Page - 7 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

7 Rainer Geißler/Horst Pöttker Preface “Media, Migration, Integration – European and North American Perspectives” This was the title of a conference held at the University of Dortmund on June 21 and 22, 2007. The presentations and discussions from the conference are documented in this volume. The conference was part of a research project entitled “Media Integration of Ethnic Minorities in Germany, the U.S., and Canada”, a project undertaken by the Universities of Dortmund and Siegen in 2002, long before German politics and media began to heatedly debate the topic of integration. That project, in turn, was one element of a research unit located at the University of Siegen and sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG): “Media Upheavals, Media Cultures, and Media Aesthetics at the Beginning of the 20th and in Transition to the 21st Century” (Medien- umbrüche. Medienkulturen und Medienästhetik zu Beginn des 20. und im Übergang zum 21. Jahrhundert). In June 2004, the first conference within the context of the project “Media Integration” took place in Siegen. The papers presented at this conference were made accessible to a broader audience through their appearance in the volume “Integration durch Massenmedien. Mass Media Integration”, published by Transcript Verlag in 2006. The insights gained during the first phase of the research project were published in 2005 in a fundamental manual now recognized as a standard reference work in the field (Massenmedien und die Integration ethnischer Minderheiten in Deutschland. Problemaufriss – Forschungsstand – Bibliografie). Another volume presenting findings specific to the second phase of the project will follow in 2009. At the conference in Siegen in 2004, we were intrigued by the idea of bringing together, on the one hand, scholars concerned with the conditions and consequences of communication in the mass media and, on the other, media practitioners1. In this way we were able to explore both the opportu- nities and the risks of mass media communication for integration in societies attracting large numbers of immigrants. Even at that time, in addition to a number of participants from German universities and editorial staffs, speakers from Canada, the U.S., and the Netherlands also took part. 1 Rainer Geißler/Horst Pöttker (Hg.): Integration durcch Massenmedien/Mass Media Integration. Medien und Migration im internationalen Vergleich. Media and Migration: A Comparative Perspective. (Medienumbrüche, Bd. 17). Bielefeld: transcript 2006