003). The interviews also asked about the relationship between government settlement services, non-governmental settlement service providers, ethnic media and ethnic communities. Ethnic media are also considered broadly, encompassing print, broadcast and digital, as well as more personal social media networks including Facebook, WhatsApp and other websites. Finally, I have not made an overt distinction between different forms of migrants and refugees in the interviews. I referred neither to migrants nor refugees when talking to participants, and instead simply referred to the country of origin of participants. None of the participants made a distinction between migrants and refugees when discussing their communities.

The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed by the researcher, and a thematic analysis was undertaken of the transcripts (Merriam, 2009). All names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the participants. There are two broad themes that capture the role of ethnic media and communication in settlement. One is that these media directly facilitate certain settlement outcomes, such as by providing advice on available jobs or creating a sense of belonging and community. The other is that mediate between settlement service providers or government and the community.

Settlement needs and media: An overview

The interviews indicate that the relationship between migrant settlement and ethnic media is shaped by various factors. Most prevalent are the particular nature of the community on behalf of whom the respondents speak; the specific needs of the community in terms of settlement information, services and connections; and the existence, or lack, of different forms of ethnic media serving that community.

One of strongest factors that emerged in the interviews was the age of the community and their time in Australia. This affected both their settlement information needs, and the media best placed to provide that information. For example, there was a significant focus on the needs of elderly residents in both the Polish and German interviews. The German participant, Ben, discusses the German population in South Australia as divided by class, age and time of migration. When discussing media and settlement, he focuses on those Germans born ‘just before the war, during the war, or just after the war’. Radio is an ideal source of information for Germans who migrated during this period. It is accessible and does not require reading ability, vital for an elderly group who he says are lacking in formal education and mobility. According to Ben, the role of radio amongst Germans centres on a specific broadcaster, Dieter Fabig, who hosts a German language program on 5EBI in Adelaide. He is a trusted voice in South Australia for the German community, and according to Ben, is able to overcome the class differences in German society:

… that’s where people like Dieter Fabig are so good because they will talk … German … and even then … he doesn’t talk highfaluting German, he talks – he’s a Hamburger… Hamburger’s fairly what they call stage German and it’s not too – it’s not perfect but it’s pretty good.

Aleksy, the Polish respondent, also discusses settlement and media in terms of elderly Polish migrants and their particular needs. He contextualises this in a discussion of the changing nature of the Polish community, their need for particular information, and their dependence on radio as a medium:

As time goes on and the population aged our focus now is fairly well on My Aged Care, how they can get – what services you can get to, how you can get to them. So the message, the community message is changing along the way now to very much understanding what this My Aged Care is all about, how can they – because they’re all now in their late 70s, 80s, 90s, a couple of them are hitting 100, they’re still listening and they’re actually not reading.

Radio also plays an important role in the Filipino community in South Australia which lacks a local print publication. It tends, again, to be listened to by older Filipinos. According to the respondent, Christian, this is due to the timing of the radio programs and their availability to retirees. He also discusses the changing nature of the Filipino community and their engagement with media. What was once a process of tethering to the homeland, and identity formation in Australia, is now, with an ageing community, attuned to settlement information, including aged care services. The important role of radio reflects prior research (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015).

Themes of generational difference are also present in the interview with the Chinese participant Yu Yan. However, these are connected to a greater range of media than in the German, Polish or Filipino communities. The Chinese community in South Australia is served by newspapers, magazines, radio and digital media, all of which play a role in the communications landscape of the community. Yu Yan suggests that older Chinese are more likely to read newspapers than their younger counterparts, who focus more on the digital space. When asked about the popularity of print among the Chinese community, she says:

[f]or some, not for everyone, the younger generation might not be looking in it … but those that will, will be more senior … they will read this newspaper inside out, every single detail … .

Along with a diverse community and a wide range of available media, the Chinese community has a range of settlement needs according to Yu Yan. These include immediate settlement needs, such as those related to housing and employment. Part of this relates to the needs of young Chinese students, who often require immediate information on accommodation. The digital space caters significantly to these students, particularly a website that features advertising for share housing. This is discussed further below.

The Greek community in South Australia also has a strong media presence. Like the Chinese respondent, Adrian discusses the use of Greek media in South Australia through different outlets and age groups. This includes media connected to various Greek churches, including his own. There are a range of Greek newspapers, radio stations and websites, including social media, which the community engages with, for information. Adrian suggests that there is a general trend for the older people (‘over 60s’ as he defines them) to listen to Radio ENA, a Greek station in Adelaide, and for younger people to gravitate towards digital platforms. As will be expanded on below, the newspaper Neos Kosmos 1 tends to play somewhat of a bridging role in the community, being accessible in both print and digital (their Facebook page) form and acting as a focal point for broader community interactions and discussion.

