Immigrants, Media Use by

Identity and Cultural Change

Identity is a central concept in the behavioral and social sciences. Authorities in these fields claim that the identity concept is important for many reasons. For example, the quest for identity can be seen as an aim of minority groups who want to assert their distinctiveness and gain recognition. The globalization of the economy and of information flow, along with intercultural encounters on a hitherto unprecedented scale, brings the question of identity to the fore. The concept of identity is closely tied to modernity and the individualization of social life, that is, to the project of self-realization. Issues of identity are of crucial importance for people who are in the process of cultural change. For example, moving from a so-called traditional society with its expectations and role distributions to a modern society in which individuality is advocated renders the question of identity formation paramount.

Daniel Dayan (1999) stresses the need to study media use within the private sphere to find out about how the media are involved in identity formation, both in the maintenance of cultural identity and in the cultural appropriation and the creation of new identities. Furthermore, globalization of the media and new media technology create new spaces for cultural meeting points, which fact further emphasizes the need to capture how people in a process of cultural change navigate in the global arena of electronic media. As Anthony Giddens points out, new media technology also has also led to an increasing separation between the concepts of place and space in late modern society. The former refers to the physical location of a person, whereas the latter is independent of a specific place or region. For example, the Internet makes it possible to communicate and to maintain and develop social relations with so-called absent others, thereby creating a social space. Other scholars, such as Joshua Meyrowitz and Manuel Castells, stress that factors such as global travel, communication technologies, and mass production of identical clothes and other [Page 396]products are making the world more and more interconnected. But Meyrowitz also stresses that physical places have not vanished and still provide settings for many of our interactions. Thus, the Internet may not only promote cultural change but may also help preserve cultural structures or patterns.

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