This paper investigated the transformation of Chinese ethnic media in Japan over the past 20 years and the influence it has received from cross-border homeland media.

    With the development of digital media, the use of ethnic media by Chinese residents in Japan is shifting from traditional mass media such as newspapers and broadcasting to we-media that utilizes SNS platforms. We-media has taken over most of the ’intra-group function’ and ’social stability function’ of mass media, and has emerged as a major player in ethnic media. On the other hand, newspapers and television for Chinese residents seem to have declined significantly in their functions as media and seem to have fulfilled only a symbolic function as a testimony to the history of the Chinese community in Japan.

    To analyze the characteristics and social functions of we-media, this paper conducted a case study on the WeChat official account ’tokyomen’, which is one of the most used accounts by the Chinese community in Japan. The results of the study from two approaches, content and discourse analysis, show that ’tokyomen’ has adopted a survival strategy of growing revenue by promoting Japanese products and designs while aligning with the hardline stance of the homeland media on political and social issues in Japan. However, the negative attitude towards Japan may undermine Chinese residents’ trust in the host society and hinder their adaptation to it. This characteristic of we-media derives from the shifting of ethnic media from the host society to the home country as they merge functionally and morphologically with the homeland platform. We consider the phenomenon in this paper as the tendency of ethnic media to become homeland media.

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