Studies of the Max Kade Institute

to make the world comprehensible by reducing its complexity and
variability, to make orientations possible, and finally to provide for
the stability of the sociocultural and individual realms.
What applies to the social function of the media in general
also proves fundamentally true of the special functions of the
ethnic press. Since the ethnic press is an example of minority
communication, some aspects are more strongly accentuated: above
all, the intensive communication within the ethnic group, which of
course finds itself in an on-going process of self-definition. The
reader's attachment to his respective paper might for this reason
be particularly strong. Obviously the composition and character of
groups and their respective stages of integration into mainstream
society play a decisive role here as intervening variables. "Old"
immigrant groups will expect different features from their ethnic
press than "new" ones, larger and heterogeneous groups different
features than small and homogeneous ones. Formerly essential
functions can with time become obsolete, whether because the
American mass media take them over or because they are no longer
necessary.
Special conditions arise from the fact that readers-at least
in the case of the German-Americans-almost always have other
sources of information in the media besides the ethnic press. Indeed,
today the ethnic press is rarely the most important source, but instead
has a supplementary function: its task must lie primarily in providing
readers with information and topics for discussion that the American
mass media do not cover. That would include, for example, historical
and contemporary information about the native country, information
about their own group, and assistance in understanding their own
ethnicity and their social position as American citizens of German
descent.
I would assume that the readers of German-American papers,
who are generally competent speakers of English, do not seek
information about facts and developments within the United States
that have nothing to do with ethnicity in the broadest sense. Of the
tasks of the German-American press named by Carl Schurz, one of
the most important-to explain America to the immigrants, a task
the AuJbau still took very seriously in the 30s and 40s-has largely
disappeared.

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