DIVERSITY ANOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Media and the representation of Others

Elfriede Fürsich

Contemporary mass media operate as a normal- ising forum for the social construction of reality. They are important agents in the public process of constructing, contesting or maintaining the civic discourse on social cohesion, integra- tion, tolerance and international understand- ing. Moreover, the media’s power to steer attention to and from public issues often determines which problems will be tackled or ignored by society. Only those issues that gain publicity have the potential to make people think about social and political ramifica- tions beyond their immediate experience and arouse politi- cal interest.

Over centuries, the mass media – starting with news- papers – have played a central role in defining and illustrating the nation-state in Europe and the Americas. In post-colonial countries, the media were used as important tools in nation-building efforts. Often the media formed a mediated national identity in limited ways by defining the bound- aries of a community considered to be part of a nation and by excluding minorities as ‘‘Others’’. Contemporary geopolitical constella- tions add another component to the mediated discourse of the Other. Intensifying globalisa- tion has led to an increasing connectedness between economies and political entities and a need for people to know about the world. A major dimension of globalisation is the voluntary and forced mobility of people. Busi- ness travellers, tourists, migrants and refugees constitute a growing number of people on the

move. At the heart of the matter is the struggle, often played out in the media, over defining and situating the Others amongst ‘‘us’’.

This report will evaluate what role the mass media have played in constructing this dis- course. In what ways do the media promote or hinder a positive outlook on cultural diversity? Based on a review of the scholarly debate on the role of media in representing Others, I identify a set of current obstacles (both in media systems

and in media content) to fair media representations.

This review provides the foundation for a set of conclusions and strategies that can lead to a frame- work for rethinking the relationship between the media and cultural diver-

sity. While every effort will be made to contribute examples from a wide variety of countries, the main academic statements are based on mass communication scholarship in the USA, the UK and other English-speaking countries and, to a lesser degree, other European countries and non-western countries. This reflects my scholarly training and area of expertise as a German media scholar working at a US university with some experience of living and teaching in India.

This inquiry into professional practices and media content in a globalising world intends to promote mass media that bring about a new civic discourse within and across national boundaries towards a more democratic global media environment, fair media practices and more critical media use.

Elfriede Fürsich is Associate Professor of Communication and Sociology at Boston College. She currently is a visiting profes- sor at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on media globalisation and mobility and their relationship to culture and civil society. Email: [email protected]

ISSJ 199 r UNESCO 2010. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DK, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Current trends in studies of media and representation

In this section, I outline diverse approaches to studying the representation of Others. I define and explain the use of the concept, ‘‘representing the Other’’ and establish its relevance to actual journalism practice and media content. In addition to my own scholarship in this area, I highlight important contributions from scholars in cultural studies, journalism studies, media sociology, anthropology and social linguistics. Overall, the scholarship in this area dealing with the media representations of the Other is eclectic and mostly disconnected. My contribution here is to link various interdisciplinary approaches to a cohesive argument about the current relationship between media representation and cultural diversity. Before delving into this topic, I give a brief overview of past and current scholarship on media’s effect on society and how representation became an impor- tant concept for understanding media.

Do the media have any impact?1

While it is commonly assumed that the mass media have an effect on their audiences, this question has been of central concern throughout the history of academic mass communication research. Maybe surprisingly, there have been long-lasting disputes as to whether the mass media indeed have such an impact. The earliest academic writing on media before the Second World War was informed by mass society theory and the fear that western democracies could be easily destabilised by extremist political frac- tions and the emerging fascist movements through their successful employment of media propaganda through newspapers, movies and radio. US intellectuals (for example, Walter Lippmann), on the one hand, understood the media to be a dangerous propaganda tool that needed to be controlled by a technocracy for democratic use. Neo-Marxist cultural theorists (for example, the Frankfurt School) arriving from Europe, on the other hand, saw the media as a dangerous part of the cultural industry that often only provided mass escapism and rein- forced a repressive status quo. Both approaches united a strong sense that the media had a direct and immediate effect on a passive and easily

manipulated audience. This idea is now often called the ‘‘magic bullet theory’’.

However, with the establishment of mass communication research as an empirical social science at the end of the Second World War, scholars struggled to measure any such media effects. Neither laboratory experiments by media psychologists nor large-scale surveys on the impact of the media on voting or consumer decisions found significant behaviour or attitude effects. This research led to a radical rethinking of media impact in what is now called the limited- effects paradigm in US mass communication research from 1940 until the 1970s. The media were considered to influence people only indir- ectly. Instead, psychological predispositions, peo- ple’s socioeconomic characteristics, cognitive selective processes and the influence of interperso- nal contact were all assumed to hinder any direct impact by the media. At most, the media only reinforced existing values, attitudes and opinions.

The rising household penetration of televi- sion sets and increasing television viewing in the USA and other developed countries during the 1960s and 1970s, however, triggered new waves of scholarship that tried to explain the everyday observation that television seemed to create changes in the political process (for example, campaigning and elections). Moreover, the proliferation of problematic visual images (espe- cially violent ones) caused concern amongst parents and educators. The latter concern seemed to become especially urgent after educa- tional psychologists established that people can learn behaviour and change their attitudes after watching television or films (that is, social cognitive theory). Several major research streams during the late 1960s then pushed the question of media effects into new directions. For example, agenda-setting theorists estab- lished the central role of the media in defining the issues that the public accepted as important. Spiral-of-silence theorists argued that the media can contribute significantly to a climate of opinion that can obfuscate the general popula- tion’s real attitudes on an issue while stopping people with dissenting views from speaking up. Cultivation theory, moreover, argued that tele- vision had little influence in the short term. Instead, life-long immersion in television seemed to lead viewers, especially heavy viewers, to take television’s constructed reality as actual social

114 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

reality (for example, viewers starting to see the world as a very violent and dangerous place).

The latest wave in the social-scientific paradigm of mass communication research, called ‘‘framing research’’, has further helped to establish that the media play a stronger role in defining and shaping topics of public debate. Since the 1990s, this stream of research has tended to show that the media play a role in defining how audiences understand an issue of public concern. Importantly, this stream of research also theorises on the capacity of governmental and non-governmental lobbies to influence the media’s coverage of events.

All approaches that assign the media a stronger impact than the limited or moderate effects school have received intense criticism from established scholars, and to this day methodolo- gical and theoretical issues are a matter of great debate. However, one can argue that, currently, many social-scientific scholars of mass commu- nication ascribe to the media a central or at least an important role in contemporary society when it comes to defining and explaining issues of civic concern (for more details on the history of social- scientific mass communication research see Baran and Davis, 2006).

In addition to the social-scientific paradigm another important approach to media studies has developed during the last thirty years. As a reaction to the limited-effect paradigm in com- munication scholarship, a new cultural-critical paradigm emerged in the 1960s, first in UK and about 15 years later in the USA. This scholar- ship has been informed by the humanistic traditions of cultural criticism, semiotics and linguistics as well as by cultural anthropology and political economy. Its impetus was to counter the idea that the media have no impact; thus, early scholarship often states that the media are institutions that reinforce a hegemo- nic status quo. Soon, however, audience-focused research in this group influenced by the inter- disciplinary cultural studies movement, coun- tered this idea by establishing the dominance of active audiences and their ability to appropriate or even resist dominant messages. A decades- long debate ensued amongst scholars using this paradigm as to whether the media, as part of cultural industries, reproduce and maintain the status quo and control public discourse in problematic ways or whether audiences

successfully negotiate or even resist cultural domination. While some traces of these debates persist, many scholars using the paradigm of cultural critique now understand the media to be significant and often problematic cultural forces, limited by their need to maximise profit and appeal to mainstream audiences, while audi- ences actively and independently accept, appro- priate and, at times, even undermine dominant discourses (for more details on cultural-critical media studies see Durham and Kellner, 2001).

