Research Article Open Access

"Let's Go Down, and There Confuse Their Language, That They May Not Understand One Another's Speech1:? Developing A Model For Comparative Analysis And Normative Assessment of Minority Media Rights

Abstract

The media have traditionally been assigned a role in creating a unified national identity, a process that has often come at the expense of recognizing the distinct identities of minority groups. Dramatic geopolitical changes and increased awareness of human rights in recent years, however, have focused attention around the world on the need to institutionalize media services designed to preserve the cultural rights of minorities, and a growing number of democratic societies have, at least in ideal, shifted away from uniform national identity to pluralistic consensus in order to maximize participation by diverse groups. These needs have been addressed in various ways in different countries and have been the focus of growing academic interest. This study offers a unified conceptual model for assessing the effectiveness of policies that aim to enhance minority representation and voice in national media systems, and tests the model on a “convenience sample” of nations self-defined as democratic. It creates a generalized model that allows comparing different policies using a common definitional context, and it examines these policies and how they measure up to ideal standards of discourse.

Amit M. Schejter, Juraj Kittler, Ming Kuok Lim, Aziz Douai, Murali Balaji