News Consumption in the Case of the Garifuna People: Reaching the Audience or Not?

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand how social media is affecting the news consumption of minority cultures, both within and outside the U.S. Using natives of Central America with ancestral roots in Africa as research subjects, this research explores how the Garifuna culture experiences social media and how these media influence news consumption and perceptions. Using a grounded theory approach, in-depth interviews were conducted in the United States and Honduras. The results of those interviews indicate that media can aid individuals within the Garifuna culture to perceive they have gained some knowledge of world news, yet in actuality, this knowledge is superficial at best.