Micro Media Industries: Hmong American Media Innovation in the Diaspora

By Lori Kido Lopez

With the rise of digital tools used for media entrepreneurship, media outlets staffed by only one or two individuals and targeted to niche and super-niche audiences are developing across a wide range of platforms. Minority communities such as immigrants and refugees have long been pioneers in this space, operating ethnic media outlets with limited staff and funding to produce content that is relevant and accessible to their specific community. Micro Media Industries explores the specific case of Hmong American media, showing how an extremely small population can maintain a robust and thriving media ecology in spite of resource limitations and an inability to scale up. Based on six years of fieldwork in Hmong American communities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California, it analyzes the unique opportunities and challenges facing Hmong newspapers, radio, television, podcasts, YouTube, social media, and other emerging platforms. It argues that micro media industries, rather than being dismissed or trivialized, ought to be held up as models of media innovation that can counter the increasing power of mainstream media.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781978823365

Book preview

Micro Media Industries

Micro Media Industries

Hmong American Media Innovation in the Diaspora

LORI KIDO LOPEZ

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lopez, Lori Kido, author.

Title: Micro media industries : Hmong American media innovation in the diaspora / Lori Kido Lopez.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020051456 | ISBN 9781978823341 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978823358 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978823365 (epub) | ISBN 9781978823372 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978823389 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Hmong American mass media. | Hmong Americans in mass media.

Classification: LCC P94.5.H5942 U656 2021 | DDC 302.23089/95972073—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051456

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2021 by Lori Kido Lopez

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Mom and Dad

Contents

1 Introduction: The Significance of Micro Media Industries

2 Without a Newsroom: Journalism and the Micro Media Empire

3 TV without Television: YouTube and Digital Video

4 Global Participatory Networks: Teleconference Radio Programs

5 Queer Sounds: Podcasting and Audio Archives

6 Alternative Aspirational Labor: Influencers and Social Media Producers

7 Conclusion: Beyond Hmong American Media

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Index

Micro Media Industries

1

Introduction

The Significance of Micro Media Industries

Hmong Americans seeking media created by and for their people are faced with a rich and multifaceted array of offerings. There are radio programs with current affairs and news programming, musical performances of traditional music and contemporary pop songs, and numerous social media networks for Hmong storytelling. There are websites for meeting other Hmong people, for buying and selling items, and for learning about Hmong language and Hmong customs. In the Twin Cities, stacks of Hmong newspapers and magazines line the racks outside of bustling markets and businesses. Stalls at Hmong markets and festivals sell hundreds of DVDs, with movies ranging in genre from drama and romance to horror and comedy. Yet the wide variety of media available belies the struggles that Hmong people have faced in building sustainable media industries, as the financial models that support media production often rely on resources that are in short supply for this relatively small ethnic community.

Moreover, Hmong in the diaspora have needed to build their media industries from the ground up, rather than being able to connect to an already established national media infrastructure. For diasporic populations originating from countries such as India, Mexico, Russia, China, or the Philippines, media use often means finding a way to connect back to the popular media created within their homeland via satellite, mobile platforms, or other digital technologies. Diasporic media provide a way to connect with members of a community who may be geographically dispersed so that they can maintain a sense of their own specific identity, heritage, and culture while also providing news and information in their native languages. Yet this is not possible for those among the 1975 Hmong diaspora, who largely trace their origins to Laos or Thailand—countries in which Hmong remain ethnic minorities, at 8 percent of the Lao population and around 1 percent of the Thai population. Due to the lack of a home country, Hmong media power remains limited as a whole, subsisting with scarce community resources or support. If this is the case, how have Hmong American media industries been able to thrive and proliferate?

Through its investigation of the nuances and contours of Hmong American media practices, this book shows how a small population with limited resources can find ways to deploy new media technologies in order to maintain a media ecology that resembles the mainstream. I focus specifically on the way that Hmong media industries consist almost exclusively of what I term micro media industries. These small-scale media run by extremely limited staff evolve in ways that are culturally specific and can nimbly adapt to the changing needs of a community in flux. Moreover, they serve to critique the high barriers for entry that are necessary for maintaining traditional forms of media industry in a labor market that values population size above nearly all other metrics. While we might assume that certain micro media industries mark a temporary moment before resource limitations can be overcome, an alternative perspective is that their innovations can be seen as a model that other media industries can integrate into their own practices. Media evolution can take winding and counterintuitive paths, and does not necessarily move in a linear fashion toward commodification, capitalization, and growth. Indeed, there are many other examples of micro media industries that are already thriving today and this deep dive into Hmong media can help us to better understand them. In peeling back the curtain on a set of outlets that are small and necessarily constricted, we can see the possibilities that are opened up within these flexible and mobile industries while also considering the limitations that accompany them.

