News Making, Contested Publics and Stories of Belonging in the Dutch Caribbean

News Making examines how people in Curaçao and Sint Maarten turn events into stories that shape public life. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2019, the book develops an analytical distinction between 'news' as an everyday social practice and 'the news' as institutional media. Moving from the late nineteenth century to the present, it traces how colonial governance, missionary activity, oil industrialization, and constitutional reform (10/10/10) have structured emerging publics in the Dutch Caribbean.Theoretically, the book reworks debates on the public sphere, creolization, and popular culture within a relational understanding of empire, bringing social and media theory into conversation with Caribbean intellectual traditions. Methodologically, it combines archival research with interviews, newsroom ethnography, and attention to rumor, gossip, and oral storytelling as forms of popular news making. Case studies include the rise of Papiamentu-language newspapers after the 1969 revolt on Curaçao, the role of news and 'the news' in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma on Sint Maarten in 2017, and contemporary popular news media on both islands.By foregrounding everyday news making as a practice of belonging, News Making offers a rethinking of news beyond liberal-democratic norms. It will interest undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars in media and communication, anthropology, Caribbean studies, and postcolonial studies, as well as informed non-specialist readers.

About the Author

Sanne Rotmeijer is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in International and Urban Studies at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). Her research explores popular media and communication, diversity, and postcolonial urbanity, focusing on (diasporic) Caribbean publics and belonging.