Gabriel Moreno Uow Thesis A

WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch Transnational audiences and the reception of television news: a study of Mexicans in Los Angeles. Gabriel A. Moreno-Esparza School of Media, Arts and Design This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2009. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: (http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] TRANSNATIONAL AUDIENCES AND THE RECEPTION OF TELEVISION NEWS: A STUDY OF MEXICANS IN LOS ANGELES GABRIEL A. MORENO-ESPARZA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2009 To Tupe, a quien debo lo que soy To Adela, mi compañera de viaje TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I ABSTRACT II INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 16 1.1 TRANSNATIONALISM, DIASPORA AND BORDERS: FLOWS OF THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL 1. THE REALM OF THE TRANSNATIONAL 16 2. CROSSING THE BORDERS OF DIASPORA 19 3. MIGRATION: THE HUMAN FACE OF THE GLOBAL 22 1.2 INTERCONNECTED ETHNOSCAPES OF THE POST-NATIONAL MOMENT 27 1. GLOBAL CULTURAL IDENTITIES 27 2. THE DETERRITORIALIZATION OF CULTURE 33 1.3 TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA IN PERSPECTIVE 37 1. VISUALIZING THE GLOCAL IN TRANSNATIONAL TELEVISION 37 2. TRANSNATIONAL AUDIENCES 42 3. STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENTS 50 4. EXPERIENCING TELEVISION NEWS: FOREGROUNDING THE AUDIENCE 54 1.4 RECEPTION ANALYSIS: SEEKING THE TRANSNATIONAL AUDIENCE 56 1. A QUALITATIVE FOCUS 56 2. WHEN THE PRIVATE AND THE PUBLIC BECOME THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL 63 CHAPTER 2: MAPPING MEXICANS IN THE US 69 2.1 MYTHIC TRASNANTIONALS IN MEXICAN-AMERICAN SPACE 69 1. ORIGINS OF A DIASPORA IN REVERSE 69 2. CLOSING IN “MEXICAN” LOS ANGELES 72 3. A GROWING DIASPORA OF LABOUR 75 4. DEMOGRAPHICS 76 2.2 A HISTORY OF MIGRATION 81 1. BORDERLINE POLICIES 81 2. NAFTA: ECONOMIC ARTICULATION AND HUMAN FRAGMENTATION 83 3. DE-NATIONALISING MIGRATION THEORY 89 2.3 MEXICAN TRANSNATIONAL, DIASPORA AND BORDER SPACES 93 1. PUTTING MEXICO IN A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE 93 2. THE STRAND OF MEXICAN TRANSNATIONALISM 95 3. DIASPORIC SPACE: LIFE BEYOND THE BORDER 100 4. THE PHYSICAL AND THE SYMBOLIC 109 CHAPTER 3: SPANISH TELEVISION NEWS 111 3.1 NEWSCAPES 111 1. TV NEWS AS DIASPORIC RESOURCES 111 2. TUNING IN SPANISH LANGUAGE TV NEWS 113 3. QUESTIONS OF ACCESS: FOCUSING ON UNIVISIÓN 116 4. ETHNIC TELEVISION NEWS 118 5. MEETING THE NEEDS OF DIASPORIC EXPERIENCE: NEWS VALUE AND TRUST 121 3.2 A SHORT HISTORY OF HISPANIC TELEVISION NEWS 122 1. THE MANUFACTURING OF PAN-ETHNICITY 122 2. PRODUCING NEWS IN SPANISH 125 3. HYBRID NEWS 127 4. A DIASPORIC REMIT IN COMMERCIAL TELEVISION? 130 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY 135 4.1 RESEARCH METHODS: NOTES FROM THE TRANSNATIONAL LIVING ROOM 135 1. WHAT IS IN THE METHODOLOGY? 135 2. FIELDWORK IN A NUTSHELL 136 3. GROOMING THE FIELD: SCREENING AND SNOWBALLING 137 4. REPRODUCING THE MOMENT OF TELEVISION NEWS RECEPTION 143 5. A FOCUS ON LIVED EXPERIENCES 147 6. TALKING THE NEWS: THE TACITLY PRESENT IN WHAT IS OUT OF SIGHT 150 7. INTERVIEWS: DIGGING BEYOND RECEPTION 153 8. WRITING THE NEWS 154 4.2 ANALYZING RECEPTION ANALYSIS: A CHALLENGE WITHIN CHALLENGES 157 1. DATA ANALYSIS: AIMING FOR RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY 158 2. CODING THE NEWS THAT MATTER: INTERPRETATION, DISCUSSION AND BIOGRAPHIES 161 CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS 167 5.1 THE POST-NATIONAL LIVING ROOM 167 1. WHAT AFTER PATRIARCHAL RECEPTION ANALYSIS? 167 2. LIVING ROOM ARGUMENTS: FINDING ABOUT THE TRANSNATIONAL AUDIENCE 172 5.2 LIVING TELEVISION NEWS 187 1. PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF THE WORLD OUTSIDE 187 2. EXPERIENCES OF THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL 197 3. ENUNCIATION AND DEIXIS: MAPPING TELEVISION NEWS RECEPTION 199 4. TELEVISION NEWS AS GROUNDED GEOGRAPHY 205 5. GLOCAL VISIONS 207 6. FROM “TELESPECTATORS” TO “TELEACTORS” 222 5.3 DISCUSSION 233 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 246 APPENDIX 278 Acknowledgements This doctoral project has been carried out thanks to the University of Westminster’s scholarship programme and on the back of the always-efficient work of Mike Fisher as research degrees manager. The intellectual encouragement provided by my director of studies, Daya Thussu, has been central to the completion of this thesis. Thank you for your kindness and for stepping the gas up when it was most needed. Also very important has been the guidance of my second supervisor, Roza Tsagarousianou, and that obtained in conversations with Professors Annette Hill, David Gauntlett and Peter