New Zealand migrants,polymedia and the ambivalences of staying in touch

Abstract

This article uses the concepts of polymedia and accentuated ambivalence to analyse the results of an interview study with New Zealand migrants in Australia. The participants in the study exploited the polymedia environment they have access to in relation to three areas of interest: consuming media representations of New Zealand, staying connected with people they have left behind and engaging with special interests such as music and sports from New Zealand. The article argues that in order to comprehend contemporary migrant audiences, scholars need to take into account the entire range of media that migrants have at their disposal. An expansion of the concepts of polymedia and accentuated ambivalence can facilitate this perspective. Polymedia theory is a vital tool for the analysis of how migrants manage their affective relationships with places and people through media consumption.

Keywords

Diaspora digital media technologies migrants national identity New Zealand news polymedia popular music satellite television sports

Introduction

This article draws on Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller’s (2012a, 2012b) theory of polymedia to explore the different ways in which New Zealand migrants in Australia use media to stay connected with their original home country. Rather than concentrating on communication between family members (which was the focus of Madianou and Miller’s study), the article aims to expand the concept of polymedia to encompass the entire media environment that contemporary migrants can engage with. In doing so, it considers a range of media, from satellite television to Internet radio, news websites, Skype, Facebook, DVDs and mobile phones, to analyse why migrants opt for particular media technologies out of the options available to them in order to manage affective relationships with people, places and interests.

The introduction of a raft of digital media technologies in the last 20 years has gone hand in hand with the intensification of migration on a global scale (Madianou, 2011: 444). Migrants’use of these new media technologies raises questions about how the nature of migration itself is changing now that people are able to easily connect with different places at once (Fortunati et al., 2012: 1–6). Andoni Alonso and Pedro Oiarzabal (2010: ix) pose that the ‘widespread use of computer-based technologies (…) constitutes a new dimension in the study of emigrant and diasporic identities and cultures within the context of the current processes of globalization’. ‘Mediatized migrants’ are in a unique position to take advantage of the availability of digital media to position themselves in relation to a variety of cultural fields (Hepp et al., 2012: 172).

For nation states, the increased mobility of migrants and availability of digital media can be a cause for concern (Athique, 2016: 79). While, in most cases, this concern is directed at migrants arriving to the country, in the relatively small nation of New Zealand (population: 4.5 million), there is continuing anxiety over the amount of people leaving the country for its bigger neighbouring state, Australia. New Zealand newspapers regularly publish migration statistics which show that increasing numbers of people permanently relocate across the Tasman Sea in search of better job and life opportunities. Figures from Statistics New Zealand demonstrate that Australia is the main destination for long-term and permanent migrants (Statistics New Zealand, 2012). These statistics do not give insight, however, into what happens to New Zealand migrants after they move to Australia, how they experience their identities and how they maintain connections with people and places in New Zealand. Apart from reports by government departments (see Hamer, 2007, for instance) and general sources on migration to Australia (see Jupp, 2007), there is not much research that explores these questions.

This article thus has two aims: based on a case study of New Zealand migrants in Australia, to explore how migrants use the contemporary digital media landscape to maintain a relationship with their original home country and to expand the notion of polymedia by taking into account a range of media. The notion of ‘accentuated ambivalence’, developed by Madianou (2012: 282) in the context of polymedia theory, proved useful in reflecting on some of the conflicting feelings that migrants experience when using media. The article proposes to also conceive of this notion more broadly than in the original study by Madianou and Miller.

The uses of polymedia

Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller (2012a) have proposed the term ‘polymedia’ in the context of their study on Filipino transnational families and how they use media to stay connected. The basic presupposition of the theory of polymedia is that we now live in an era of media abundance and that migrants use the multifaceted media landscape to remain in touch with family members they have left behind. There are three conditions for a state of polymedia to exist (Madianou and Miller, 2012a: 126): first, individuals need to have access to a range of communication media, at least more than half a dozen; second, they need to have the media literacies to navigate the media landscape; and third, they need to be able to afford accessing media environments, whereby the cost of media is typically shifted from using distinct media technologies to accessing media infrastructures. The essence of the theory is that audiences constantly compare different media technologies with each other and opt for particular media out of all of the options they have to achieve their communicative goals and gain a sense of control over their relationships (Madianou and Miller, 2012a: 9). Madianou and Miller (2012b: 170) emphasize that migrants navigate media as an integrated environment, in which each medium only makes sense in relation to other media that could have been used: ‘in conditions of polymedia, the emphasis shifts from a focus on the qualities of each particular medium as a discrete technology, to an understanding of new media as an environment of affordances’. Polymedia is ultimately a theory about affective relationships. Media use is seen not as the result of a particular technological media environment, but as the outcome of a process in which audiences reflect on how they want to manage relationships with people who are geographically distant yet emotionally close to them.

Since the concept of polymedia was introduced, other authors have also started using it as a framework to analyse how audiences navigate contemporary media environments. Most citations of polymedia are rather straightforward applications of the theory. Some scholars, alike Madianou and Miller, write about transnational migrant families (Boccagni, 2015; Cabanes and Acedera, 2012; Cuban, 2014); other scholars apply the concept to the wider field of interpersonal communication (Burchell, 2015), or specifically to communication between parents and children (Longhurst, 2016) and couples (Jansson, 2015). Several authors, among which Madianou herself, have written about polymedia and smartphones (Bertel and Ling, 2016; Madianou, 2014; Miller, 2014), and Madianou (2015) herself has used the concept to analyse social media. The premise of polymedia is repeated and applied in these studies: audiences have a range of media at their disposal, they compare these media with each other and media function as an integrated environment to manage affective relationships.

