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Abstract

This paper concerns the relationship between media and the framing of ethnic diversity as a central condition of contemporary urban life. Rather than focusing on how media represent ethnic diversity, this paper relies on a conceptualisation of news media as cultural forms which become entangled in the various interpretive communities partaking in their circulation. Examining the practical milieus of news editors at the Toronto Star, the paper focuses on a case example of editors’ work on a special section related to Toronto’s projected ethnic diversity in 2017. The main argument of the paper is that the relationships between sites of mainstream media production and urban publics are more complex and contradictory – as well as more banal and everyday – than conventionally acknowledged. This suggests we take seriously the ongoing importance of increasingly fragile, unified mediated public forums through which different groups might encounter one another in and across contemporary cities.

Keywords: actor-network theory,   circulation,   cities,   journalism,   materiality,   multiculturalism,   news form,   social practices  

How to Cite: Rodgers, S., (2013). Circulating cities of difference: assembling geographical imaginations of Toronto’s diversity in the newsroom. JOMEC Journal. (3), p.None. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18573/j.2013.10243