This book argues that micro media industries, rather than being dismissed for their small size and ostensible lack of resources, ought to be held up as models of media innovation that can expose both the possibilities and limitations engendered by super niche media production. This includes running media outlets with extremely small staffs, sometimes of just a single micro media entrepreneur, and mastering multiple skills related to production and distribution. The micro media entrepreneurs investigated here also pursue innovative business models with goals that can be outside of commodification, capitalization, and growth. Some participate in traditional media platforms like television and radio, while others develop new forms altogether—including hybrid media platforms that harness the affordances of existing technologies and evolve rapidly to meet an audience population’s special needs. Rather than seeing the techniques used by micro media industries as anomalous measures that have to be taken under constricted circumstances, they could serve as models for other media industries and audience populations which may similarly trend more micro in the future.

The Hmong American media landscape as documented in this book demonstrates the wide array of possibilities afforded by micro media industries. Participating in the creation of media that is by and for themselves offers new routes to self-representation, which sometimes highlights the experiences of marginalized community members such as Hmong women and queer Hmong folks. This emphasis on visibility and community empowerment for minority groups can be one of the central goals of micro media outlets, contesting expectations that media outlets must be financially profitable. Micro media industries can also serve as a proof of concept for new platforms and uses of media technology. But this investigation also exposes the limitations Hmong micro media entrepreneurs face in developing media outlets. This includes struggles around the concentration of media power in a small number of micro media entrepreneurs, and a lack of autonomy when micro media entrepreneurs have to rely on infrastructural platforms over which they have no control. There is a high level of stress and burnout among micro media entrepreneurs, and there is frequent institutional turnover due to the emotional consequences as well as the vulnerability of individual outlets.

The study of micro media industries is important because it calls attention to media projects and platforms that otherwise may be dismissed and trivialized, particularly those that are created for specific minority communities. It helps us to better understand the way that communities with restricted resources can create a thriving media ecology, and gives us insight into how we can better support such endeavors. In this investigation of both media production and reception, we can get a better sense for how media workers and media consumers define what counts as a legitimate form of media or media industry, and who participates in shaping these conversations about media values. It also strengthens our understanding of traditional media industries by questioning assumptions about who and what are included within standard definitions, and imagining future possibilities for the way that media industries are changing and will continue to change in the digital era. There is a common fear that media industries are inexorably moving toward conglomeration and consolidation in order to more efficiently make use of economies of scale and scope, and that a smaller number of individuals have come to control an increasingly homogenous media landscape. Indeed, the logics of capitalism combined with our commercial media system have dictated that success for most media corporations is premised on expansion, and as a result we have seen our media landscape become inundated with franchises, sequels and reboots, and transmedia story worlds. But this investigation of micro media industries demonstrates the viability of resistance to this trend. In shedding light on those who are not interested in or are not capable of expansion, we can assess what opportunities for innovation, participation, and diversity exist within these small-scale media formats.

Micro Media Industries

The formations that I call micro media industries are small-scale versions of media production and distribution modeled after traditional forms of mass media whose growth is limited by a number of barriers: namely, they are unable to take advantage of the economies of scale that provide the traditional mechanism for media sustainability and growth. Micro media industries remain limited in terms of staffing, funding, audience size, and the ability to profit financially in a way that could allow for scaling up. The production team behind such micro media industries can be as limited as one person taking on every role, or up to a handful of individuals that includes largely volunteer and/or temporary participants. The broader category of micro business is generally used to describe businesses with one owner and less than five employees, although this designation is often used in the context of accounting and lending. Rather than providing a hard upper limit on the number of staff members who constitute micro media production and distribution, here the designation of micro is simply useful in marking a difference from traditional forms of mass media. It seems clear from this investigation of Hmong American media that there are many distinct media entities whose small size, scale, and capacity challenge our more standard understanding of media industries.

