Media and the representation of Others

Elfriede Fursich
Contemporary mass media operate as a normal- move. At the heart of the matter is the struggle, ising forum for the social construction of reality. often played out in the media, over dening and They are important agents in the public process situating the Others amongst us. of constructing, contesting or maintaining This report will evaluate what role the mass the civic discourse on social cohesion, integra- media have played in constructing this distion, tolerance and international understand- course. In what ways do the media promote or ing. Moreover, the medias power to steer hinder a positive outlook on cultural diversity? attention to and from public issues often Based on a review of the scholarly debate on the determines which problems will be tackled or role of media in representing Others, I identify a ignored by society. Only those issues that gain set of current obstacles (both in media systems publicity have the potential and in media content) to to make people think about fair media representations. Elfriede Fursich is Associate Professor of social and political ramicaThis review provides Communication and Sociology at Boston tions beyond their immediate the foundation for a set of College. She currently is a visiting professor at Freie Universitat Berlin. Her experience and arouse politiconclusions and strategies research focuses on media globalisation cal interest. that can lead to a frameand mobility and their relationship to Over centuries, the mass work for rethinking the culture and civil society. media starting with newsrelationship between the Email: fursich@bc.edu papers have played a media and cultural divercentral role in dening and illustrating the sity. While every effort will be made to nation-state in Europe and the Americas. In contribute examples from a wide variety of post-colonial countries, the media were used countries, the main academic statements are as important tools in nation-building efforts. based on mass communication scholarship in Often the media formed a mediated national the USA, the UK and other English-speaking identity in limited ways by dening the bound- countries and, to a lesser degree, other European aries of a community considered to be part countries and non-western countries. This of a nation and by excluding minorities as reects my scholarly training and area of Others. Contemporary geopolitical constella- expertise as a German media scholar working tions add another component to the mediated at a US university with some experience of living discourse of the Other. Intensifying globalisa- and teaching in India. tion has led to an increasing connectedness This inquiry into professional practices and between economies and political entities and media content in a globalising world intends to a need for people to know about the world. promote mass media that bring about a new A major dimension of globalisation is the civic discourse within and across national voluntary and forced mobility of people. Busi- boundaries towards a more democratic global ness travellers, tourists, migrants and refugees media environment, fair media practices and constitute a growing number of people on the more critical media use.
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Current trends in studies of media and representation

In this section, I outline diverse approaches to studying the representation of Others. I dene and explain the use of the concept, representing the Other and establish its relevance to actual journalism practice and media content. In addition to my own scholarship in this area, I highlight important contributions from scholars in cultural studies, journalism studies, media sociology, anthropology and social linguistics. Overall, the scholarship in this area dealing with the media representations of the Other is eclectic and mostly disconnected. My contribution here is to link various interdisciplinary approaches to a cohesive argument about the current relationship between media representation and cultural diversity. Before delving into this topic, I give a brief overview of past and current scholarship on medias effect on society and how representation became an important concept for understanding media.

Do the media have any impact?1

While it is commonly assumed that the mass media have an effect on their audiences, this question has been of central concern throughout the history of academic mass communication research. Maybe surprisingly, there have been long-lasting disputes as to whether the mass media indeed have such an impact. The earliest academic writing on media before the Second World War was informed by mass society theory and the fear that western democracies could be easily destabilised by extremist political fractions and the emerging fascist movements through their successful employment of media propaganda through newspapers, movies and radio. US intellectuals (for example, Walter Lippmann), on the one hand, understood the media to be a dangerous propaganda tool that needed to be controlled by a technocracy for democratic use. Neo-Marxist cultural theorists (for example, the Frankfurt School) arriving from Europe, on the other hand, saw the media as a dangerous part of the cultural industry that often only provided mass escapism and reinforced a repressive status quo. Both approaches united a strong sense that the media had a direct and immediate effect on a passive and easily

manipulated audience. This idea is now often called the magic bullet theory. However, with the establishment of mass communication research as an empirical social science at the end of the Second World War, scholars struggled to measure any such media effects. Neither laboratory experiments by media psychologists nor large-scale surveys on the impact of the media on voting or consumer decisions found signicant behaviour or attitude effects. This research led to a radical rethinking of media impact in what is now called the limitedeffects paradigm in US mass communication research from 1940 until the 1970s. The media were considered to inuence people only indirectly. Instead, psychological predispositions, peoples socioeconomic characteristics, cognitive selective processes and the inuence of interpersonal contact were all assumed to hinder any direct impact by the media. At most, the media only reinforced existing values, attitudes and opinions. The rising household penetration of television sets and increasing television viewing in the USA and other developed countries during the 1960s and 1970s, however, triggered new waves of scholarship that tried to explain the everyday observation that television seemed to create changes in the political process (for example, campaigning and elections). Moreover, the proliferation of problematic visual images (especially violent ones) caused concern amongst parents and educators. The latter concern seemed to become especially urgent after educational psychologists established that people can learn behaviour and change their attitudes after watching television or lms (that is, social cognitive theory). Several major research streams during the late 1960s then pushed the question of media effects into new directions. For example, agenda-setting theorists established the central role of the media in dening the issues that the public accepted as important. Spiral-of-silence theorists argued that the media can contribute signicantly to a climate of opinion that can obfuscate the general populations real attitudes on an issue while stopping people with dissenting views from speaking up. Cultivation theory, moreover, argued that television had little inuence in the short term. Instead, life-long immersion in television seemed to lead viewers, especially heavy viewers, to take televisions constructed reality as actual social