Both the Bangladeshi and Syrian participants present somewhat unique trends in their use of media in the study. Both express a greater concern with immediate settlement needs and rely on digital media to meet such needs. The Syrian community in South Australia does not have a broadcasting or print outlet. Abbas, the Syrian respondent, attributes this to the relatively low population of Syrians in South Australia, their recent arrival, and the pressing needs facing the community today, including housing, employment and health which take precedence over starting a media venture. In place of these more traditional ethnic media, the Syrian community engages with social media, primarily Facebook and WhatsApp. The latter is a particularly important resource for networking and sharing interpersonal information and is ‘very popular’ amongst the Syrian South Australian community.

Shamim, the Bangladeshi respondent, emphasises Facebook as being important to the Bangladeshi community in Adelaide. Like the Filipino respondent Christian, Shamim indicates a distinction between the function of radio and social media in the Bangladeshi community. Radio is focused on music and cultural celebrations, rather than news, and thus tends to be linked with feelings of community and belonging. It is listened to mostly around the time of festivals. The Facebook pages that serve the community, he says, are more popular than radio. They provide a greater and more detailed range of information, such as news on Visas, links to external organisations and announcements of events. Like the Syrian community, information on immediate needs, such as rental accommodation, are posted to these Facebook sites.

Social media are important due to their ease of accessibility, their open nature and their transnational reach. Not only can anyone within the community post on Facebook or WhatsApp, but they can post specific information and news, and address it to a general or specific audience. Shamim, gives the example of using social media to exchange documents needed for visits to Bangladesh. Abbas also discusses WhatsApp’s transnational reach, and the fact that people on their way from Syria to settle in Australia can use the application to reach out to the Syrian community here in an attempt to procure housing upon arrival. Indeed, this dual inward and outward facing role of social media has been noted elsewhere. Dekker et al. (2018) have found that Syrian asylum seekers use social media both before and during migration, negotiating the trustworthiness of information by drawing more heavily on existing social ties and relationships that are mediated through social networks (see also Alencar, 2020).

The importance of digital media amongst some respondents also reflects the findings of Hebbani and Van Vuuren (2015) in their research on the Sudanese community in Brisbane. There is a connection between the technological affordances of different media and their role within the participants’ communities. While these affordances do not determine nor fully explain the media’s role, the nature of radio and the one-to-many nature of broadcasting, with established hosts and identities and regular patterns and formats, and the lack of necessity of any form of overt interaction, aligns it with well settled older communities who lack digital literacy. Social media, while necessitated to a degree by a lack of other media for some groups, allows the flexibility to address fluid short term needs such as housing, information on migration processes, and employment. While these are issues that impact many migrant groups, social media allows them to be addressed on a more interpersonal and ad-hoc level.

Connecting with providers

Participants sought a greater connection between settlement service providers, migrant representative bodies and ethnic media (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015). Overwhelmingly, participants viewed connections with settlement service providers positively and were open to, or actively seeking, more of such relationships. Respondents spoke about this relationship in different ways. Those participants from well-established communities, such as the German and Polish groups, emphasised the importance of clear communication, particularly in reference to elderly community members. Ben discusses the connections between local and state government and the German community through a story of communication breakdown with elderly German women:

… the Multicultural Communities Council of South Australia, when they changed one of the laws in South Australia, they wanted to get German people to know … it was something to do with the women … about 30 German women turned up, the elder group. The person speaking at it … spoke too fast, she spoke jargon, and she spoke words these women had no idea about … people have no idea of the difficulty of older people listening to something in their second language.

Aleksy, the Polish respondent, also focuses on the importance of information on aged care, particularly the new My Aged Care system established by the federal government in 2013. Again, he sees problems with the information that was provided to the Polish community, primarily due to language barriers. He also highlights the sensitivity needed when communicating with elderly people regarding aged care complaints and elder abuse:

So giving people serious knowledge about, you don’t have to accept what’s going on, and recently – a hard one for use as a group was to put together stuff about abuse, elder abuse, because they needed to understand that it’s your own family or your friend that could be abusing you, and in a culture which is, well, catholic culture, trying to get that message across in Polish is a lot harder … .

Yu Yan from the Chinese community discusses the connections between Chinese media and government-based settlement service provision, with the example of government advertising in Chinese language newspapers. In discussing her desire for more communication between local, state and federal government and Chinese media, she focuses on what she calls ‘big news’:

… like when they got census they need to know what census [is]…And then people when there’s a change in the health system then people will know, that will be good to put an ad in the newspaper, to put an ad on all the websites and then people will understand … .

