Oboler notes in her work that various political forces have been responsible for how Latinos are defined, and that these definitions have affected how individuals and groups define and understand themselves. Many Chicanos in the US Southwest and Puerto Ricans, for example, have been living under US colonization for many generations, yet they are considered under that same Hispanic label as the wave of Latin American immigrants arriving in larger numbers in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (Oboler, 1995). In media and political arenas, both television giants and Latino journalists and politicians seek various unities and convergences (cultural and socio-political) of diverse Latino groups to further their perspective market oriented and political goals.4 Felix Padilla has offered the term "Latinismo" to describe projects and movements for Latino political unity for the purpose of addressing social and economic inequalities (Oboler, 1995).

The criticisms of the US English-language media discussed above can be seen within the "liberal" tradition of (mainly US) mass communication research. Liberal feminist media studies in the US, for example, have used techniques such as content analysis of female representations on mainstream television to illustrate the frequent use of negative stereotypes and other inequities (Steves, 1987). Although liberal feminists have been widely criticized in the past for neglecting questions of race and class, media studies of Latino representations in the US have often used similar techniques and arguments (Subervi-Velez, 1994). Where identity is concerned, the some US researchers in this "liberal" tradition posit (though sometimes not explicitly) that the inadequate and negative representations of women and Latinos (and other marginalized groups as well) in the media are likely to have detrimental effects on the identity construction and self-view of members of these groups.
 
 

Questions of Television Use

Although it seems doubtful that Spanish-language television provides more equitable representations of women, it does offer a cultural/representational sanctuary for many US Latinos. The vast networking, communication and expression capabilities of the Internet can be seen as another sanctuary/source for desired representations. When the task is to discuss how these cultural spaces interact with cultural identity, liberal mass communication research methods and theoretical assumptions are inadequate. Instead, we must look to reception studies, cultural studies and critical communication theory. Chapter Three of this thesis covers several concepts from these areas of study which have been applied to understandings of the interaction of television texts and their audiences. Particular attention will be paid to how US Latinos use Spanish-language television for cultural identity construction and maintenance.

Of the different approaches that been used to study processes of television use, reception studies have been particularly pivotal in mapping out the vital role of the audience/media consumer(s), in the construction of uses and meanings during processes of reception. The concept of the active audience Ð that users of television, radio and other media selectively expose themselves to certain texts (programs) and selectively (both consciously and unconsciously) make meaning of these texts Ð has been one of the most important observations within relatively recent media and communication studies. Theories of selective exposure are vital to any understanding of how heterogeneous groups of US Latinos use messages within available cultural and social spaces to help construct individual and collective identities.

Selectivity is first encountered in an audience's decision to view/consume certain programs that match their personal preferences, tastes and viewing habits. Uses and gratifications research has aimed to find out what motivates program selection and what audiences "get out of" their viewing experiences (entertainment, companionship, information, etc...). Reception studies can be seen as going further. This emerging area of research has worked from the uses and gratification focus on audiences (as opposed to texts), and cultural studies' concern with how social and cultural power relations affect reception and the production of meaning within mediated experiences and other social events as well.

British cultural and communication studies have been particularly influential in the development of what is now known as reception studies (particularly due to the work of British scholars Stuart Hall and David Morley, which is discussed at several points throughout this thesis). Students of reception studies have looked at questions of (1) the role social/group environments in television consumption (Morley), (2) social uses of media texts, and (3) the nature of encoding and decoding processes (Hall). Chapter Three discusses how these three areas of research offer ideas of how processes of television consumption influence individual and group identities. It is the research of Stuart Hall (and others) on the nature of text encoding and decoding, however, that is most fundamental in connecting the political-economy of text production with the possible consequences of this logic on the cultural identity of audiences (while at the same time not relapsing into an implicit appropriation of "direct effects" to explain away assumptions about the indoctrinating power of the mass media).

In "Encoding, Decoding" (1980), Hall insists that we understand the moment(s) of the creation of the text and the moment(s) of reception and creation of meaning as distinct situations taking place in different environments (social, political, economic). Encoding occurs when the media, as cultural producers, take information and ideas and put them into linguistic codes. These coded texts are designed to work to "enforce, win plausibility for and command as legitimate a decoding of the event within the limit of dominant definitions in which it has been connotatively signified" (Hall, 1980:134).

For commercial television this means encoding that frame and define commercialism, consumption, capitalism, and other concepts such as versions of democracy and individuality, all as natural, positive-goods Ð institutions, customs and lifestyles not to be questioned. Hall considers a dominant reading, one in which a viewer accepts and buys into the meanings that a text is intended to convey. Yet, other decodings, which are important in understandings of the active audience, are possible. With a negotiated reading an audience only accepts part of what the text has been designed to convey while disagreeing with other parts or creating alternative meanings as well. An oppositional reading/decoding involves an audience's complete usurpation of the text, creating an alternative and often critical meaning/interpretation. Another important aspect of the decoding process is conscious and unconscious identification with certain symbols or events occurring within a text. Thus, a Latina watching a Spanish-language program might recognize a situation in the text as sexist, (which can be negotiated or oppositional stance) while identifying with a strong, matronly figure.

Although negotiated and oppositional readings are possible, these are limited due to social and cultural institutions, and other sources of social power, that reinforce and facilitate dominant readings. The motivations and institutional structures that affect text production must therefore be explored as extremely relevant locations that influence cultural identity. Chapter Three includes a discussion of the development and current political-economy of the US Spanish-language television industry as a necessary step for understanding encoding and decoding battles waged within and around the mainstream US Latino audiovisual spaces and US Latino identity by the corporate Spanish-language cultural industries and US Latino communities and individuals themselves. Today, some US Latino communities are not only faced with questions of the motivations and powers behind Spanish-language broadcasts, but often, and more importantly, whether any Latino-oriented-audiovisual spaces are offered at all in places where the cultural needs of Latinos are not a priority for commercial industries. This is the case in the city of Raleigh, NC, where a grassroots group of US Latinos is pushing for greater cable access to Spanish-language television (The Raleigh News and Observer, 1997, August 14). As mentioned before, Internet access is another issue affected by the politics of culture and economics.
 
 

Questions of Internet Use

Understandings of the hegemonic-like cultural power of the media and the selective exposure of audiences are invaluable to media studies. However, much more work still needs to be done to reconcile these two areas of observation and scholarship. If networked, computer-mediated cultural and social spaces might become (at least for some groups) the most dominant information/entertainment/communication model in the future (eclipsing or engulfing television as we know it), then both concepts (hegemony and selective exposure) must be revised in consideration to what they might offer for analysis of Internet use and the evolving cultural implications of the information/communication "revolution."