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reality (for example, viewers starting to see the world as a very violent and dangerous place). The latest wave in the social-scientic paradigm of mass communication research, called framing research, has further helped to establish that the media play a stronger role in dening and shaping topics of public debate. Since the 1990s, this stream of research has tended to show that the media play a role in dening how audiences understand an issue of public concern. Importantly, this stream of research also theorises on the capacity of governmental and non-governmental lobbies to inuence the medias coverage of events. All approaches that assign the media a stronger impact than the limited or moderate effects school have received intense criticism from established scholars, and to this day methodological and theoretical issues are a matter of great debate. However, one can argue that, currently, many social-scientic scholars of mass communication ascribe to the media a central or at least an important role in contemporary society when it comes to dening and explaining issues of civic concern (for more details on the history of socialscientic mass communication research see Baran and Davis, 2006). In addition to the social-scientic paradigm another important approach to media studies has developed during the last thirty years. As a reaction to the limited-effect paradigm in communication scholarship, a new cultural-critical paradigm emerged in the 1960s, rst in UK and about 15 years later in the USA. This scholarship has been informed by the humanistic traditions of cultural criticism, semiotics and linguistics as well as by cultural anthropology and political economy. Its impetus was to counter the idea that the media have no impact; thus, early scholarship often states that the media are institutions that reinforce a hegemonic status quo. Soon, however, audience-focused research in this group inuenced by the interdisciplinary cultural studies movement, countered this idea by establishing the dominance of active audiences and their ability to appropriate or even resist dominant messages. A decadeslong debate ensued amongst scholars using this paradigm as to whether the media, as part of cultural industries, reproduce and maintain the status quo and control public discourse in problematic ways or whether audiences

successfully negotiate or even resist cultural domination. While some traces of these debates persist, many scholars using the paradigm of cultural critique now understand the media to be signicant and often problematic cultural forces, limited by their need to maximise prot and appeal to mainstream audiences, while audiences actively and independently accept, appropriate and, at times, even undermine dominant discourses (for more details on cultural-critical media studies see Durham and Kellner, 2001). Another important research area further prioritised audience activity in this equation by championing media literacy as a strategy for countering the problematic impact of the media and popular culture on individuals, especially children and adolescents.

What is representation?
It is within this cultural-critical paradigm of media studies that scholars created and studied the idea of representation. This concept helped scholars to move beyond understanding media messages as simply a portrayal or reection of reality. Instead, representations are embedded in the 24-hour saturated media stream and establish norms and common sense about people, groups and institutions in contemporary society. The media create representations as central signifying practices for producing shared meaning (Hall, 1997). The representations are constitutive of culture, meaning and knowledge about ourselves and the world around us. Beyond just mirroring reality, representations in the media such as in lm, television, photography and print journalism create reality and normalise specic world-views or ideologies. This view understands the concept of ideology as a hegemonic, normalising force in contemporary societies, as developed by cultural theorists (Eagleton, 1991; %izek, 1989). Cultural media scholars are especially interested in representations as constructed images that carry ideological connotations. Since representations can produce shared cultural meaning, problematic (that is, limited) representations can have negative consequences for political and social decision-making and can be implicated in sustaining social and political inequalities. Following the cultural turn in many humanistic disciplines and the seminal inuence

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of semiotic and post-structural theory (see Fursich, 2002b), representations of Others (ethnic, racial, gender or sexual minorities, international Others) have become a focal point for critical-cultural media studies. Many cultural studies scholars inside and outside mass communication programmes followed Edward Saids (1978) work on the historical contingencies of problematic western Othering to use media texts such as newspaper articles, television programmes or advertisements to show evidence of this Othering. Later, Saids concepts were often challenged. His tendency to establish new binaries (the west versus the Orient) while rebuking others has come under special attack (for a critical, if irreverent evaluation, see Varisco, 2007). Shohat and Stam (1994), in particular, provided an important extended approach to analysing Eurocentric media representation by advocating what they call a radical pedagogy of the mass media (p. 356). This strategy allows for a critique of problematic representation in the media and popular culture while using emancipatory moments in popular culture for an indispensable re-envisioning of the global politics of culture (p. 359).

Current challenges to fair media representations of Others

The overwhelming tenor of the research on the mediated representation of Others is sceptical about the ability of contemporary media to portray cultural diversity. This section explains the central concerns brought forward by this scholarship. Two forms of Othering will be addressed: rstly, media representations of minorities as Others in a nation (that is, ethnic, linguistic, racial, religious or sexual minorities); secondly, the medias role in explaining international relations, conict and culture. Here I evaluate the limitations of international reporting as well as other types of journalism (such as travel journalism) about Others outside the borders.

The media representations of Others in a nation

The media representations of minorities have been a central concern for media scholars

in the cultural-critical paradigm (for example, Castaneda and Campbell, 2006; Dines and Humez, 2003). For more than 25 years this research has explained the role the media play in upholding problematic stereotypes. Especially in an environment increasingly saturated by visual communication the sheer propensity of imagery works to maintain, conrm and recreate problematic representations ad innitum. Cultural media scholarship has often demonstrated that news and entertainment media stereotype non-white, non-elite groups and other minorities by excluding them from coverage or by offering a limited range of representations. Media imagery across various platforms, from news journalism to ctional movies, has often portrayed minorities as different, exotic, special, essentialised or even abnormal. It is especially striking that the repertoire of representations of diverse minorities that contemporary media offer is often linked to historically established racist imaginaries such as in colonial literature and science (for example, slave imaginary or Orientalism). Moreover, as post-colonial, race, and gender studies have shown, the long history of visual mass media production that started with the invention of lm more than 100 years ago has created a stockpile of mediated representation types that are constantly recycled in a variety of media outlets. Even if the contemporary media seem to avoid outright stereotypical portrayals and racial or ethnic defamation, genre conventions (such as the inexibility of character development in sitcoms), production practices (such as the use of news conventions under deadline pressure) or economic pressure (for example, the drive by commercial TV networks to attract a large mainstream audience) continue this problematic construction (for example, Entman and Rojecki, 2000). Even shows and media content that openly tried to counterstereotype prevalent negative representations by presenting opposing roles and characters were often seen as limited approaches still linked to earlier problematic versions that were often broadcast in tandem with them (for example, Gray, 1995). In addition, new media technologies have tremendously increased channel capacity and stimulated niche marketing and narrowcasting. This development has resulted in more media outlets for earlier silenced