Another important research area further prioritised audience activity in this equation by championing media literacy as a strategy for countering the problematic impact of the media and popular culture on individuals, especially children and adolescents.

What is representation?

It is within this cultural-critical paradigm of media studies that scholars created and studied the idea of representation. This concept helped scholars to move beyond understanding media messages as simply a portrayal or reflection of reality. Instead, representations are embedded in the 24-hour saturated media stream and estab- lish norms and common sense about people, groups and institutions in contemporary society. The media create representations as central signifying practices for producing shared mean- ing (Hall, 1997). The representations are con- stitutive of culture, meaning and knowledge about ourselves and the world around us. Beyond just mirroring reality, representations in the media such as in film, television, photo- graphy and print journalism create reality and normalise specific world-views or ideologies. This view understands the concept of ideology as a hegemonic, normalising force in contem- porary societies, as developed by cultural theorists (Eagleton, 1991; %ižek, 1989).

Cultural media scholars are especially interested in representations as constructed images that carry ideological connotations. Since representations can produce shared cul- tural meaning, problematic (that is, limited) representations can have negative consequences for political and social decision-making and can be implicated in sustaining social and political inequalities. Following the cultural turn in many humanistic disciplines and the seminal influence

Media and the representation of Others 115

r UNESCO 2010.

of semiotic and post-structural theory (see Fürsich, 2002b), representations of Others (ethnic, racial, gender or sexual minorities, international Others) have become a focal point for critical-cultural media studies. Many cultur- al studies scholars inside and outside mass communication programmes followed Edward Said’s (1978) work on the historical contingen- cies of problematic western ‘‘Othering’’ to use media texts such as newspaper articles, television programmes or advertisements to show evidence of this Othering. Later, Said’s concepts were often challenged. His tendency to establish new binaries (the west versus the Orient) while rebuking others has come under special attack (for a critical, if irreverent evaluation, see Varisco, 2007). Shohat and Stam (1994), in particular, provided an important extended approach to analysing Eurocentric media repre- sentation by advocating what they call a ‘‘radical pedagogy of the mass media’’ (p. 356). This strategy allows for a critique of problematic representation in the media and popular culture while using emancipatory moments in popular culture for ‘‘an indispensable re-envisioning of the global politics of culture’’ (p. 359).

Current challenges to fair media representations of Others

The overwhelming tenor of the research on the mediated representation of Others is sceptical about the ability of contemporary media to portray cultural diversity. This section explains the central concerns brought forward by this scholarship. Two forms of Othering will be addressed: firstly, media representations of mino- rities as Others in a nation (that is, ethnic, linguistic, racial, religious or sexual minorities); secondly, the media’s role in explaining interna- tional relations, conflict and culture. Here I evaluate the limitations of international reporting as well as other types of journalism (such as travel journalism) about Others outside the borders.

The media representations of Others in a nation

The media representations of minorities have been a central concern for media scholars

in the cultural-critical paradigm (for example, Castaneda and Campbell, 2006; Dines and Humez, 2003). For more than 25 years this research has explained the role the media play in upholding problematic stereotypes. Especially in an environment increasingly saturated by visual communication the sheer propensity of imagery works to maintain, confirm and recreate proble- matic representations ad infinitum.

Cultural media scholarship has often demonstrated that news and entertainment media stereotype non-white, non-elite groups and other minorities by excluding them from coverage or by offering a limited range of representations. Media imagery across various platforms, from news journalism to fictional movies, has often portrayed minorities as different, exotic, special, essentialised or even abnormal. It is especially striking that the repertoire of representations of diverse mino- rities that contemporary media offer is often linked to historically established racist imagin- aries such as in colonial literature and science (for example, slave imaginary or Orientalism). Moreover, as post-colonial, race, and gender studies have shown, the long history of visual mass media production that started with the invention of film more than 100 years ago has created a stockpile of mediated representation types that are constantly recycled in a variety of media outlets. Even if the contemporary media seem to avoid outright stereotypical portrayals and racial or ethnic defamation, genre conven- tions (such as the inflexibility of character development in sitcoms), production practices (such as the use of news conventions under deadline pressure) or economic pressure (for example, the drive by commercial TV networks to attract a large mainstream audience) continue this problematic construction (for example, Entman and Rojecki, 2000). Even shows and media content that openly tried to counter- stereotype prevalent negative representations by presenting opposing roles and characters were often seen as limited approaches still linked to earlier problematic versions that were often broadcast in tandem with them (for example, Gray, 1995). In addition, new media technolo- gies have tremendously increased channel capa- city and stimulated niche marketing and narrowcasting. This development has resulted in more media outlets for earlier silenced

116 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

minorities (for example, the US network BET for African–American viewers; easy access to satellite television or Internet publications from ‘‘home’’ for migrants). Yet critics have argued that these new opportunities further separate audiences in new media ghettos and even release the remaining mainstream media from construc- tively engaging with minorities.

The reasons for the persistence of traditional representation are threefold. Firstly, the ubiquity, saturation and repetitiveness of the mass media seem to reinforce the longevity of these represen- tations. Secondly, profit-driven commercial med- ia industries that aim at large mainstream audiences were often blamed for being unable to initiate more complex representations to undermine problematic ones. Thirdly, the media were seen as being too closely aligned to the elites in society (or directly controlled by elites) to be interested in a change of the status quo. Even scholars sympathetic to the idea that the media are a cultural forum (Newcomb and Hirsch, 1983) that has the potential to introduce ideas for progressive social change tended to find that, at best, the media’s role was to push the envelope of inclusion at times but ultimately to mainstream (that is, contain) a new socio- political situation (such as the coverage of the emancipatory struggle of western women since the 1960s).

Lately, a debate has emerged as to whether digital technology and the Internet can under- mine traditional repressive systems of represen- tation by adding new outlets for representation. In addition, growing audience fragmentation caused by the increasing number of channels available to audiences in nearly all countries of the world may also diminish the impact of negative representations. However, since repre- sentation speaks to a sustained image delivered across media channels and outlets rather than to individual problematic media portrayals, long- established representations may survive across genres and media platforms.

Media representations of international Others

In this globalising world it is also important to explain how cultural diversity across nations is

portrayed in the media. Two main areas of concern are highlighted here. Firstly, I summar- ise traditional problems of international report- ing; secondly, I introduce some of my own research to delineate how the current intensified level of globalisation aggravates problematic representation of Others by journalists.

Traditional problems of international reporting

Ever since Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) seminal study on news selection in Norwegian news- papers it has been established that journalists tend to favour cultural proximity by preferring stories that are close to their own and their audiences’ perceived cultural background. Com- bined with a preference for conflict, a lack of ambiguity and a focus on elite nations, this makes for a very limited international news selections. Gans (1979) called this news value ethnocentrism, explaining that US journalists report any event from an American angle. Ample research on international news coverage since then has shown that western reporting, especially of the developing world is almost exclusively triggered by crises, catastrophes and natural disasters – thereby re-emphasising an image of the developing world as is chaotic beyond relief and in constant need for support by the west. International reporting tends to follow – to index (Bennett, 1991) – the agenda of its current government’s foreign policy doctrines and relies on elite national sources to explain international events.

