Volume 32, Issue 2

Across the countries of Europe and within the European Union, there seems to be no end to discussions of policies related to migrants – from the labor migrants who came to Europe more than 40 years ago to the continued requests from prospective migrants who want to immigrate for asylum and family formation. The discussions on what those policies should be, range from multiculturalism to integration and assimilation. Shifts in policies have occurred because of the slow economic and educational progress made by some migrants; by the post-9/11 changes in attitudes and behavior among some Muslim migrants, and by concerns over the increased size of the migrant population.

The first part of this article summarizes research carried out during the last decade in the field of media use of ethnic minorities throughout Europe. Guiding research questions, underlying paradigms, and empirical evidence will be critically discussed in a comparative way. In the second part, empirical data of a Swiss survey among 1,600 adolescents aged 12 to 17 with migrant and Swiss backgrounds are presented. The comparative study points at similarities and differences in access to and use of old and new media such as the Internet as well as with the link between media use and social integration or cultural identity. Special emphasis is given to ethnic versus social factors as underlying explanatory factors. The results of the Swiss study are placed in the context of European research evidence.

Although most Turks in Germany belong to the second or third generation of immigrants, they have retained the social, cultural, and religious identity of their country of origin. This article deals with this double identity of young Turks in Germany and their language-bound exposure to television, radio, press, and the Internet. Telephone survey data are presented regarding the integration and media use of Turks in Germany. The survey was carried out in 2006 on behalf of the public broadcasting station of North Rhine-Westphalia (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, WDR). The analyses identify and describe different types of integration of Turks and investigate the relationship between their level of integration and their demographic profile as well as their patterns of media use. Causal analysis was focused on the question how different strategies of acculturation influence the use of mass media.

This article, which looks at exposure to and the use of host and home media by Turkish diaspora in Belgium, illustrates that media use is determined by cultural as well as socio-demographic features. By means of a quantitative survey among four hundred respondents of Turkish origin between the ages of eighteen and sixty, the use of host and home media (i. e., old and new) in general and news contents in particular were analyzed in relation to culture-specific features such as ethnic cultural position, religion, and command of language, alongside with socio-demographic features such as age, gender, education, years of residence and socio-economic status. Our investigation showed religion, ethnic-cultural position and command of the Turkish language to be the strongest determinants for home language news media use, while host language news media use was strongly determined by command of the Dutch or French language, length of residence and educational level. These findings, especially those pertaining to news use, bring nuance to a certain number of earlier findings with Turkish youngsters in the Netherlands and Flanders (12–19), whose media use was predominantly related to socio-demographics.

Advertisers in the Netherlands and Flanders are discovering marketing opportunities to market to specific target groups such as children and adolescents, and their growing numbers in the ethnic minority population. There have been relatively few empirical studies on the portrayal of these audience segments. In light of the first steps in ethnic marketing theory and practice in the Netherlands and Flanders, this study questions how advertising campaigns actually deal with ethnicity and the multicultural market. This issue is tackled by means of a quantitative and comparative content analysis of Dutch, Flemish, American, Turkish, and Chinese television commercials. The first section of this article sketches a theoretical framework for the measurement of cultural values and the representation of ethnic minorities in commercials. On the one hand it draws on previous cross-cultural research examining the individualism/collectivism dimension of culture (cf. Hofstede, 1991; Schwartz, 1992; Gudykunst, 1998) and on the other hand on advertising research concerned with both content-related, and style characteristics of commercials (e. g., De Pelsmacker and Geuens, 1997). In the second section, the methodology is discussed through an examination of the sample and coding instrument. The results section reveals both similarities and differences in the use of values and communication styles in commercials from individualistic as well as collectivistic cultures. Finally, the conclusions of this study are discussed and recommendations for further research are presented.

Since 9/11 it has become increasingly difficult to conduct primary research with Muslim migrant communities in Europe. In addition to the usual problems such as locating Muslim respondents that cross major demographic categories and preparing questions that are culturally and linguistically appropriate, the tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims that have followed violent incidents in Europe and North America have increased the likelihood of misunderstanding in the interview environment. This article addresses the management of methodological issues through examples taken from field work that took place among Turkish migrants in the Netherlands in 2006.

The present study shows that the Internet functions as a gratifying context for the exchange of knowledge and values related to religious matters among youngsters (primarily Moroccan) in the Netherlands; they are in the midst of constructing a religious identity. Systematic content analysis complemented by qualitative research was carried out on Maroc.nl , a discussion forum primarily aimed at Moroccan youth. Inspired by Kemper's (1996) definitions of experiencing Islam, the recurrence of six dimensions of religious experience (i. e., the ritual, ideological, consequential, experiential, intellectual, and social) was looked into in 1,354 online messages. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the nature and the relative visibility of each of these dimensions in the online discussions under study. In addition, a number of context-bound and issue-related characteristics of the message were assessed through qualitative analysis, in an effort to find out what key issues were mainly dealt with, what normative statements were made, and how the informants related to one another.