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minorities (for example, the US network BET for AfricanAmerican viewers; easy access to satellite television or Internet publications from home for migrants). Yet critics have argued that these new opportunities further separate audiences in new media ghettos and even release the remaining mainstream media from constructively engaging with minorities. The reasons for the persistence of traditional representation are threefold. Firstly, the ubiquity, saturation and repetitiveness of the mass media seem to reinforce the longevity of these representations. Secondly, prot-driven commercial media industries that aim at large mainstream audiences were often blamed for being unable to initiate more complex representations to undermine problematic ones. Thirdly, the media were seen as being too closely aligned to the elites in society (or directly controlled by elites) to be interested in a change of the status quo. Even scholars sympathetic to the idea that the media are a cultural forum (Newcomb and Hirsch, 1983) that has the potential to introduce ideas for progressive social change tended to nd that, at best, the medias role was to push the envelope of inclusion at times but ultimately to mainstream (that is, contain) a new sociopolitical situation (such as the coverage of the emancipatory struggle of western women since the 1960s). Lately, a debate has emerged as to whether digital technology and the Internet can undermine traditional repressive systems of representation by adding new outlets for representation. In addition, growing audience fragmentation caused by the increasing number of channels available to audiences in nearly all countries of the world may also diminish the impact of negative representations. However, since representation speaks to a sustained image delivered across media channels and outlets rather than to individual problematic media portrayals, longestablished representations may survive across genres and media platforms.

portrayed in the media. Two main areas of concern are highlighted here. Firstly, I summarise traditional problems of international reporting; secondly, I introduce some of my own research to delineate how the current intensied level of globalisation aggravates problematic representation of Others by journalists.

Traditional problems of international reporting

Ever since Galtung and Ruges (1965) seminal study on news selection in Norwegian newspapers it has been established that journalists tend to favour cultural proximity by preferring stories that are close to their own and their audiences perceived cultural background. Combined with a preference for conict, a lack of ambiguity and a focus on elite nations, this makes for a very limited international news selections. Gans (1979) called this news value ethnocentrism, explaining that US journalists report any event from an American angle. Ample research on international news coverage since then has shown that western reporting, especially of the developing world is almost exclusively triggered by crises, catastrophes and natural disasters thereby re-emphasising an image of the developing world as is chaotic beyond relief and in constant need for support by the west. International reporting tends to follow to index (Bennett, 1991) the agenda of its current governments foreign policy doctrines and relies on elite national sources to explain international events. Scholars who understand journalists not just as information selectors and gatekeepers but as narrators and producers of culture have further outlined the limited parameters of the story of the Other told in journalism. Lule (2001), for example, explains in a case study on The New York Times coverage of Haiti how negative news myths such as the Other World are invoked over long periods of time to negatively frame an underdeveloped nation. Another persistent news frame, the Cold War (Entman, 2004) and its related lter anticommunism (Herman and Chomsky, 1998) have governed international news reporters dichotomising news outline for almost four decades and seems to be more resilient (Carragee, 2003) than many scholars had expected.

Media representations of international Others

In this globalising world it is also important to explain how cultural diversity across nations is

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In some of his later work, Edward Said (1981) suggested that Orientalism, as a historic and hegemonic discourse for addressing and dening the Other produces effects not just in literature and in art but also on contemporary news coverage of the Middle East. When extending this idea to the news lter antiterrorism (Chomsky has recently updated his propaganda model), the anti-Muslim and antiArab aspects of this frame seem to revive and extend the historical oriental Other. Overall, journalism researchers often emphasise that traditional journalism is not up to the task of covering the complexities of international events. The biggest accomplishment of print journalism over the years has been to help dene the nation as an imagined community (Anderson, 1991). Similarly, national TV newscasts have been essential for connecting an audience to its nation (Gans, 1979). Yet journalisms biggest failure has been that this national integration was often created in the negative by suppressing regional, local and minority audience interests and access (Rantanen, 2005), and by Othering anyone outside national borders.

New problems in a global media world

If we agree that while globalisation as a historic process has intensied over the last 25 years, then what is the story of globalisation to be covered? Globalisation is a complex issue; it is a political story, a business story and an environmental story, but it is also a human rights and social justice topic, in addition to the always needed human interest story. In my work I have tried to touch on many of these aspects (for example, Fursich, 2002c); I highlight here some of my ndings as starting points for further discussion. In a series of studies I have moved beyond national media outlets to explore a type of factual media content that is produced for global audiences. This led me to investigate media production on a global level, starting with my study of Discovery Communication International and its cable outlet Travel Channel by examining the informative potential of travel programmes produced for global television. I analysed three

internationally-popular travel shows called Lonely Planet, Travellers, and Rough Guide. Situating these three shows within their global production and distribution demonstrates the limitations of this type of programming. As global media products they present a culturally ambivalent text. As they need to work for an international audience, these shows could widen narrow representations of the Other and counter the reliance of traditional television news journalism on narrow demarcations of national(istic) distinctions. These shows could break the problematic narrative of traditional foreign reporting, which has concentrated on crises and catastrophe, by presenting a more positive image of the Other. Because these shows focus on travel, they could exemplify the complex representation work on either side of the tourism exchange, thus in due course challenging cultural dichotomies in such representations. Yet I found that travel journalism is fundamentally structured by the search for difference (as the ultimate motivation of tourism in general), which results in the perpetual replay of manufacturing, celebrating and exoticising difference. These discursive strategies rely on essentialising cultural groups. Often the shows present a sanitised or static idea of multicultural understanding devoid of political connotations. In the worst case, this strategy leaves locals (as tourism workers and interviewed representatives of a country) only as essentialised types: nameless, voiceless or poorly translated. All shows ultimately hide the privileged and problematic situation of all tourists, travel show producers and the tourism industry in general when packaging culture as a commodity. Their narratives, which stress individual pleasure and personalised travel as programmes that have to work across borders, often neglect the broader political, social and economic problems of contemporary tourism and international relations in general (for more details see Fursich, 2002a, 2003). My concerns are echoed in a more recent argument doubting the capacity of the national media or border-crossing programming in an increasingly globalised media environment to reect an enlightened and humanistic cosmopolitism in the media (Rantanen, 2005; Waisbord, 2004).

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Overall, three main reasons hinder more open and complex media representations of international Others: 1. The national media tend to cater to national audiences whether they follow a commercial or public service model. Foreigners are depicted as Others. Global media productions often target only afuent cosmopolitan elites; thus, cross-border diversity is produced as a sanitised celebration of culture but lacks critical approaches to political, cultural and economic inequalities. 2. Intrinsic and traditional work routines of journalists, producers and other media workers that have been developed over centuries (after all, newspapers have been around for 400 years) have only recently been challenged on their ability to represent diversity. Even the social responsibility model (which underlies the idea of public service broadcasting) or nationbuilding efforts in the development of media systems allow the media to function mainly as a force of integration and assimilation and less as a presenter of multiple diversities. 3. The relationship between the media, governments and elites is another issue to be evaluated. This relationship is always close in authoritarian systems and often in the developing world but it has become clear that even journalists in western (free-market and socially responsible) media systems stay close to elite perspectives and ofcial foreign policy when describing international people.