Scholars who understand journalists not just as information selectors and gatekeepers but as narrators and producers of culture have further outlined the limited parameters of the story of the Other told in journalism. Lule (2001), for example, explains in a case study on The New York Times coverage of Haiti how negative news myths such as ‘‘the Other World’’ are invoked over long periods of time to negatively frame an underdeveloped nation. Another persistent news frame, the Cold War (Entman, 2004) and its related filter anti- communism (Herman and Chomsky, 1998) have governed international news reporters’ dichot- omising news outline for almost four decades and seems to be more resilient (Carragee, 2003) than many scholars had expected.

Media and the representation of Others 117

r UNESCO 2010.

In some of his later work, Edward Said (1981) suggested that Orientalism, as a historic and hegemonic discourse for addressing and defining the Other produces effects not just in literature and in art but also on contemporary news coverage of the Middle East. When extending this idea to the news filter anti- terrorism (Chomsky has recently updated his propaganda model), the anti-Muslim and anti- Arab aspects of this frame seem to revive and extend the historical oriental Other.

Overall, journalism researchers often emphasise that traditional journalism is not up to the task of covering the complexities of international events. The biggest accomplish- ment of print journalism over the years has been to help define the nation as an imagined community (Anderson, 1991). Similarly, national TV newscasts have been essential for connecting an audience to its nation (Gans, 1979). Yet journalism’s biggest failure has been that this national integration was often created in the negative – by suppressing regional, local and minority audience interests and access (Rantanen, 2005), and by Othering anyone outside national borders.

New problems in a global media world

If we agree that while globalisation as a historic process has intensified over the last 25 years, then what is the story of globalisation to be covered? Globalisation is a complex issue; it is a political story, a business story and an environ- mental story, but it is also a human rights and social justice topic, in addition to the always needed human interest story. In my work I have tried to touch on many of these aspects (for example, Fürsich, 2002c); I highlight here some of my findings as starting points for further discussion.

In a series of studies I have moved beyond national media outlets to explore a type of factual media content that is produced for global audiences. This led me to investigate media production on a global level, starting with my study of Discovery Communication International and its cable outlet Travel Channel by examining the informative potential of travel programmes produced for global television. I analysed three

internationally-popular travel shows called Lonely Planet, Travellers, and Rough Guide. Situating these three shows within their global production and distribution demonstrates the limitations of this type of programming.

As global media products they present a culturally ambivalent text. As they need to work for an international audience, these shows could widen narrow representations of the Other and counter the reliance of traditional television news journalism on narrow demarcations of national(istic) distinctions. These shows could break the problematic narrative of traditional foreign reporting, which has concentrated on crises and catastrophe, by presenting a more positive image of the Other. Because these shows focus on travel, they could exemplify the complex representation work on either side of the tourism exchange, thus in due course challenging cultural dichotomies in such repre- sentations.

Yet I found that travel journalism is fundamentally structured by the search for difference (as the ultimate motivation of tourism in general), which results in the perpetual replay of manufacturing, celebrating and exoticising difference. These discursive strategies rely on essentialising cultural groups. Often the shows present a sanitised or static idea of multicultural understanding devoid of political connotations. In the worst case, this strategy leaves locals (as tourism workers and interviewed ‘‘representa- tives’’ of a country) only as essentialised types: nameless, voiceless or poorly translated. All shows ultimately hide the privileged and proble- matic situation of all tourists, travel show producers and the tourism industry in general when packaging culture as a commodity. Their narratives, which stress individual pleasure and personalised travel as programmes that have to work across borders, often neglect the broader political, social and economic problems of contemporary tourism and international rela- tions in general (for more details see Fürsich, 2002a, 2003).

My concerns are echoed in a more recent argument doubting the capacity of the national media or border-crossing programming in an increasingly globalised media environment to reflect an enlightened and humanistic cosmopo- litism in the media (Rantanen, 2005; Waisbord, 2004).

118 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

Overall, three main reasons hinder more open and complex media representations of international Others:

1. The national media tend to cater to national audiences whether they follow a commercial or public service model. Foreigners are depicted as Others. Global media produc- tions often target only affluent cosmopolitan elites; thus, cross-border diversity is pro- duced as a sanitised celebration of culture but lacks critical approaches to political, cultural and economic inequalities.

2. Intrinsic and traditional work routines of journalists, producers and other media workers that have been developed over centuries (after all, newspapers have been around for 400 years) have only recently been challenged on their ability to represent diversity. Even the social responsibility model (which underlies the idea of public service broadcasting) or nation- building efforts in the development of media systems allow the media to function mainly as a force of integration and assimilation and less as a presenter of multiple diversities.

3. The relationship between the media, govern- ments and elites is another issue to be evaluated. This relationship is always close in authoritarian systems and often in the developing world but it has become clear that even journalists in western (free-market and socially responsible) media systems stay close to elite perspectives and official foreign policy when describing international people.

Representation reconsidered: possible new strategies and recommendations

The above scholarship outlined on representa- tion mainly diagnoses problematic portrayals. In this section, I move beyond this criticism to develop new strategies that break up proble- matic representations. The areas of possible change outlined in this section connect to the three main domains of mediated communica- tion: production, content and audiences.

Media production

While the potential for more open representa- tions of the media within larger organisational

frameworks is not the main focus of this article, it deserves a brief mention. Macro-level and micro-level aspects have to be considered when evaluating whether media outlets are set up to encourage cultural diversity. On the interna- tional level, many countries have been experien- cing foreign media imports as a threat to local and national cultures. A central concern of international media policy initiatives has been to regulate the flow of media content across borders. Over the years, media policy has been governed by two main conceptual models (see Hamelink, 2002). On the one side, the media were understood as a public good (including earlier UNESCO efforts such as the McBride Report). This viewpoint asked for regulatory measures to protect national cultures and diver- sity. On the other side, media products have been treated as commodities (such as in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and World Trade Organization documents). This position has emphasised the deregulation of media sys- tems in combination with optimism that econom- ic competition among media outlets would guarantee diversity in a marketplace of ideas.

Both approaches have shortcomings. The economic model often fails to take into account the uniqueness of media production and dis- tribution (such as the benefit of economies of scale since the reproduction costs of media products are extremely low or the complicated but central situation of copyright especially in a digital media environment). Moreover, the fact that more than 50 binding and non-binding international agreements and resolutions (Hamelink, 2002; Magder, 2004) currently govern international media exchange shows that a purely market-oriented global media environ- ment is a pipe dream. In addition, a sustained research effort by political economists in mass communication research has diagnosed the shortcomings of market-driven media with regard to cultural diversity in a global media system dominated by consolidated transnational media conglomerates. It is not part of the traditional commercial media business model to cater to diverse audiences if they are not marketable target groups for advertisers or sponsors.

However, the public good model, with its protectionist tendencies has also often been unsuccessful in protecting cultural diversity.

Media and the representation of Others 119

r UNESCO 2010.

As Magder (2004) explained, these national efforts have too often been based on a very limited idea of diversity as a conglomerate of static and essentialised cultural groups. In the best case, any regulatory efforts to ensure cultural diversity – whether across or within national borders – have to position the media not as preservers of cultural diversity, by freezing cultural groups in time, but as enablers of cultural diversity and free, creative expression in the future:

We should be less concerned about processing and

promoting particular a priori cultures and more concerned

about creating the conditions that allow individuals and

groups to determine and express themselves alone and

collectively. Instruments that promote diversity in media,

diversity in cultural expression, and diversity in the form of

content of public expression within and across borders

should be permitted and encouraged. Instruments that seek

to control and fetter expression should be circumscribed.

