Why “developmental media”?– Question on Stuart

The discussions by Stuart in the course reading are interesting, and especially the one in 2003 provides stimulus view point through conceptualizing Maori as a nation within the state of New Zealand. It is convincing discussion to see the colonization as the power of disruption against iwi based Maori nation, and the social/ cultural revitalization movement as the re-establishment of Maori nation. In this discussion, the nation which Maori media has been/ is building is something more than the iwi based nation in the past, that is, pan tribal.

However, in his discussion, his critique and attempt to revise Robie(2005) is not fully explained and often seems to confuse Robie’s point. I could not find the answer even for a simple question, “why does he regard Maori media as third world media, not as forth world media?”
In my understanding, the most important feature of the 4th world media is that the media is embedded in the society in which another social group/ culture has power. In the social circumstances, forth world media is seeking different ways from “main stream media” to represent themselves in their perspective, often with their own language.
For me, it sounds more reasonable to see most of the Maori media as 4th world media because primarily Maori media is motivated to broad cast Maori culture/ voice/ language in different way from main stream or “Pakeha” media. Many aspects Robie pointed out as the feature of third world media suit to Maori media, too. However, the third world media and the fourth world media share many aspects in Robie’s discussion. Only one difference is if they are sharing the nation ( country) with other media in the present, and if they have been/ are in underprivileged social situation under the bigger power of others.

In short, Stuart’s attempt to regarding Maori as nation is very interesting (and also reasonable if we see many researches dealing with “nation” and nationalism beyond state or country). However, the notions of “nation” in those two discussions are different, and we should confine “nation” in Robie’s discussion to “country”.