Representation reconsidered: possible new strategies and recommendations

The above scholarship outlined on representation mainly diagnoses problematic portrayals. In this section, I move beyond this criticism to develop new strategies that break up problematic representations. The areas of possible change outlined in this section connect to the three main domains of mediated communication: production, content and audiences.

Media production
While the potential for more open representations of the media within larger organisational

frameworks is not the main focus of this article, it deserves a brief mention. Macro-level and micro-level aspects have to be considered when evaluating whether media outlets are set up to encourage cultural diversity. On the international level, many countries have been experiencing foreign media imports as a threat to local and national cultures. A central concern of international media policy initiatives has been to regulate the ow of media content across borders. Over the years, media policy has been governed by two main conceptual models (see Hamelink, 2002). On the one side, the media were understood as a public good (including earlier UNESCO efforts such as the McBride Report). This viewpoint asked for regulatory measures to protect national cultures and diversity. On the other side, media products have been treated as commodities (such as in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and World Trade Organization documents). This position has emphasised the deregulation of media systems in combination with optimism that economic competition among media outlets would guarantee diversity in a marketplace of ideas. Both approaches have shortcomings. The economic model often fails to take into account the uniqueness of media production and distribution (such as the benet of economies of scale since the reproduction costs of media products are extremely low or the complicated but central situation of copyright especially in a digital media environment). Moreover, the fact that more than 50 binding and non-binding international agreements and resolutions (Hamelink, 2002; Magder, 2004) currently govern international media exchange shows that a purely market-oriented global media environment is a pipe dream. In addition, a sustained research effort by political economists in mass communication research has diagnosed the shortcomings of market-driven media with regard to cultural diversity in a global media system dominated by consolidated transnational media conglomerates. It is not part of the traditional commercial media business model to cater to diverse audiences if they are not marketable target groups for advertisers or sponsors. However, the public good model, with its protectionist tendencies has also often been unsuccessful in protecting cultural diversity.

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As Magder (2004) explained, these national efforts have too often been based on a very limited idea of diversity as a conglomerate of static and essentialised cultural groups. In the best case, any regulatory efforts to ensure cultural diversity whether across or within national borders have to position the media not as preservers of cultural diversity, by freezing cultural groups in time, but as enablers of cultural diversity and free, creative expression in the future:
We should be less concerned about processing and promoting particular a priori cultures and more concerned about creating the conditions that allow individuals and groups to determine and express themselves alone and collectively. Instruments that promote diversity in media, diversity in cultural expression, and diversity in the form of content of public expression within and across borders should be permitted and encouraged. Instruments that seek to control and fetter expression should be circumscribed. (Magder, 2004, p.384)

On a more micro-level, which strategies might help reform media institutions to promote cultural diversity? Which strategies for journalists and media workers will help overcome the current static representations? For some time, one possible solution has been to hire a more diverse media workforce. In the USA the percentage of minorities in journalism and other media production has been increasing over the years, although minority participation in these professions is still not equal to the majority share of the general population. In addition, selfdirected support organisations (such as, in the USA, the organisation UNITY [n.d.]) act as important lobbying groups for a more diverse workforce. Public broadcasters across the world also often follow specic hiring strategies that aim at workforce variety (for example, with regard to regional origin, political afliation or gender). However, governmental bodies have sometimes tried to promote or mandate proportional representation in broadcasting or other media institutions. This strategy has often led to complaints of governmental interference and has undermined the neutrality mandates of public broadcasters. While a more diverse workforce is in itself a worthwhile goal, it is less clear whether the assumption holds true that a more diverse media workforce will automatically lead to

distinctively different media content. For example, research is not conclusive as to whether a more diverse pool of journalists produces a better coverage of minority issues. Benson (2005), for example, complained that in an increasingly competitive situation for journalists in the USA, most of the recent rise in ethnic coverage has reected an economic necessity more than a civic urgency. He argued that this coverage, generated by a more diverse workforce in some of the most prestigious US newspapers, has tended to favour informative or even celebratory ethnic multiculturalism coverage that has crowded out or masked economic and class issues related to racial inequality (Benson, 2005). So, while these types of articles have given previously ignored minority groups an important voice and spotlight, the coverage mainly helped to target new multicultural consumer groups that advertisers wanted to reach. Ultimately, diversity hiring alone may not be able to overcome the systemic shortcomings of the journalistic eld mentioned earlier. As a long tradition of news research has shown, the news product is ultimately shaped far more by economic and organizational constraints than the personal characteristics race, class, sexual orientation or even ideology of individual journalists (Benson, 2005, p.17). Similarly, the hope that minority groups might nd new outlets in a commercially driven multi-channel, narrowcasting media system have mostly remained unfullled. New niche channels tend to draw in diverse audiences as consumers, but they have split audiences and cannot provide them with a new public position as citizens in civic discourse. Also on the micro-level, media education is an important site for change. Parallel to the efforts of diversity ofcers in many major media companies, an increasing number of journalism schools and programmes in the USA, Australia, the UK, and other countries have intensied their attention on minority students. Throughout the 1990s, many schools started including classes on diversity issues, founded student groups or hired minority faculty. While researchers have lamented the slow progress of multicultural journalism education at least in the USA (Kern-Foxworth and Miller, 1993), other scholars have presented more positive case studies, for example, of journalism education