(Magder, 2004, p.384)

On a more micro-level, which strategies might help reform media institutions to promote cultural diversity? Which strategies for journal- ists and media workers will help overcome the current static representations? For some time, one possible solution has been to hire a more diverse media workforce. In the USA the percentage of minorities in journalism and other media production has been increasing over the years, although minority participation in these professions is still not equal to the majority share of the general population. In addition, self- directed support organisations (such as, in the USA, the organisation UNITY [n.d.]) act as important lobbying groups for a more diverse workforce. Public broadcasters across the world also often follow specific hiring strategies that aim at workforce variety (for example, with regard to regional origin, political affiliation or gender). However, governmental bodies have sometimes tried to promote or mandate propor- tional representation in broadcasting or other media institutions. This strategy has often led to complaints of governmental interference and has undermined the neutrality mandates of public broadcasters.

While a more diverse workforce is in itself a worthwhile goal, it is less clear whether the assumption holds true that a more diverse media workforce will automatically lead to

distinctively different media content. For example, research is not conclusive as to whether a more diverse pool of journalists produces a better coverage of minority issues. Benson (2005), for example, complained that in an increasingly competitive situation for journalists in the USA, most of the recent rise in ethnic coverage has reflected an economic necessity more than a civic urgency. He argued that this coverage, generated by a more diverse workforce in some of the most prestigious US newspapers, has tended to favour informative or even celebratory ethnic multiculturalism coverage that has crowded out or masked economic and class issues related to racial inequality (Benson, 2005). So, while these types of articles have given previously ignored minority groups an impor- tant voice and spotlight, the coverage mainly helped to target new multicultural consumer groups that advertisers wanted to reach. Ulti- mately, diversity hiring alone may not be able to overcome the systemic shortcomings of the journalistic field mentioned earlier. As a long tradition of news research has shown, ‘‘the news product is ultimately shaped far more by economic and organizational constraints than the personal characteristics – race, class, sexual orientation or even ideology – of individual journalists’’ (Benson, 2005, p.17).

Similarly, the hope that minority groups might find new outlets in a commercially driven multi-channel, narrowcasting media system have mostly remained unfulfilled. New niche channels tend to draw in diverse audiences as consumers, but they have split audiences and cannot provide them with a new public position as citizens in civic discourse.

Also on the micro-level, media education is an important site for change. Parallel to the efforts of diversity officers in many major media companies, an increasing number of journalism schools and programmes in the USA, Australia, the UK, and other countries have intensified their attention on minority students. Through- out the 1990s, many schools started including classes on diversity issues, founded student groups or hired minority faculty. While researchers have lamented the slow progress of multicultural journalism education at least in the USA (Kern-Foxworth and Miller, 1993), other scholars have presented more positive case studies, for example, of journalism education

120 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

in The Netherlands, which has taken the ‘‘contextualization of knowledge and social responsibilities of journalism students into account’’ (Deuze, 2006, p.390).

A focus on minority students alone will not be sufficient: the whole student body needs to be made aware of the importance of cultural diversity. Journalism and media education are crucial sites for changing routines and practices of journalists and media workers at a time when students are not yet socialised into established professional strategies. Journalism schools and media production programmes should turn away from basic skills education to a more reflective theoretical evaluation of current pro- fessional strategies. Journalism education is a contested field. The perceived importance of journalism for democracy and the impact of the media on society make it an area in which many groups invest considerable interest. For years, academic journalism educators have criticised media education for its undifferentiating advo- cacy of short-term industry expectations, its emphasis of technology over theory, its reliance on out-dated professional standards and its lack of pedagogical strategies such as critical think- ing. Professional journalism schools usually have a strong connection to the media industry and traditionally support a skills-based educa- tional model based on the simulation of how it is done in the industry. This has led many journal- ism schools to become high-tech institutions where pedagogical success is measured by how many non-linear editing stations, digital cam- eras, scanners or graphic terminals are available in a classroom. While it is important for students to learn the ins and outs of professional strategies, colleges should also be innovative training places. Journalism schools should allow students to develop critical and unusual creative solutions to a journalistic task. An assignment that allows them to develop an alternative newscast, or a newspaper section that has never been there before will make them aware of the constraints of the media and can also generate a critical perspective on current media representa- tions of cultural diversity (see Fürsich and Raman, 2000).

Another important area for reforming journalistic and media practice is recent norma- tive models of journalism based on humanistic values. Two important proposals in this respect

are Tehranian’s model of ‘‘peace journalism’’ (Tehranian, 2002), which includes an institu- tional and systematic ethical response to over- coming biases of international crisis reporting, and Shah’s ‘‘emancipatory journalism’’ as a new model for media workers in developing nations. Shah has proposed a theoretical model that asks journalists locally to ‘‘contribute to participa- tory democracy, security, peace, and other humanistic values’’ (Shah, 1996, p.143). On similar lines to the subsequent US concept of public journalism, Shah advocated a reconfi- gured relationship between journalists, political elites and audiences. Free from government control, emancipatory journalists provide infor- mation that improves audiences’ ability to ‘‘establish control over their immediate social conditions’’ (p.160).

Media content

Since critique of representations often focuses on textual constraints, media content is a major aspect that needs to be questioned here. In my scholarship I have moved beyond providing evidence of problematic Othering to a more active approach to media change. By analysing media such as international travel programmes, business news, African Web sites and migration coverage, I have tried to go beyond the textual analyses of problematic representations to high- light moments in this coverage that seems to hint at new content strategies. I have developed these moments further into a more unified set of strategies that can be used by media workers and journalists to overcome the old predicaments.

Simple solutions will not solve the problem. Media representations are often entrenched and predefined ways of portraying Others. At times, representations may leave out whole populations simply by ignoring them or their viewpoints. In a media-saturated culture, this lack of attention means silencing – a dilemma that cultural scholars call symbolic annihilation. Annihilation can also be a result of very limited or stereo- typical portrayal of a group. At other times, representations essentialise Others as ‘‘exotic’’, or even worse, as abnormal and even deviant.

A common representational move to over- come outright stereotyping has been to counter- stereotype, that is, to take a previously stereo- typed minority and create media content that

Media and the representation of Others 121

r UNESCO 2010.

presents this minority in a positive light. The internationally successful US situation comedy, The Cosby Show, is an example of this strategy. However, as cultural scholars have pointed out, counter-stereotyping always runs the risk of indirectly referring back to the negative por- trayal. Moreover, some of this coverage may come across as too didactical or even inauthentic (see Grey, 1995; Means Coleman, 2002).

The cultural scholar Stuart Hall (1997) provides some suggestions for trying to contest a dominant regime of representation through trans-coding. His premise for the analysis of representation is the poststructural principle that ‘‘meaning can never be finally fixed’’ (p.270). Trans-coding then can be used for ‘‘taking an existing meaning and re-appropriat- ing it for new meanings’’ (p.270). However, Hall’s strategy is difficult to implement as an actual media strategy. It assumes that it is clear which representations are positive or negative, while in fact many media content producers have to make quick decisions about ambiguous representations. Also, Hall understands this strategy mostly as an audience-driven activity. I would argue that trans-coding can also be used for producing content. For instance, some important avenues for trans-coding might be story lines that open up representations and break stereotypes through the use of humour and exaggeration to present the dominant position in a new light (such as portraying Whiteness as ‘‘ethnic,’’ as opposed to construct- ing is as a latent and normalised category).