The aim of this article is to expand the concept of polymedia in a different way, by returning to the study of migrants which Madianou and Miller’s conceptualization of polymedia began with. Drawing on a case study with New Zealand migrants in Australia, I will use polymedia to analyse not only personal communication but all media use that migrants engage in to stay connected with the places and people they have moved away from. I am thus proposing to take Madianou and Miller’s (2012a: 124) premise that to understand migrants’ media cultures ‘we need to look at the entire range of media as a communicative environment’ one step further by including media which are not directed at interpersonal communication (see Siapera, 2014: 178, who advocates for the same point). To form a comprehensive picture of the role that media play in migrants’ lives, we need to take into account all media that they use, including broadcast media such as radio and television and online media not directly targeted at interpersonal relationships. As Andreas Hepp, Cigdem Bozdag and Laura Suna (2012: 172) also comment, it is essential to ‘analyze the communicative connectivity of (…) migrants in its entirety if we want to make any statements on their (media) culture’. I also aim to expand the notion of ‘accentuated ambivalence’, which Madianou (2012: 282) has used in the context of polymedia to reflect on the multiple pressures around issues of parenthood, to analyse tensions around the use of media to stay in touch with people and places left behind more broadly.

Media use and ambivalence

In the last decade, the study of how migrants use media to connect with their original homelands has shifted focus from broadcast media to Internet media (Oiarzabal and Reips, 2012: 1334). The changing media environment has urged scholars to pay attention to the newly arisen opportunities offered by computer-based and mobile technologies. At the same time, media such as television, radio and film has not disappeared; on the contrary, with the introduction of digital media technologies they have become more accessible than before. Due to the widespread availability of satellite television and cable networks, migrants can access familiar narratives in their new countries of residence (Fortunati et al., 2012: 9). Myria Georgiou (2012: 305) argues that television is still an important medium for contemporary migrant audiences. Her research with migrants in the United Kingdom has found that television can give a sense of relief in the management of ‘transnational anxieties’ through providing a constant cultural reference: ‘television supports a sense of continuity in migrant and diasporic populations’ symbolic space of belonging’ (Georgiou, 2012: 309). The news in particular can give migrants audiences the assurance that ‘identities, places and people are “in place”’ (Georgiou, 2012: 315).

Previous research on migrant and diasporic groups, on the other hand, has revealed that migrants have a much more ambivalent relationship with television from their countries of origin and television news in particular. Stuart Cunningham and John Sinclair’s (2001) study on diasporas in Australia, for example, traces how different groups of migrants from Asia use media to stay in touch with news and popular culture from their homelands. Their study analyses how video, music video, television and music provide resources for migrants to negotiate between the dominant Australian culture and their own respective cultural backgrounds (Cunningham and Sinclair, 2001: 18). What they found, instead, was that Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian migrants tended to distance themselves from media from the home country and preferred Australian media (Sinclair and Cunningham, 2000: 27). Similar observations arose from a project on Turkish migrants in London, in which participants commented that television news from their country of origin, due to its graphic nature, could be profoundly unsettling and disturbing to watch (Aksoy and Robins, 2003: 97).

Madianou (2012: 282) coins the term ‘accentuated ambivalence’ to denote the conflicting roles and identities that migrants have to juggle. She uses this notion to analyse the opposing pulls towards home and work that Filipino migrant women negotiate on a daily basis. In this article, I argue that ‘accentuated ambivalence’ can also be used to explain opposing feelings that migrants experience towards communicating with family and friends and using media to stay informed about what is happening ‘at home’. Based on an interview study with New Zealand migrants in Australia, I will illustrate that broadened conceptions of polymedia and accentuated ambivalence can enhance understanding of the different ways in which migrants navigate the digital media landscape.

Participants

Participants for the interview study were contacted through the Kiwi Fine Foods store in Brisbane, Australia. This store sells products from New Zealand, mainly food products such as biscuits, honey, jam, chips and confectionery, but also artwork, souvenirs, sports gear, beauty products and – in a corner next to the entrance – media such as DVDs, CDs and books. The store’s slogan, displayed on signs outside the store, ‘For a taste of New Zealand’, indicates that the store owners aim to connect costumers to a ‘New Zealand’ experience. Purnima Mankekar (2002: 92), who studied Indian grocery stores in San Francisco, found that migrant grocery stores ‘form a crucial node in the transnational circulation and consumption of commodities and discourses’ and that they ‘invoke and produce powerful discourses of home, family and community – all of which are contested’. This also applies to the New Zealand grocery store in Brisbane, it is a place where people can consume not just products from New Zealand but also discourses on what ‘New Zealand culture’ is, and by engaging with these, they position themselves in relation to ideas about New Zealand and New Zealanders. At the same time, different participants make sense of these discourses in quite divergent ways.

