Abstract

Media use by ethnic minorities is increasingly becoming a politicized matter, appearing regularly in discussions on multiculturalism and integration. In a globalizing media-landscape, the rise of ethnic and global ethnic media paradoxically enables ethnic minorities to maintain links with forms of ethnic identity. Especially interesting in this respect is media use by adolescents, often on the crossroads between different cultures. This article departs from the notion concerned with the extent to which media use of adolescents from ethnic minorities actually differs from that of their Belgian counterparts, and instead focuses on the role ethnicity plays as a determinant of media use when weighed up against other socio-economic or education-related variables. Based on a large-scale Belgian survey of 12- to 18-year-olds, this article shows, amongst other results, that the importance of ethnic-cultural background as an indicator for media use by adolescents from ethnic minorities ought to be placed into perspective.