Diasporic Media and Transcultural Journalism: a case study of OMNI TV Chinese News in Greater Vancouver

With the increasingly multicultural demography in Greater Vancouver, diasporic media have played an important role in addressing the needs and concerns of immigrants from all over the world. Diasporic media’s strong commitment to show positive recognitions to their intended ethnic community can, however, be seen as a double-edged sword. While their allegiance has, to a certain degree, fractured the “regime of objectivity” found mostly in mainstream media, it has not fully captured the diversity and transcultural interactions between and within ethnic groups. Diasporic broadcasting has accordingly consolidated ethnic enclaves and created the problem of reification. To remedy the situation and foster the transcultural communication in journalism, this paper calls for an establishment of a new regime – the regime of intersubjectivity – to replace the “regime of objectivity.” A three-dimensional model of in-group and out-group transcultural communication in journalism is thus proposed to conceptualize the new regime of intersubjectivity.