International Communication Gazette

Media are fundamental to the way communities make sense of conflicts. This also holds true for diaspora communities, who are involved in and affected by distant/homeland conflicts. Shifting away from the dominant focus on ‘radicalization’ through media in this context, this study looks at the role media play in making sense of such conflict among young Kurds in London. Data consist of focus groups with Kurdish youth, participant observations in community centres and ethnographic conversations. While media are generally perceived as the central forces through which diaspora youth experience and engage with the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, ethnic media, in particular Kurdish broadcasting, play a very limited role. The distance vis-à-vis ethnic media is analysed and explained through respondents’ discourses on diasporic cosmopolitanism. The results show that their shift away from ethnic media facilitates more solid ethnic identities and more enhanced engagements with the Kurdish conflict.

Third spaces have been imagined as sites of resistance, where hegemonic and normative understandings of the world may be challenged. New media are often imagined to have this liberatory potential as well, particularly for those individuals who experience social, cultural, or political marginalization. This research considers whether social media might help facilitate third spaces. It takes as a case for exploring this topic the experience of 188 Muslim bloggers in social networking site Tumblr. Many of these individuals live in non-Muslim majority countries and say they sometimes feel stuck between identities. The qualitative analysis of their blogs, as well as interviews with 30 of the bloggers, seeks to understand how Tumblr can facilitate third spaces where these bloggers can explore the hybrid nature of their identities while connecting to others who share that experience.

Recent studies have juxtaposed hedonic forms of media entertainment motivations (seeking for pleasure and fun) with eudaimonic forms (seeking for insights into the human condition). As most of this research was confined to the Western world so far, this contribution explores the impact of culture on hedonic and eudaimonic media entertainment motivations. Culture is conceptualized on both macro- and micro levels of analysis. On the macro level of countries, the study draws of Hofstede’s concept of individualism/collectivism. On the micro level of individuals, the study explores independent and interdependent self-construals and ethnic identity as potential influences on hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment. A survey was carried out with international students and non-students in Germany and Turkey (N = 324). Cross-level operator analyses were calculated to explore relationships between cultural variables and hedonic/eudaimonic entertainment motivations. Results show consistently that variables of culture that tap into cultural belonging (collectivism, interdependence, and ethnic identity) are significant predictors of hedonic entertainment. Cultural variables that tap into distinctiveness and separation from one’s collective (individualism and independence) are significant predictors of eudaimonic entertainment. The study is among the first to explore the impact of cultural variability on entertainment motivations and thus especially relevant for sparking up a new line of research.

Previous research reported that meaningful entertainment experiences are associated with elevation, mixed affect, physical indicators, and moral motivations. The importance of values, particularly altruistic values and self-transcendence, was thought to play a central role. Although the importance of values has been found to vary across cultures, little research so far has examined cultural variations in the response towards meaningful entertainment. The present study, therefore, investigated how cultural variations in self-construals and the importance of values (self-enhancement, conservation, and self-transcendence) in movies are related to meaningful entertainment experiences. An online experiment in Germany and the United Arab Emirates (N = 245) confirmed that meaningful entertainment elicited elevation. Elevation was associated with conservation and self-transcendence values and, via this path, increased moral motivations. An interdependent self-construal was related to elevation and to moral motivations. The results are discussed in light of current conceptualizations of inward- and outward-oriented gratifications of meaningful entertainment and the impact of values.

Digital media offer various possibilities for internet-based telecollaboration in schools and open up a space for intercultural learning. Diverse initiatives like such as the European Union-initiative eTwinning network aim to support telecollaboration projects in education. This article argues that we need to develop critical and grounded understanding of telecollaboration projects and how they are being embedded in the context of existing school cultures. The article presents an in-depth case study of a telecollaboration project between a Turkish and a German school. On the basis of observations in schools, interviews with teachers and focus groups with pupils, the article argues that there are two main challenges that limit the experience of intercultural learning in the analysed project. The first point is about the strong teacher-centred project design and the discrepancy between the perspectives of teachers and pupils. The second point is the rather simplistic and superficial understanding of culture, which reasserts national cultures instead of promoting a more open perspective, that influences the project tasks and topics.