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in The Netherlands, which has taken the contextualization of knowledge and social responsibilities of journalism students into account (Deuze, 2006, p.390). A focus on minority students alone will not be sufcient: the whole student body needs to be made aware of the importance of cultural diversity. Journalism and media education are crucial sites for changing routines and practices of journalists and media workers at a time when students are not yet socialised into established professional strategies. Journalism schools and media production programmes should turn away from basic skills education to a more reective theoretical evaluation of current professional strategies. Journalism education is a contested eld. The perceived importance of journalism for democracy and the impact of the media on society make it an area in which many groups invest considerable interest. For years, academic journalism educators have criticised media education for its undifferentiating advocacy of short-term industry expectations, its emphasis of technology over theory, its reliance on out-dated professional standards and its lack of pedagogical strategies such as critical thinking. Professional journalism schools usually have a strong connection to the media industry and traditionally support a skills-based educational model based on the simulation of how it is done in the industry. This has led many journalism schools to become high-tech institutions where pedagogical success is measured by how many non-linear editing stations, digital cameras, scanners or graphic terminals are available in a classroom. While it is important for students to learn the ins and outs of professional strategies, colleges should also be innovative training places. Journalism schools should allow students to develop critical and unusual creative solutions to a journalistic task. An assignment that allows them to develop an alternative newscast, or a newspaper section that has never been there before will make them aware of the constraints of the media and can also generate a critical perspective on current media representations of cultural diversity (see Fursich and Raman, 2000). Another important area for reforming journalistic and media practice is recent normative models of journalism based on humanistic values. Two important proposals in this respect

are Tehranians model of peace journalism (Tehranian, 2002), which includes an institutional and systematic ethical response to overcoming biases of international crisis reporting, and Shahs emancipatory journalism as a new model for media workers in developing nations. Shah has proposed a theoretical model that asks journalists locally to contribute to participatory democracy, security, peace, and other humanistic values (Shah, 1996, p.143). On similar lines to the subsequent US concept of public journalism, Shah advocated a recongured relationship between journalists, political elites and audiences. Free from government control, emancipatory journalists provide information that improves audiences ability to establish control over their immediate social conditions (p.160).

Media content
Since critique of representations often focuses on textual constraints, media content is a major aspect that needs to be questioned here. In my scholarship I have moved beyond providing evidence of problematic Othering to a more active approach to media change. By analysing media such as international travel programmes, business news, African Web sites and migration coverage, I have tried to go beyond the textual analyses of problematic representations to highlight moments in this coverage that seems to hint at new content strategies. I have developed these moments further into a more unied set of strategies that can be used by media workers and journalists to overcome the old predicaments. Simple solutions will not solve the problem. Media representations are often entrenched and predened ways of portraying Others. At times, representations may leave out whole populations simply by ignoring them or their viewpoints. In a media-saturated culture, this lack of attention means silencing a dilemma that cultural scholars call symbolic annihilation. Annihilation can also be a result of very limited or stereotypical portrayal of a group. At other times, representations essentialise Others as exotic, or even worse, as abnormal and even deviant. A common representational move to overcome outright stereotyping has been to counterstereotype, that is, to take a previously stereotyped minority and create media content that

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presents this minority in a positive light. The internationally successful US situation comedy, The Cosby Show, is an example of this strategy. However, as cultural scholars have pointed out, counter-stereotyping always runs the risk of indirectly referring back to the negative portrayal. Moreover, some of this coverage may come across as too didactical or even inauthentic (see Grey, 1995; Means Coleman, 2002). The cultural scholar Stuart Hall (1997) provides some suggestions for trying to contest a dominant regime of representation through trans-coding. His premise for the analysis of representation is the poststructural principle that meaning can never be nally xed (p.270). Trans-coding then can be used for taking an existing meaning and re-appropriating it for new meanings (p.270). However, Halls strategy is difcult to implement as an actual media strategy. It assumes that it is clear which representations are positive or negative, while in fact many media content producers have to make quick decisions about ambiguous representations. Also, Hall understands this strategy mostly as an audience-driven activity. I would argue that trans-coding can also be used for producing content. For instance, some important avenues for trans-coding might be story lines that open up representations and break stereotypes through the use of humour and exaggeration to present the dominant position in a new light (such as portraying Whiteness as ethnic, as opposed to constructing is as a latent and normalised category). Another approach to nding alternative, non-essentialising representational strategies is to examine whether there have been previous moments of transformations in media texts about the Other. This idea has been a central focus of my work. Based on the concepts of critical visual anthropology and postmodern theory, I developed three interrelated themes that are taken up in the following proposals for new journalistic strategies. Fixed media representations can be broken up by showing the production conditions of programmes; by providing space for other voices and by working toward a uid rather than static and xed production logic. The underlying idea is that despite limitations, the media in a global system do allow for some creative latitude even in a commercially driven environment. Most

examples are drawn from studies I have conducted over the years, especially of travel programmes. Most of the observations and strategies relate to television, but they can be easily adapted to other journalistic forms. Contextualising coverage. In order to open texts and representations, an important step for journalists and producers will be to contextualise coverage as much as possible. Individualisation and personalisation, as the typical strategies of Anglo-American journalism, often focus too narrowly on the individual case and lose track of wider systemic implications. While the personalised story of a migrant, for example, may be useful in illuminating a difcult life situation for mainstream audiences, it will not necessarily allow time to focus on the underlying global economic inequalities that generate migration. Also, when these ideas are applied to general media production, the trend towards specialisation and narrow casting may hinder the contextualisation of representations and limit the openness of media texts. Nevertheless, the latest developments in the digital media environment may offer interesting new solutions. An increasing number of print and broadcasting topics are now tied into online sites that offer, at least to interested audiences, important background material. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent audiences use these external materials. Verfremdung (alienation). In order to confront entrenched journalistic and aesthetic work routines that lead to negative representations, media workers have to be able to look to other artistic productions for new ideas. The German dramatist and playwright Bertolt Brecht developed the alienation effect for his epic theatre in the 1920s. He used theatrical devices such as a non-emotional acting style, unrealistic dialogue or anachronistic costumes to disturb the audiences emotional connection to the play, instead forcing them into an attitude of critical distance (Banham, 1995). Brecht favoured an antirepresentational style of theatre in which the audience should be prevented from identifying with the actors. He hoped to stimulate a rational critique of contemporary economic, political and social practices. The weight and effectiveness of these methods has been questioned with regard to the theatre. Also, postmodern critique challenged Brechts idea that rational critique will automatically lead to change.

