Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Differing diversitiesincreased broadcasting followed, rather than preceded, the language revival. He alsonotes that radio, often more-community-based, might be a better vehicle for Gaelic.Also, even within a specific national territory, the discourses about language usecan change over time. Bulck and Poecke (1996) show the historical and ongoingdebates about language policy in relation to Flemish in Belgium and in relation toSwiss-German in Switzerland. Yet another argument is that across Europe, evenwell-established national languages such as Swedish are being bombarded byEnglish-language programming (Findahl, 1989) and some would say thatStandard English is being taken over by American forms.ConclusionsThere is a marked lack of empirical research in this increasingly important area ofmedia production and consumption within Europe. What work exists is spotty,pertinent to particular moments within a rapidly changing social and media environment,and focusing both on different countries within Europe and on differentminority groups. It is thus both difficult to make comparisons and dangerous to tryto draw too many conclusions from these limited findings. It is absolutely clearthat more co-ordinated, comparative research in this area is badly needed.Ethnic media channels change the entire media “field”, to use Bourdieu’s term.The effects may be contradictory, in that what appears to be an opening out of thepublic sphere in terms of diversity only functions to socialise ethnic members furtherinto their own identity and not out toward others, the reproduction of culturalghettos. But all of this needs to be examined over time: it seems clear that ethnicmembers do not only feast on a diet of their “own” minority programming – inmost cases, there isn’t sufficient to do that – but rather dip in and out of own-languageprogramming and host country channels. The minority channels also operatewithin different spatial realms, determined by a complex mix of the actualoperating conditions and physical strength of the broadcast signal as well as imaginedboundaries of the “community” that they try to address: face-to-face localcommunities; ethnic minorities within national spaces and across national boundaries;truly diasporic orientations, all jostle for space and voice.Some are more clearly locally-oriented and community-based channels, includingminority-oriented programming on terrestrial channels. Here issues of training andaccess become pertinent, as ways of including minority members in the variouscreative processes of production. Novel programmes have been developed inmany parts of Europe. For example, the Adolf Grimme Institut in Germany isworking with migrant women with journalistic experience, providing training andthen placements with broadcasting and production companies. In the UnitedKingdom, the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham set up Intermedia totarget refugees with some media experience to train and provide short-term workplacements. The New Voices project of the London Film and Video DevelopmentAgency also aimed to develop the creative, entrepreneurial and technical skills ofpeople from minority groups (Aitchison, 1999: 53; Sreberny, 1999: 110).162