Page - 120 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Souley Hassane | Mainstream Media vs. Ethnic Minority Media 120 specific vision of the world, and in particular, facilitate the group’s presence in the media. Ethnic media transform readers, listeners and spectators into components of the media, into active sources of information, and most importantly, into constant recipients. The work of constructing a community readership and audience in a minority situation depends on the ability of the initiators to combine various ideological components of interest to the group. As a consequence, community, culture, religion and politics all mix in editorial policy making. In other words, a single magazine allocates space to the religious, political and ideological sensibilities of the community. This defining principle is similar to a large net which captures the diverse interests of a maximum number of people. A minority medium which addressed itself only to the “Shiites of the community”, or the “Tunisians of Marseille”, to the “natives of Djerba in Ile-de-France”, or the “Nigerians of Bordeaux”, the “Guyanan people of Lille” etc. would take as its starting point only a very restricted perspective. Thus, the need to interest a number of people as large as possible leads the minority media to deal with subjects that the mainstream media do not cover, and to give voice to people boycotted by the major public media. The Internet revolution has given a preponderant role to the media in the lives of its users. A site such as Oumma.com is a point of reference for the French and francophone ‘Muslim community’. When Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss specialist on Islam, was banned from the mass media in France, Oumma.com gave him coverage. Beur FM, Radio Orient de Paris and Radio Gazelle did the same with others ignored by the mainstream media. At this point, the question arises as to how the mainstream media’s opposition to the minority media is constructed. Which interests govern the mediatization of ‘Arabs’ and ‘blacks’ in France? In what way is this media coverage connected with the integration crisis involving these populations in France? How can the media landscape of minority media best be characterized? Can these media be automatically associated with communities residing in France? Is there a systematic oppositional relationship between these new media and the mainstream media? How far does the relationship between the two call integration (insofar as this means that the various parts of French society function better together) into question, especially for those whose familial origins lie beyond the borders? The representations of social groups often correspond to existing social configurations and correlate exactly to structures of established forms of domination. These are aggravated in France by its colonial history with an ideology based on racial hierarchy. This heritage intensifies the power of stereotypes on French populations from the former colonies and their descendents.