Remembering Ireland: News flows and 1916 in the transnational mediascape

Abstract

Irish emigration has resulted in large and highly organised diasporas in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia which sustain commercially successful ethnic news organisations serving the communities’ informational and cultural needs. Some of these titles have been operating in print for decades and expanded operations as they transitioned online. Diaspora journalism has an important role in recreating ethnic identity among deterritorialised Irish audiences. However, little is understood about what aspects of homeland culture diaspora news media represent, how ‘Irishness’ is characterised or the extent these representations can be regarded as homogeneous across different hostlands. The focus of this research is on Irish diasporic news organisations, comparing how news titles in each of the regions represented Irish identity over 6 months in 2016. Using RSS Feeds and automated data entry, it maps the news flows from Ireland to the digital diaspora press in each of the regions, revealing differences in the salience of news categories and topics. In addition, a comparative frame analysis of how the 1916 Centenary event in Ireland was covered revealed differences in the conceptualisation and representation of this part of Irish culture. This article highlights the complexity of diaspora news media’s role in representing ethnic identities as they respond and republish homeland current affairs. It reveals unbalanced news flows to the diaspora press and divergences among Irish diasporic news media over how transnational Irish culture is conceptualised and represented.

The politics and poetics of migrant narratives

“…It is important also to attend to the transformative potential of how migrant media professionals narrate migration (Ogunyemi, 2015). The experiences discussed in this special issue of migrant and displaced journalists (Voronova, 2019) and diaspora journalism (Kirk, 2019) provide strong evidence. Liudmila Voronova (2019) describes how migrant journalists in Ukraine actively seek to include migrant and other ‘fragmented communities into a media nation’ (p. 1) and Niamh Kirk (2019) articulates how Irish diaspora journalists ‘reinforce and challenge traditional conceptions of Irish culture’ (p. 2).…”

“…The experiences discussed in this special issue of migrant and displaced journalists (Voronova, 2019) and diaspora journalism (Kirk, 2019) provide strong evidence. Liudmila Voronova (2019) describes how migrant journalists in Ukraine actively seek to include migrant and other ‘fragmented communities into a media nation’ (p. 1) and Niamh Kirk (2019) articulates how Irish diaspora journalists ‘reinforce and challenge traditional conceptions of Irish culture’ (p. 2). Furthermore, journalism is not homogeneous: besides reporting on news, politics and debates, which commonly stereotype migrants; cultural and entertainment journalism, as shown in a study of the Swedish context ‘provides alternative perspectives on immigration and integration’ (Riegert and Hovden, 2019: 171).…”

“…It is then the task of the researcher to bring these different, divergent or at times colliding viewpoints together in a meaningful way, making evidence-based recommendations for change. (d'Haenens and Joris, 2020: 438) The group of actors narrating migration explored in this special issue include diaspora and migrant journalists (Kirk, 2019;Voronova, 2019), government officials and policy makers (Madörin, 2019), migrants and refugees (Dhoest, 2019;Greene, 2019;Løland, 2019), diasporas (Almenara-Niebla and Ascanio-Sánchez, 2019) and social media publics (Bozdağ, 2019). The narration of migration happens through anti-migrant social media memes, visual surveillance, digital fingerprints, asylum interviews, smartphone use, refugee selfies and news accounts.…”