My aim in contacting people through a grocery store was to engage in ‘purposeful sampling’ by looking for information-rich cases that yield in-depth understanding (Patton, 2002: 230). The logic here was that if people are interested to come to a grocery store to buy and consume products from New Zealand, they may well be interested in consuming New Zealand media too. On three weekends, I stood outside the store and talked with people who were leaving. My first question was ‘Are you originally from New Zealand?’. If the answer was ‘Yes’, I asked: ‘Do you use media to stay in touch with New Zealand?’. If they answered affirmatively, I invited them to participate in an interview. In all but a few cases, people were interested in being interviewed and we met at a later date to sit down and talk. The interviews were semi-structured and I used a topic list to guide the conversation. After introducing the project, I asked participants to introduce themselves and tell me about their migration history. Next, I asked about the media they use to connect with New Zealand: television, radio, Internet and any other media they wanted to discuss. Finally, we discussed identity issues: New Zealand and Australian identities, participants’ own sense of identity and the role that media play in relation to identity. The interviews lasted for 45 min to 1.5 h.

I conducted 12 interviews in which 15 people participated. Eight participants were men and seven were women, nine were Pākehā New Zealanders and six were Māori. Nine interviews were with individuals and three with couples. Participants represented a broad range of ages: some were in their 20s, others in their 30s, 40s or 50s and one participant was in his 60s. Looking at the three preconditions for polymedia – access, media literacy and affordability – all participants had access to a range of media, some were more media literate than others – depending on age and education – and discussion about the cost of media was limited to the use of mobile phones for calling and texting to New Zealand.

Even though the number of participants in the study was limited, some clear patterns emerged. These patterns describe part of the experience of New Zealand migrants in Australia, and more research will be needed to explore how widespread they are. After analysing and comparing participants’ media use, migration histories and identity issues – notably gender – participants could be divided into three groups: (1) men who had been living in Australia for several decades and who were focused on media representations of New Zealand; (2) women who were predominantly invested in using media to connect with people in New Zealand; and (3) male–female couples who had only recently arrived in Australia and showed relatively much interest in connecting with special interests such as sports and music through media.

Regarding all three areas – representations of place, connecting with people and looking for information about special interests – polymedia as a theory could be applied, in the sense that in each area, participants use media as an integrated environment to satisfy their wishes and desires, which means that if they cannot find what they are looking for in one medium, they will opt for another. The notion of ‘accentuated ambivalence’ plays a role when participants talk about areas of interest that they do not see as one of their priorities.

New Zealand identities

Participants in the study identify strongly with their New Zealand identity, or as most of them call it, Kiwi identity. They are happy to reside in Australia but do not identify as Australians or consider that living in Australia has changed their sense of identity. It seems that participants resort to an identity performance that is not open to negotiation, a position that other scholars have encountered when studying migrant groups (Schein, 2002: 230):

JOOST:

So you’ve been in Australia for quite a while, both of you, do you feel New Zealand, or Kiwi, or Australian?

MAX:

Definitely, a hundred percent.

KATE:

Kiwi!

JOOST:

Kiwi.

MAX:

One hundred percent!

KATE:

Definitely yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever feel like an Aussie aye, I wouldn’t even want to.

JOOST:

How come? How does that work?

MAX:

Because I’m a Kiwi.

KATE:

[laughs]

MAX:

(…) I don’t care how long I’ve been here for.

JOOST:

OK, so that hasn’t changed over time.

KATE:

No.

MAX:

Not one bit, no.

JOOST:

You haven’t started feeling more Australian, somehow.

MAX:

No!

KATE:

No.

MAX:

No, I hope not. [laughs]

As Hamid Naficy (1993: 118) has commented, these kinds of identity performances offer migrants ‘discursive and symbolic order and rigidity in the face of personal and social disorder and fluidity’. Despite their proclamations that they have not become Australians, participants found it difficult to articulate what the exact differences are between Australians and New Zealanders. In the context of their everyday lives, they often negotiate these distinctions, as well as their sense of where ‘home’ is. In this vein, ‘home’ can feel like a ‘changeable and liminal zone’ for migrants (Bailey, 2011: 258):

JOOST:

So when you say I’m proud to be a New Zealander, can you describe what are you proud of?

DAVID:

Oh, everything about…I live here, but my wife always says to me, because I say ‘Why don’t we go home?’, she says ‘Your home is here’. But then when I go to New Zealand I say ‘home’ referring to Australia. I don’t know, but I don’t know, just of everything really, of being a Kiwi…in Australia. That is the thing and trying to make your mark.

JOOST:

So what does, what sets Kiwis apart? From Australians perhaps…

DAVID:

Accent and that’s about it.

JOOST:

OK, apart from that.

DAVID:

No, I don’t think so, we, we party hard, we like a drink, same as the Aussies. Probably we are too much alike.

The New Zealand accent was brought up by many participants. Even though the Australian and New Zealand accents in English are similar to someone who is not from the region, the New Zealand accent is a distinct identity marker for New Zealanders living in Australia and plays a continuing role in their everyday lives. Participants reported being laughed at or discriminated against as a result of speaking with a New Zealand accent, particularly in their workplace:

JO:

I don’t notice a huge difference in like the way I talk, you know like the guys at work make fun of me, but I don’t, I don’t notice it.