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Nonetheless, television could effectively use Brechts method to problematise its practice. This strategy also relates to Nolley (1997) and other visual anthropologists preference for aesthetic strategies that break with viewers expectations. Verfremdung can break a journalistic narrative by displaying its production methods. This can be done directly by producers and journalists or indirectly through the selection of ambiguous scenes. The international travel shows I analysed, for example, already included small moments of Verfremdung, often more passively than Brechts active stage devices. The strongest cases of alienation occurred when locals did not play along. Many broadcast journalists would edit these aws, but by including them, these shows created a break in the narrative. For instance, a moment of probably involuntary Verfremdung was aired in the internationally popular travel programme Lonely Planets visit to Namibia. The host Andrew Datta strongly emphasised in his narration the remoteness of the part of Namibia (Ovamboland) he was in and of its tribes (Some tribes have never seen white people). At the village, the visit was framed like an anthropological contact. Through two translators Datta negotiated with the chief. Then he asked the chief what he thought about whites. The chief rmly pointed out that while it is clear to him that the whites are from beyond his area, he has learned how to cooperate: you are coming from very far for making a lot of money with this lm. Datta, abbergasted, could only answer with a funny grimace and the remark that it was not he who was making the money but rather them (pointing at the camera). Showing the poignant comments of the chief breaks the anthropological narrative that positioned this tribe (through images and voice-overs) as an uncivilised and less intelligent Other. Even Andrews condescending voice-over Back in civilisation which provides the transition into the next scene in a Namibian city, may become less effective as a consequence of this alienation. Postmodern play with representations. Critics of the postmodern aesthetic tend to condemn the postmodern trend to self-referentiality (that is, the media relating back to other media constructions) as an indication of superciality and simulated hyper-reality. However,

as an aesthetic principle it can help illuminate the constructedness of television productions that some visual anthropologists favour in their work as well. For example, tourism has always depended on the successful creation of images. Juxtaposing traditional images with uid hybrid images smashes the monolithic totality of those images. For example, in an episode on Hawaii, Rough Guide host Magenta de Vine pointed out a poster with a traditional looking Hawaiian beauty and compared this image to the contemporary situation of women on the islands, while the camera cut rapidly to images of modern Hawaiian women of diverse ethnic and class backgrounds. If programmes employed these types of strategy more aggressively, then travel journalism and international journalism in general could exemplify an open struggle over representation similar to that of Cliffords (1988) idea of exhibitions in multicultural junctures:
The relations of power whereby one position of humanity can select, value, and collect the pure products of others need to be criticised and transformed. This is no small task. In the meantime one can at least imagine shows [here exhibitions] that feature the impure, inauthentic productions of past and present tribal life; exhibitions radically heterogeneous in their global mix of styles; exhibitions that locate themselves in special multicultural junctures; exhibitions in which nature remains unnatural; exhibitions whose principles of incorporation are openly questionable. (Clifford, 1988, p. 213)

Play with representations can become a method of critique. Another level of selfreexivity that would help to open up the conditions of production (similar to some strategies of visual anthropology) is to invite the production crew into the scene. By showing the camera and the production staff, and through specic editing techniques, the constructedness of the shows and its representations could become more visible. Rough Guide, for example, revealed the production teams on several occasions; one of their promotional trailers referred to the camera and showed the camera team. Both anchors also carried a Hi-8 tourist video camera that they mostly used in transitions travelling from one location to another. With this camera they normally lmed each other and the shots are always on locations that, contrary to typical

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photo opportunities, appear to be boring, routine places (such as airports and stations). Seeing someone lming in a television programme tends to break the closed logic of the television screen as a window to the world. A similar effect is achieved when Rough Guide occasionally uses stand-up shots of the co-anchors in two or more versions including outtakes with slips of the tongue or other errors. Another step would be to illuminate production and research principles even further. For example, it would be important to know why the producers chose certain locations and how they chose certain locals as sources and interview partners. Again, new technology now makes these strategies very feasible for traditional news journalists as well. Journalists blogs that comment on the circumstances of latest assignments can full this role. Other voices. One of the most common suggestions to overcome the dominance of western media representations is to provide more space and time for other voices (Spurr, 1993). Therefore journalists need to develop creative ways of integrating the voices of others. To what degree does journalistic content reect the unequal power situation between lmmakers and subjects? Travel journalists and international correspondents always deal with Others (not only indigenous communities). Of course, the power of representing the Other is always on the side of the production team (those who hold the microphone or the camera); therefore producers should be conscious of the impact of these strategies. Most international journalism deals with people in crisis, which places them at an automatic disadvantage. One positive aspect of the travel shows I analysed was that they also provided images of Others as not just as victims, threats or exotic, unlike in most regular news reporting. At best, some of these programmes presented a wide variety of people and often juxtaposed different perspectives showing the Other as part of the social formations of contradictory and hybrid cultures. The interview situation in Rough Guide, however, was the only programme that named all interviewees and allowed them to speak in their native language or dialect with translations provided in subtitles. Relying on speakers of English as a second language or ad hoc translations, as other shows did, diminishes the impact of their statements.

Although struggling with language may sometimes reect the situation of actual tourists, in a television close-up it intensies the demeaning portrayal, denigrating the intellectual capabilities of locals. Speaking in front of a camera, even for native speakers, is an intimidating situation, and for others, in a language other than their mother tongue, it can be devastating. Another problem of television is that it has the inherent tendency to xate; its traditional logic of production and editing as well as its narrative structure forces closure (Dahlgren, 1995). However, the postmodern aesthetic exemplied by music videos (MTV) and others has opened up more exible and ambiguous modes of representation. Instead of packaging culture travel shows should embrace a more open unpacking of cultures, by displaying many different aspects of the country covered. By giving up the search for the typical and the authentic, one can hold the representation in suspense as Clifford suggests:
If all essentializing modes of thought must . . . be held in suspense, then we should attempt to think of cultures not as organically unied or traditionally continuous but rather as negotiated, present processes. (Clifford 1988, p.273)

The liminoid position of journalists. Strategies for opening representations seem to diminish the control of journalists and producers over a preferred reading of the text. In fact, this strategy can engage the journalist, the production, the system and the subject and object of journalism in the struggle of representation. This is contrary to the idea of the realist school of visual anthropology and experimental documentary work that producers interference should be avoided as much as possible in order to catch on lm what really happened (Rony, 1996, p.193). But the technical interference of video equipment and production requirements forces its logic on the nal lm even if (or perhaps especially when) it is invisible. Even more, the professional rules of television journalism always shape the programme. There cannot be an objective journalistic (or anthropological) perspective free from inuence by the respective producers; representations are always developed within a hegemonic cultural system. Yet travel journalism, like international journalism in general, places media practitioners

