Ethnic media, community media and participatory culture

<jats:p>Several recent studies document the rapid growth and success of ethnic or minority media in, for example, North America and Western Europe. Scholars in the field tend to attribute this trend as an expression of increasing worldwide migration patterns. In this article this explanation is challenged by locating the proliferation of these (news) media in a wider social trend: the worldwide emergence of all kinds of community, alternative, oppositional, participatory and collaborative media practices, in part amplified by the internet. A critical awareness of an increasingly participatory global media culture in multicultural societies is developed as a necessary tool to explain the success and impact of ethnic or minority media, as well as to embrace the changing ways in which people ‘use’ their media.</jats:p>