JOOST:

Do they still make fun of you?

JO:

Oh, yeah.

JOOST:

So what are some of the jokes they would make?

JO:

Oh, not so much jokes, just laughing at the way I say things, like ‘sure’ is a big one. Apparently I say that ‘shower’. Yeah, ‘sure’. [laughs]

All participants have paid employment, mostly working class jobs (builder, truck driver, mechanic, jobs in the service industry). The main reasons for migrating to Australia that participants mentioned were better job opportunities, better weather, a more active lifestyle or joining an Australian partner. Most participants mentioned that they meet a lot of other New Zealanders socially or through work:

JOOST:

Do you know many New Zealanders here or Kiwis?

LARRY:

Several thousands.

JOOST:

Thousands!

LARRY:

Yeah, there’s thousands. Thousands and thousands of us.

JOOST:

And do you meet many of them?

LARRY:

Every day. If I’m out working, it’s ‘spot the Australian’.

JOOST:

Oh, OK, so most people are actually from New Zealand.

LARRY:

In the construction and building industry, yes.

JOOST:

So if you look at your circle of friends or the people you meet in your daily life…

LARRY:

98.5% Kiwis.

To conclude, even though cultural differences between Australia and New Zealand are minor, participants are very aware of their New Zealand identity. This identity seems to play a large role in their lives, where it is negotiated on a daily basis. This outcome is likely related to the fact that participants were contacted through a New Zealand grocery store. The participants all came to the store because they had an interest in consuming New Zealand food and culture. In relation to media, they navigate the media landscape to find connections that are meaningful to them and reinforce their sense of identity. Different participants have different priorities and accentuated ambivalence comes to the fore when participants experience feelings that do not align with their aspirations and priorities.

Representations of New Zealand

The polymedia landscape gives migrants ample opportunities to access representations of the place that they have moved away from. Participants in this study use satellite television, the Internet, but also other media such as DVDs and newspapers to consume representations of New Zealand. In the context of this study, representations of New Zealand were particularly popular with men who came to Australia several decades ago. They mentioned travel shows, food shows, farming shows and New Zealand films as genres which give them access to visual representations of New Zealand:

BEN:

There’s other odd ones that just pop up, travel shows that pop up. Oh, there was one, a young part-Māori girl used to present a sort of New Zealand travel thing, I can’t remember what that was, but that was really good, just, you know, took you to different parts of New Zealand, to show you, encouraged you to travel there (…). Yeah, yeah love watching the New Zealand landscape, the New Zealand people, love listening to the New Zealand accent.

The notion of images ‘popping up’ is important here. Most participants in the study live in a dwelling where there is access to satellite television services such as Foxtel or Austar. These services provide them with between 40 and 90 television channels, depending on the package they sign up for: a true sign of television in an age of plenty (Ellis, 2000: 162). The wide variety of channels and programmes creates a context where visual representations of New Zealand are routinely available. In some cases, this facilitates warm feelings of belonging:

LARRY:

I always look up New Zealand things, I have Austar and anything on New Zealand I watch or attempt to watch. (…)

JOOST:

So do those programmes give you a sense of, like being in touch with home?

LARRY:

Yes, yes.

JOOST:

Is that something that is important to you?

LARRY:

Yes.

JOOST:

OK. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, like how that works?

LARRY:

I guess the easiest way to put it would be, it helps me with my feelings of belonging. I belong to a very unique country and a unique lifestyle. And, and when I watch programmes I’m looking in the background at the hills and the sheep and the daffodils, the gorse hedges, the macrocarpa hedges…

Within an Australian media context, however, there are particular genres that disturb this process. One prime example that many participants talked about is Reality TV from New Zealand. At the time of the interviews, Australian channels were screening crime-oriented Reality TV shows such as Police Ten 7 and Motorway Patrol, according to one participant, ‘all portraying New Zealand really badly’:

JOOST:

Since coming here, have you come across any New Zealand television programmes?

WARREN:

Yeah.

LINDA:

Yeah.

JOOST:

Which ones?

LINDA:

Motorway Patrol.

WARREN:

Yeah. Police Ten 7.

LINDA:

That renter’s one where they, like they had tenants in New Zealand. [laughs] (…) And the crash ones, Serious Crash Unit. All portraying New Zealand really badly! [laughs] (…)

JOOST:

How is New Zealand portrayed?

LINDA:

Pretty rough and like, especially with Motorway Patrol and how they pull people up and they’re always drunk and stuff like that, or the crash scene ones and stuff and then the renter’s one was going, it was always going through people’s houses and it’s a tiff and it’s, they’ve run away without paying bills or something.

These kinds of representations do not facilitate positive feelings of belonging; on the contrary, they can create anxiety and embarrassment for New Zealand migrants. Participants sense that Australian media portray an image of New Zealand and New Zealanders which echoes sentiments they perceive as existing more widely in Australian society:

DANIELLE:

When Australians put on Kiwi programmes, they usually put on Kiwi programmes that like, in my opinion, tend to embarrass us as a Kiwi nation. Like ‘see this is what Kiwis are like’. And I mean they’re always downing us here on the media, on the radio, especially with sport like, you know, if Australia beats New Zealand [in sports], Australia is on the front page of the Courier Mail [a Brisbane newspaper], if New Zealand beats Australia we’re not on the front page generally.