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in a special journalistic role outside their usual system of reference. In close direct contact with the Other, the intricacies of this existential moment should not be overlooked. Instead of retreating to a seemingly safe position of objective journalism, I suggest journalists should actively embrace an intermediate role. The anthropologist Victor Turner, in his work on rituals and pilgrimages, emphasises the liminoid situation of travels (Turner, 1969). Liminoid situations allow the challenging of status boundaries and role expectations and foster playfulness and moments of strong social bonding communitas (experiences). The idea of an actively liminoid journalism suggests that media practitioners use their position to challenge the traditional modes of journalistic representation. They should also enthusiastically integrate their own perspective into the programme. This is the only way for audiences and locals to understand the ideological point of reference of both journalists and journalism. In television programmes anchors are often presented without history, class, or ethnicity (except what may be deciphered from their use of colloquial English). Instead of just categorising Others, they need to be aware of their own position. Moreover, the liminoid stage extends from the travellers (travel journalists and international journalists) to the foreign people who are featured in a show: to be under the camera gaze is a complex situation. Most travel and international journalism pretends that the people in the host country are represented as they really are. But the subjects of travel and tourism (tourism workers and locals) as well as local sources of news reports, are performing in an extraordinary situation. Journalists can accept and depict this mutual out-of-place situation. Ultimately, I hope that a new journalism practiced in between can problematise its situation in the contact zone (Pratt 1992). It should become a model for all journalists, since all journalism represents. Recently, media scholar Simon Cottle (2007) has also taken up the call to acknowledge and bolster more politically productive representations of mainstream journalism (p.34). He analysed reports by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. As a public broadcaster the range of engagement by the Corporation is wider than that of the commercial cable shows I analysed. In particular, Cottle argued

that in recent coverage on societal Others such as migrants and Aboriginal people, Australian media were capable of producing representations that give voice to the voiceless and identity to image (p.34), noting, We need to be sensitised to the multiple ways in which words and talk, discourses and debate, claims and counter-claims publicly dene and defend interests and identities (p.37) He described ve procedures of deliberation and display as effective ways to undermine problematic representations and to avoid symbolic annihilation. Firstly, the journalist can become the champion of Others, giving them a voice by increasing preestablished modes of reporting on Others or widening the public debate on controversial issues. Secondly, the journalist can intervene more actively as a public interlocutor by countering established government policy-makers in interviews and undermining frames of coverage generated by ofcial policy-holders. Journalists thereby work on a more democratic exchange. Thirdly, Cottle also emphasised the importance of supporting and airing programmes that allow previously silenced Others to tell their side of the story. These programmes help humanise the lived experience of marginalised groups, thereby contributing to their mediatised recognition (p.35). Fourthly, the airing of memorials and ceremonial events of Others aided in informing mainstream audiences about the historic contingencies of current racial and ethnic divides. In his nal point, Cottle emphasised the importance of media reexivity (similarly to the previously mentioned self-reexivity) and stressed how this coverage can transform entrenched media representations:
[Journalists] can do so by eshing out that is, embodying and humanizing the status of former others, repositioning them inside the imagined social universe of collective care and politics and acknowledging their denied humanity. In such ways, others can become symbolically rehabilitated, past stereotypes can be fractured and identities repositioned as active subjects and not simply as the object of someone elses discourse. (p.35).

Media audiences
In order to truly sustain any efforts towards a more diverse media environment, it is important

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to integrate the audiences as important partners in these efforts. Three issues are of central importance: media literacy, access and creative audience activity. Media literacy is an important effort that aims at educating audiences to be more critical when consuming the media. In the USA, the media literacy movement seems to focus on K-12 education and the college level. Paradoxically, journalism schools as major institutions of media production still seem to be more or less unaffected by it. This may be a result of the specic version of media literacy popular in the USA, which constructs media literacy efforts mostly as an individual defence mechanism against media practices that appear unchangeable and permanent. However, as Lewis and Jhally (1998) argue, media literacy should be about helping people to become sophisticated citizens rather than sophisticated consumers (p.109). They explain how media literacy has to move beyond a simply text-centred deciphering of media messages to understanding aspects of production and reception. If one positions media literacy in this context, journalism and production students should be the rst to know about it. The interdisciplinary cultural studies movement is also an important factor in these media literacy efforts. Concepts such as hegemony, ideology, representation and cultural appropriation provide a vocabulary that can support a systematic critique of the normalising impact of mass media. Active audiences can independently decode problematic representations (see also McLaren et al. 1995). As Shohat and Stam (1994) argued, media products from non-western countries can, in particular, successfully be used to lead audiences away from Eurocentric representation to a polycentric multiculturalism (p.46). New technology, however, challenges traditional approaches to media literacy. No longer are media audiences simply recipients of media messages. They increasingly become participants and creators in a digital world. This development has started an important new approach to media literacy that integrates production and reception situations (Livingstone, 2004). Moreover, media literacy can easily be extended from individualistic pedagogical efforts to grassroots movements of critical media audiences who try to translate media criticism

into lobbying efforts and policy inuence. The last 15 years have seen an increasing number of movements across the globe engage critically with what they have seen as a limited media environment. These groups are now aided by the alternative networking strategies in the Internet. Some of these groups use email campaigns to inform politicians and media producers of their concerns. Others try to engage in media literacy efforts, raise awareness and develop proposals for cultural policy. Among the earliest groups was the now defunct Cultural Environmental Movement founded by US professor George Gerbner in 1990; more recent groups are the umbrella organisation Voices21 (Comunica, n.d.) and Communication Rights in the Information Society. This grassroots movement culminated in a two-part UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and 2005 (Padovani 2004) where more than 10,000 delegates debated issues of connectivity, development, and digital divide (p.158). This summit has been criticised for its vast variety of topics and proposals, for narrowly dening access in technological terms and for the untested assumption that new technology will overcome all given societal, economic and political constraints on cultural diversity (Hamelink 2004). However, one should not overlook the fact that all these efforts, from local grassroots movements to global conferences, will help to raise awareness and bring to a critical mass the concern over unfair media representation. Media access is another important factor of gauging diversity. Scholars often dene media access simply as an issue of access to media technology. Research on the digital divide, for example, has demonstrated the problems of unequal distribution and use of digital media within and across nations. When one considers that only a minority of the world population (fewer than 25 per cent) actually uses online media, the issue of access is undoubtedly still pressing. However, access also needs to be understood as an active concept of audience participation in the media. Changing video and audio technologies (equipment that is lighter, cheaper, easier to use) has opened up additional channels of communication. Indigenous people all over the world use the media (radio, television, audio and video and now also the Internet) to present and

