OCR Output

ANUSHRAY SINGH

promotion of multicultural media began in the 1980s to foster ethnic cohesion
to ultimately help diaspora bridge into the larger Canadian community.”
Though it is observable that, in the mass-media culture of the mainstream,
exclusion of minorities is often found, Canadian multicultural policies are
aimed towards alleviating that. South Asian ethnic media in Canada is often
a fringe of the mainstream, for example, the Hindi-Urdu-Punjabi programs of
OMNI TV (a private subsidiary of Rogers Communications), and other media
like radio, newspaper and magazines in various South Asian languages. South
Asian ethnic media is not able to coalesce into the mainstream Canadian
media landscape. Similarly, in the Second Space, the Canadian mainstream
media culture is observably a subset of the transnational North American
one and is dictated by the American mediascape. The South Asian diasporic
culture in the First space is a subset of the transnational South Asian one and
is dictated by Indian economic and cultural products.

The biggest problem with Canadian mass-media products compared to
other Anglophone Western industries it the lack of distinct identity. Canadian
cultural products are often indistinguishable from those of the USA. In
comparison, the American mediascape has been evolving: its South Asian
minorities are contributing significantly to the construction ofa heterogeneous
and multidimensional Mediascape. Similarly, the mass-media cultural
products from Australia, the UK and New Zealand also have their unique
identities. In terms of mainstream and minority culture, Canadian identity
has not evolved and lacks coherent representation of both its indigenous and
immigrant identities. Mass-media communication is often a reflective and a
dialectic* process amongst different communities in a region and the lack of
common identity can lead to fragmented cultural belonging and disparate
mass-media channeling: French Quebecois, English Canadian American and
Immigrant-transnational identities. In a survey, many Canadians believed
that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC, a federal government
corporation) should provide “high-quality Canadian programming”*® with
strong regional content throughout Canada. This means including South
Asian and other minority identities in the Canadian context. The mass-media
culture (especially the one spearheaded by the Canadian federal government)
fits into the “multicultural” ethos of the mosaic, which can help build an
integrated common cultural landscape, helping foster various ethnic identities
of Canada, and I see the Third Space as an important enunciative framework

23. Robin Mansell, The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy, John Wiley and
Sons, 2011.

4 Irving, Mass Media, 223.

3% The CBC, Canadian Culture, and Media Concentration, Ipsos.com, 29 August 2002,
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/cbc-canadian-culture-and-media-concentration (accessed 20
March 2020).

* 150 +