• 1 Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1970 [1922].
• 2 Bernard Berelson and Patricia J. Salter. “Majority and Minority Americans: An Analysis of Magazine (...)
• 3 Paul Lazarsfeld, “Some Remarks on the Role of the Mass Media in So-Called Tolerance Propaganda,” Th (...)

2Anglo-Saxon countries have been one step ahead on this issue, in particular the United States, where, in the very early days of sociology and communication sciences, scholars investigated the link between mass media and interracial and intercultural relationships. While contributing to the reflection on “Americanization”, Robert Ezra Park first inaugurated this specialized field by furnishing an in-depth documentation of the foreign-language press, and its role in encouraging or hindering new immigrants to become Americans.1 In 1946, Bernard Berelson, the founding father of content analysis, delved with another researcher into hundreds of pieces of popular fiction appearing in mass magazines to determine what kinds of people appeared in short stories in terms of their racial, religious, and national backgrounds, and how they were treated, with the ambition to investigate the existence and nature of differential treatment accorded to various ethnic groups. Their content analysis revealed that the “100% Americans”, whom they defined as “people of ‘pure American stock’ – white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxons”, were better treated, quantitatively and qualitatively, than minorities, in which category they included American Negroes, Jews, Mexicans, Italian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Irish-Americans.2 In 1947, Paul Lazarsfeld, renowned as the father of sophisticated studies of mass communications, investigated the concept of “Tolerance Propaganda” and discussed its assumption that mass media like radio and newspapers could promote friendly relations between racial groups. “If we can sell soap this way, why shouldn’t we also be able to sell good interracial relations?” he wondered, before identifying the different shortcomings or risks of this idealistic perception, one of the major ones being that such propaganda might have a boomerang effect that would reinforce the intolerance of those having structured discriminatory attitudes.3 If media were to voluntarily help improve interracial and intercultural relationships, they would have to be backed up by other institutions such as the government or local associations.

• 4 Kerner Commission, The 1968 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York (...)

3After these early studies, analysis of the representation of ethnic minorities and of racism in the mainstream media gained a new force through the impetus of the Kerner Report, which investigated the causes at the roots of repeated riots in the ghettos from 1965 to 1968, and which unexpectedly devoted a specific chapter to the responsibility of the news media in the division of American society into two societies, black and white, separate and unequal.4 Since then, numerous American studies on media representation of minorities, which has become an established academic research field in the second part of the 20th century, have revealed a tension between the producers of news – the large majority belonging to the white community – and minorities. In spite of real progress, especially since the civil rights movement, stereotypes that white citizens harbored about Americans of color still affected the content of news at the end of the century, and the general lack of coverage of minority communities contributed to a sense of “otherness” about Americans of color, one that induced the audience not to regard them as regular citizens. From the 1960s to the 2000s, most researchers drew the conclusion that by failing to reflect the diversified composition of societies and by fueling misrepresentations of minorities, mass media fed the social distance that separates different groups already distanced by de facto segregation.

• 5 Park, The Immigrant Press; Isabelle Rigoni, ed. “Migrants, minorités ethniques et Internet. Usages (...)

5The first and major line of inquiry – the invisibility, underrepresentation and misrepresentation of minorities in the mainstream news media – which developed first in the United States, before reaching other countries such as Canada or Great Britain has been consolidated by further avenues of research. The large internationalized field of “Media and Minorities” has gone beyond this first dimension and now comprises complementary inquiries. Multidisciplinary approaches on the media have revealed that alongside mainstream media coexist a multitude of media productions led by ethnic and religious groups which, both by their existence and by the positions they take, contribute to a redefinition of national identity, minority groups’ identities and individual identities. Migrants and ethnic minorities have a long tradition of establishing ethnic media, which were first created in the 19th century in North America and in some Western European countries.5 Academics highlighted their role in furthering and supporting democracy and participating in the public sphere, as well as strong vectors of collective representation and mobilization. More recently, due to their extensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT), ethnic media have been described as indicators of transnational and transcultural ways of life. The orientation and production of ethnic media must ultimately be understood within a transnational field of informational flow, diasporic/identity engagement and self-(re)presentation. Despite the still ongoing digital divide, the widespread use of ICT and the advent of Web 2.0 have particularly amplified the expression of cultural and religious actors, in the sense that they have introduced new facilities and new tools. Rich sociological works on the electronic media of ethnic minorities and diaspora show that we are witnessing the emergence of new forms of living together at the same time as new forms of identity representation. The Internet has become, for minorities and diasporas, both a means of group representation and a mode of intervention in public debate.

• 6 Katérina Stenou, ed. UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. A Vision, A Conceptual Pla (...)
• 7 Tarlach McGonagle. Minority Rights, Freedom of Expression and of the Media: Dynamics and Dilemmas, (...)

6At the turn of the millennium, with the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of 2001, the already extended field of “Media and Minorities” has been extended again to new frontiers. The UNESCO declaration – unanimously adopted at the first ministerial-level meeting to be held after September 11 – was an opportunity for States to “reaffirm their conviction that intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of peace and to reject outright the theory of the inevitable clash of cultures and civilisations”.6 In this political, philosophical and epistemological evolution towards a greater recognition of diversity, the mass media have become considered one of the key targets of the actions taken by supranational organizations playing a delicate role of providing incentives and encouragement for more inclusive media content. In its action program, UNESCO pays a particular attention to the role of the media in the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity in the context of globalization. The Council of Europe has also repeatedly underlined the role of the media in the promotion of cultural diversity, be they traditional media or “new media” benefiting from the development and popularization of ICT.7 The Framework Convention of the Council of Europe for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) in particular demonstrates the strong linkage between the goals of promoting tolerance, social cohesion and cultural diversity, and the instrumental importance of the media in respect of each goal. From the 2000s on, the objective of promoting cultural diversity in respect of the media (including digital) environment became a priority. New information technologies are particularly mentioned in terms of encouraging the production, safeguarding and dissemination of diversified content in the media.

• 8 Augie Fleras. The Media Gaze: Representations of Diversities in Canada, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

9In this set of questioning on the diversification effect, Bradley Clark used a participant observer methodology to analyze a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news and current affairs operation with the ambition to unveil the influence of production norms and long-held news values on the coverage of minority groups. His study, which examines the forces that shape news content at its principal site of production, i.e. the newsroom, reveals that corporate culture, hiring diverse staff, and the deployment of more resources can all work to bring diversity to news content. However, Clark observes that more inclusive journalism remains sporadic, as mainstream bias pervades newsgathering routines. Clark provides a detailed analysis that supports Augie Fleras's contention that the challenge of reforming media coverage of minority groups would be the equivalent of “walking up a down escalator”.8