Ethnic Media and Multi-Dimensional Identity: Pacific Audiences’ Connections With Māori Media

Abstract

This article explores issues of identity, hybridity, and media in an Aotearoa/New Zealand context by analyzing Pacific audiences’ affinity for and use of indigenous Māori media. It makes the case for broadening ethnic categorizations in media practice and scholarship to better account for multi-ethnic audiences’ identities and practices. And, by exploring Pacific audiences’ talk about a shared “Brown” identity, it suggests that Pacific peoples, particularly New Zealand-born youth, resort to a racialized “Brown” identity as a way to connect to multiple others in the New Zealand context—using Māori media as a “third space” of identity negotiation to do so. Finally, it argues for more overtly situated and localized research and theory-building to further tease out the uniquely South Pacific elements of these emergent identity practices.