Compared to broadcast and cable television, the information and entertainment options available on the World Wide Web are incredibly vast and diverse despite the economic barriers to network and hardware access. Audio, video, text-based, hyper-text and real-time communication are currently being used. Rather than creating beneficial meanings from limited numbers of sources, multifarious texts matching specific interests and needs are more likely to be available via the Web or other Internet technologies. Most significantly, Internet access allows for many types of participation in communication processes. This fact has significant implications for identity construction, cultural maintenance, the creation of cultural texts and social networking. Through engaging in such processes, the empowerment potential of Internet use is great (Lillie). As some postmodernists have pointed out, such opportunities can be especially important to members of groups marginalized culturally and socially by mainstream society. "Virtual communities" have been studied as communities of association where individuals use computer networks to express themselves and to commune with members of a particular identity group (Braddlee, 1993). Yet utopian predictions concerning the Net's impact on human civilization often bypass the social, economic and political inequalities in which the mechanisms of cyberspace exist. English-language and corporate culture are certainly greatly over represented. Furthermore, the information and communication technologies used via the Internet are, for the most part, only available for upper middle-class peoples in highly-industrialized nations.

When considering the present and future of new, networked information and communication technologie, it is certain that while they seem to have many positive and democratizing uses, there are also many obstacles that limit this potential. Thus, to begin with, the cultural, political, social and even economic implications of Internet use by marginalized groups (and also by developing nations) must be explored to see if any of the Net's potential is being realized. A second step is to analyze (1) which technologies are being used (2) to different ends (3) by what groups or interests. This information should be used in policy considerations for access projects and NII (National Information Infrastructure) initiatives.

All identities are constituted within a system of social relations and require the reciprocal recognition of others. Identity...is not to be considered a 'thing' but rather a 'system of relations and representations'...the maintenance of an agent's identity is...a continual process of recomposition rather than a given one, in which, the two constitutive dimensions of self-identification and affirmation of difference are continually locked...identity is seen as a dynamic, emergent aspect of collective action (Schlesinger, 1987:236-7, quoted in Morley and Robins, 1995:46).

Identity can be described as the construction of meanings from lived experiences and realities on the basis of cultural attributes that are given priority over other sources of meaning and authority (Castells, 1997:6). Manual Castells in his comprehensive volume,The Power of Identity (1997), distinguishes between identity and social roles such as musician, Presbyterian, care-taker, or soccer player which are tied to formal and informal institutions and organizations of society. Castells writes that:

The construction of identities uses building materials from history, from geography, from biology, from productive and reproductive institutions, from collective memory and from personal fantasies, from power apparatuses and religious revelations. Individuals, social groups, and societies process all these materials, and rearrange their meaning, according to social determinations and cultural projects that are rooted in their social structure, and in their space/time framework (Castells:7).

Castells' hypothesis is that identity construction since modernity can be separated into three categories: (1) legitimizing identity, which is introduced by the dominate (hegemonic) institutions of society to further, reproduce and rationalize their privileges, power and domination vis-a-vis social actors (a theme which corresponds to analysis of nationalism and various media criticisms); (2) resistance identity, emerging from actors within cultures that are marginalized by dominate discourses and power relations, and who therefore build "trenches of resistance and survival" against these forces; and (3) project identity, "where social actors, on the basis of whichever cultural materials are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and, by doing so, seek the transformation of overall social structure" (Castells:8). Castells' identity construction typology is situated within an understanding of the political-economy of cultural production and social power within the era of "late-modernity" or postmodernity.

The defining features of this historical period is the primacy of transnational capitalist powers to control the use of communication and information technologies to colonize cultural spaces and socio-economic discourses with their products and neoliberal logic.6 The dominate ideology in modern societies is thus in transition from a nation oriented, state-driven hegemony to a new neoliberal order/hegemony where the consumption of transnational, multicultural products occurs within the vertical integration of most cultural symbols and meanings into this dominate political-economic logic. Yet, even in late-modernity, state governments, civil institutions and new social movements reacting against neoliberalism continue to strive for power and legitimacy in society and culture.

The nature of identity has been considered (at least implicitly) by modern scholars, particularly ontologists, existential philosophers, psychologists and others. It has only been in recent years, with the advent of cultural studies, that cultural identity has been labeled by name as a topic for consideration and research (Hall and du Gay, 1996)(Woodward, 1997). For the purpose of this thesis the discussion of cultural identity will be limited. Not much more is needed here than an understanding of how individuals or groups come to identify certain symbols, behaviors and ways of knowing as their, "our," or "my" culture. Cultural identity and collective group identity are two concepts whose similarities and differences are also considered within this Chapter and Chapter three.

Early modern writers who wrote on identity Ð what and who an individual feels she or he is, and what she or he identifies/has solidarity with Ð often held either essentialist or non-fixed views. For essentialists such as Descartes, Kant and Husserl, identity is naturally fixed within a person without possibility for change (Kellner, 1992). Other early modern philosophers including Hume, Nietzsche and Sartre considered identity as a variable which could be changed by the individual and his or her circumstances in life. Later theories of identity fit into this later, non-fixed grouping, but focus on the constructed nature of identity. Basically, these more contemporary modern writers have been preoccupied with understanding how social and cultural relations and institutions are instrumental in the construction of identities. Constructionists see identity as "constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristic with another person or group, or with an idea" (Hall, 1996:2). Thus, both cultural identity and personal identity are formed through experiences of, and identification with, certain events, rituals, social institutions and symbols of culture(s) in which an individual was raised and lives. Intuitively speaking then, cultural environment, or cultural space (this is the term that I have chosen to use throughout this work) is of utmost importance to personal, collective and cultural identity construction.

It is important at this point to distinguish between personal, or self-identity and cultural identity. Personal identity, as the term implies, is unique to the individual. Everyone has a subjective experience of life and forms different patterns of thoughts and behavior. A person's cultural identity is part of her or his individual, personal identity. Cultural identity has always been closely tied to collective temporal epistemologies. Cultural identities are collective identities in many ways, although each individual constructs different understandings of her or his cultural identity.

Cultural identity is made up of shared histories, cultural meanings and patterns of behavior that express who and what a cultural/social group is and what they have been through and value. Individuals and families within the group protect, embellish and often embody aspects of the collective cultural identity. Gender roles, prejudices, religious practices and civic rituals are often imbedded within cultural identity. It is easy to see then how personal identity and cultural identity can come into great conflict within an individual. An example of this, is that in many societies today some women and men personally identify with concepts and practices of equity and flexible gender roles, whereas their cultures in general continue to proscribe non-egalitarian gender roles within collective cultural identities. Sources of cultural and social power can be seen as seeking to enforce or encourage certain cultural identifications.

In the transition from traditional (tribal) societies to those existing within modernity, the lived histories of human kind has seen many changes in the nature of cultural space. For the traditional, the space in which a society and culture functioned was wed to a single social place. Though some groups were nomadic, societies remained cohesive, whole. There was often only one distinct culture with which members of that society could identify and through which they could understand themselves and their roles in the society. Even in these times, it seems intuitive that the politics of "Who am I?" were/can be processes of give and take within the (sometimes more, sometimes less) constraining limitations within a society.

A male hunter (for example) or a female midwife (for example) Ð both finding themselves within social roles dictated by gender (and most likely mediated by other actors as well, such as family rank) might have sought opportunities to excel within these roles, gaining reinforced identity through achievements and praise. Customs, belief systems, and social institutions are parts of both traditional and modern society's ideological apparatuses. Ideological apparatuses are the communication technologies, practices and most importantly institutions (social, religious, political) by which the cultures and ideologies of a society interact with its members. This interaction can either be direct (i.e. when an individual or group experiences a ritual song, or television program) or indirect (i.e. when an individual or group interacts with other members of their society who are indoctrinated into its cultural systems). Within the politics of "Who am I?" both direct (film, television, religious ceremony) and indirect influences (parents and friends) affect cultural identity.

