Representations, mis-representations, stereotyping? Minorities in the media

Dr Myria Georgiou

Dept of Media and Communications

European cultures are increasingly media cultures

•National media compete with transnational and local media•Production and distribution of the media is only in part bounded within a single national territory•National policy only in part controls the production and distibution of the media•European homes are increasingly media-rich and media-savvy homes

Research from across Europe demonstrates that migration and asylum are highly newsworthy for the media, especially for the highest circulation press publications.

Data from across Europe shows that for a large majority of citizens, knowledge about different cultural groups is primarily mediated.

Context

Media reproducing hegemonic racial ideologiesMedia misrepresent social injustice and attribute problems such as crime to the behaviour of specific (ethnic) groups, rather than dealing with it as an outcome of an economically dividing system (Hall, 1991; 1997)

Media as terrain of power strugglesMedia culture is complex and involves power struggles both on the production and the consumption level(Gillespie, 1995; Downing and Husband, 2005)

Media representations are plural and oppositional‘there is another position, one which locates itself inside a continuous struggle and politics around black representation, but which then is able to open up a continuous critical discourse about themes, about the forms of representation, the subjects of representation, above all, the regimes of representation’ (Hall, 1996: 448).

Social theory and critique

Marginal in everyday news agenda and media imagination but visible in specific thematic areas

Terrorism, immigration and crime: the axis of minority visibility in the press

Ambiguous and neutral in coverage – negative in consequences?

Big indistinguishable categories of Otherness(es)

A Case Study: Minorities in the British Press

Sample & Appraisal

Broadsheets Tabloids

Right wing

The Telegraph 86 headlines

35% pos. vs. 34% neg.21% no appraisal

The Sun34 headlines

18% pos. Vs. 68% neg.6% no appraisal

Left wing

The Guardian64 headlines

41% pos vs. 16% neg.33% no appraisal

The Mirror23 headlines

22% pos. vs. 57% neg.9% no appraisal

Headline appraisal:

Total sample: 207 headlines with minority content

32% pos. Vs. 36% neg.

21% no appraisal ; 11% Other appraisal (not included in the table)

The rule: Marginality and Invisibility

• Ethnic minorities receive proportionately very little coverage in the British press (7.6% of the articles coded have minority content)

• There is consistency in the scale of (low) coverage throughout the pages of the national newspapers, and this goes across both left and right, tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.

•Terrorism as a thematic area is referred to more frequently in articles with minority content (10%), than in articles without minority content (0.2%), thus linking minorities with terrorism.

In this case, terrorism is more likely to be referred to in the tabloids (18%) than in the broadsheets (7%).

•In articles with minority content, terrorism (10%) is one of the most referred to thematic areas [others: politics (19%) sport (10%), violence and crime (8%), war (8%), and immigration (8%)].

Terrorism with minorities as (presumed) threat or perpetrators emerges as the major issue in headlines referring to a specific minority issue.

•Tabloids (23%); the broadsheets (15%).

•69% of headline appraisal is explicitly negative (69%) - There are, however, distinct differences between broadsheets: 55% explicitly negative; tabloids 93% explicitly negative

The exception (that confirms the rule) I: Terrorism

• Immigrants are the most important General group in headlines (16%); only religious minorities receive higher coverage (34%).

•It’s about the topic, not the people• As a rule, items dealing with immigration are not related to any specific group

(immigrants 81%, temporary immigrants 53%, illegal immigrants 75% and refugees and asylum seekers 50%).

•Concentration of Immigrants as actors to a small number of topics

• Minority issues of Immigration (26%)• Effect of immigration on majority ethnic jobs and wages (15%)• Effect of immigration on the social and economic situation (13%).

The exception (that confirms the rule) II: Immigration

•Violence & Crime is one of the most referred Thematic areas, when it comes to minority content

• 8% of coverage (with only Politics (19%), Terrorism (10%), Sports (10%), and War (9%) taking higher percentages)

• It is one of the Thematic areas most referred to in Tabloids than in Broadsheets: (15% vs. 6%)

•The minority issue of Violence & Crime with minorities as (presumed) threat or perpetrators is in three-quarters of the headlines referred to negatively (75%)

• In Broadsheets (7 out of 12), more than half of the headlines give negative appraisal (57%), while in Tabloids (5 out of 12) all headlines have negative appraisal.

•There are connections between crime and the other two major themes that dominate minority issues, i.e. immigration and terrorism.

• E.g. 24% of references to Muslims name them as ‘crime suspects’.

The exception (that confirms the rule) III: Crime

•The case of Muslims is the most apparent in terms of a construction of a homogenous, generic ‘community’; also Muslims appear as the only visible religious group

• Muslims are by far the most referred group based on religion (in 27% of headlines) followed by 4% for Christians, 4% for Buddhists and 3% for Jews.

•Muslims’ extensive coverage in the press relates in more than 50% of entries to violence, terrorism and crime.

•Muslims are overwhelmingly affiliated with Terrorist organisations (56%), and in almost one-third of the cases are Islamist terrorists (30%) or Crime suspects (24%).

•Speakers with a Muslim background are in 56% of the cases related to a terrorist organisation but are only in 3% of the cases related to an official church or religious organisation.

Islam and Muslims: The Ultimate Other

•Minority presence in the media tends to relate to negative/problematic elements of the news agenda

• A neutral media approach to stories where minorities are less powerful/institutional confirms minorities’ marginality

•Minorities are often addressed as indistinguishable groups without internal diversity

•Ethnic minority becomes a racialised category by assumption

•Minority leadership and positive minority role models almost voiceless – the Black exception

Neutral coverage but with what consequences I?

Neutral coverage but with what consequences II? • Confirmation of negative stereotypes in public

imagination

• The high levels of negative appraisal in popular press feed popular fears and strengthen social divides along ethnicity/religion lines

• Little information in public sphere about complexities of minority cultures and politics sustains cultural boundaries

• Lack of positive representations sustains a sense of marginality and negative self-identification among minorities themselves

• Press: Power without Responsibility?

A framework for the study of media and diversity I?

• Specificity of media and cultural politics Not all media play the same political role at all times

• Dialectics between the particular and the universal, the majority and the minority. Difference both as a boundary and a separator, as well as a point of meeting and potential dialogue; to investigate how tensions and ‘incommunicability’ between different groups named minorities and majorities are NOT stable and natural, but the outcome of the representations of different media cultures themselves as closed, competitive and incompatible systems.

A framework for the study of media and diversity II?

Media production/consumption not divided along cultural lines alone

Media literacy, savvy audiences, diversified and niche markets

Freedom of speech: A new element to consider? (i.) does/shall freedom of peace apply to projects that challenge

the European political traditions and norms? (iii.) does/shall freedom of peace apply to individuals and groups

suppressing diversity and culture within the communities they allegedly represent?

•Urgent necessity for the national press to actively seek to include ethnic minority voices in the news stories

•The recruitment of ethnic minority staff needs to be further advanced, especially on editorial level

•The creation and promotion of forums where media professionals and the civil society can advance dialogue and trust are urgently needed

•Media literacy is a key issue that needs further attention by all stakeholders – this requires contextualisation of stories and humanisation of actors (minorities), as well as acknowledgement of the diversity of cultural and media spaces for representation.

Policy implications