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to preserve marginalised cultural practices (Kummels, 2010). Visual anthropologists have been using and researching these techniques in the eld for many years and theorised their problems (Ginsburg, 1991; Tomaselli, 1996). Moreover, Brown (1996) indicates how indigenous no longer just means tribal communities out there; cultural endangerment is often a problem at home (in the west). Awards and special grants successfully launched such alternative programming in various countries (Leuthold, 1996). In general, public-service broadcasting systems are more likely to take up these forms of indigenous presentation to add voices and full established mandates on diversity. Thus, the government of Canadas decision to instruct cable operators to carry the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network is an interesting example of representational recognition (Roth, 2000). The history, variety, impact and potential of community media across the world was succinctly explained in a recent book by Rennie (2006). Community media initiatives should be understood as an important partner in ensuring cultural diversity. Finally, the resourceful use of new technology by audiences is where some of the most encouraging ideas for breaking representation are developed. Some of my earlier work has emphasised that new technology does not automatically free us from often long-established dependencies on textual representations (Fursich and Robins 2002). However, it is encouraging to observe how contemporary globalising media technology is used by diasporic communities around the globe in original ways to create specic empowered hybrid mediascapes (Karim 2003). These interesting new usage patterns give us a glimpse into the potential media environments of the future. However, it will be up to communication scholars to evaluate whether the current trend towards digital, global but fragmented media use creates a more holistically mediated reality. At best, there will be new media platforms for diverse audiences to see themselves represented in their unique lived experiences, concerns and successes. At worst, the fragmentation of audiences will lead to tribalisation along demarcations of ethnic, religious, sexual or other cultural identities; these types of niche media may hinder a civic discourse that is considered vital for democracy.

Conclusion and recommendations

The global media industry is currently undergoing revolutionary changes. The rise of digital media has started to challenge traditional business models of the industry, undermined established work routines of media workers and changed the way audiences interact with the media. This is a perfect moment to reconsider some of the long-held assumptions and routines of media work, to interrogate problematic representations and to develop alternative strategies for media production. Overall, I have attempted to clarify the connection between cultural diversity and media, which is more complicated than often theorised. The representation of Others has been tied up in longestablished signifying practices that are slow to change because of systemic media constraints. My advice on transforming media representations entails a serious rethinking of media practice. However, I am hopeful that the current upheaval in the global media industries, in which many traditional models have become obsolete, is a golden moment for creative and pro-active rethinking by media critics and media practitioners alike. I also hope to have made it clear that issues of representation do not reside just within media content but must be connected to all aspects of media practices from more systemic issues such as the conditions of production and regulation, to the work routines of media workers and audience integration. Based on this review, I distil a set of recommendations that can inform actual policy recommendations for creating media systems that foster cultural diversity. If culture is understood as a dynamic process as opposed to static and essential, the media should be situated as institutions that allow for cultural development: as enablers and not simply as preservers of cultural diversity. Moreover, media policy and regulation aimed at securing cultural diversity need to be aware of the detrimental effect of censorship and restriction on expression of cultural diversity. As Magder (2004) pointed out:
Cultural diversity is enhanced when individuals can express themselves freely and receive forms of expression from the broadest possible range of sources, within and across frontiers. Public policy whether domestic or international should respect this principle, rst and foremost. (p.393)

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As this article has demonstrated, representation of Others in the media is not just a matter of content. All content is produced in a specic context of production and reception; all these communicative moments can be included in strategies for change. Measures that alter problematic media representations of Others need to be resourceful and creatively rethink many established routines of media workers. Not only must established media workers but also journalism and media educators and students be integrated in these efforts. In addition, media literacy for general audiences is an important correlate to efforts to trans-code problematic representations. Not all initiatives have to be new, but established alternatives to mainstream media representations such as community media and minority integration mandates typical for public broadcasters can inform future ideas of change. The new digital media environment has begun to offer new outlets for the creative integration of the voices of Others. Thus, providing access for traditionally underserved communities to new media technologies and production facilities is an important goal. However, given that most of the world population is not online, digital technology is limited in its potential to create an impact across the globe. Traditional media such as radio and print media continue to be important forums for cultural expression. Access should be understood not just as the opportunity to buy media technology but

also as direct access to producing content and other forms of programming participation that allow minorities to be heard. Despite the growing focus on globalisation, cultural diversity is a concept that relates to social issues within and across borders. Media strategies need to take into account many diverse situations. Strong solutions will be local and exible. Overall, this article advocates a soft approach. While new aesthetic and textual models for representing have to be found, successful strategies are likely to be subtle rather than radical and to present distinct approaches that work from within the contemporary economic and professional media structure. An important starting point is the critical analysis of currently used strategies that already break production conventions. At the end of this article, I want to highlight a predictable bias of communication scholars: We tend to understand the media not just as one but as the central impetus for societal developments. It should be noted that any strategies for improving the role that the media play in providing cultural diversity always have to be seen in a wider economic, social and geopolitical context. To put it bluntly, xing the media alone will not aid in establishing more just relations among diverse groups within and between societies. Cultural diversity is not just a communication or image problem; the lived experiences of various groups are based on actual social and economic injustices.

Notes
1. This overview presents mainly US approaches to mass communication research. Two reasons justify this selective re-telling of communications scholarship. Firstly, US scholarship has arguably been at the forefront of developing social scientic approaches to mass communication as a discipline, especially since the Second World War, and its results have been used in many other countries. Secondly, the main point here is to demonstrate the complicated history of empirically establishing media effects, and US scholarship provides a typical example.

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