Another approach to finding alternative, non-essentialising representational strategies is to examine whether there have been previous moments of transformations in media texts about the Other. This idea has been a central focus of my work. Based on the concepts of critical visual anthropology and postmodern theory, I developed three interrelated themes that are taken up in the following proposals for new journalistic strategies. Fixed media repre- sentations can be broken up by showing the production conditions of programmes; by pro- viding space for other voices and by working toward a fluid rather than static and fixed production logic. The underlying idea is that despite limitations, the media in a global system do allow for some creative latitude even in a commercially driven environment. Most

examples are drawn from studies I have con- ducted over the years, especially of travel programmes. Most of the observations and strategies relate to television, but they can be easily adapted to other journalistic forms.

Contextualising coverage. In order to open texts and representations, an important step for journalists and producers will be to contextua- lise coverage as much as possible. Individualisa- tion and personalisation, as the typical strategies of Anglo-American journalism, often focus too narrowly on the individual case and lose track of wider systemic implications. While the persona- lised story of a migrant, for example, may be useful in illuminating a difficult life situation for mainstream audiences, it will not necessarily allow time to focus on the underlying global economic inequalities that generate migration. Also, when these ideas are applied to general media production, the trend towards specialisa- tion and narrow casting may hinder the con- textualisation of representations and limit the openness of media texts. Nevertheless, the latest developments in the digital media environment may offer interesting new solutions. An increas- ing number of print and broadcasting topics are now tied into online sites that offer, at least to interested audiences, important background material. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent audiences use these external materials.

Verfremdung (alienation). In order to con- front entrenched journalistic and aesthetic work routines that lead to negative representations, media workers have to be able to look to other artistic productions for new ideas. The German dramatist and playwright Bertolt Brecht devel- oped the alienation effect for his epic theatre in the 1920s. He used theatrical devices such as a non-emotional acting style, unrealistic dialogue or anachronistic costumes to disturb the audi- ence’s emotional connection to the play, instead forcing them into an attitude of critical distance (Banham, 1995). Brecht favoured an anti- representational style of theatre in which the audience should be prevented from identifying with the actors. He hoped to stimulate a rational critique of contemporary economic, political and social practices. The weight and effective- ness of these methods has been questioned with regard to the theatre. Also, postmodern critique challenged Brecht’s idea that rational critique will automatically lead to change.

122 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

Nonetheless, television could effectively use Brecht’s method to problematise its practice. This strategy also relates to Nolley (1997) and other visual anthropologists’ preference for aesthetic strategies that break with viewers’ expectations. Verfremdung can break a journal- istic narrative by displaying its production methods. This can be done directly by producers and journalists or indirectly through the selec- tion of ambiguous scenes. The international travel shows I analysed, for example, already included small moments of Verfremdung, often more passively than Brecht’s active stage devices. The strongest cases of alienation occurred when locals did not play along. Many broadcast journalists would edit these ‘‘flaws’’, but by including them, these shows created a break in the narrative.

For instance, a moment of probably invo- luntary Verfremdung was aired in the interna- tionally popular travel programme Lonely Planet’s visit to Namibia. The host Andrew Datta strongly emphasised in his narration the remoteness of the part of Namibia (Ovambo- land) he was in and of its tribes (‘‘Some tribes have never seen white people’’). At the village, the visit was framed like an anthropological contact. Through two translators Datta nego- tiated with the chief. Then he asked the chief what he thought about whites. The chief firmly pointed out that while it is clear to him that the whites are from beyond his area, he has learned how to cooperate: ‘‘you are coming from very far for making a lot of money with this film’’. Datta, flabbergasted, could only answer with a funny grimace and the remark that it was not he who was making the money but rather ‘‘them’’ (pointing at the camera). Showing the poignant comments of the chief breaks the anthropologi- cal narrative that positioned this tribe (through images and voice-overs) as an uncivilised and less intelligent Other. Even Andrew’s condes- cending voice-over ‘‘Back in civilisation’’ which provides the transition into the next scene in a Namibian city, may become less effective as a consequence of this alienation.

Postmodern play with representations. Critics of the postmodern aesthetic tend to condemn the postmodern trend to self-referenti- ality (that is, the media relating back to other media constructions) as an indication of super- ficiality and simulated hyper-reality. However,

as an aesthetic principle it can help illuminate the constructedness of television productions that some visual anthropologists favour in their work as well. For example, tourism has always depended on the successful creation of images. Juxtaposing traditional images with fluid hybrid images smashes the monolithic totality of those images. For example, in an episode on Hawaii, Rough Guide host Magenta de Vine pointed out a poster with a traditional looking ‘‘Hawaiian beauty’’ and compared this image to the contemporary situation of women on the islands, while the camera cut rapidly to images of modern Hawaiian women of diverse ethnic and class backgrounds. If programmes employed these types of strategy more aggres- sively, then travel journalism and international journalism in general could exemplify an open struggle over representation similar to that of Clifford’s (1988) idea of exhibitions in multi- cultural junctures:

The relations of power whereby one position of humanity

can select, value, and collect the pure products of others

need to be criticised and transformed. This is no small task.

In the meantime one can at least imagine shows [here

exhibitions] that feature the impure, ‘inauthentic’ produc-

tions of past and present tribal life; exhibitions radically

heterogeneous in their global mix of styles; exhibitions that

locate themselves in special multicultural junctures; exhibi-

tions in which nature remains ‘unnatural’; exhibitions

whose principles of incorporation are openly questionable.

(Clifford, 1988, p. 213)

Play with representations can become a method of critique. Another level of self- reflexivity that would help to open up the conditions of production (similar to some strategies of visual anthropology) is to invite the production crew into the scene. By showing the camera and the production staff, and through specific editing techniques, the con- structedness of the shows and its representations could become more visible. Rough Guide, for example, revealed the produc- tion teams on several occasions; one of their promotional trailers referred to the camera and showed the camera team. Both anchors also carried a Hi-8 tourist video camera that they mostly used in transitions travelling from one location to another. With this camera they normally filmed each other and the shots are always on locations that, contrary to typical

Media and the representation of Others 123

r UNESCO 2010.

photo opportunities, appear to be boring, routine places (such as airports and stations). Seeing someone filming in a television programme tends to break the closed logic of the television screen as a window to the world. A similar effect is achieved when Rough Guide occasionally uses stand-up shots of the co-anchors in two or more versions including outtakes with slips of the tongue or other errors. Another step would be to illuminate production and research principles even further. For example, it would be important to know why the producers chose certain locations and how they chose certain ‘‘locals’’ as sources and interview partners. Again, new technology now makes these strategies very feasible for traditional news journalists as well. Journalists’ blogs that comment on the circum- stances of latest assignments can fulfil this role.

Other voices. One of the most common suggestions to overcome the dominance of western media representations is to provide more space and time for other voices (Spurr, 1993). Therefore journalists need to develop creative ways of integrating the voices of others. To what degree does journalistic content reflect the unequal power situation between film- makers and subjects? Travel journalists and international correspondents always deal with Others (not only indigenous communities). Of course, the power of representing the Other is always on the side of the production team (those who hold the microphone or the camera); therefore producers should be conscious of the impact of these strategies.

Most international journalism deals with people in crisis, which places them at an automatic disadvantage. One positive aspect of the travel shows I analysed was that they also provided images of Others as not just as victims, threats or exotic, unlike in most regular news reporting. At best, some of these programmes presented a wide variety of people and often juxtaposed different perspectives showing the Other as part of the social formations of contradictory and hybrid cultures. The interview situation in Rough Guide, however, was the only programme that named all interviewees and allowed them to speak in their native language or dialect with translations provided in subtitles. Relying on speakers of English as a second language or ad hoc translations, as other shows did, diminishes the impact of their statements.