The central problem that modernity has created for the construction of cultural identity is the fragmentation and colonization of cultural spaces that used to be distinct to one people, one society. "Modernity signifies the destruction of past forms of life, values and identities, combined with the production of new ones" (Kellner, 1992: 142). Arising out of the development of militaristic nation-states in Western Europe, capitalism and colonialism have been the principal engines facilitating this process. The advancement of communication and transportation technologies were essential for allowing (1) the colonization of many traditional societies and cultures and (2) the globalization of capitalism. These innovations were thus the propagating arms of the ideological apparatuses of modernity. These spatial technologies enabled European conquistadors and capitalists to wage campaigns of indoctrination, profiteering and the genocide against many indigenous peoples and their cultures. This illustrates how within modernity the transformation of cultural spaces has always been caused by power relations. Military, political, social and economic power have all been utilized to privilege one culture over others.

Today, people talk of global languages such as English and Spanish, but rarely consider what this implies for cultural space, cultural identity and cultural power. Less than two-thousand years ago the ancestor of modern English was an obscure Indo-european language in the far north-western corner of the Roman empire. It has become the first language of many of the world's peoples, and the second language of even more people. The history that I am referring to demonstrates that in modernity one of the principal means by which cultural spaces have been transformed is through colonization and war. Now, within late-modernity, the English-language threatens to transform many more cultural spaces through the spatial bias of electronic media, principally through television and film. Those that control the communication technologies also control a vital portion of the cultural system. Many parts of the modern world are filled with cultural products which were created within another society according to experiences and meanings indigenous to other cultures. Cultural/communication policies in many countries have attempted to limit the amount of US/foreign entertainment products precisely due to the effects they are thought have on local cultures and cultural identity.

Colonization and immigration are two modern trends which have created a plethora of multicultural societies. Political, economic and social inequities exist in all of these, being based often on histories of class and ethnic privilege/discrimination. Ethnicity is a term which draws much of its significance from the dispersion of cultural and racial groups in modern times. It is used to categorize people by race and national/regional origin. Ethnicity has also come to play a greater role in the politics of difference and cultural identity. The mechanics of this are indeed quite fascinating. To begin with, ethnicity is often dictated by the dominant discourses present in a place of origin. Nationality, for example, is assertive in this way among most modern cultures. Nationality has always struggled with smaller regional ethnicities for loyalty and for recognition within the cultural identities of individuals and groups. While governments have utilized the power of the electronic media to bolster national identity, local ethnicities are reinforced by community cultural heritage like the passing-on of customs and heirlooms from parents to children.

Feelings of ethnicity and cultural identity have also been affected by race relations. Many marginalized groups have for a long while been continuously afflicted by the politics of race: the politics of slavery, of institutional racism, of war, discrimination and hate crimes (to name a few). Ethnic groups who have suffered under such racial politics have in many instances built political and social movements to defeat such atrocities. The Zapatistas in Mexico are an example. As the Zapatista and other indigenous people's movements illustrate, cultural preservation can be an important project within the political goals and motivations of marginalized ethnic groups. The Zapatistas are also an example of how ethnicity is an important sight for the construction of resistance identities for marginalized groups in multicultural societies.

The politics of "Who am I?" will always involve a mediation between the individual and the many groups that have a stake in his or her cultural identity. Family and relatives often seek preservation of cultural heritage and values. Community and religious leaders usually have this interest as well. The state seeks the assimilation of aspects of a national identity which entails the state's version of patriotism, duty, citizenship, etc... The media, advertisers and other capitalists hope that individuals accept their versions of reality, desired lifestyles and patterns of consumption. Through these influences, cultural power is used to encourage certain cultural and personal identities. Yet, all cultures include ways of knowing and being which are valuable to individuals and groups that are part of these different cultures, and also have much to offer peoples of other cultures.
 

Social geographer Ed Soja posits that late-modernity's "current crisis is accentuating spatiality and revealing more clearly than ever before, the spatial and locational strategies of capitalist accumulation and the necessity for labor and all segments of society "peripheralized" by capitalist development and restructuring to create spatially conscious counterstrategies at all geographical scales, in all territorial locales" (Soja, 1989).

As Soja suggests, the components of dominate cultures/societies which legitimizing identities emerge from, and which resistance identities react against, are the architectural product of the capitalist political-economy. Capital accumulation is the motivation behind the cultural industries7 whether these interests draw from the mainstream dominate US society to sell new cultural products or, if the symbols and information are selected from various Mexican realities for the purpose of massing the largest possible audience to sell. Thus, within the totality of the possible frameworks for commercial (i.e. capitalist) cultural industries, the primary task is creating consumers out of audiences.

The primary result is the colonization of cultural space Ð the places and mediums through which people experience and interpret social symbols, and where they start to build their legitimizing or resistance identities. In the same way that civilizations have historically incorporated frontier spaces into their boundaries (determining the design and function of those spaces by the needs of the center society) so too corporate interests incorporate new cultural consumption spaces as new communication and information technologies emerge.

The car, the bedroom, the private or company office, the home, and other public, private and "family" spaces as well have been exploited as places where modern individuals consume entertainment/information products through radio, television, video and new technologies, such as the World Wide Web. These spaces are literally created by big business which invests in design research towards new technologies, as opposed to traditional spaces such as face-to-face communication, belief systems, traditional music and artwork, etc.. that may be colonized by corporate-driven cultural products, or by the influences of other social institutions. Certainly, media consumers do negotiate benefits from such colonized spaces, but the question is: do these positive uses outweigh the negative consequences of allowing corporate interests to wield such pervasive power in cultural and communication arenas?

Canadian communication scholar Jody Berland notes that the dominate US influence in the production of cultural products within the digital domain (film, television drama, CDs, computer-mediated communication technologies, etc..) is due to the vast US entertainment and military industrial complex that invents and produces many communication technologies first and is thus able to produce large amounts of cultural products within these mediums at the highest technological levels. Only countries with large domestic markets, advanced production capabilities (such as Mexico), or effective protective cultural policies can hope to meet national demands for "high(tech)-quality" entertainment products. Multinational corporations are thus more likely than not to colonize English-language (and other) international/foreign audiovisual (and other entertainment) spaces with US cultural products and Latin (Spanish-language) audiovisual spaces with Mexican cultural products. Dallas Smythe proposes that the role of the mass media in sustaining hegemonic structures maintained by big business:

...is to produce people in audiences who work at learning the theory and practice of consumership for civilian goods,...and to produce audiences whose theory and practice confirms the ideology of monopoly capitalism (possessive individualism and authoritarian political systems)(Smythe, 1981:123).

Berland supplements this thesis, suggesting that, "Media and information technologies and the entire material, spatial, and social organization of knowledge are part of (and in fact, central to ) the "means of production" whereby natural space is produced as productive space, as part of the hierarchically organized social space of contemporary capitalism" (Berland, 1997:62). As these authors have observed, the cultural goods produced by capitalism are created according to the logic and world-view of the dominant society, and particularly those groups that have the most money to spend. The lucrative pornography markets found in every audiovisual industry are examples of the engendered biases of socio-economic inequities that are replicated in the colonization of transnational cultural domains.