In a polymedia environment, there are plenty of opportunities for migrants to find news about their original home countries. New Zealand migrants in Australia can watch New Zealand news on satellite television, and they can visit news websites online. Some participants followed the news from New Zealand intensively and on an almost continuous basis, for example, through the Stuff news website:

BEN:

I am constantly on Stuff.co.nz , I am registered with them so I get an email every morning with the current news headlines so then I click onto them and then when you’re reading that, there’s a list of stories on the site which you invariably start checking through and then, you sort of, once you’ve started, you know, if you’ve been on the web you start clicking here, there and everywhere and you end up, new stories just constantly going around and around in circles, finding new stories, so it can be a long-winded exercise but no, there is an awful lot that I watch on Stuff.co.nz .

JOOST:

What kind of stories do you like?

BEN:

Oh just, I read anything, I’ll scan through them all, whether they’d be robberies, murders, car accidents, earthquakes, weather, anything that’s there, I just read. Yeah, I just like to know what’s happening I think. You’ve got to read every story to get a general idea of what’s happening.

Yet similar to the Turkish people in London interviewed by Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins (2003: 97), other participants found that staying informed about New Zealand could be disturbing:

DANIELLE:

We can watch the Kiwi news every day of the week. (…) So we can see what’s going on in New Zealand every day like same, pretty much the same as what they can. (…) Usually when I’m watching it it’s because I’ve heard something specific is happening over there so I want to see it first-hand myself (…). But usually like, with New Zealand I’m not too interested in their stories because, you know it’s always a brutal murder and it happens quite a lot and usually kids are involved and I really don’t want to. If you don’t hear something, if you don’t know about it, it doesn’t affect you.

The participants who were the most interested in consuming representations of New Zealand, visual representations as well as news, were men who migrated to Australia, a considerable amount of time ago. They navigate the polymedia landscape to look for representations that create positive feelings of belonging for them. Other participants – women and young couples – talked about the drawbacks of accessing these representations. For them, consuming particular representations of New Zealand creates ambivalent feelings about using media to stay in touch with New Zealand.

Connecting with people

The existing scholarship on polymedia concentrates on communication between people who live in different locations. Participants in this study have access to a range of digital media that they use to stay in touch with people: email, social networking sites, mobile phones, landlines and Skype. The participants who talked the most about connecting with people in New Zealand through media were women who moved to Australia in recent years. One participant could compare the contemporary media landscape with its many possibilities to stay in touch with people in different locations to the media landscape migrants were dealing with in previous decades. Anna lived in London in the 1990s and reflected on changes that have taken place with regard to the available media to stay in touch:

ANNA:

It’s not like fifteen years ago when I lived in London, that you know, it was really expensive to make a phone call and communication was via letter and it used to take a week to get there and then a week to get anything back and all that, you know there was nothing that was instant. If you wanted to send photos you had to go and get them printed out and post them, whereas with email, I mean it’s just so much easier, the Internet. (…) Fax machines were just sort of coming in, so my parents had a fax in their business and we had a fax machine at work so occasionally I’d send a fax, but it was, you know, you weren’t supposed to be using it. (…) I mean and that was just really the last little while and then generally it was, yeah, letter writing. (…) And to make a phone call was really expensive. To call from London to New Zealand then was really expensive.

As Madianou and Miller (2012a: 57–62) found in their study, temporality and cost are vital factors in determining the use value of distinct media for staying in touch. The fact that letters took so long to arrive presented a limitation of this ‘old’ medium for maintaining relationships. The cost of phone calls used to be another impediment to staying connected. These two notions play out differently in an era of polymedia, in which communication can be immediate and costs for media have generally shifted from the technology to the media infrastructure. Instant communication is possible through mobile phones and computers, and video chat applications such as Skype are free of charge:

DANIELLE:

Because I like to hear back immediately, usually if I want to have contact it’s pretty much instant, it’s either text or phone. (…) Sometimes I’ll email but that’s not my personal preference. It’ll be via text, I like instant reply, so text or phone is instant reply pretty much.

PAULA:

[Skype] is so much easier than talking on a cell phone, because, obviously like I only got a cell phone so if my parents phone it gets quite expensive and then like, I know I phone my son and I think for eight minutes it costs fifty bucks. Yeah. So that’s quite expensive.

In a context of polymedia, migrants compare the affordances of different media technologies and opt for the ones that allow them to meet their specific relationship and emotional needs (Madianou and Miller, 2012a: 128). For participants such as Paula, who moved to Australia while her two children were in the care of family members in New Zealand, communication is particularly important, and in this case, the results of this study echo the findings of the original study by Madianou and Miller (2012a). The widespread availability of mobile phones facilitates ritualized communication through which parents can let their children know that they are thinking of them (Madianou and Miller, 2012a: 110):

PAULA:

I send a text, like my son has a cell phone and my daughter has a cell phone, and I just text them every Wednesday and every Saturday, we’ve got, I got this saying ‘Love you long time’, so I just send them a text and it says ‘Love you long time’. And I do it every Wednesday and every Saturday.

