Between Russianness, Jewishness, and Israeliness: Identity Patterns and Media Uses of the FSU Immigrants in Israel

Immigration to and integration in a new society are among the most dynamic and complex processes in an individual's life, characterized by numerous discoveries, challenges, and the construction of a new identity. The research literature demonstrates that mass communication plays a decisive role in this process. According to Kim's Theory of Cross-Cultural Adaptation, "adaptation of an [immigrant] individual to a given cultural environment occurs in and through communication."¹ Immigrants' adjustment to the host society, their search for a new identity, and their media consumption are thus strongly interrelated. Consequently, mass media are likely to play a variety of roles in the lives of immigrants, in keeping with the diversity and dynamics of their ongoing settling down in a new society.

Studies focusing on the relationship between host media and immigrant integration began appearing early in the twentieth century, when increasing immigration became a national issue in the United States. One of the most popular media in those days was the motion picture, which offered America's new immigrants an accessible form of entertainment that provided them with a glimpse of their new home and its culture.² Later, this assimilative role was identified in regard to other host media, especially television, as, for example, in Stilling's "electronic melting pot hypothesis," that is, host television viewing influenced the adoption of new cultural codes, or in Chaffee, Naas, and Yang's study of the bridging role of host-language television in immigrants' political socialization.³

During the first half of the twentieth century, the assimilative approach was also dominant in empirical research on mass media in the immigrants' mother tongue. This approach assumed that immigrant media could serve as a complementary learning means for immigrants who had yet to acquire the local language, facilitating their new identity construction. Hence, along with community organizations, immigrant media were perceived as "cultural brokers," providing the newcomers with indirect links to the host cultural environment.⁴

An interesting example of this effect was found through content analysis of Yiddish newspapers established in New York by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. According to Howe, one such newspaper, the Forward, "explained... the mysteries of baseball to Jewish fathers. It proudly noted the increase of immigrant attendance at museums....It even gave instruction on the use of handkerchiefs," thus facilitating immigrants' adjustment to their new surroundings.⁵ Effective as they were in shaping the immigrants' new cultural identity, however, Yiddish newspapers were also instrumental in encouraging intra-community relationships and maintaining their readership's original culture, thus reflecting the diversity of roles played by the immigrant media.

Since the 1970s, efforts to explore the multidimensional effects of immigrant media have been reinforced, as most Western countries abandoned the melting pot ideology in favor of cultural pluralism. Hence, more and more researchers have taken an interest in the dual role of immigrant media: On one hand, helping with adjustment to new surroundings, while on the other, propagating ethnic identity and pride, intra-group solidarity, original language, and culture. That is, instead of perceiving the media as the cement that holds the various parts of the host society together by creating a common culture, these studies focused on an additional role fulfilled by the immigrant media, namely preservation of cultural differences between immigrants and the hosts.⁶

In contrast to this pluralistic approach which recognizes the importance of preserving the immigrants' original identity, several studies also point to the segregative role of immigrant media, as the maintenance of original identities is sometimes perceived to be an obstacle to immigrants' social and cultural adaptation.⁷ Similarly, recent academic discourse on technological innovations such as satellite broadcasting and the Internet offers contradictory opinions. Some researchers find these media particularly beneficial for immigrant communities, as they preserve online contacts with the former homeland and with co-ethnics dispersed across the globe, but do not interfere with immigrants' integration.⁸ Other researchers, however, ascribe a disintegrative influence to the diasporic media, as they bring the flavors of a distanced homeland into immigrants' homes, thus detaching them from local...