Goodwin, three of our academic ‘heavyweights’ at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). I am also thankful to poet Anthony Rudolf, who gave me confidence in my writing, and to Professors Keith Hart, at Goldsmiths, University of London, and to Felix Gutierrez, from Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Their early advice stuck with me and made a difference. My appreciation goes also for Professors Federico Subervi, Roy Langer and Hannu Nieminen, who gave me valuable academic advice. Priceless for my empirical incursion in California were Stella B. López and Nancy Ruiz, from the School of Journalism at Annenberg School for Communication. The project, of course, would have been impossible without the contribution of my many fieldwork informants. They kindly opened the doors of their homes and lives to a stranger, and found room in their hectic schedules to fit in the research activities. I am particularly indebted to Adela Martínez, the strong and hopeful woman who took over as my guide in Los Angeles right when she was going through a difficult life transition. I will never forget the friendliness and appreciation showed to me by Cristina and her daughters, Minga and Gustavo, Elo and Trino, as well as by families like the Arellano’s, the Camacho’s, the Otero’s, and the Olguin’s. You all made Los Angeles feel homely. There are then those who reside in my heart and mind no matter where I go: my father Gabriel Moreno Bayardo, whose prayers – I am sure – always find me even though I myself never pray, and my aunt, María Guadalupe Moreno Bayardo, the one I look up to as a person and an academic. All the hardships of the doctoral experience were made sweeter by Rosa Adela Murillo Martínez, who in these last six years has been my companion and strength. Last and certainly not least, I should mention my grandmothers, Conchita Bayardo de Moreno, whose parting has left a big hole in our hearts, and María Guadalupe Esparza Gallegos, to whom I owe everything I am. i Abstract This doctoral contribution borrows from the discursive practices of transnationalism and diaspora in order to articulate the concept of “transnational audiences” in the United States. The project identifies transnational audiences as formed by individuals and families whose lives straddle two national territories. It draws on the traditions of cultural studies and reception analysis as a strategy to explore the relation between media use and novel experiences of migration in a context of contemporary globalization. This conceptual background is the result of empirical research conducted in Los Angeles which investigated the television news reception of 67 informants of Mexican origin during three months in 2006. Relying on a range of qualitative research methods based in the domestic settings of the participants, the project found high levels of interests across a variety of news occurring in Los Angeles, the US, Mexico and further afield. During interviews, television news-viewing sessions and in daily written accounts, respondents constantly conveyed the idea of being directly impacted by a wide variety of events and developments in the news, regardless of geographic proximity. Heightened sensitivity to realities unfolding in nearby and distant places, it will be argued, would be a result of transnational communities’ connections with different social, cultural, economic and political contexts. These links emerged in a variety of ways throughout the research activities. Notably, the interactions in which members of families engaged when discussing the news, revealed the re-articulation – and possible subversion – of patriarchal structures regulating relationships between males and females. At the same time, the research provides hints of a possible intertwining between the mediated and unmediated experiences of contributors to the study, who constantly informed their understanding of the news on the basis of interpersonal and mediated communication, knowledge of places and locations, and circumstances attached to opportunities and constraints related to aspects such as migration and citizen status. While in need of further systematization, this thesis’ findings are relevant for they highlight the need to operationalize the transnational audience in ways which differentiate it from those media publics who are based in their countries of origin. At the same time, this intervention highlights the need to question or move forward from established forms of thinking about the media use of non- native peoples in the developed world. The project as a whole opens a window to explore an alternative academic vocabulary to the notions of “ethnic” and “minority” audiences, privileged in US scholarly endeavour.

Load more