Michael Foucault observed that it is vital to not see technologies themselves as facilitating marginalization, but rather to understand these processes within the scope of practices - the practices of using technologies in certain ways that affect spatial organization and function. When the space in question is that of cultural space, where individuals and groups experience cultural products/symbols (such as music, artwork or television programs) personal and group experiences and mediations of cultural products are affected by the practices of production and dissemination of those products which are experienced within social space.

Whereas products produced by the transnational entertainment/information industry seek to promote the universal value of depolitisized entertainment, mass consumption and stereotypical mainstream values, as articulated by Dallas Smythe, alternative, activist or indigenous cultural products can potentially have unique practices of production that serve heterogeneous, diverse goals and intended meanings. When these types of alternative communications are disseminated through contemporary communications mediums, they are able to project their products into the cultural spaces of human experience. This amounts to (1) resistance of the colonization of cultural space by products pushed by transitional capitalism, and (2) the possible emergence of project identities at the individual and group levels. Analyzing some of these cultural communication strategies and projects facilitated by US Latinos using the Internet has been an integral part of my thesis work.

The postmodern global political-economy suggests that the politics of capitalism is increasingly dominant in dictating or perhaps facilitating the myths of social and political discourse. One of the primary features of the neoliberal political-economic order is the role of national governments in working to create deregulated climates in which transnational corporations can further their influence over global economic and cultural flows. This cooperation of forces, as Berland notes, has worked to globalize the US First Amendment, extending freedom of speech to mean the freedom of corporations to colonize any cultural space with depolitisized entertainment/cultural products. The recent Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the US is a prime example:

The acquisition of "personal rights" by corporations new exceeds beyond the growth of "corporate speech" and First Amendment rights in the US, and is for the first time consolidated in international law. The US government succeeded in extending the exclusive right of corporations to organize, process, store, retrieve, and disseminate information, currently entrenched in corporate economic structures, to an internationally ratified, legally guaranteed right of corporations to override government policies and political rights (Berland, 1992:49).

Thus, the use of media technologies in the dissemination of cultural products has been disassociated from the political, cultural and social implications of this process. While some countries such as Australia, France, Germany, as well as some Scandinavian and African countries have policies regulating the percentage of foreign entertainment products that are to be disseminated within domestic consumption markets, the depoliticized nature of media communications are not solely descriptive of US, or "foreign" products. The multinationals of Latin American (Televisa, Globo, Venevision) as well as national media in general for the most part facilitate colonization within the often apolitical standard of both modernity and postmodernity. In most democracies, alternative, critical domestic media do exist and are vital for challenging social, political and economic injustices. Generally, these can be considered as important alternatives to national and global hegemonic communication apparatuses, although in real life categorizing many institutions within either side of a spectrum is difficult.

Ultimately, the colonization of cultural space and media communications in general facilitates the continued dominance of current privileged hegemonies and continued marginalizations when media/cultural products within this context fail: (1) to articulate and recognize the realities and persuasiveness of social injustice and multiculturalism, (2) to offer opportunities for marginalized groups to voice their concerns and demands so that national, regional, and international populations and politicians must reckon with these demands, (3) to delineate the uneven distributions of power that perpetrate poverty and social injustice, and (4) to offer media space for marginalized groups to express their ideas and cultures. The majority of cultural products disseminated globally through communications networks by the powers of international capitalism fail on all four counts.

Where NWICO initiatives and media criticisms have failed or been frustrated in ameliorating capitalist manipulation of communication technologies, the discovery of the active audience Ð the acknowledgment of popular voices and skills that were ignored by the dominate communication discourses Ð emerged as a psychoactive force that had always occupied the reality of media users but which now occupied the imagination of academics as well. New networked communication technologies such as those utilized on the Internet allow even more diverse participation in the cultural realm. Cultural meanings, imaginations and identities negotiated from mass communicated texts (produced and disseminated mainly through the logic and channels of the corporate media) can now be published into a more democratic, global, networked market place of ideas.
 
 

In the US, the primary audiovisual cultural spaces that Latinos are likely to encounter and use are colonized by (1) the dominate English-language networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, etc..), and (2) the dominate Spanish-language entertainment/information networks (Univision and Telemundo). Given that Latinos in the US are minority and marginalized groups, we can hypothesize according to Castells' typology, that, for most US Latinos, identity construction is likely to be along the lines of resistance identity and for some project identity. These forms of identity construction are furthermore likely to involve both resistance too and selective positive uses of (1) mainstream English-language audiovisual spaces (which facilitate the process of acculturation into the dominate culture/society), and (2) mainstream Spanish-language audiovisual spaces that may facilitate Latinoization: the acculturation into a more broadly defined US Latino culture as opposed to more narrow national and ethnic Latinos groups/cultures.

For some US Latinos, particularly for newly arrived groups, both of these dominant cultural industries, however, can and often do facilitate positive uses in terms of (1) negotiated and oppositional readings that reinforce cultural identities within the epistemologies of individuals and groups (i.e. cultural maintenance), and (2) selective and often conscious cultivation of various cultural competencies, such as learning English and learning about US political, economic and social systems. From here it will be useful to explore how use of English- and Spanish-language television can facilitate acculturation and at some points enculturation for US Latinos.

Acculturation can be defined as the assimilation of an alien culture. Enculturation can be defined as the learning of one's own natural culture. Obviously both are processes that affect cultural identity. English-language television can be seen clearly as a cultural space that facilitates acculturation, at least for those US Latinos who are new residents of this country. Both acculturation and enculturation probably result from these recent arrivals use Spanish-language television. Enculturation occurs as cultural maintenance Ð when symbols, practices, and other information from a home country or cultural region exist within television texts. Acculturation through Spanish-language television use might occur as Latinoization. Two questions to be dealt with in this inquiry, are (1) whether acculturation greatly influences the cultural identity of new Latino groups in the US, and (2) if Spanish language television and Internet use by US Latinos influences their cultural identities.

Latinoization can be seen as a form of acculturation because if there is such a thing as a pan-Latino culture in the US, then that culture is in some ways alien to the cultures from which immigrants have come Ð from the various Latin American countries and the many distinct ethnic/cultural groups that live within them. In general, utilizing these terms (acculturation and enculturation) when discussing a multicultural society is difficult and in some ways problematic. When talking about Chicanos and Cuban-Americans who have lived in the US for many generations we see peoples whose cultures are both "American" but also Cuban and Mexican. This underscores that fact that all cultures that can be said to exist within modernity, are hybrids Ð containing symbols, customs and ways of knowing that have been borrowed from other cultures. Cultures continuously mix, merge and engulf one another, and cultural identities will always be changing with the cultural spaces that they draw from. This is not in-of-itself a bad thing. Indeed, multiculturalism as a political and social project can involve peoples from different cultures within a society working together to recognize and respect these plural and heterogeneous realities. Multicultural projects must push for equitable representation and participation of marginalized cultures within mediated spaces if desired cultural identities are to find the resources that they seek.