None of the other participants had children in New Zealand at the time of the interviews, but all of them talked about staying connected with friends and family members. The availability of different media technologies has changed the nature of migration, in the sense that you can remain close to people who are important to you. For migrants, this can facilitate an ongoing sense of belonging:

ANNA:

I think it’s really important [to stay in touch with people in New Zealand] because, I mean, I guess your family and your friends from there are, that’s who I am, you know, sort of, you know. It’s part of me, so it’s really important to keep up with and know what’s happening and also because I’ve had such a sort of longstanding relationship with them that you’re used to just being on the phone or going around having dinner with them or talking that you’re just sort of…So it’s not, especially with Skype I think, well and with email really, it’s just, it’s not really like you’re…[that far away].

Participants also talked about ambivalences they experience in staying in touch with people. The fact that you are constantly connected can distract from life in the place where you are:

JOOST:

Do you reckon it’s a good way of staying in touch with people?

MAX:

Definitely, yeah. Sometimes it’s a bit too much. You just want to be left alone sometimes.

KATE:

Most of the time I turn the chat, I go offline on the chat window, so that people don’t talk to me, sometimes it’s just annoying but ‘Ohh…I’ll just write you a message’. (…)

MAX:

Yeah, if your friends are online, and then like, so even when you sign on to do other stuff someone starts messaging, someone else, just starts messaging, you’re just like ‘Ahhh…’. (…)

The participants in this study navigate the polymedia landscape to stay connected with family and friends in New Zealand. They exploit the affordances of different media available to them to meet relationship and emotional needs and retain a sense of belonging (Madianou and Miller, 2012a: 128). Living in a media environment in which mobile phones, Skype and social networking sites are readily available, they choose media that they feel comfortable with, that are convenient to use and that allow them to maintain relationships. Although all participants discussed this, the participants who stressed the importance of staying connected with people the most were women who had only recently migrated to Australia. Other participants experience accented ambivalence about connecting with friends and family in New Zealand (also see Baym, 2010: 154). As Max comments in one of the interviews with young couples, staying in touch is not always a priority: ‘You just want to be left alone sometimes’.

Special interests: Music and sports

In addition to accessing representations of places and connecting with people left behind, migrants can use the polymedia environment to satisfy specific interests. The participants in this study talked about special interests which, in different ways, have a connection to New Zealand, ranging from aviation, motorcycles, earthquakes, education resources and real estate to music and sports. The latter two stood out as areas of interest, and it is striking that in both cases, there is an overlap between New Zealand and Australian cultural spheres: New Zealand bands and sports teams travel to Australia, which gives New Zealand migrants an opportunity to connect with them. The participants who are active followers of New Zealand music scenes and avid sports fans are in most cases young couples. They exploit the polymedia environment to interact with their interests.

Some participants prefer New Zealand radio stations over Australian ones because of the genres of music they play. They are able to access New Zealand radio stations through the Internet:

MAX:

I listen to that Radio Active on the internet.

JOOST:

Oh, we talked about that at the Kiwi shop. (…) What kind of music?

MAX:

Everything. Sort of like, I suppose you’d say it’s like Triple J over here but better.

KATE:

Triple J is crap.

MAX:

Yeah, nah, it’s crap. (…)

JOOST:

No, I remember you saying actually at the shop that you listen to New Zealand radio because Australian radio…

MAX:

Is shit, yeah.

JOOST:

So how are New Zealand ones better?

MAX:

They just play more reggae, I don’t know, just more, more up-to-date stuff as well and more drum ‘n’ base, dub, stuff like that, but Australians just aren’t even into it at all. (…) [They] play better hip hop, all that sort of stuff is a lot better, yeah. And New Zealand music is better as well. [laughs]

Within an environment of polymedia, people can use different avenues to find the music they like to listen to. If this music is not available on FM or AM frequencies in the area where they live, they can tune in to radio from almost anywhere through the Internet. Participants also talked about listening to New Zealand music through mobile media such as a CD player in the car or an MP3 player, mobile phone or iPod that they carry with them:

JOOST:

Any New Zealand music that you guys listen to?

RICHARD:

Elemeno P.

JO:

Lots…

RICHARD:

Yeah, her iPod’s full of it.

Similar to consuming representations and staying in touch with people, participants compare media technologies with each other and opt for the ones most convenient to them. On top of this, migrants in the Brisbane region can regularly listen to visiting New Zealand bands ‘live’. This is also an occasion to meet other like-minded New Zealanders:

KATE:

There’s heaps of Kiwis bands that play Australian events, like Evermore, like they’re from New Zealand and they play like here all the, well pretty much, they’re based here. (…) And Tim Finn played, like not long ago here, for like the Australian, some Australian event…

JOOST:

Do you ever go and see New Zealand bands?

MAX:

Yeah.

KATE:

Yeah, yeah.

MAX:

The last one, we went to Sal Dub on Friday.

KATE:

Yeah, Salmonella Dub was on Friday night.

MAX:

(…) Our last, was it a Shapeshifter, [we] went there. Was a while ago now. They played not that long ago though, with…When did we go to Shapeshifter?

KATE:

I don’t know, I can’t remember. We’ve seen them a few times, we’ve seen them heaps.

MAX:

Yeah, we’ve seen them heaps. (…)

MAX:

There was heaps of Kiwis there as well.

