Media Consumption and the Construction of Diasporic Identities of Youth of Pakistani Origin in Britain

The topic of this thesis is ‘Media Consumption and the Construction of Diasporic Iden-tities of Youth of Pakistani Origin in Britain’. This research aims to investigate interplay between consumption of media and the construction of identity of young people of Pakistani heritage born and brought up in Britain, known as British-Pakistanis. Role of media has been recognized as a part of social institutions that contribute to formation of identity. The overpowering presence of media in everyday life and penetration of digital media into personal lives relate in many ways to the construction and expression of iden-tities including those of diasporas. The interactive nature of digital media has trans-formed the character of media consumers from passive receivers to producers as well, which also invokes reflexivity leading to discovery and construction of various facets of identity. The identity of Pakistani diaspora, predominantly Muslim, came into focus in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7 because of involvement of young Muslim men in these incidences, which led to association of terrorism with the Muslims and gave rise to phenomenon of ‘Islamophobia’ in which media also played a significant role by portray-ing Muslims in a peculiar way. The research was carried out in two cities London and Bradford. Choosing qualitative method suitable to such research, 20 focus groups were conducted with total of 160 participants in the categories of age groups 18-24 and 25-30 with subcategories of Male only, Female only and Mixed groups. Besides this a ques-tionnaire was also circulated to collect some quantitative data about the consumption pattern in terms of type of media and content accessed. Data was analysed in the light of theories about media and diasporas in globalized world and emergence of Islam and Muslims as security threat to the West in physical as well as ideological sense.