The process of Latinoization (as well as a more general Americanization, i.e. acculturation) may occur over time for most, if not all Latinos who live in the US for a prolonged period of time. Levels of acculturation and cultural competencies facilitate different types and/or variations in social uses (of groups) and gratifications (for individuals) of cultural resources such as media. Understanding of various cultural symbols and systems, and the development of social, emotional and manual skills related to a society/culture is what scholars mean by "cultural competencies."

Bi-lingualism and familiarity with the dominate culture are important factors/stratifications that influence how and why Latinos use Spanish-language and English-language television and what they can get out of their use. The role of the dominant commercial/English-language, US media in the acculturation of immigrant and multicultural groups have been researched,8 although analysis of the use of Spanish-language television and other mediums for both acculturation and cultural maintenance are not as prevalent (Johnson, 1996). Very little, if any, research has been done on US Latino uses of the Internet, although it seems likely that most US Latinos who do use the Internet on a regular basis are fully bi-cultural.

It is important to note at this point that any process of (1) Latinoization, (2) cultural uses of Spanish-language television, and (3) identity construction in general, is likely to vary greatly between (a) US born and established communities of Latinos (such as Chicanos in the US Southwest) and (b) recent immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Castells' identity construction typology might classify both groups as likely to create resistance identities, which, as mentioned before, vary within and between groups. Processes of hybridization and uses of Spanish-language television for cultural maintenance (discussed below) have been seen as occurring within those groups who have only recently arrived from the South. I expect to find in my Internet research that individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds do communicate via the Internet for cultural purposes, albeit though with different social uses and practices being fulfilled. Latinoization implies a process of acculturation that can be discussed within the problematic of the "American melting pot." As an often marginalized, minority groups, US Latinos are (as this term implies) categorized and defined within the lump-sum of ÒLatinosÓ or "Hispanics." Specificities such as ethnic/state nationalities are not as relevant to the dominate society/culture as broader categorizations. Cuban-American, Japanese-American, Haitian-American, Polish-American, etc....become Latino, Asian, Black, White, when the former's stereotyped ethnic characteristics correspond to the latter's enculturated racial types.

There are many motivations behind the production of Spanish-language television as a vital component of Latinoization, namely the creation of a US Latino market which facilitates a more homologous Latino community/identity distinct from and often eroding more specific national and ethnic identities and cultures. Yet although such forces can clearly be identified as treating Latinos as a cohesive ethnic/cultural group, there is a vital question taken up by Suzanne Oboler as to whether Latinoization (my term not hers) is much more of an imagined process mythisized by US scholars, political actors, journalists and entertainment media (Oboler). Oboler posits that the social value of the term Hispanic, "must be found through exploring the specific context of US society that fostered the emergence of this ethic label as an ideological construct Ð a label that is thus specific to the political and daily life of this nation, to its past ideological self-image and identity as a "melting pot" of immigrants, and to its current redefinition as an "ethnic mosaic"," (Oboler:18).

While news from Latin American countries are a component of Univision and Telemundo's programming, these corporations work to produce a cohesive US Latino audience, thus possibly furthering a process of Latinoization and helping to create a unified Latino culture/community. Mainstream Spanish-language television may respond to some of the dynamics of US Latinos Ð certainly far more than most English-language programs. Yet, content produced for national groups such as Cuban-Americans, and Puerto Ricans are limited, except perhaps where those groups make up sizable proportions of the audience.

The internal politics since the birth of Univision attests to the real and heated contestation (for cultural resources) between the most powerful/numerous Latino groups, Cuban- and Mexican-Americans. For the most part, Telemundo and Univision, as well as a majority of print and large scale music distributors of Latino cultural products, appeal to and target the broader US Latino market. Although some Spanish-language programs might focus on the perceived concerns of one group such as Cuban-Americans, the overall "grammar of production through which the media universalize a style of life" (Martin-Barbero, 1993a:142) is that of the lowest possible cultural denominator, the hodge-podge of US Latinos.

Thus again, both theoretical and real life contradictions clearly arise between active audiences' selective uses and the fact that various media uses and text production occur within broader power relations. The construction of resistance identities for some Latinos who seek to preserve national (often Latin American) and other cultural heritages thus may involve resistances to the process of Latinoization facilitated by Spanish-language television. News about a home country are distinguished and more cherished than news from other Latin American regions. Oboler maintains that difference among Latino cultural groups and difference to other minorities and the dominant culture are accentuated in the cultural/social mosaic within the US and further the resistance identities situated within the unique cultural origins and values of each group, which are grounded and given context against the various "others." Thus within any acculturation hypothesis, the active, selective nature of individual uses and gratifications, and social uses, must not be ignored. Many US Latinos appropriate Spanish-language messages in different ways for cultural maintenance and do find and or create positive cultural resources from these communication channels (Rios and Gains, 1997).

 

Media-transmitted ideology in any political-economic-cultural context is represented partly in language and articulated and interpreted through language and other highly elaborated codes and modes - including visual forms and music - which are further interpreted and used by people in routine social interaction (Morley and Robins, 1995:47).

The transnationalization of culture brought about by communication technologies, their reach, and their efficiently are better appreciated as part of the recomposition of urban cultures, along with the migrations and tourism that soften national borders and redefine the concepts of nation, people, and identity (Garcia-Canclini, 1995:10).

The creation of new social and political-economic geographies necessitates (as Canclini suggests above) new strategies of community self-conceptualization and identity. So far I have has worked to problematize the power of commercial communication as the most powerful authority in late-modernity to affect cultural identity. All notions of set reality and identity, created through combinations of hegemonic and active selective processes, are ultimately imagined yet cohesive entities. Locally positioned and negotiated imaginations, however, offer the most specific differentiations to other sources of cultural power, by being situated in authentic collective experiences and cultural projects for the enrichment of communal understandings and identity. "Authenticity here does not imply a privileged space of truth that is bounded by the inauthentic. Rather, it refers to the specific pleasures of familiarity, to the capacity of cultural forms to connect with and express vicissitudes of everyday life" (Hawkins, 1993:27).

This view posits the local as a logical sight for the cultivation of cultural products and meanings. It is at the local site of reception where television texts (for example) are shifted through individual and where group epistemologies and meanings/interpretations are produced. Within many communities today, however, most of the technologies of social and political communication and cultural expression are owned and utilized by private capitalists interests, as this proposal has discussed. Therefore, as mentioned above, one of the major tasks of my thesis has been to discuss the beneficial uses of these texts, such as with television, and the breadth of options and potential for expression and empowerment through Internet use.

In summary/conclusion, a main goal of my thesis has been to study the nature of Spanish-language television and Internet technologies, how they interact with the active mediations of Latino audiences and how this plays out to influence US Latino cultural identities. Participatory communication (Ria­o, 1994; Vargas, 1995; Goulet, 1979) and empowerment scholars (Scherwin, 1987; Rappaport, 1995) have posited that groups and individuals that have taken active roles in social communication in their communities are participating in empowerment processes at various levels. This in turn can imply the emergence of collective 'project identities' that serve to assert the legitimacy and actualization of Latino communities' cultural and civil rights, in resistance to their marginalization within the dominate US culture and society.