JOOST:

OK, of course, because other people in the audience are Kiwis as well.

MAX:

Yeah. Yeah, yah, yeah.

JOOST:

So is that something you enjoy about that?

MAX:

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Other participants talked about attending sports events with visiting New Zealand teams. The New Zealand Warriors rugby league team play in the Australian league, which means that they travel to Brisbane and the neighbouring Gold Coast frequently. Aroha, who wore a New Zealand Warriors T-shirt during the interview, has been to their matches in both Australia and New Zealand and uses a range of media as well as contact with her father in New Zealand to stay informed about the Warriors:

AROHA:

I always go when they’re in Brisbane. (…) And I was going to go to the Gold Coast one when they played the Titans, but it was my uncle’s fiftieth so I didn’t end up going. (…)

JOOST:

And when you were in New Zealand, did you follow them as well, did you go to Auckland?

AROHA:

Yeah, I flew up to Auckland last year for the semis (…) but I’ve only ever been to Auckland once (…). They used to sometimes play in Wellington, and I’d go to them.

JOOST:

So where would you get information about the Warriors?

AROHA:

They would have write-ups in the paper, or you can buy, when it’s NRL each week they have the league magazine. And you buy that and it’s always got different, not as much about the Warriors but you can read up a bit about it. Yeah, or if I’m on the phone like I said, to my dad, he will say ‘Oh dadada is happening with the Warriors’, yeah.

Music and sports are areas of interest in which New Zealand and Australian cultural spheres overlap. New Zealand bands regularly visit Australia to perform, New Zealand sports teams come to Australia to play international matches or participate in Australian leagues. This gives New Zealand migrants – and in the case of this study, these were mainly young couples – an option to physically connect with them as well as others who share their interests. People have a range of media at their disposal which they can use to pursue their interests. Engaging with music and sports through media as well as attending live events allows migrants to feel part of a New Zealand community, which helps with retaining a sense of belonging. Different participants have different interests, and it is for this reason that accentuated ambivalence does not come to the fore; within a polymedia environment, migrants are in a position to find information about a wide range of areas depending on their own individual preferences.

Conclusion

The aim of this article has been to expand the concept of polymedia and the related notion of accentuated ambivalence based on an interview study with New Zealand migrants in Australia. The results of the study provide insight into how the nature of migration has changed as a result of the introduction of digital media technologies. Participants had a range of media at their disposal to remain in touch with their New Zealand identities. Satellite television, news websites, Internet radio, DVDs, iPods, mobile phones, Skype and Facebook, among others, were mentioned as facilitating connections. The study shows that migrants employ the polymedia environment in relation to three areas of interest: consuming representations of the place that they have moved away from, staying connected with people and pursuing special interests. With regard to each of these areas, due to the availability of a range of media, migrants evaluate distinct media in relation to each other, compare the affordances of media technologies and opt for media that help them achieve their goals and give them a positive sense of belonging. Polymedia is ultimately a theory about affective relationships (Madianou and Miller, 2012a: 127), and this is evident in all three areas. Through consuming media representations of New Zealand, New Zealand migrants manage their relationship to the country that they have left. In connecting with people in New Zealand, they continue relationships with family and friends. Using media to make connections with special interests also facilitates relationships, both with the object of interest – in the case of this study, music and sport stood out as examples – and with other like-minded people.

In relation to all three areas of interest, an accentuated sense of ambivalence becomes apparent. The notion of accentuated ambivalence as developed by Madianou (2012: 282) concentrates on conflicting roles that migrants – specifically mothers who have moved away from their children – have to juggle. Based on the results of the interview study, I argue that accentuated ambivalence also applies to other aspects of the migrant experience and related media use. Feelings of ambivalence occur when migrants feel uneasy about aspects of their identity or sense of belonging. While consuming representations of New Zealand that resonate with people’s feelings can be a reinvigorating experience, being confronted with disturbing news or images from New Zealand can upset migrants’ sense of security. Staying in touch with people left behind through the use of media technologies can play a vital role in migrants’ lives, but on the other hand, it can distract from the life they are building up in the place that they have moved to. For these reasons, some of the participants in this study shied away from using media to stay in touch with New Zealand as well as people in New Zealand.

Not all migrants go through the same experiences, and it is important to acknowledge the multidimensionality of diasporic media cultures while, at the same time, analyse typical patterns of media use among migrant groups (Hepp et al., 2012: 172). The results of the present study highlight that New Zealand migrants in Australia are not a uniform group and that media use can be guided by specific migration histories, gender and age. This is comparable to the results of a study with a similar design that I have carried out with migrants in New Zealand, where it became apparent that different cohorts of migrants interact with the digital media landscape in different ways, depending on when they arrived to New Zealand (de Bruin, 2017). Within the present study, there were some distinct patterns in the media use of three different groups. Men who migrated to Australia several decades ago preferred to use media that give them access to representations of New Zealand; women who recently arrived were most focussed on using media to connect with people; and young couples more often used media to interact with music and sports. What the different participants have in common is that they all strongly identify as New Zealanders and that they all use media in some way to retain a connection to New Zealand. Within the present polymedia environment, they are able to manage their affective relationships to the country they have moved away from and the people they have left behind in a way that suits their interests.

