Page - 31 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Rainer Geißler/Sonja Weber-Menges | Media Reception and Ideas on Media Integration 31 exclusively oriented to the original culture. In extreme cases, they contain no information at all about Germany, nor do they provide assistance in dealing with integration problems in the society at large. Typical media-segregated audiences are, for example, Turks who live in Germany and exclusively watch Turkish television programs or read Turkish newspapers that were made in Turkey for the Turkish population there. In the German media system, ethnic minorities are less apparent as producers than as consumers. As far as media content is concerned, they are thematized relatively rarely and, if so, as ‘foreigners’, as people who don’t belong. Their representation is distorted in a negative way. They are dealt with, e.g., as ‘problem groups’, as groups that live in Germany but tend to pose problems for society more than anything else. 1.2.2 Assimilative Media Integration The opposite pole of media segregation is assimilative media integration. Here, at the level of social structures ethnic minorities are ‘institutionally’ integrated, i.e., they are appropriately represented in the functionally significant institution of the mass media – as journalists, managers, controlling authorities (e.g. on television boards) or as proprietors. Since the assimilative model presumes that ethnic minorities are also ‘adapted’ in socio-cultural respects, such minorities no longer represent any ethnically specific problems or interests in the German media system. There is no ethnically specific coverage in the mass media since the ethnic minorities no longer exist as socio-culturally specific groups. They have been fully absorbed and assimilated into the diversity of the German majority culture – with respect to cognitive, social, and identity models (see above). There are no distinct ethnic segments of the public sphere because there are no ethno-media and because the ethnic minorities use German media in patterns similar to those of the Germans themselves (e.g., dependent on their level of education). It is obvious that both of the models outlined so far only relate to very limited sections of the real mass media situation in Germany as a country attracting immigrants. They are not useful as normative models that would contain desirable goals. Media segregation prevents the desirable integration of ethnic minorities, and assimilative media integration is at odds with the mental disposition of a large number of migrants who do not wish to break all bonds with their homelands. Apparently, the integrative requirements of the accommodating society and the specific socio-cultural needs of the migrants can best be brought into an appropriate balance with the third model.