Although struggling with language may some- times reflect the situation of actual tourists, in a television close-up it intensifies the demeaning portrayal, denigrating the intellectual capabil- ities of locals. Speaking in front of a camera, even for native speakers, is an intimidating situation, and for others, in a language other than their mother tongue, it can be devastating.

Another problem of television is that it has the inherent tendency to fixate; its traditional logic of production and editing as well as its narrative structure forces closure (Dahlgren, 1995). However, the postmodern aesthetic exemplified by music videos (MTV) and others has opened up more flexible and ambiguous modes of representation. Instead of ‘‘packaging culture’’ travel shows should embrace a more open ‘‘unpacking of cultures’’, by displaying many different aspects of the country covered. By giving up the search for the typical and the authentic, one can hold the representation in suspense as Clifford suggests:

If all essentializing modes of thought must . . . be held in

suspense, then we should attempt to think of cultures not as

organically unified or traditionally continuous but rather as

negotiated, present processes. (Clifford 1988, p.273)

The liminoid position of journalists. Strategies for opening representations seem to diminish the control of journalists and producers over a preferred reading of the text. In fact, this strategy can engage the journalist, the produc- tion, the system and the subject and object of journalism in the struggle of representation. This is contrary to the idea of the realist school of visual anthropology and experimental docu- mentary work that producers’ interference should be avoided as much as possible in order to catch on film ‘‘what really happened’’ (Rony, 1996, p.193). But the technical interference of video equipment and production requirements forces its logic on the final film even if (or perhaps especially when) it is invisible. Even more, the professional rules of television jour- nalism always shape the programme. There cannot be an objective journalistic (or anthro- pological) perspective free from influence by the respective producers; representations are always developed within a hegemonic cultural system.

Yet travel journalism, like international journalism in general, places media practitioners

124 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

in a special journalistic role outside their usual system of reference. In close direct contact with the Other, the intricacies of this existential moment should not be overlooked. Instead of retreating to a seemingly safe position of objective journalism, I suggest journalists should actively embrace an intermediate role. The anthropologist Victor Turner, in his work on rituals and pilgrimages, emphasises the liminoid situation of travels (Turner, 1969). Liminoid situations allow the challenging of status boundaries and role expectations and foster playfulness and moments of strong social bond- ing communitas (experiences). The idea of an actively liminoid journalism suggests that media practitioners use their position to challenge the traditional modes of journalistic representation. They should also enthusiastically integrate their own perspective into the programme. This is the only way for audiences and locals to understand the ideological point of reference of both journalists and journalism. In television pro- grammes anchors are often presented without history, class, or ethnicity (except what may be deciphered from their use of colloquial English). Instead of just categorising Others, they need to be aware of their own position.

Moreover, the liminoid stage extends from the travellers (travel journalists and interna- tional journalists) to the foreign people who are featured in a show: to be under the camera gaze is a complex situation. Most travel and interna- tional journalism pretends that the people in the host country are represented as they really are. But the subjects of travel and tourism (tourism workers and locals) as well as local sources of news reports, are performing in an extraordinary situation. Journalists can accept and depict this mutual out-of-place situation. Ultimately, I hope that a new journalism practiced in between can problematise its situation in the contact zone (Pratt 1992). It should become a model for all journalists, since all journalism represents.

Recently, media scholar Simon Cottle (2007) has also taken up the call to ‘‘acknowl- edge and bolster more politically productive representations of mainstream journalism’’ (p.34). He analysed reports by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. As a public broad- caster the range of engagement by the Corpora- tion is wider than that of the commercial cable shows I analysed. In particular, Cottle argued

that in recent coverage on societal Others such as migrants and Aboriginal people, Australian media were capable of ‘‘producing representa- tions that give voice to the voiceless and identity to image’’ (p.34), noting, ‘‘We need to be sensitised to the multiple ways in which words and talk, discourses and debate, claims and counter-claims publicly define and defend inter- ests and identities’’ (p.37) He described five procedures of deliberation and display as effec- tive ways to undermine problematic representa- tions and to avoid symbolic annihilation. Firstly, the journalist can become the champion of Others, giving them a voice by increasing pre- established modes of reporting on Others or widening the public debate on controversial issues. Secondly, the journalist can intervene more actively as a public interlocutor by counter- ing established government policy-makers in interviews and undermining frames of coverage generated by official policy-holders. Journalists thereby work on a more democratic exchange.

Thirdly, Cottle also emphasised the impor- tance of supporting and airing programmes that allow previously silenced Others to tell their side of the story. These programmes help humanise the lived experience of marginalised groups, thereby contributing to their ‘‘mediatised recog- nition’’ (p.35). Fourthly, the airing of memorials and ceremonial events of Others aided in informing mainstream audiences about the historic contingencies of current racial and ethnic divides. In his final point, Cottle empha- sised the importance of media reflexivity (simi- larly to the previously mentioned self-reflexivity) and stressed how this coverage can transform entrenched media representations:

[Journalists] can do so by ‘‘fleshing out’’ – that is,

embodying and humanizing – the status of former

‘‘others’’, repositioning them inside the imagined social

universe of collective care and politics and acknowledging

their denied humanity. In such ways, ‘‘others’’ can become

symbolically rehabilitated, past stereotypes can be frac-

tured and identities repositioned as active subjects – and

not simply as the object of someone else’s discourse. (p.35).

Media audiences

In order to truly sustain any efforts towards a more diverse media environment, it is important

Media and the representation of Others 125

r UNESCO 2010.

to integrate the audiences as important partners in these efforts. Three issues are of central importance: media literacy, access and creative audience activity.

Media literacy is an important effort that aims at educating audiences to be more critical when consuming the media. In the USA, the media literacy movement seems to focus on K-12 education and the college level. Paradoxically, journalism schools as major institutions of media production still seem to be more or less unaffected by it. This may be a result of the specific version of media literacy popular in the USA, which constructs media literacy efforts mostly as an individual defence mechanism against media practices that appear unchange- able and permanent. However, as Lewis and Jhally (1998) argue, ‘‘media literacy should be about helping people to become sophisticated citizens rather than sophisticated consumers’’ (p.109). They explain how media literacy has to move beyond a simply text-centred deciphering of media messages to understanding aspects of production and reception. If one positions media literacy in this context, journalism and production students should be the first to know about it. The interdisciplinary cultural studies movement is also an important factor in these media literacy efforts. Concepts such as hege- mony, ideology, representation and cultural appropriation provide a vocabulary that can support a systematic critique of the normalising impact of mass media. Active audiences can independently decode problematic representa- tions (see also McLaren et al. 1995). As Shohat and Stam (1994) argued, media products from non-western countries can, in particular, suc- cessfully be used to lead audiences away from Eurocentric representation to a ‘‘polycentric multiculturalism’’ (p.46).

New technology, however, challenges tradi- tional approaches to media literacy. No longer are media audiences simply recipients of media messages. They increasingly become participants and creators in a digital world. This development has started an important new approach to media literacy that integrates production and reception situations (Livingstone, 2004).

