A Community Perspective on Montréal’s Past and Future Portuguese Ethnic Media
Authors:
Luís LM Aguiar, PhD
Farrah Bérubé, PhD
Carlos Teixeira, PhD
Amilie Chalifoux, BA
Date:
2024
Community Peer-Reviewed
ISBN: 978-1-988804-53-8
This report (written in French) summarizes the findings of a research investigation into the state and future of Portuguese ethnic media in Montreal. It is based on a partnership between academic researchers and a Portuguese community organization. In focusing on the Portuguese community, the study identifies two changing landscapes: the cultural and linguistic changes within this communities and the technological changes the media is undergoing more generally. Within this context, the questions investigated in this research include: What does the future hold for ethnic media in the community? Is ethnic media ready for renewal and change? What are the main challenges it faces? How and by what means can ethnic media remain culturally relevant and financially stable as the media landscape changes? To answer these questions, focus groups were organized in the Portuguese community and with owners and collaborators, ethnic media consumers and youth members of the community. The findings herein capture various points relating to the opinions of owners and collaborators and general consumers as (a) to the state of the ethnic media, (b) what the future holds for ethnic media and (c) how to meet these challenges. From the owners' point of view, the main issues are concerns about the financial stability of their media, the competition between the media in a “small” community marketplace, the decreasing number of talented writers and the challenges digital technology and social media raise for the future of the community’s media. From the point of view of the consumers of the media, the challenges relate to content that is out of sync with the profiles, needs and expectations of the audience and to the obligatory shift to digital platforms. Recommendations from participants range from encouraging participation of youth in the media, to a turn to technological innovations and media content that is bilingual in nature. The conclusion section of this report elaborates on recommendations from research participants on how to move forward to improve Portuguese ethnic media in Montréal.
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Luís M. Aguiar is an Associate Professort in the Department of History and Sociology at UBC Okanagan. His career focuses on investigating building cleaners’ campaigns to ‘crisise’ neoliberalism. He studies cleaners’ strategies and discourses of resistance neoliberal policies of the erosion of industrial citizenship.
Aguiar has written on transnationalism and southern European migration, as well as whiteness and racism. He has taken the Okanagan Valley as a case study of racism and whiteness. This analysis is implicated in the literature of localism and the new economy of post-Fordism.
Farrah Bérubé is Professor in the Department of Literature and Social Communication at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Canada). She teaches public relations and communication campaign planning at the undergraduate level, as well as intercultural and international communication at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Since 2020, she has have been directing the bachelor's degree programs in social communication, and since 2024. Sje is also a regular researcher at the Intercultural Relations Research Laboratory (LABRRI), the Regional Education Diversity Laboratory (LEDiR) and the Quebec Network for Research in Immigration, Integration and Intercultural Relations (RQ3I), where my work focuses mainly on intercultural communication.
José Carlos Teixeira is a professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan in Canada. From early on, he wanted to understand the geographic displacement of communities and the impact on culture. In his doctoral studies at York University, he chose as his dissertation topic “The Role of Ethnic Information Sources in Relocation Decision Making: A Case Study of the Portuguese in Mississauga”. He specializes in geographies of migration, settlement, and urbanization in Canada. Over the years, he has been committed to putting contemporary issues at the center of his teaching, including immigration in the urban and social geography of Canadian cities.
With over one hundred publications whether in book publication, his contributions in book chapters, articles, and research papers. His contribution to education in general and to ethnic communities in particular, have been evidenced in the various awards he has received over the years. Some of these were the Ethnic Geography Distinguished Scholar Award, the Research Excellence Award, the FPCBC Professional Excellence Award, the Medal of Professional Merit by the government of the Azores and the appointment as Commander by the Order of Portugal.
Amilie Chalifoux studied their undergraduate degree in Language and literature at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Canada).
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Montreal, media, Portugese, ethnic media