Other participants lacked a clear picture of when stakeholders or service providers had engaged with their community’s media. For Abbas (Syrian) and Shamim (Bangladeshi), their discussions of connections are shaped by the nature of the social media those communities engage with. For example, while Abbas laments that there is only superficial interaction with little posting of information, he understands that this may be because of the more personal nature of the media (Facebook). As he says during this part of the discussion, ‘I wouldn’t go on your Facebook’.

Most participants are either unable to recall any organised, sustained engagement between media and stakeholders or settlement providers, or, as in the case of Christian from the Filipino community, actively lament the lack of structure to any such relationship. It should be emphasised that this lack of recollection does not mean that service providers or other stakeholders have not engaged with ethnic media or communication networks. Participants could recall instances of contact. However, there is room for a more sustained and focused relationship between ethnic media and service providers and stakeholders. The nature of this relationship requires further research to understand each community’s ways of engaging with important information and how best to connect with them at a deeper, workable level. It would, however, no doubt rest on the particular media that best serve different communities and their settlement needs.

Effective communication channels

As part of the interviews, I asked participants to reflect on the most effective way of passing on information from government and non-government settlement service providers to migrant audiences. Responses to this question differed in their complexity. However, most participants answered the question in terms of a granular approach tailored specifically to their community and its needs. For Christian, for example, there is no one way of reaching the Filipino community with relevant settlement information.

It’s multi-pronged, it’s purely defined by the mission at hand … on a broader level, I think radio has a role to play, but that could be done in a more systemic manner … But on a more deeper level, it would be identifying the community which you want to engage with … then identifying, where are their main cultural hot-spots. So, then you would go to churches, right, so then you would need to target churches … radio, letters, and phone calls, multi-layered.

This participant, who also says that social media has a role to play in settlement in the above discussion, emphasizes a targeted approach to communicating settlement information, one attuned to communities within the wider Filipino population.

Distinguishing the needs of particular sectors of the community, Yu Yan discusses the role of newspapers and the internet for settlement information. She distinguishes between new arrivals and those more established, and between commercial and community Chinese media (newspapers and radio respectively) and user-generated digital media. Of the latter, a website called Adelaide BBS provides more targeted information, such as on housing, but also has the advantage of not being an overtly commercial enterprise:

I suppose what you need to also understand when a newly arrival comes into Adelaide … when people looking at the newspaper often people will say that those one are very commercial, people pay money to put that in there … they don’t trust them that much and yet BBS is like a place that they all, each person can put in feedback, so they more trust that website than the website from I Age because still it’s a commercial page.

The Adelaide BBS website, according to Yu Yan, tends to be a more effective forum for settlement information, not only due to the type of news it can convey but because of a general skepticism towards commercial print media in particular by Chinese migrants. As well as providing relevant news for the Adelaide-Chinese community, the site houses information and advertising for services, goods and accommodation.

For other participants the question of effective communication channels is more straightforward. Shamim indicates that Facebook is the most effective way of getting messages out to the Bangladeshi community and uses examples of Zoe Bettison, at the time Minister for Multicultural Affairs in the South Australian state parliament, posting information to their Facebook pages. Facebook and WhatsApp are also the most effective ways of reaching the Syrian community in Adelaide, according to Abbas. Engaging with social media sites, which are often personal in nature and lack the structured system of print and broadcast media, may present a challenge to some settlement organisations. However, their role indicates the importance of a targeted approach in this instance.

Further reflecting this emphasis on nuance, both the Polish respondent Aleksy and the German participant Ben, re-emphasise the role of radio and language for their communities. For example, Ben continues to emphasise the role of broadcaster Dieter Fabig when proposing German community radio in Adelaide as a key source of settlement information for elderly residents. As reflected above, Dieter Fabig is positioned as personifying the strengths of German language radio to effectively reach (elderly) German residents. Fabig, with his Hamburger accent and his ability to use appropriate language is able to speak across a community differentiated by age, class and education. Importantly, he is also familiar and trusted by elderly residents.

Adrian, from the Greek community, provides a detailed account of the most effective mediums in communicating migrant information. He cites Facebook and Neos Kosmos as the two main avenues. He discusses Neos Kosmos in both paper and online form. The paper form seems to provide a site of regular, almost ritualistic reading, with elderly Greeks going to church on Sundays and reading it ‘cover to cover, right, so it gives them a lot of what’s going on …’. The online version appeals to younger members of the community, meaning that content shared across both forms reaches both sectors of the community. The discussion this prompts within the community then gives the paper a reach beyond its immediate circulation figures.