To summarize, the following portions of this thesis will explore and expand on the following assumptions, some of which have discussed to a limited extent already:
(1) US Latinos' use of dominate audiovisual spaces vary by ethnic subgroup, national, familial, economic, gender and other ties.
(2) While the use of Spanish-language television for cultural maintenance and cultural identity construction involve selectively produced benefits, the hegemonic political-economy of audiovisual text production do have some effects, both selectively mediated and otherwise, that encourage social, political and ideological acculturation towards legitimizing identity and Latinoization.
(3) Experienced inequalities and perceived differences from other Latino groups and other members of society, however, facilitate the development of resistance identity. Selective media use, use of alternative resources and creation of more meaningful cultural products are active strategies of resistance.[9]
(4) Some US Latinos have begun to use the Internet for cultural production and cultural identity construction. I hypothesize that analysis of these cases will reveal expressions of collective resistance identity and cultural differentiation that are offered to Latino groups as new resources for information and cultural and identity maintenance and other uses. Those Internet initiatives that engage in participatory community communication, and, or create texts that are critical of macro- and micro socio-economic and political problems can facilitate the emergence of project identity and other types of empowerment. Indeed, it seems likely that increased access to resources and cultural production are themselves processes of project identity.
 

This thesis has worked so far to describe television as a cultural space important to the construction and maintenance of various identities. The US Spanish-language television industry is particularly interesting because it produces a mainstream cultural space although it caters to a marginalized set of groups in the US. In some ways, both English-language and Spanish-language television producers in the US face similar obstacles in that they are creating texts for increasingly multicultural societies that are made up of groups with varying amounts of economic power. The success of Spanish-language television in the USA has come about due to its ability to provide cultural programming to a growing market that the English-language networks have chosen to ignore (i.e. US Latinos).

The Spanish-language market was developed and dominated at first by the Mexican media conglomerate Televisa, whose skill in producing high quality products corresponded with the language and cultural preferences of many US Latinos. In the 1960s, with boosted investment, technological development and success in selling advertisement, TSM (Televisa's predecessor) was able to expand its television assets into the US, beginning with the purchase of San Antonio Channel 41. Starting here, Emilio Azcarraga, the primary owner of TSM, carefully built a US Spanish-language monopoly. To by-pass the FCC law prohibiting "alien" ownership of broadcast facilities, Azcarraga became one of the primary investors in Rene Anselmo's Spanish International Communications Corporation (SICC). Emilio subsequently set up the Spanish International Network (SIN) which purchased and provided programming (mostly TSM products made in Mexico) and arranged advertising for SICC (Subervi-Velez, 1994:336). Mergers, expansions and reorganizations ensued in the later 60s and 70s, which included SIN's control of Televisa station broadcasts across the Mexican-US border to major US cities in the Southwest where a large Mexican-American market was already established. In these early days of Spanish-language television, SIN and the local broadcasters struggled to make a profit, and were continually bankrolled by Azcarraga.11 Unlike Mexico, where the majority of revenues came from government advertising coffers, commercial advertising is basically the sole means of support for the television industries in the US. Thus, SIN and the SICC stations had to work hard to show major US ad agencies that they could attract sizable Latino audiences/consumers.

The year 1976 was a watershed for SIN and its parent organization Televisa in furthering their dominance in US Spanish-language television. In that year, SIN moved ahead of the US English-language networks to became the first company to distribute programming to its broadcasting affiliates directly from satellite. Before this time video-taped programs where shipped to Spanish-language stations affiliated with SIN. By the early 80s, SIN found that paying cable companies to carry these satellite signals was another effective strategy for increasing their exposure to audiences where Spanish-language broadcasts were not available or of poor quality. By 1983, the SIN network reached 3.3 million Spanish-speaking households in the US. Gutierrez and Schement state that at that time 90% of Latinos in the US could receive SIN material on television (Gutierrez and Schement, 1984:249). Furthermore, 1976 also saw Televisa's creation of Univision to provide live, direct Spanish-language programming to word-wide audiences. A main focus of Univision was the US market. By 1977, Univision was broadcasting through urban stations about 20 hours a week of live variety shows, sports and daily late-night newscasts of "24 Horas" from Mexico City (Gutierrez and Schement, 1984). Audience researched showed that about two-thirds of Univision's audience in the 1980s were Mexican-Americans (Rodriguez, 1997).

SIN's major role was importing Televisa's programming to feed to Spanish-language broadcasters, primarily the SICC stations in urban centers in the southwest and also cable companies (Gutierrez and Schement, 1984). In 1979, for example, every 50 of 64 hours of programming distributed by SIN was produced in Televisa's studios in Mexico city. These programs were ultimately created for Mexican audiences. Both SIN and Univision sold advertising in Mexico with the bonus of the ads being shown in the US as part of the deal. By the 1970s, SIN and the SICC stations were turning a sizable profit. Spanish-language television revenues jumped from around $40 million in 1972 to between 60 and 70 million in 1977 and over 160 million by the early 80s (Gutierrez and Schement, 1984:253). SIN's ad revenues for the US market in 1982 were over $35 million (Walker, 1983). This success gave SIN the financial resources needed to upgrade its US news and public affairs programs to focus more on the concerns of US Latinos and the political unity of these communities.

In the 1980s, many US Latinos voiced concerns about the domination of Mexican programming and Mexican employees in the SIN and Univision networks (Gutierrez and Schement, 1984). Latino journalists, for example, have been particularly active in combating Televisa's influence in setting any agenda or Mexican/Televisa model of news gathering and news casting. "Noticiero SIN" SIN's news program worked hard to produce comprehensive newscasts through US modeled journalistic practices, covering Latin America (approx.45% of all stories), US Latino (33%) and more mainstream US issues (Rodriguez, 1997). In 1986 over 35 employees of "Noticiero SIN" resigned when Jacobo Zabludovsky, Televisa's longtime news anchor on "24 Horas" was appointed to take over SIN's US news operations (Subervi-Velez, 1994:338). Noticiero's efforts were successful in keeping Zabludovsky and Televisa's news agendas in Mexico.

SICC was denied a broadcasting license renewal in 1986 by an FCC appointed judge who felt that Televisa's influence on these stations superseded US broadcast laws. In January of 1987, SICC and SIN were merged into Univision, and the headquarters and production studios of this conglomeration was moved to Miami. Galavision (cable), which was part of the old Univision was separated into its own company so that Televisa could maintain control after selling its SICC interests and SIN to Hallmark cards, Inc. later that year (Subervi-Velez, 1994:339). Under Hallmark, Univision continued to expand its facilities in Miami amid protests from Mexican-Americans who feared increased Cuban-American influences and news bias.

Although Univision made strides in producing domestic programming, Hallmark was never satisfied with the company's profit margins. In 1992 Hallmark, announced that it was negotiating a sale of Univision to an investor group that included Emilo Azcarraga and Gustavo and Ricardo Cisneros (owners of the most powerful broadcast corporation in Venezuela, Venevision) (Subervi-Velez, 1994). Both Univision employees, who attempted a counter buyout bid, and others in US Latino communities protested the sale fearing increased encroachment of foreign control, employees and programming. These groups lobbied the FCC not to approve the sale (Subervi-Velez, 1994). Several of Univision's top executives moved to Telemundo before the transfer. The new Univision did cut US productions of programs that did not do well in the Nielson Hispanic Television Index. These slots were mostly filled with Televisa shows from Mexico. With the Televisa corporation and Venevision's greater interests and assets in Latin America, by 1994 Univision was accessible in 17 Latin American countries. In the US, Univision reached 91% of the Hispanic population through over 600 cable affiliates and 36 broadcast stations (Subervi-Velez, 1994:349).

