Transcript Small Scale Media in Glocalized Competition – New Media’s

Listening in to minorities
in societal dialogue
TOM MORING
SWEDISH SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
[email protected]
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Why do we need a media policy
for minorities at all?
 In a minority language situation, the media sector is more
likely to interfere with mother-tongue transmission than
support it.
 The media effect tends to undermine minority identities
by accelerating language shift and assimilation of
minority communities
 To counter this, minority-language media performs a
restitutionary function by balancing the media impact
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Restitutionary?
The act of restoring something that has been
taken away, lost, or surrendered
The act of making good or compensating for
loss, damage, or injury
A restoration of a previous state or position
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
A functional view on media for minorities
 Different media carry different functions
 Substitutive strategies do not work in protection of
minorities
 Institutional completeness is an ultimate goal (”necessary
but not sufficient”)
 Functional completeness requires the strict preference
condition to be met
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Strict preference condition

The target public, ceteris paribus, must display a net
preference for carrying out at least some of their
activities in their (minority) language rather than in the
majority language.

If this condition is not (or only weakly) met, protection
and promotional measures will be ineffectual
Source: Grin, Moring et al. 2003, 190
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Research shows…
 That the strict preference condition is met if
quality is good
 Quality requires genre-diversity and regional
diversity also in minority media
 New media should be no exception
 New media is cost effective to establish (compare
to radio)
Source: Grin, Moring et al. 2003
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Seven aspects of minority media
impact on language and culture
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
a symbolic role for communities that signals that the language and
the community are able to cope fully with the contemporary world
an economic role, providing career prospects for young people who
want to work from within a minority language/culture
a role in developing a public sphere within a community which can
carry a distinct cultural agenda
a representational role allowing the community to be represented
both within itself and to outsiders
the role as a key conveyor of culture and producer of cultural
products
providing an opportunity to use a language routinely on a daily
basis as a listener or reader of the language
the continuous re-construction of language/culture and the
development and diffusion of language/culture innovation in a
changing world.
Positioning the subjects of the media
A division of functions:
 ‘for the Community’

authorities address the minority populations
+ sharing information, countering segregation
– integration or assimilation?
 ‘of the Community’

minorities publish their own media
+ participation through group identity
– marginalization?
 ‘from the Community’

minorities are presented in main media
+ visibility of the group in society
– tokenist representation
 ‘to the Community’

diasporic media
+ rich content
– formation of sphericules?
Media: what does it reveal; What does it hide?
• Supply side:
• Radio for the community
• Press = reading, ‘short-term
memory’
• TV for visibility
• Internet for strengthened selfdetermination
• The demand side
• Society needs to support the
media for minorities
• Society needs to listen in
• An obligation to understand (?)
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
This also concerns new media
84 percent of Internet use is in the top ten languages
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Why is particular attention to New
Media for minorities important?
 A lot of potenial:
 Maintenance of cultural identity
 Diasporic media
 ’Super-local’ media (community media)
 Formation of new types of public spheres and networks
 A lot of dangers
 A new boost of hate-speech
 Forum for terror, drugs, new forms of violent behavior (Jokela,
Kauhajoki school shootings)
 Isolation of minorities into separated spheres (’sphericules’)
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
”Digital/social imbrication”
 New Media mediatizes fields that have not been
considered to be part of the media world, such as how
people communicate with and within administration and
business.
 The increasing role of new media leads to this direction.
 Authorities communicate increasingly often with the
public through the medium of Internet.
 What does this mean to the right to use a minority
language in communication with the authorities?
(Cf. Sassen 2006)
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Some (comparative) views on
regulations in an EU perspective
How does EU treat (cultural) rights of minorities?
 Negative regulations of migration are binding
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The Schengen Treaty 1985
The Schengen Implementation Treaty (1995): internal border
controls abolished; external border controls increased
Since September 11th, 2001 a change of paradigms with
combating illegal migration becoming an EU top priority
Readmission Agreements oblige countries to take back
migrants who entered this way into the Schengen area
The construction of ‘fortress Europe’ as a set of concentric
circles began to take shape
Source: Brigitta Busch and Michal Krzyzanowski 2007
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
Fortress Europe
Source: Brigitta Busch and Michal Krzyzanowski 2007
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
A new apartheid
 European citizens (citoyens, civic citizens) are
categorized into different classes
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
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citizens who hold an EU passport from a pre-2004 member state
'second-class citizens' who do not immediately enjoy full freedoms to
live and to work anywhere within the EU (until 2014, from 9 new EU
states)
the mobile elite from 'rich' so-called 'third countries', highly skilled
and highly valued professionals
Fourthly, and in sharp distinction


migrant workers also from so called 'third countries‘
'illegal migrants', ‘sans-papiers’ ; pariahs of contemporary society,
deprived of rights and protection
Source: Brigitta Busch and Michal Krzyzanowski 2007
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
From migration rules follows a
negative discourse
 Designation of in-groups and out-groups (‘we’ vs. ‘they’)
 positive self-presentation
 negative other-presentation
 Immigrants are stereotypically represented
 different, deviant, a threat to 'us
 metaphors borrowed from the military/catastrophy register (e.g.
invasion, army of illegals; flood, tide)
 serves to justify rhetoric and practice of fortifying the border.
 over-emphasis on ethnic and immigrant crime

Negative images of migrants in the media are rarely
compensated by positive reporting of their living conditions
Source: Brigitta Busch and Michal Krzyzanowski 2007
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
In contrast to migration policies, affirmative
media policies are non-binding
 Non-binding Charter of fundamental rights of the EU
 Articles 21 and 22 on non-discrimination and respect for minorities
(with the Lisbon Treaty, it will bind EU institutions but not states)
 Binding but not enforceable treaties of the Council of
Europe (cover autochthonous, not migrant minorities)


The Framework Concvention for the Protection of National
Minorities
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
 Non-enforceable principles of the OSCE and the UN
 OSCE Oslo Recommendations, Broadcasting Guidelines
 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
A need for regulations of media
rights
 Regulation is possible, also of new media
 Affirmative principles of restitutionary character
are not against freedom of expression
 New media require new regulatory measures (eg.,
hate speech) through self- and co-regulation
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009
References
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Bucy, Erik, “Social Access to the Internet”, 5 Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
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Busch, Brigitta and Michael Krzyzanowski (2007). ‘Outside/Inside the EU: Enlargement,
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Thank you!
for your time, attention and interest
Tom Moring, CIF, 4.8.2009