Media and Minorities

Paths to Greater Diversity in the Media  223
Several thousand people soon shared their stories, and the hash tag remained
on the trending topic11 list in Germany for three days — unusual for a
social issue. According to Gümüşay, “as a result of being shared, these experiences
were raised from the individual level to the societal level. The responsibility
for dealing with racism no longer lay only with the people who
experienced it on a daily basis, but with all of society.” The campaign thus
made the racist structures in society visible to the public. Journalists were
tagged and thus made aware of the topic’s relevance. In this way, the initiators
succeeded in getting the mainstream media to cover an issue that is usually
difficult to spotlight. Through the coverage, it became part of a public debate.
However, the primary goal was to make people aware of racism in everyday
life because extreme right-wing expressions of racism are not its only
forms. Subtle manifestations are often not recognized or identified as racism,
not even by the people who are targeted. The initiators also reported that
the stories posted under #SchauHin made people who were not directly affected
by everyday racism aware that they sometimes spoke in unconsciously
racist ways themselves.
The Limits of Online Social Media Campaigns
Although use of the Internet to circumvent the gatekeepers of the press, radio,
and television enables minorities to be seen and heard, it also gives other
users access to the public. For example, the #SchauHin campaign was temporarily
hijacked by users who spewed racist slogans or presented themselves
as victims of reverse racism. Anti-Muslim racists, antisemites, and immigration
opponents are also active in forums and blogs and network on social
media platforms such as Facebook, which they use to disseminate racist and
discriminatory content. In its reports, the Council of Europe has expressed
concern about the increasing number of calls to violence and the hate speech
directed against various groups on the Internet. The 2014 Annual Report of
the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) confirms
that there is growing sympathy for extreme right-wing groups.12
Although racist movements meet with vocal opposition in the public, such
problems point to the limits of the Internet. There is a need to create more
awareness of right-wing racism, everyday racism, and marginalization in and
11 Trending topics is a list on Twitter that identifies important topics on the basis of the
12 See Annual Report on ECRI’s Activities, 7, accessed 20 July 2015, http://www.coe.int/t/
dghl/monitoring/ecri/activities/Annual_Reports/Annual%20report%202014.pdf.
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