Moreover, media literacy can easily be extended from individualistic pedagogical efforts to grassroots movements of critical media audiences who try to translate media criticism

into lobbying efforts and policy influence. The last 15 years have seen an increasing number of movements across the globe engage critically with what they have seen as a limited media environment. These groups are now aided by the alternative networking strategies in the Internet. Some of these groups use email campaigns to inform politicians and media producers of their concerns. Others try to engage in media literacy efforts, raise awareness and develop proposals for cultural policy. Among the earliest groups was the now defunct ‘‘Cultural Environmental Movement’’ founded by US professor George Gerbner in 1990; more recent groups are the umbrella organisation ‘‘Voices21’’ (Comunica, n.d.) and ‘‘Communication Rights in the Infor- mation Society’’. This grassroots movement culminated in a two-part UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and 2005 (Padovani 2004) where more than 10,000 delegates debated issues of ‘‘connectivity, devel- opment, and digital divide’’ (p.158). This sum- mit has been criticised for its vast variety of topics and proposals, for narrowly defining access in technological terms and for the untested assumption that new technology will overcome all given societal, economic and political constraints on cultural diversity (Hame- link 2004). However, one should not overlook the fact that all these efforts, from local grass- roots movements to global conferences, will help to raise awareness and bring to a critical mass the concern over unfair media representation.

Media access is another important factor of gauging diversity. Scholars often define media access simply as an issue of access to media technology. Research on the digital divide, for example, has demonstrated the problems of unequal distribution and use of digital media within and across nations. When one considers that only a minority of the world population (fewer than 25 per cent) actually uses online media, the issue of access is undoubtedly still pressing. However, access also needs to be understood as an active concept of audience participation in the media.

Changing video and audio technologies (equipment that is lighter, cheaper, easier to use) has opened up additional channels of communication. Indigenous people all over the world use the media (radio, television, audio and video and now also the Internet) to present and

126 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

to preserve marginalised cultural practices (Kummels, 2010). Visual anthropologists have been using and researching these techniques in the field for many years and theorised their problems (Ginsburg, 1991; Tomaselli, 1996). Moreover, Brown (1996) indicates how ‘‘indi- genous’’ no longer just means tribal commu- nities ‘‘out there’’; cultural endangerment is often a problem at home (in the west). Awards and special grants successfully launched such alternative programming in various countries (Leuthold, 1996). In general, public-service broadcasting systems are more likely to take up these forms of indigenous presentation to add voices and fulfil established mandates on diver- sity. Thus, the government of Canada’s decision to instruct cable operators to carry the ‘‘Abori- ginal Peoples Television Network’’ is an inter- esting example of representational recognition (Roth, 2000). The history, variety, impact and potential of community media across the world was succinctly explained in a recent book by Rennie (2006). Community media initiatives should be understood as an important partner in ensuring cultural diversity.

Finally, the resourceful use of new technol- ogy by audiences is where some of the most encouraging ideas for breaking representation are developed. Some of my earlier work has emphasised that new technology does not auto- matically free us from often long-established dependencies on textual representations (Fürsich and Robins 2002). However, it is encouraging to observe how contemporary globalising media technology is used by diasporic communities around the globe in original ways to create specific empowered hybrid mediascapes (Karim 2003). These interesting new usage patterns give us a glimpse into the potential media environ- ments of the future. However, it will be up to communication scholars to evaluate whether the current trend towards digital, global but frag- mented media use creates a more holistically mediated reality. At best, there will be new media platforms for diverse audiences to see themselves represented in their unique lived experiences, concerns and successes. At worst, the fragmenta- tion of audiences will lead to tribalisation along demarcations of ethnic, religious, sexual or other cultural identities; these types of niche media may hinder a civic discourse that is considered vital for democracy.

Conclusion and recommendations

The global media industry is currently under- going revolutionary changes. The rise of digital media has started to challenge traditional busi- ness models of the industry, undermined estab- lished work routines of media workers and changed the way audiences interact with the media. This is a perfect moment to reconsider some of the long-held assumptions and routines of media work, to interrogate problematic representations and to develop alternative stra- tegies for media production. Overall, I have attempted to clarify the connection between cultural diversity and media, which is more complicated than often theorised. The represen- tation of Others has been tied up in long- established signifying practices that are slow to change because of systemic media constraints. My advice on transforming media representa- tions entails a serious rethinking of media practice. However, I am hopeful that the current upheaval in the global media industries, in which many traditional models have become obsolete, is a golden moment for creative and pro-active rethinking by media critics and media practi- tioners alike. I also hope to have made it clear that issues of representation do not reside just within media content but must be connected to all aspects of media practices – from more systemic issues such as the conditions of production and regulation, to the work routines of media workers and audience integration. Based on this review, I distil a set of recommendations that can inform actual policy recommendations for creating media systems that foster cultural diversity.

If culture is understood as a dynamic process as opposed to static and essential, the media should be situated as institutions that allow for cultural development: as enablers and not simply as preservers of cultural diversity.

Moreover, media policy and regulation aimed at securing cultural diversity need to be aware of the detrimental effect of censorship and restriction on expression of cultural diversity. As Magder (2004) pointed out:

Cultural diversity is enhanced when individuals can express

themselves freely and receive forms of expression from the

broadest possible range of sources, within and across

frontiers. Public policy – whether domestic or international

– should respect this principle, first and foremost. (p.393)

Media and the representation of Others 127

r UNESCO 2010.

As this article has demonstrated, representation of Others in the media is not just a matter of content. All content is produced in a specific context of production and reception; all these communicative moments can be included in strategies for change. Measures that alter problematic media representations of Others need to be resourceful and creatively rethink many established routines of media workers. Not only must established media workers but also journalism and media educators and students be integrated in these efforts. In addition, media literacy for general audiences is an important correlate to efforts to trans-code problematic representations.

Not all initiatives have to be new, but established alternatives to mainstream media representations such as community media and minority integration mandates typical for public broadcasters can inform future ideas of change.

The new digital media environment has begun to offer new outlets for the creative integration of the voices of Others. Thus, providing access for traditionally underserved communities to new media technologies and production facilities is an important goal. How- ever, given that most of the world population is not online, digital technology is limited in its potential to create an impact across the globe. Traditional media such as radio and print media continue to be important forums for cultural expression. Access should be understood not just as the opportunity to buy media technology but

also as direct access to producing content and other forms of programming participation that allow minorities to be heard. Despite the growing focus on globalisation, cultural diver- sity is a concept that relates to social issues within and across borders. Media strategies need to take into account many diverse situations. Strong solutions will be local and flexible.

Overall, this article advocates a soft approach. While new aesthetic and textual models for representing have to be found, successful strategies are likely to be subtle rather than radical and to present distinct approaches that work from within the contemporary eco- nomic and professional media structure. An important starting point is the critical analysis of currently used strategies that already break production conventions.

At the end of this article, I want to highlight a predictable bias of communication scholars: We tend to understand the media not just as one but as the central impetus for societal develop- ments. It should be noted that any strategies for improving the role that the media play in providing cultural diversity always have to be seen in a wider economic, social and geopolitical context. To put it bluntly, fixing the media alone will not aid in establishing more just relations among diverse groups within and between societies. Cultural diversity is not just a com- munication or image problem; the lived experi- ences of various groups are based on actual social and economic injustices.

Notes

1. This overview presents mainly US approaches to mass communication research. Two reasons justify this selective re-telling of communications scholarship. Firstly, US

scholarship has arguably been at the forefront of developing social scientific approaches to mass communication as a discipline, especially since the Second World War, and its results have been used

in many other countries. Secondly, the main point here is to demonstrate the complicated history of empirically establishing media effects, and US scholarship provides a typical example.

References

ANDERSON, B., 1991. Imagined communities. (2nd edn). London: Verso.

