A general overview of the relevant literature seems to suggest two major strands of research within which the relationship between media and cultural diversity in general, and the situations of minorities in particular can be examined. The first strand is related to the research on historical forms of diversity, such as that focusing on aboriginal media in Northern America and Australia, and work dealing with
17 EU Commission’s regular Progress Reports on Turkey’s accession process in 2004 and 2005 discussed the situation of the Kurds in terms of minority rights.
18 Hourigan (2007) also mentioned this aspect and indicated the scarcity of research looking at this relationship.
national or regional media in Wales, Scotland, Ireland or Spain (Riggins, 1992;
Cormack, 2007).
The second strand addresses the relationship between media and minorities in the context of newer forms of cultural diversity reflecting a growing interest in the links between migration and media (King and Wood, 2001). Such works look at the media consumption and production of immigrants, as well as the influence of new technologies in the maintenance and negotiation of cultural identities (Gillespie, 1995; Milikowski, 2000; Dayan, 1998; Aksoy & Robins, 2000; Cottle, 2000; Robins, 2003).
Inquiries into the media practices and media consumption of minority groups have until recently remained as an under-researched field within media studies (Cottle, 2002; Rigoni, 2005; Cormack, 1998 and 2007; Moring, 2002). Scholars have utilised a range of different concepts such as ‘ethnic community media’ (Tsagarousianou, 2002), ‘ethnic minority media’ (Husband, 1994), ‘diasporic media’ (Georgiou, 2005),
‘citizens’ media’ (Rodriguez, 2001), ‘immigrant’, ‘indigenous’ or ‘ethnic minority’
media (Riggins, 1992), ‘particularistic media’ (Dayan, 1998) or ‘minority language’
media (Cormack, 1998). These terminologies are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to similar processes and formations.
Minority or minority language media can be considered as the first strand of this research that has begun to emerge as a research field in its own right. It pertains to the process of ‘regionalisation’ in Western Europe that involves the revival of the language and cultural identity of national minorities or indigenous groups (Cormack, 1998; 2007, Moring, 2002). ‘Ethnic minority media’ is similarly used to address the media of national or indigenous minorities as well as the media of immigrant groups (Riggins, 1992; Moring, 2002).
In addition, the term ‘minority media’ has similarly been used to refer to immigrant groups’ own media production. But it was also used in the context of media provisions provided by states in order to target, or to assimilate and integrate immigrant groups (Teerink-Bovenkerk, 1994; Ananthakrishnan, 1994).
Despite such a variety of conceptualisation, these terms all refer to various instances of ‘community media’ that emerge in different social, economic and geographical contexts. Community media groups, either print or broadcast, are limited to a geographical region such as a city, town or a neighbourhood, and aim to provide news and information for the community. They are usually non-profit organisations owned by the community organisations or members who work as volunteers.
Community media produce locally oriented output and generally target the audiences in the locality (Jankowski, 2002: 7-8).
The use of community media principally relates to the democratisation of communication and the facilitation of citizens’ further involvement in the process. It has emerged as a result of the efforts of various community organisations and activists aiming to counter-balance the effects of national or transnational dominant media outlets and to empower or give voice to ethnic minority and immigrant groups.
These initiatives emerged in Western Europe during the 1980s, but the use of ethnic minority or community media has also been supported in the developing world by organisations such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisations) and the Council of Europe due to similar concerns (Husband, 1994;
Rodriguez, 2001)19.
In this context, Rodriguez (2001: 20) proposes the use of the term ‘citizens’ media’
in order to address various types of local, community or grassroots media that pose the potential to ‘empower’ communities and that could lead to a positive change in established social codes because these communities can actively ‘enact’ their citizenship and ‘intervene’ in the general mediascape. In a similar vein, it has been argued that the media of ethnic and minority groups need to be considered within a larger trend that accentuates ‘participatory culture’, a trend that is being increasingly
19 The democratisation of communication and information flows was supported by The New
Information and Communication Order (NWICO) project of UNESCO in the 1980s in the developing world. For details see Chakravartty and Sarikakis (2006) and Reeves (1993).
observed in the global proliferation of community, oppositional or alternative media practices (Deuze, 2006).