Univision's major competitor in the 1990s, Telemundo, was founded under the initiative of the Reliance Capital Group, headed by Saul Stienberg and Henry Silverman (who was eventually the president of Telemundo). Realizing the potential profitability of the "Hispanic" television market, Reliance acquired floundering television stations in San Juan Puerto Rico, Miami, Houston, San Antonio, San Francisco, Los Angles and the greater NYC metropolitan area (Subervi-Velez, 1994). By 1990, Telemundo was potentially accessible by over 80% of the US Hispanic population. Although a majority of the network's programming was at first imported telenovelas, Telemundo was also innovative in its domestic programming. Examples of original programming include "MTV-International" and "Angelica, Mi Vida," a telenovela made in Puerto Rico which wove the lives of Puerto Rican, Mexican and Cuban families into a US Latino setting (Subervi-Velez, 1994). Despite financial difficulties due to a large debt left over from the company's acquisition phase, Telemundo has joined Univision in seeking to become a diversified global player in Spanish-language markets. In 1993, Telemundo began working with Reuters to produce a 24 international television news service in Spanish (Subervi-Velez, 1994:35).

The expansion of US Spanish-language networks in the 1990s represents their interests in creating a larger profit margin as opposed to offering an cultural resource for Latino communities. In areas where Latino populations are small there is little motive for cable companies to include a Spanish-language channel in local services. Recent research has showed that Spanish-language television can be especially important for recent Latino immigrants who speak little or no English. This medium is an important cultural resource, even if there are other Latino media available in a certain area. We live in an era when many children and adults alike use television for a variety of purposes. Television is both part of our culture(s) and an important conveyor of cultural texts. As the Kerner comission found, one of our greatest failures as a multicultural society has been to demand and mandate that the cultural resources within our communities, particularly television, begin to mirror the cultural diversity of our communities. This failure is largely the responsibility of the dominant society, the corporate media and law-makers at each level of government.
 

Not much research has been conducted concerning the media use of different US Latino groups. Of the work covered here, one of the principal conclusions is that television use can vary greatly depending on the length of time a family has lived in the US. For groups that have only recently arrived in the US, Spanish-language television, if available, is likely to be one of the few sources of Latino culture(s) that is accessible. This is particularly true for mono-lingual immigrants. It is possible that while immigrant Latinos use Spanish-language television for cultural maintenance, that this use also facilitates acculturation into a broader US Latino culture. In general, however, longitudinal acculturation studies have failed to identify whether certain media choices increase acculturation, or whether various sources of acculturation influence media choices (Johnson, 1996).

In an analysis of the "Impact of Gender and Ethnic Subgroup Membership on Mexican-Americans' Use of Mass Media for Cultural Maintenance," Diana Rios and Stanley Gains argue against the notion of Latinoization (they refer to de-ethnicization). Instead, they posit that Mexican-Americans get the most out of mainstream broadcasts that is possible through selective exposure, while also turning to alternatives for cultural resources that are more detailed and relevant to their experiences and cultural identities. These uses can vary greatly even within ethnic, national, cultural, class and gender groups. Some US Latinas, for example, have reported that both English- and Spanish-language television use helps them to ameliorate and to adapt to "language barriers, discrimination, lack of employment, and financial strains" which exacerbate acculturation stress, i.e. culture shock and lack of cultural competencies" (Johnson, 1996). Several scholars have suggested that some Mexican-American women see themselves as caretakers of Mexican heritage and culture and have used Spanish-language television as resources for exposing their children to Mexican symbols.12 Until recently, Mexican media products were commonly, and still to some extent are, broadcast on US Spanish-language channels. Thus, certain types of media uses for cultural maintenance might be more common within Mexican-American households than for other Latino groups due to the prevalence of Mexican cultural products on some Spanish-language channels (such as Univision). Some local stations cater to sizable Latino populations within their broadcasting area, such as Puerto Ricans and Dominican-Americans in New York and Cuban-Americans in southern Florida.

Rios and Gains' report in their conclusions that cluster analysis subjects identified as having "high Mexican cultural heritage" found Spanish-language television very useful (Rios and Gains, 1997:212). Members of the high heritage cluster were more likely to be recent immigrants and of lower sauce-economic class than the bicultural and low heritage groups. Some of the uses described here are therefore better understood as more likely for recent immigrants from the South Ð groups that can be considered part of a Latin American Diaspora.

This term has been used increasingly to describe various historic migrations from national or regional "homelands" to dispersed parts of the world, usually for reasons of political and economic hardships. Although immigrants from Latin American nations to the USA in the past few decades represent heterogeneous backgrounds, similarly diverse Diasporas have been studied in this manner. The Australian research team mentioned earlier, for example, analyzed the media uses of Australian Chinese communities originating from Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong and mainland China, etc.. These researchers see globalization of national media industries as responding to mass migrations: "Like flows of people, media flows travel not just from the metropolises to their peripheries, but can originate within and even help to define major world regions, including 'geolinguistic regions', that is, regions across which there are linguistic and cultural similarities" (Sinclair, Pookong, Fox, Yue, 1997:2).

In the next chapter, some of the cultural implication of Internet use will be discussed. The increased proleferation of the Internet and the integration of domestic electronic information and communication technologies necesitates the synthasis of new, or revised, theoretical (and methodological) models for understanding how and why people use these new media. One of the principal goals of this thesis is to work out what some of the main differences in the cultural uses of television and Internet are. By drawing from the many useful concepts that have been developed through television and media use studies, we can begin to explore how new media such as the Internet are being used in similar and unique ways. The concepts discussed in this chapter and those preceeding it will be used along with the results of the poilet study to suggest the begginings of a theoretical model concerning the cultural uses of the Internet.

There are two central themes with which the concepts that this thesis deals with are concerned. The first is the nature of processes of cultural identification. This process has undoubtedly either evolved (due to), or been affected by, the increasing prevelance of multicultural societies and varrous cultural spaces (information and communication technologies) available. Castells' catagories of collective identity formation is particularly helpful in understanding how different groups develope identity in referance to the dominant society. The use of differant cultural spaces for identity formation and maintenance is of course part of such processes. Theories of resistance and legitamising identity are limited, however, in explaining the great variety and details involved in cultural ues of media. For this we have looked to asecond central theme: the nature of the encoding/decoding process. With each differant information and communication technology, this process, or more accuratly, this cycle of processes, is unique. Infact, each time a media product is created, and each time a product is consumed that particular process is unique to all others. When we look at the encoding side of a particular medium or production unit, we should seek to know who is creating the product(s), why they are doing so, who is able to participate in production, and the range of cultural products available, while exploring the political-economy of text production. On the decoding side, understanding why and how a cultural product or space is used, must be explored in the context of how those messages are mediated and made sense of in social viewing contexts.

