Media plays a complex role by acting as a tool for transnational identity. On the one hand, the media assists in the assimilation of immigrants into the host society; on the other hand, the media reinforces the connections immigrants have with their home countries, thus strengthening their original identities so that they may resist the cultural assimilation of the host society (Riggins, 1992; Wang, 2000). However, some communications scholars have now amended this line of dual thinking, asserting that cultural integration is more common.
As Arnold and Schneider (2007) claim, social/cultural integration does not merely force one group to assimilate into the dominant group; on the contrary, it encourages diversity, difference, and mutual learning. Thus, social integration supports a variety of cultural backgrounds and different social or people groups, resulting in mutual understanding and recognition. Likewise, social integration is a process of ongoing communication and exchange of information with the goal of mutual understanding; and based on these processes, agroup’scollectivevalues,meanings,and mostimportantly,identities, are constructed and learned.
Communications media often play a role in providing cultural materials that help establish immigrantidentity.Forexample,Shi’s(2005)and Sun’s(2000)studieson Chinese immigrants have indicated that the content and texts of Chinese media such as newspapers, TV, magazines, and video have helped Chinese immigrants establish an image of the transnational/global Chinese community. This image enables immigrants to feel a sense of belonging in this community and reinforces their identification with Chinese culture.
Likewise, McGrath (2002) studied a group of second-generation Korean Americans and found that Korean Americans who most often use Korean media tend to identify themselves as Korean, while those who prefer American media tend to identify themselves as Americans.
Research has shown that the Internet has a strong impact on the construction of transnational imaged communities. In fact, in the early years of the Internet, many scholars believed that the deterritorialized, supra-national character of the Internet would contribute to the fragmentation of populations and the breakdown of stable national identities. However, when Eriksen (2007) explored various types of nationalism found in groups such as the Kurds, Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian nationals, and Chinese nationals, he found that they have constructed image communities within the Internet.
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A number of studies have examined relationships between the Internet, national identity, and unique types of political participation, such as independence movements (Bakker, 2001;
Eriksen, 2007; Ranganathan, 2003). Bakker (2001) researched how Kurdish individuals used websites,especially newswebsiteslike“KurdishMedia,”to push theKurdish independence movement and to construct Kurdish nationalism among the Kurds. Bakker highlighted the crucial role of the Internet in this process; it not only helps enhance Kurd cultural and political identities, but also becomes the primary channel by which the Kurdish political elite exchange their thoughts and ideas about the independence movement as well as disseminating those ideas to other Kurdish people. Eriksen refered to this type of effort as
“InternetNationalism”(Eriksen,2007,p.10).
The Internet may also be used by transnational communities to construct their national identity as a strategy to bypass discrimination and the conflicts of everyday life. According to Zhan and Hao (1999), the Internet in particular has great significance for immigrants’ identity construction because of its low cost, convenience, interactive nature, flexibility, and high speed of information flow. Moreover, Mitra (1997) observed that unlike the discrimination or ignorance of mainstream media toward immigrant groups, the Internet is one of the few channels that immigrants can use to restore their confidence in original cultures, avoid the pain of being viewed as aliens, and maintain connections with their own people, cultures, and even hometowns. In the example of Chinese immigrants, Chan (2005) analyzed the texts of two Chinese-related websites in Singapore and found that Singapore Chinese use Chinese identity and Chinese nationalism to resist the cultural and social hegemony of Singapore and even the U.S.; on the other hand, they also exhibit resistance toward “pan-Chinese” nationalism led by China’s officials (Chan, 2005, pp. 362-3).
Consequently, they have constructed their own unique identity within and between both Singaporean and Chinese cultures.
From the above studies, we find multiple functions of the Internet in the process of identity construction, including: to construct “long distance nationalism” or to promote independence, to strengthen the link between two countries, to maintain cultural material that strengthens identity, to resist discrimination in the host society, and to develop dual or hybrid national identities.