While the concept of micro media industries is focused on the limited size of those involved in media production and distribution, this scale is of course connected to the limited size of the audience for its products. Indeed, there has long been a trend toward creating media that is targeted toward specific audiences, or niche audiences. Yet the emergence of micro media industries is not a product of the same contextual factors that have moved profit logics toward audience fragmentation and narrowcasting—these reflect a desire to market to specific audiences rather than altering the media industries that create products for these smaller and smaller populations. There are some instances in which ethnic media is coterminous with niche media, as we can see in examples such as Vietnamese diasporic videos and music that Nhi T. Lieu argues constitute a niche media industry in targeting a specific ethnic audience (Lieu 2011). Cases like these reveal the productive overlap between the Hmong micro media industries described here and other similar formations. Yet the term niche media is also expansive enough to cover cable-like television programming like NBC’s show The Slap or millennially targeted online news outlets like Mic.com that both clearly are produced in a traditional fashion with extensive staff and reach millions of audience members (Lowry 2015). If niche media describes conventional fare that simply aims for a smaller piece of the population, it is clear we need new terms such as micro media to describe the distinctively small scale of media production we see in Hmong media.

There are many interrelated concepts that are similar to the formation described here as micro media industries, including community media, alternative media, and citizens’ media. Each of these terms can be useful in describing certain aspects of micro media industries—and vice versa, as the concept of micro media industries can help to illuminate and uncover new aspects of these specific media formations. Indeed, these concepts are quite flexible and fluid in circumscribing a wide array of media practices that may be differently understood by different scholars. Yet there are still significant differences between the way these specific terms have been traditionally theorized and the micro media industries analyzed here.

The term community media is a broad concept that includes a wide variety of media practices that challenge the norms of mainstream media. Familiar formats encompassed by this term include community radio, community television/video, and community newspapers, although there is a growing trend to also describe various online formations under the umbrella of community media as well. Nevertheless, the primary use for this term is in describing local media with a democratic ethos of being created by and for the people it serves. As such, it is often directly oriented toward informing a geographically circumscribed community about local occurrences or otherwise making a local impact. Community media commonly refers to media institutions whose mandate is service-oriented, rather than primarily being designed to produce financial profit. The mission for community media centers on access and participation—providing media production tools and technologies to local communities, and democratizing the practices of production through involving community members and nonprofessionals (Howley 2005, 16). Some of the other goals may be a commitment to producing and circulating information about local communities, training in media production, building community, or contributing to larger social changes. The funding for such projects can come from a variety of sources, including member contributions, private and public grants, philanthropic relations, and state funding. Yet the overall goal is not to produce profit.

When the profit imperative is bypassed, there are also opportunities for media organizations to foreground political advocacy and challenges to the status quo. These goals are often taken up by alternative media outlets, which Downing (2001) further describes with the additional term radical. Such titles emphasize the political positioning of such media entities as being counter to the mainstream, providing a perspective that is ignored or silenced in more traditional venues. The content may be situated toward protest and dissent, or it may simply eschew professional norms in terms of training, design, aesthetics, editing practices, or the power hierarchies that traditionally govern such media bodies. Similarly, the term citizens’ media evokes the democratic ideals of encouraging citizens to participate in the public sphere via grassroots media organizations. As Pantelis Vatikiotis (2009) describes, citizens’ media practices are a fundamental part of civic culture, as they allow diverse participants to intervene in the political processes constituted through public communication.

All of these terms—community media, alternative media, and citizens’ media—may indeed be useful in describing the small-scale forms of media production and distribution taken up within micro media industries. Yet they are not mutually exclusive, and each provides a slightly different valence that emphasizes the unique qualities or differences that pull them apart. For instance, while community media is traditionally centered on local participants, geographically circumscribed regions, and issues of local significance, micro media industries may expand far beyond the local. The Hmong micro media industries examined here are oriented toward diasporic communities positioned all over the globe. Similarly, the political and counterhegemonic orientation of alternative and citizens’ media are not necessarily taken up within micro media industries, whose products may more seamlessly align within the commercial or mainstream aesthetics of traditional media industries. There is certainly a political component to any enterprise in which an ethnic minority strives for visibility, self-determination, and participation in a public sphere of their own making. But it would be inaccurate to describe the ethos of all micro media industries as premised on democratizing the processes of media production by transferring control over media to the community, or as oriented toward social justice goals and radical social transformation. It is clear these terms do not fit what we see happening within Hmong American media, and there are many other media outlets that similarly deserve further investigation and more precise categorization.