The study shows that polymedia and accentuated ambivalence are useful concepts for the analysis of contemporary migrants’ media use. They can be applied to examine the entire range of media migrants have access to. While recent scholarship on migrants and media has focussed on the added value of Internet media, the results of this study suggest that broadcast media such as television and radio remain important to migrants. Polymedia theory is a vital tool for the study of how migrants draw on a range of media to manage affective relationships.

References

Aksoy

Robins

(2003) Banal transnationalism: The difference that television makes. In: Karim

(ed), The Media of Diaspora. London: Routledge, pp. 89–104.

Alonso

Oiarzabal

(2010) Preface. In: Alonso

Oiarzabal

(eds), Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics, and Community. Reno: University of Nevada Press, pp. 9–12.

Athique

(2016) Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale. Cambridge: Polity.

Bailey

(2011). Reconfiguring diasporic-ethnic identities: The web as technology of representation and resistance. In: Christensen

Jansson

and Christensen

(eds), Online Territories: Globalization, Mediated Practice and Social Space. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 256–271.

Baym

(2010) Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity.

Bertel

Ling

(2016) “It’s just not that exciting anymore”: The changing centrality of SMS in the everyday lives of young Danes. New Media and Society 18(7): 1293–1309. DOI:10.1177/1461444814555267.

Boccagni

(2015) Burden, blessing or both? On the mixed role of transnational ties in migrant informal social support. International Sociology 30(3): 250–268.

Burchell

(2015) Tasking the everyday: Where mobile and online communication take time. Mobile Media and Communication 3(1): 36–52.

Cabanes

JVA

Acedera

KAF

(2012) Of mobile phones and mother–fathers: Calls, text messages, and conjugal power relations in mother-away Filipino families. New Media and Society 14(6): 916–930.

10.

Cuban

(2014) Transnational families, ICTs and mobile learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education 33(6): 737–754.

11.

Cunningham

Sinclair

(2001) Floating Lives. The Media and Asian Diasporas. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

12.

de Bruin

(2017) Migrants and mediatization: Three generations of dutch migrants to Aotearoa/New Zealand. In: Hight

Harinidranath

(eds), Studying Digital Media Audiences: Perspectives from Australasia. London: Routledge.

13.

Ellis

(2000) Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty.London: I.B. Taurus.

14.

Fortunati

Pertierra

Vincent

(2012) Introduction: Migrations and diasporas – making their world elsewhere. In: Fortunati

Pertierra

Vincent

(eds), Migration, Diaspora, and Information Technology in Global Societies. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–17.

15.

Georgiou

(2012). Seeking ontological security beyond the nation: The role of transnational television. Television and New Media 14(4): 304–321.

16.

Hamer

(2007) Māori in Australia/Ngā Māori i te Ao Moemoeā.Wellington: Te Puni Kōkiri.

17.

Hepp

Bozdag

Suna

(2012) Mediatized migrants: Media cultures and communicative networking in the diaspora. In: Fortunati

Pertierra

Vincent

(eds), Migration, Diaspora, and Information Technology in Global Societies. New York: Routledge, pp. 172–188.

18.

Jansson

(2015) Polymedia distinctions: The sociocultural stratification of interpersonal media practices in couple relationships. Nordicom Review 36(2): 33–50.

19.

Jupp

(2007) From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

20.

Longhurst

(2016) Mothering, digital media and emotional geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. Social and Cultural Geography 17(1): 120–139. DOI:10.1080/14649365.2015.1059477.

21.

Madianou

(2011) Beyond the presumption of identity? Ethnicities, cultures, and transnational audiences. In: Nightingale (eds), The Handbook of Media Audiences. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 444–458.

22.

Madianou

(2012) Migration and the accentuated ambivalence of motherhood: The role of ICTs in Filipino transnational families. Global Networks 12(3): 277–295.

23.

Madianou

Miller

(2012a) Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia.London: Routledge.

24.

Madianou

Miller

(2012b) Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication. International Journal of Cultural Studies 16(2): 169–187.

25.

Madianou

(2014) Smartphones as polymedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19: 667–680.

26.

Madianou

(2015) Polymedia and ethnography: Understanding the social in social media. Social Media + Society 1(1): 1–3.

27.

Mankekar

(2002) India shopping: Indian grocery stores and transnational configurations of belonging. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 67(1): 75–98.

28.

Miller

(2014) The fourth screen: Mediatization and the smartphone. Mobile Media and Communication 2(2): 209–226.

29.

Naficy

(1993) The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

30.

Oiarzabal

Reips

(2012) Migration and diaspora in the age of information and communication technologies. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38(9): 1333–1338.

31.

Patton

(2002) Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

32.

Schein

(2002) Mapping Hmong media in diasporic space. In: Ginsburg

Abu-Lughod

Larkin

(eds), Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 229–244.

33.

Siapera

(2014) Diasporas and new media: Connections, identities, politics and affect. Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 5(1): 173–178.

34.

Sinclair

Cunningham

(2000) Go with the flow: Diasporas and the media. Television and New Media 1(1): 11–31.

35.

Statistics New Zealand (2012) Demographic Trends: 2012. Available at: www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/estimates_and_projections/demographic-trends-2012/international%20travel%20and%20migration.aspx (accessed 12 January 2016).