Nevertheless, studies on immigrants, their Internet use, and national identity in daily life are scarce, especially when it comes to Taiwanese Americans. Because they are not viewed as a disadvantaged minority, and because Taiwan is not a big country and not even viewed as a country in international society, their cultural and identity needs are often ignored by U.S.
society. In addition to being impacted by American views of their group,Taiwanese as well as Taiwanese Americans are regarded as having rather complex national identity problems
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due to the complicated cultural and historical relationship between Taiwan and mainland China. Hence, this paper investigates how Taiwanese Americans use the Internet to help construct different types of transnational identities and also to build a unique cultural experience that includes both Taiwan and the U.S. Moreover, this research examines whether Internet use facilitates Taiwanese American immigrants’connectionsto theirculturalroots and maintains their ties to the country of origin, or instead, facilitates the adoption of American culture and new national identities. The Internet may also serve a third purpose in this regard, falling somewhere between maintaining the old and creating the new.
Methods and Research Design
In this research, a semi-structured interview method was applied to systematically collect data while allowing interviewees to steer the direction of the discussion. The interview questionnaire was divided into five sections. The first section, on daily Internet use, incorporated questionsmainly regarding Internetusein termsoftheimmigrants’cultural experience. The second section included questions designed to reveal the relationships between Internet use and national identity. The third section further probed Internet use and nationalidentity through immigrants’daily socialand culturalinteractionswith peoplein their home country and people in the host society. The fourth section asked about immigrants’emotionsand feelingsregarding theirhomecountry and American society,as well as their cultural experience with these two societies. The final section gathered basic demographic information about the interviewees. The complete questionnaire is presented in Appendix A.
The interviews were conducted by six interviewers with appropriate prior training to ensure a thorough understanding of the questions and consistency in their interview skills. An average interview lasted approximately one hour, and all interviews were conducted between May 2007 and December 2008. The sample size was decided by the completion of information we collected, and thus the sampling process was closed when no new extra information was found, resulting in a sample size of 53 interviewees. A consent form was clearly explained and then signed by the interviewee before the interview, and each interviewee received a complementary gift valued at $6 at the end of the interview. All interviews were recorded and thoroughly transcribed; all records were kept.
The interviewees were recruited through local Taiwanese social networks and referrals, with an attemptto encompassadiversegroup in termsofparticipants’age,gender,education level, occupation, regional place of origin, and the length of time spent in the U.S. As a result, 53 Taiwanese Americans living in Austin, Texas were approached, and they agreed to
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participate in this study. Among them, 31 (58.5%) were male and 22 (41.5%) were female.
As for ages, 9.5% of the interviewees were under 20 years old, 45.6% were in their twenties, 28.5% in their thirties, 7.6% in their forties, and 9.5% were older than 50.
Participants arrived in the U.S. at various ages. In all, 37.8% moved to the country when less than 10 years old, 33.6% were between 10 and 20, 21% were 20 to 30 years old, 6.3 % were in their 30s, and only 2.1% were older than 40 when they moved to the U.S.
For total years living in the U.S., 16.8% of the interviewees had stayed less than 10 years, 39.9% had stayed between 11 and 20 years, 31.5% had stayed 21 to 30 years, 10.5%
had stayed 31 to 40 years, and only 2.1 % had stayed more than 41 years.
In the category of education level, 9.6 % of the interviewees had a high school degree or less, 44.2 % had earned a college or vocational school degree, 5.7% had a medical degree, 26.9% had amaster’sdegree,and 13.5% had aPh.D.degree.When asked aboutlanguages spoken, we learned that 55.7 % of the interviewees mainly spoke Chinese and Taiwanese at home, 34.6% spoke Chinese and English equally, and only 9.7% primarily spoke English. It is interesting to note that Chinese (here including Taiwanese and Cantonese) is still the primary language the interviewed Taiwanese Americans use at home. More detailed demographic information about these interviewees is provided in Appendix B.
Results and discussion