Voices from the other side: communication technology, media, and migration

This research looks closely on the articulation between media, communication technology, and Latin American migrants. It explores the dialectic between digital and global worlds playing a vital role on migrants’ life and activism. Observing tensions and contradictions, this study analyzes the discursive narratives in three cases: five migrant’s families, two newspapers, and an Internet website. The emphasis on tensions and contradictions is important in this project as it is the discursive narratives media and migrants create. In the narratives analyzed notions of identity, nationalism, culture, community, race, and ethnicity are deployed. Narratives and discourses demonstrate that migrants become produced from the processes of globalization, transnationalism, and hybridization; but at the same time some of them are also acting as social agents trying to transform their lives. The cases analyzed suggest that a historical and transnational approach offer a space to hear Latin American voices contesting mainstream discourses. The political and cultural ‘Other’ is created out of hegemonic ideas, and arguments of dissents are necessary to start crafting an integral map reappraising the different voices that have been silenced by social structures.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2016

Author dc:creator

• Villalobos Romo, Gerardo

Contributors dc:contributor

• Molina, Isabel
• Cacho, Lisa
• Valdivia, Angharad
• Nerone, John

• Mass Media
• Immigration

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2016 Gerardo Villalobos-Romo

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/90565

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/90565