Hopefully it is already clear by now why the terms ethnic media and diasporic media are also markedly distinct from what we are seeing within Hmong American micro media industries. Most importantly, this is due to the fact that many forms of ethnic and diasporic media are large-scale ventures that far exceed the limits of micro, but also because I intend for the category of micro media to be useful outside the context of ethnic minority or diasporic communities. As we will see in later discussions and the conclusion, the limits of size and scale are in no way exclusively the purview of ethnically bounded communities and can be seen in any kind of identity formation. This exploration of micro media helps us to challenge the assumption that there are only two kinds of media industries that matter—the massive capitalist conglomerates that have become dominant and the grassroots alternative forms of media that are specifically designed for social justice goals. In examining media projects that occupy a shifting ground in between, we can question this binary split and expand our frameworks around media industries.

The Significance of Size

In order to make sense of what micro media industries do, let us first consider what it is that makes these small-scale media formations media industries. At a basic level, the Hmong media products described throughout this book consist of similar products that compete in a marketplace and strive for professionalism, like any industry. Gillian Doyle (2013) further defines a media industry in terms of its profit orientation, claiming that for media industries, the general aim is to make intellectual property, package it and maximize revenues by selling it as many times as is feasible to the widest possible audience and at the highest possible price (20–21). Such a definition seems premised on the promise of scale, which might exclude smaller ventures facing a set of limits that caps their potential to expand widely. Yet the spirit of this definition is simply that the goal of such ventures is to maximize potential. For small communities, that financial potential might be negligible, but the goal is consistent—despite their size, they still seek to develop the largest possible audience while maintaining financial solvency.

Moreover, amid an intellectual landscape where the term culture industries has long been used to refer to the production and distribution of cultural goods and services such as media, it is clear the term industry does not always need to refer to a traditional corporate industrial structure. The emergence of the term creative industries primarily in the United Kingdom can also be useful in describing new economic models around creative endeavors that are not vertically integrated industrial silos, but small enterprises, flat-hierarchy, autonomy, risk-taking, project-based work patterns, partnerships and network relations with both clients and competitors (Hartley and Cunningham 2001, 20). Indeed, using the definition provided here, there are many different media platforms and creative products that could fall within micro media industries that are outside the realm of ethnic or diasporic media. A partial list of possibilities includes blogs, rural newspapers, podcasts, fan-produced media such as fan fiction and fan vids, low-power radio stations, and YouTube channels. The theories advanced in this book are designed to help initiate questions about what might be happening in each of these cases, calling attention to the lively cultures of media production and distribution that risk being dismissed due to their small size. It also builds from the work of Vicki Mayer, Miranda Banks, and John Caldwell (2009) in forwarding production studies as a way of asking how production cultures contribute to social hierarchies and inequalities. In their empirical analyses, they ask how the processes of making media relate to politics, economics, and culture. This specific examination of Hmong American media production and distribution provides a narrow focus for asking questions about how micro media may challenge or redefine how we understand media industries as a whole. It also reveals a number of significant secondary characteristics of micro media industries, including the experiences of micro media entrepreneurs, the rise of hybrid media platforms, opportunities for new participants to have a seat at the table, and missions that go beyond growth, commodification, and capitalization in seeking visibility and community empowerment.

Labor and Entrepreneurship

There are many studies of the way that the content of ethnic media contributes to social factors such as assimilation into mainstream society or engagement with local politics (Gentles-Peart 2014; Tanikella 2009; Viswanath and Arora 2000; Zhou and Cai 2002). But in this examination that foregrounds a media industries perspective and considers these multiskilled media owners as entrepreneurs, it is clear that we must move beyond examining textual content to also consider the labor that produces these texts. Due to the invisibility of micro media industries that are often assumed to be managed by larger, more traditionally sized staffs, this entrepreneurship and its particular meanings often go unrecognized and uninterrogated. Micro media industries clearly deploy a different labor structure from their larger counterparts. This may include a greater dependence on volunteer or temporary workers, a flattening or reworking of traditional labor hierarchies, or single individuals taking up multiple roles. There are also ways in which labor can be obscured or rendered illegible within these small ventures, as entrepreneurs may work to strengthen the company’s brand by concealing how few individuals are actually working behind the scenes or what they do. In these cases, audiences can reveal misunderstandings of labor structures through comments such as the reporter should be fired or the photographer should get paid more when the reality is that there is only one person who takes up all of these roles, and more.

Micro media outlets also may shift our notion of authorship, due to this emphasis on multiskilling over labor differentiation. Traditional forms of mass media have challenged notions of the singular author because production tasks are usually divided up among a collective in order to produce movies, TV shows, comic books, albums, and other media products. This has shaped how we identify and assess media authorship both creatively and technically, as there is an assumption that behind every celebrated auteur is a host of invisible laborers who deserve equal acknowledgment and consideration. Micro media industries have the potential to