Indeed, the most exemplary and effective forms of community media are to be found in the ethnic minority media of immigrant groups, which are increasingly transforming into ‘diasporic’ media (Tsragarosianou, 2002). The field of diasporic media research considers the media production and consumption of dispersed groups within the ‘new’ media landscape that emerged after the de-regulation of media systems and the emergence of satellite technology in the 1990s. The change in terminology from ‘ethnic community’ or ‘ethnic minority’ media to ‘diasporic’
media is part of the shift - or ‘re-wording’ - within the field on issues of ethnicity and minorities. The older sociological categories of ethnic minorities, immigrants or minority culture are being replaced by the term ‘diaspora’ because of its increasing centrality in the theorisation of the relationship between identity and immigration (Sreberny, 2000; Sreberny, 2001; Cottle, 2000). This is because ethnicity as a concept was seen as insufficient to convey the ‘complexity’ of diasporic experiences and relationships, factors that are increasingly subject to transnational dynamics of social and cultural interaction (Tsagarousianou, 2004: 64).
One of the earlier treatments of diasporic media is found in Dayan’s (1998: 105) analysis of ‘particularistic media’, which is considered instrumental in the process of
‘transmitting memory and filiation’ for especially fragile communities like minority groups, immigrants, exiles and diasporas20. Dayan utilises the concept in special reference to communities such as Armenians, Jews and the Kurds. Dayan also differentiates between media produced ‘by the minorities’ and ‘for the minorities’, which can help to simplify the language used to examine these diverse practices. It can be argued that the transformation of ‘media by and for minorities’ implicates both the national political culture and how it deals with minority protection as well
20 Sreberny (2002:221) suggested approaching collective identities through their ‘gaze’ rather than trying to identify a core essence. Therefore, a focus on ethnicity was about looking inward to the new national host culture. A focus on exile is a ‘nostalgic gaze’ looking back to the political homeland, but diasporas are ‘looking all around’.
as the general rules and regulations that organise the national media space and its practices. This is because minority media not only emerge as venues to preserve the communality, identity and the language of a group. They also emerge as a reaction by minority groups seeking self-esteem, prestige and recognition to limited or hostile representations within the mainstream media (Horboken, 2004; Husband, 2005).
Despite the conceptual differences, non-profit, voluntary, bottom-up media production characterises ethnic or community media and issues. They are implicated in the debates about media and national culture and how the nation-state, as Turner (2001) expressed, attempts to retain its cultural monopoly against global and local pressures from ‘above and below’. Consequently, these research areas share common questions and concerns about the effects of globalisation on the mediation of cultural identities, the response of states and communities to these dynamics, and the ways in which these challenges are contested or negotiated.
Furthermore, some of the key texts in minority media research suggest a combined focus on external, internal, political and economic variables as well as the ‘specific contexts’ in which minority media are situated (Cormack, 1998; Riggins, 1992). For Riggins (1992: 16-17), the ‘characteristics of the ethnic minority population’, the
‘political structure’ and the ‘international context’ within which minority media operate were all significant. The ‘characteristics’ of the ethnic minority population not only includes the number of members in the community in question, but the
‘degree of homogeneity, organisation and integration’ it has achieved and the
‘degree of persecution or repression it has experienced.’
Additionally, the ‘prevailing ideology of the state’ - its ability to tolerate diversity within its own political structure - was considered as a crucial parameter influencing the emergence and survival of minority media. The impact of the international context and the extent to which it helped and empowered the minorities was also instrumental in their performance. Finally, the number of speakers and the symbolic status of the language, the existence of a mass campaign, the political culture of the
state and interactions with regional trends also impacted on the emergence and performance of minority media (Cormack, 1998: 39-42).
In order to establish why the mediation of ethnic or linguistic differences continues to be a source of concern and controversy within national cultures, this chapter first considers debates that capture the relationship between nation, media and the national communicative space. It then moves on to explore the various practices and challenges in the mediation of cultural identities in the European context. The chapter considers examples within traditional forms of cultural diversity and also pays attention to the development of regional media in areas such as Wales, the Basque country and Catalonia. The following part discusses the impact of changes within the human rights regime on the status of those minority media that cater for national minorities. The last section of this chapter addresses the issues relating to particularistic media that emerged as a result of migration and it seeks to examine the interface between ethnic and diasporic media.