Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Differing diversities“Black Caribbean/Black British” (Sreberny, 1999: 65). The “national imaginary”is a continual space of contestation and reinvention, not a fixed, unitary culturalgiven, and broadcasting is a significant site for participation in its liveliness.Thus, policy concerns need to continue to focus in many directions at once. Thereis still a role for national terrestrial channels to make programming provision forethnic minority audiences. There still needs to be a focus on improving representationin front of and behind the cameras of mainstream media, as well as a morepermeable interface between minority and mainstream media (Husband, 1994:16). The tensions between being represented and representing oneself remainpowerful ones, and terrestrial media still need monitoring.But so too do the new channels. The concern about the construction of ethnicmedia ghettos does not preclude support and training in entrepreneurial, technicaland creative skills to help the expanding independent minority ethnic productionsector. It is also very hard to study audience preferences without a fuller understandingof the media environments in which minorities live. It would be excellentto have a pan-European research project that simply monitors the range of channelsand nature of minority media productivity.Research understanding would be improved through comparative projects thatexamine the same minority group across a number of different national spaces,trying to disentangle the various forms of capital that an incoming group bringswith it from the constraints and opportunities that the new host location offers.Longitudinal research, or research that takes the time factor seriously, is alsoneeded. In a limited research environment, snapshots at specific moments in timebecome metonymic for the entire experience of the group; projects that activelyexamine changes over time, not anticipating a linear acculturation but ratherexpecting increasing hybridisation and variance, are badly needed. It remainsimportant to locate groups within and to map the rich and complex media and culturalenvironments of minorities, instead of taking a single medium as the focus ofattention, and that includes use and availability of net-based materials.Comparative policy analysis would also locate media use within a set of politicaldiscourses about multiculturalism, and help our understanding of the successesand failures of different kinds of state interventions, licensing, training, etc. Anacademic site that collected research output would be splendid.Further research work needs to hone in more clearly on the assumed functions ofdiasporic media in maintaining and/or reconstructing cultural and social identities.Do they help to maintain linguistic connectivity, or would that happen throughother means? Do they help develop a real diasporic consciousness, an awarenessof being linked to people like oneself around the world? And what about internaldifferentiation, possibly along lines of gender and generation, within the diasporicgroup: how does the trope of “community” function here? And is the older focusof production toward an “ethnic minority community” giving way to a more commercialmedium for “transnations”, 1 with the same “ethnic” film, soap opera or CD__________1. See Tsagarousianou, 2000.164