Media and migration: a review of the field

The interrelationships between media and migration is not a new field of study, but it is a rapidly growing and not unproblematic one. The migration process itself generates a reliance on mediated forms of communication. Yet, while, traditionally, public service broadcasting has addressed an audience that was imagined on the national scale, society in immigration countries is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. At the same time, massive advances in the technology of communication have opened up transnational communication channels of a speed, scale, and level of accessibility never seen before. Technological advances, changes in regulatory regimes, and increasing audience demand are also fundamentally transforming the patterns of production, distribution, and consumption of media content. This paper examines how these three processes are combining to drive change in global media and communications patterns, and considers the implications for such changes on the democratic ideal of the public sphere.