Media transnationalism in Ireland: an examination of Polish media practices

A divergent range of Polish-language and Polish-oriented media has developed in Ireland since May 2004. These media, and the practices that produce and engage with them, cannot adequately be analysed within conventional categories such as ‘ethnic minority media’. Drawing on qualitative work conducted with Polish journalists and media workers, this article examines Polish media as an emerging transnational field, shaped by a reflexive awareness of the extent of transnational media flows within Polish social networks. It suggests that this field can be approached, and further research based, on concepts of immanent transnationalism, multi-modal address and multicultural reflexivity. Given the incipient condition of transnational media research in Ireland, the article draws on current debates in diasporic and transnational media research to argue that future research should transcend the reductive tendencies of ‘methodological multiculturalism’, and attend to the ways in which transnational practices negotiate situated political discourses concerning migration