Promoting social cohesion: the role of community media - amarc

5. Do third sector media contribute to socialcohesion or threaten it?The political aspect of the questionfirst has to be answered by thegovernment of a country, and thisgoes back to McQuail’s summarycited on page 9. What view is takenby the authorities of initiativeswhich, if not exactly centrifugal,represent diverse or minority opinions?India’s decision to licencethousands of community radio stationsis significant because for solong this important democracy haddecided against such a devolution ofpower. Across the world, communitymedia are widely used for theexpression of marginalised or disadvantagedgroups who define themselvesby gender, age, sexualpreference or geographical isolation,to name the most common examples,but in the contemporary Europeancontext the question is mainlyconcerned with minority ethnicgroups and this, together withbroadcasting in minority languages,will be the focus of the discussionthat follows.Within that focus, a distinctionhas to be made between (1) languagecommunities that pre-datethe nations within which they findthemselves, such as Basque, Occitan,Gaelic and Welsh, and (2) those thathave arrived in Europe as a consequenceof colonial and post-colonialconnections or as refugees from persecutionsuch as the Jewishdiaspora. One might describe theselatter groups as older minority communitiesin comparison with themore recent arrivals.In many of the western Europeancountries, the older minority communitieshave had to wait a longtime before seeing some concessionsin mainstream media that begin torepresent their views and cultures.Still less do more recent arrivals feelsatisfied:“Audience research shows thatmigrants and refugee communitiesdo not feel they are equally andfairly represented in the nationalmainstream and that they are notseen as equal citizens of the countryof settlement.”(OL/MCM 2002)Recent shifts in patterns ofmigration, and the creation of newdemocracies since the demise ofSoviet- or Yugoslav-style socialism,have meant the arrival of newminority language communities,without previous experience of thehost countries – let us categorise thisgroup as (3).Again, to focus the discussion, itis the relation of groups (2) and (3)to community media that will beaddressed here. Community mediawill be understood to include“minority ethnic media” in the thirdsector, recognising that broadcastmedia may take the form either ofslots assigned to a minority ethnicgroup within the schedule of a stationowned by a broader group – themore usual situation, or might insome cases be a station whollyowned by a minority ethnic group.Assuming that there is politicalwill to deal fairly with migrants,refugees and asylum seekers on thebasis of their human rights, thequestion is: to what extent do communitymedia assist in the dual roleof according space for the expressionof minority cultures and languages,and of assisting minority communitiesto settle in their new home? 1A handbook on InterculturalMedia Training in Europe, the outcomeof a two-year EU Socratesproject, distinguishes between“polylingualism” in communitymedia – the existence of many programmes,each of them in a differentlanguage, and “multilingualism”– the use of different languages inone programme.It is common to find, across Europe,the polylingual approach inwhich different languages are usedin separate programmes in theschedule. There is an increasing tendency,however, within the programmes,for the local majoritylanguage to be used as well. “Thesemultilingual programmes seek tomake the concerns of their languagecommunity understandable for amuch broader audience – a crucialstep in the direction of genuineexchange between majority andminorities” (Intermedia 2006:52). 21. For a discussion of “dual role” see Riggins 1992 p.4.2. In many cases of broadcasting by established minorities the broader audience is likely include not only the native speakers of the majority languagebut the younger generation of the minority group who have less proficiency in their parent’s mother tongue.5. Do third sector media contribute to social cohesion or threaten it? 27