The Transnational Politics of Canadian, Chinese-language Television News Production: Media, immigration, and foreign policy

• Author / Creator

  Ng, Elim

• The complexities and challenges of minority media production bring sharp focus to the sprawling and nebulous politics of transnational migration. By creating news programs meant to inform people with attachments in Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, Canadian, Chinese-language television news (CCLTN) workers bring together overlapping political claims from both the Chinese and Canadian states. Each of these governments seek a specific subject-state relationship with Chinese people in Canada and so engages CCLTN production to that affect. My dissertation considers the dilemmas, strategies, and choices of the people charged with creating such news programs by asking the question: how do CCLTN workers navigate the power and influence of the Chinese and Canadian states? I sought answers to my question by interviewing CCLTN workers, including news directors, network presidents, advertising managers, and reporters, in May and June of 2013. Their answers revealed the resourceful ways in which these workers renegotiate the subject-state claims made by each state, even as they are marginalized in their own industry as well as serving communities marginalized by Canada and the PRC. Where the PRC government desires loyal agents through which they can project their power and influence in overseas Chinese communities, CCLTN workers selectively engage by acknowledging the importance of the Chinese state while seeking to develop independent editorial approaches to issues considered to be politically sensitive by the Chinese Communist Party. The Canadian government, by contrast, seeks news coverage which will assist in immigrant adaptation and affirm the efficacy of Canadian multiculturalism. CCLTN workers respond by not only aligning themselves with the goal of immigrant adaptation but also describe the value of their work with respect to cultural retention and minority recognition. In this way, they offer back to the Canadian state a different vision of multicultural practice in Canada.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • sending state
  • transnational migration
  • foreign policy
  • broadcasting policy
  • minority media
  • Canada
  • China
  • receiving state
  • overseas Chinese
  • multiculturalism
  • ethnic broadcasting
  • media policy
  • Chinese Canadians

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-sjej-0868

• License

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