An examination of the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes

This study draws upon cultivation theory, acculturation theory, and works on intergroup relations to examine the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes of Chinese immigrants in Australia. Data was gathered via a survey administered to 265 respondents with Chinese origin. Results indicate that exposure to mainstream newspapers is only positively related to one indicator of subjective reality, namely, outgroup perception whereas exposure to ethnic newspapers was not significantly related to any of the indicators of subjective reality. Acculturation attitudes, on the other hand, are more closely related to group perception and contact but not closely associated with exposure to print media. These findings have again challenged the direct effect assumption of cultivation theory, paved the ground for combining mediated communication variables with interpersonal communication variables in acculturation research and suggested policy implications for interethnic coexistence. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

'Nothing good ever came out of Japan': Race-mixing and the limits of diaspora

This paper argues that postcolonial notions of diaspora are premised on immigrant subjectivities and standpoints which do not fully apprehend the mixed-race / bi-racial experience and the local effect of cultural hybridity in Western settings. The paper was prompted by a recent conversation with Dee, the daughter of a Japanese warbride. As a child Dee recalled being told by her friend's mother that 'nothing good ever came out of Japan'. The significance of constant interpolations into 'Asianness' by statements such as these; by the 'where do you come from?' question and by more blatant discriminations are inadequately addressed by traditional and postcolonial notions of diaspora. 'Roots' and 'routes' imagery feature prominently in discussions of diaspora and hybridity which aim to decolonise culture and identity in deconstructive moves that highlight their flexible, multiple, contractedness. While it has been argued that even these conceptualisations are problematic because they privilege orders of explanation, theory and standpoint that are forced back into line with traditional notions of discrete 'races', cultures, ethnicities and identities, cultural studies and postcolonial theorists do not appear to find this contradiction overly troubling. Lodged in bodies that do not easily conflate to neat either/or cultures, politics and genetics, race-mixing also defies and yet return us to culture and biology. However, I argue that their refractions though the same tired old orders of racial, ethnic, cultural and national differentiation prevent us from disregarding the discursive effects of racism and racialisation.