The changing ethnic news media landscapes: implications of technological convergence in multicultural Pakistan and Russia

Media representation of ethnic minorities and communities is important in multicultural societies that reflect ethnic cultural diversity. Therefore, the role of ethnic news media becomes crucial to give voices to marginalized communities, especially in the digital age when their cultural practices, issues and concerns can reach faster beyond the national territories. With technological advancements, ethnic news media practices are also transforming. Ethnic journalists, like their colleagues from mainstream news media, now use integrated digital tools to produce and disseminate news. However, quite less is known about how technology-driven changes are reshaping the ethnic news media landscape, and if such developments have any implications to strengthen the communicative power and representation of ethnic communities in culturally pluralistic societies. This study hence reflects upon the cases of Pakistan and Russia. Informed by the framework of technological convergence and cultural discourse studies (CDS), this study investigates the key implications of technological convergence in Pakistan’s and Russia’s ethnic news media. Moreover, this study primarily uses the qualitative method of in-depth interviews (face-to-face and online) and offers an inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data.