BANHAM, M., 1995. The Cambridge guide to theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

BARAN, S. J., AND DAVIS, D. K., 2006. Mass communication theory: foundations, ferment, and future.

128 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

Belmont, CA: Thomson and Wadsworth.

BENNETT, W. L., 1991. Toward a theory of press–state relations. Journal of Communication, 40 (2), 103–125.

BENSON, R., 2005. American journalism and the politics of diversity. Media, Culture and Society, 27 (1), 5–20.

BROWN, D. R., 1996. Electronic media and indigenous peoples: a voice of our own? Ames: IA: Iowa State University.

CARRAGEE, K. M., 2003. Evaluating polysemy: an analysis of The New York Times’ coverage of the end of the cold war. Political Communication, 20 (3), 287–308.

CASTANEDA, L. AND CAMPBELL, S., eds 2006. News and sexuality: media portraits of diversity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

CLIFFORD, J., 1988. The predicament of culture: twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

COTTLE, S., 2007. The mediatised recognition and the ‘Other’. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 123, 34–48.

DAHLGREN, P., 1995. Television and the public sphere: citizenship, democracy and the media. London: Sage.

DEUZE, M., 2006. Multicultural journalism education in the Netherlands: a case study. Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, 60 (4), 390–401.

DINES, G. AND HUMEZ, J. M., eds 2003. Gender, race, and class in the media: a text–reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

DURHAM, M. G. AND KELLNER, D. M., eds 2001. The media and cultural studies: keyworks. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

EAGLETON, T., 1991. Ideology: an introduction. Verso.

ENTMAN, R.M., 2004. Projections of power: framing news, public opinion and U.S. foreign policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

ENTMAN, R. M. AND ROJECKI, A., 2000. The black image in the white mind: the media and race in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

FÜRSICH, E., 2002a. Packaging culture: the potential and limitations of travel journalism on global television. Communication Quarterly, 50 (2), 203–225.

FÜRSICH, E., 2002b. How can global journalists represent ‘the Other’? A critical assessment of the cultural studies concept for journalistic practice. Journalism, 3 (1), 57–84.

FÜRSICH, E., 2002c. Nation, capitalism, myth: covering news of economic globalization. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 79 (2), 353–373.

FÜRSICH, E., 2003. Between credibility and commodification: nonfiction entertainment as a global media genre. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (2), 131–153.

FÜRSICH, E., AND RAMAN, U., 2000. Cultural studies goes to J-school: opportunities for bringing cultural critique into the skills classroom. Paper presented at the International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, Birmingham, UK.

FÜRSICH, E., AND ROBINS, M., 2002. Africa.com: the self-representation of sub-Saharan nations on the world wide web. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19 (2), 190–211.

GALTUNG, J., AND RUGE, M. H., 1965. The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace Research, 2 (1), 64–91.

GANS, H. J., 1979. Deciding what’s news: a study of CBS evening news, NBC nightly news, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Pantheon Books.

GINSBURG, F., 1991. Indigenous media: Faustian contract or global village?. Cultural Anthropology, 6 (1), 92–112.

GRAY, H., 1995. Watching race: television and the struggle for ‘‘blackness’’. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press.

HALL, S., ed. 1997. Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.

HAMELINK, C. J., 2002. The politics of global communication. In: Y. R., Kamalipour, ed. Global communication. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth and Thomson Learning, 161–187.

HAMELINK, C. J., 2004. Did WSIS achieve anything at all?. Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, 66 (3–4), 281–290.

HERMAN, E. S., AND CHOMSKY, N., 1998. Manufacturing consent. New York: Pantheon Books.

KARIM, K. H., ed. 2003. The media of diaspora: mapping the globe. New York: Routledge.

KERN-FOXWORTH, M. AND MILLER, D. A., 1993. Multicultural journalism education revisited: 1982–1991. Journalism Educator, 48 (2), 46–55.

KUMMELS, I., 2010. Video Indı́gena: Migration und Gender aus der Sicht indigener Filmemacher/innen im transnationalen Raum Mexiko/USA [Migration and gender from the perspective of indigenous film makers in the transnational space Mexico/USA] In: S. Kron, G. M. Zapata and B. zur Nieden, eds Gender, Migration und Diaspora in Lateinamerika [Gender, migration and diaspora in Latin America]. Berlin: Tranvı́a.

LEUTHOLD, S., 1996. Representing truth and history in Native American documentary: indigenous efforts to counter mass media stereotypes. Film and History, 26 (1–4), 30–39.

LEWIS, J. AND JHALLY, S., 1998. The struggle over media literacy. Journal of Communication, 48 (1), 109–120.

LIVINGSTONE, S., 2004. Media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication

Media and the representation of Others 129

r UNESCO 2010.

technologies. The Communication Review, 7 (1), 3–14.

LULE, J., 2001. Daily News, eternal stories: the mythological role of journalism. New York: Guilford Press.

MCLAREN, P., HAMMER, R., SHOLLE, D. AND REILLEY, S. S., eds 1995. Rethinking media literacy: a critical pedagogy of representation. New York: Peter Lang.

MAGDER, T., 2004. Transnational media, intercultural trade and the idea of cultural diversity. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 18 (3), 380–397.

MEANS COLEMAN, R. R., 2002. Say it loud! African–American audiences, the media and identity. New York: Routledge.

NEWCOMB, H. M. AND, HIRSCH, P., 1983. Television as a cultural forum: implications for research. Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 8 (3), 44–55.

NOLLEY, K., 1997. Finding alternatives to gossip: reflexivity and the paradigm of traditional documentary. Visual Anthropology, 9 (3–4), 267–284.

PADOVANI, C., 2004. The world summit on the information society: setting the communication agenda for the 21

st century? An ongoing

exercise. Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, 66 (3–4), 187–191.

PRATT, M. L., 1992. Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation. London: Routledge.

RANTANEN, T., 2005. The media and globalization. London: Sage.

RENNIE, E., 2006. Community media: a global perspective. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefields.

RONY, F. T., 1996. The third eye: race, cinema, and ethnographic spectacle. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

ROTH, L., 2000. Bypassing of borders and building of bridges: steps in the construction of the aboriginal people’s television network in Canada. Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies, 62 (3), 251–269.

SAID, E., 1978. Orientalism. New York: Random House.

SAID, E. W., 1981. Covering Islam: how the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world. New York: Pantheon Books.

SHAH, H., 1996. Modernization, marginalization, and emancipation: towards a model of journalism and national development. Communication Theory, 6 (2), 143–166.

SHOHAT, E. AND STAM, R., 1994. Unthinking Eurocentrism:

multiculturalism and the media. London: Routledge.

SPURR, D., 1993. The rhetoric of empire: colonial discourse in journalism, travel writing, and imperial administration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

TEHRANIAN, M., 2002. Peace journalism: negotiating global media ethics. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 7 (2), 58–83.

TOMASELLI, K. G., 1996. Appropriating images: the semiotics of visual representation. Hojbjerg: Intervention.

TURNER, V., 1969. The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

UNITY (n.d.) Journalists of colour. Home page. Available from: www.unityjournalists.org [23 June 2010])

VARISCO, D. M., 2007. Reading orientalism: Said and the unsaid. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

WAISBORD, S., 2004. Media and the reinvention of the nation. In: J. Downing, D. McQuail, P. Schlesinger and E. Wartella, eds The Sage handbook of media studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 375–392.

%IŽEK, S., 1989. The sublime object of ideology. London: Verso.

130 Elfriede Fürsich

r UNESCO 2010.

Copyright of International Social Science Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be

copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.