In the United States, the cultural diversity of television texts is not great and certainly does not come close to matching the cultural diversity of the US population. The reasons for this are many, including the commercial nature of the industry, the pivotal roles and demands of advertisers, the costs of high-tech production and the socio-economic marginalization of many minority cultural groups. For some groups, the process of creating positive cultural meaning out of television texts involves seek out a scarce number of images or texts that address, or partially address, their cultural presferences. Those technologies and spaces that are found to be most useful for cultural (and other) purposes are likely to be used the most.
 

In a way, Reid is describing the process that users go through of developing new social and cultural competencies in MUD environments. MUDs and IRC are certainly part of many usersÕ virtual experiences, yet the frameworks of these studies are not designed to understand how and why people use the variety of technologies that are now common place on the Internet for cultural interaction and expression.

The Internet is now a multimedia environment proliferating with products of various technologies, various cultures, various uses and various users. As Bruce Overby explains in his study of social identity in usenet environments, "cyberspace...can be understood as a vast territory, a space of representations. While human beings have inhabited representational spaces for a very long time, we have never been able to create representations with the ease and flexibility possible in cyberspace" (Overby). It is this flexibility of expression and the ability to form expressive relationships that have enticed many individuals into this habitat. In the few years since the Internet has enjoyed exponential growth, new subcultures and old subcultures have emerged, taking advantage of all that cyberspace has to offer. It is in this light that the evolution of media use is taking place via the Internet. Participation in media is not longer limited to the audience's active engagement in the interpretation of texts. Now many types of horizontal dialogue are possible through email, chat rooms, discussion boards and usenet, and real-time audio and video conferencing. Furthermore, full self-management of personal and group Web sites allows for almost any type of cultural and personal information to be published (either for the general public or for a select, private group). When you consider this in conjunction with the fact that the potential number and variety of choices (sites) is almost endless, it is easy to get excited at the cultural implications of this.

Despite all of this potential, it is important to gather a succinct idea of what the Net is actually being used for. Is it a vast kaleidoscope of opinions and cultures, or more of a pipeline for corporate communication needs? At present, the largest factor limiting the proliferation of the Internet is the cost of its infrastructure and of the hardware (i.e. computers) needed to use it. The majority of Internet users live in North America or Western Europe. These countries have relatively large middle-classes and already established telephone and fiber-optics networks that the Internet can run on. For most of the rest of the world, modernization is a consistent process that governments invest in to further their countries' positions in the global political-economic system. Although "being connected" is often part of this agenda, many scholars of development and modernization argue that the social costs of neoliberal economics and rampant, thoughtless industrialization are not justifiable. In this light, this research not does support or advocate access projects outside of sustainable development.

So far, very little research has been done on what gratifications users are getting out of the information and communication technologies of the Internet. Likewise the cultural impact of Internet use has not been analyzed to the extent of other mediums such as television. At Georgia Tech, the Graphics, Visualization, & Usability (GVU) Center has been conducting general surveys of Internet users for several years. One significant finding of this research is that most of the respondents to their surveys report accessing the Internet from home. In the USA, 60 percent of those surveyed in early 1997 used the Internet from home (Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center, 1997a). Thus, many Internet interactions take place within the moral economy of the household which influences the cultural and social mediations of media use and interpretations. This does not mean that home Internet use is mediated in the same way as television. Family group viewing of television, for example, can be common place, while using a computer to access the Internet could be more frequently an individual process.

A GVU survey conducted in early 1997 also asked about personal uses of the World Wide Web. The most common Web activities reported were gathering information (86.03%), browsing (61.29%), work (54.05%), education (52.21%), communication (47.02%), and entertainment (45.48%) (Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center, 1997a). Since survey subjects were allowed to chose several categories as their most common type of use, and since these categories do not seem mutually exclusive, it is difficult to draw conclusions from this data. Each category can include using the Web for cultural maintenance and expression (with the exception perhaps of work). The GVU surveys have helped, however, to show that some individuals use the Internet instead of, and as a replacement for, television. Of respondents in the US (again from an early 1997 survey) over 35 percent claim that they use the Web instead of watching television on a daily basis (Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center, 1997a).

Considering that most of these users have only had Internet access for a few years or less, the growing importance of this technology over other domestic media is quite amazing. The authors of the GVU survey results conclude that "These numbers when used in conjunction with the use of the email as being on equal par with the phone paint a tremendously strong picture of the rapid integration of the Internet and World Wide Web into the fabric of the lives of those who currently use it" (Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center, 1997a). The most recent survey (fall 1997) shows that email (84%) and the Web (82%) are by far the most used technologies (via the Internet) (Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center, 1997b). 43 percent of those surveyed have created a personal Web pages (more that half of men and about one-third women users).

Like all other Internet users, US Latinos who have access use a variety of different technologies when they are online. I have been unable to find statistics of the number of US Latinos who use the Internet, or studies of what specific Internet technologies some of them use and why. There is a sizable population of US Latinos who are poor or live in poverty. Like all Internet users, those US Latinos who have access are likely to middle and upper class. Ultimately the cultural and empowering potential of the Internet cannot be truly realized while only relatively wealthy individuals and families have access. The information and communication possibilities offered by these technologies actually helps to further marginalize many groups who are being left behind and ignored in the information age.

The presence of (mostly middle class) US Latinos on the Web is however prominent and easily located. One of the best ways to study the Latino presence on the Internet is to visit the myriad of personal and group/organizations Web pages that are available to anyone with a connection and a Web browser. A closer look at one of these sites can offer some examples of the type of cultural expression that Internet (in this case World Wide Web) use can facilitate and how aspects of personal and cultural identity are integrated into these new cultural texts. One page encountered during the course of this research that I found particularly interesting was "a Chicana feminist homepage," which was created and is maintained by Susanna Gallardo. Like many of the US Latinos who maintain Web pages, Gallardo is affiliated with a University. Her Web page html and email account are both stored on university servers. A copy of her introduction page is included as Appendix C. Gallardo writes in a welcome statement that her site is "just one Chicana's efforts at providing an introduction to Chicana and Chicano cultures and issues in Chicana feminisms through a collection of educational and cultural resources" (Gallardo). This site provides links to a variety of Latino resources on the Web as well as information on the author's personal views and interests. One of the most interesting pages on her site gives brief biographies on famous/important Chicanas. Two that are covered are Emma Tennayuca, an activist for Mexican farmworkers in Texas in the 1930s and Yvonne Trevino the World Super Flyweight boxing champion.

Susanna Gallardo's site is literally filled with information about Chicanas and US Latino culture. She includes links and reviews about Latino movies, bands, television shows and novels. There are also links to papers and Web sites dealing with Chicana studies and literature. Yet Susanna's site is not just about her interests, it is an expression of her identity and her culture. It is a statement of who she is and what she values as a young Chicana and as a unique individual. At the same time this site allows her to reach out to other Chicanas, US Latinos and people who want to learn more about Chicanas. While Susanna is engaged in her daily life, Web users can engage the texts that she has created. Her site is an active product, a piece of Chicana culture in the vast cultural space of the World Wide Web. This site in particular is a partial index of Chicana and US Latino cultural products that exist within varies cultural spaces(mediums) and stakes a claim on what it is to be Chicana and Latino. When non-Latinos think of Chicanas, their ideas and definitions may be influenced by this site. US Latino Web users may go there to access other resources, Chicana Studies pages, or to learn more about famous Chicanas.