Like the Syrian and Bangladeshi communities, the use of personal and community Facebook pages within the Greek community is haphazard, again drawing on the networked and viral nature of the medium. When I ask him which Facebook site would be used, he responds:

It’ll probably be the Greek community, sort of network, like friends and all of that sort of stuff. So yeah, and usually what happens is … you’ll find I’ll put something on the Facebook about this, it’ll get picked up and especially our Church’s Facebook page, it goes fantastic … and then that just gets shared.

Although more research is needed on the role ethnic media in connecting stakeholders to migrant groups, it is clear that broadcast, print, and social media (in both established community form and in more personal form) each require a different form of engagement, and each facilitates a different form of information exchange. The audience reached and the types of messages that can be sent, differ across each. However, without knowledge of who uses which technology for which purposes, a generalist, one-size-fits-all approach is likely to have limited success in providing appropriate settlement information or developing important connections.

The above findings are not intended to represent or reflect the totality of the relationships between ethnic media and migrant settlement amongst the groups included in the study. Instead, they are a snapshot of the views and attitudes of community leaders toward the role of ethnic media, including areas where settlement provision is strong, and where it needs improvement.

The politics of media settlement

Developing closer relationships between settlement organisations and ethnic media brings with it several important considerations. One is to recognise the inherently political nature of migrant settlement, and the way in which it relates to other concepts such as assimilation and integration. While (ethnic) media research has developed a more nuanced understanding of these processes and expectations, any concern with settlement involves questions around the relationship between migrants and dominant social, cultural and political structures within society. Calls for successful migrant settlement should not be taken to equate to the approval of wider structures of inequality which marginalize racial and ethnic minorities. An engagement with ethnic media is indeed part of an attempt to see settlement as active and user led (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2003). However, there is clearly still a need for the politics and policy of settlement to be analysed (Loconsz, 2017a, 2017b).

The capabilities of ethnic media organisations and communication outlets in this process must also be considered. Not all ethnic media see the provision of settlement information as their primary goal (Lindgren, 2015). Those that do will often take different approaches to this task, with some preferring to provide more general cultural resources in the form of music, language and community discussion, and others focusing on more specific information such as that related to education, employment, or the legal and political systems of the host society. The resources available to ethnic media are also important. As Lindgren (2015) has demonstrated, for some ethnic media the provision of settlement information requires resources and time. More government funding is often suggested as a way of overcoming limitations of time and resources (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015).

Further, the politics of government engagement with ethnic media needs to be considered. Sherry Yu (2016) warns against what she calls the instrumentalization of ethnic media. Reflecting on several instances where Canadian politicians have engaged extensively with ethnic media in order to reach voters in migrant and ethnic minority sectors of the community, Yu indicates that it is important to distinguish between a relationship in which there is a genuine desire to improve communication between governments, service providers and ethnic media/audiences, and one in which the ethnic audience is seen primarily as a viable market, one attractive due to an increased voting and/or purchasing power.

Conclusion

It is clear that there is a role for ethnic media and communications networks in the migrant settlement process. Ethnic media provide information relevant to the settlement needs of their communities and are often best placed to do so. They can also act as a conduit between service providers/government and migrants. Their role here may be to translate information so that it is understood by the intended audience, to filter out irrelevant information, or to ensure that relevant information reaches an appropriate audience.

This study points to the importance of understanding the different settlement needs and media capabilities of users (Hebbani & Van Vuuren, 2015). These differences:

… should be taken into account by governments, local organisations, and other stakeholders to develop effective communication strategies to connect with these communities and to reach out to various members (Veronis & Ahmed, 2015, p. 90).

The limitations of the current study must, however, also be taken into consideration. The findings presented represent the feedback of those I have labeled community leaders. This does not mean these people speak for their entire community, or indeed that such a ‘community’ exists as a cohesive whole. Future research on ethnic media and settlement needs to incorporate a wider range of voices into its analysis.

This study also shows that common understandings of ethnic media may be limited in terms of stakeholder engagement. Personal social media and user-made websites are seen as an important point of connection for migrant communities and audiences. These less formalised and routinised forms of media should be incorporated into future research on ethnic communities, their use of media and settlement (Hebbani & Van Vuuren, 2015).

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About the author

John Budarick is a lecturer in the Department of Media at the University of Adelaide. He has been researching ethnic and migrant media for the past ten years. He has two books with Palgrave Macmillan: Minorities and Media: Producers, Industries, Audiences (2017) and Ethnic Media and Democracy: From Liberalism to Agonism (2019). He also researches race, democracy and journalism and has published in a number of leading journals, including Media, Culture and Society, Communication Theory, International Journal of Communication, Global Media Journal and Journal of Sociology.

Email: john.budarick@adelaide.edu.au