1 Why Media Researchers Don't Care About Teletext
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1 Why Media Researchers Don’t Care About Teletext Hilde Van den Bulck & Hallvard Moe Abstract This chapter tackles the paradoxical observation that teletext in Europe can look back on a long and successful history but has attracted very little academic interest. The chapter suggests and discusses reasons why media and commu- nications researchers have paid so little attention to teletext and argue why we should not ignore it. To this end, it dissects the features of teletext, its history, and contextualizes these in a discussion of media research as a field. It first discusses institutional (sender) aspects of teletext, focusing on the perceived lack of attention to teletext from a political economic and policy analysis perspective. Next, the chapter looks at the characteristics of teletext content (message) and reasons why this failed to attract the attention of scholars from a journalism studies and a methodological perspective. Finally, it discusses issues relating to the uses of teletext (receivers), reflecting on the discrepancy between the large numbers of teletext users and the lack of scholarly attention from traditions such as effect research and audience studies. Throughout, the chapter points to instances in the development of teletext that constitute so- called pre-echoes of debates that are considered pressing today. These issues are illustrated throughout with the case of the first (est.1974) and, for a long time, leading teletext service Ceefax of the BBC and the wider development of teletext in the UK. Keywords: teletext, communication studies, research gaps, media history, Ceefax, BBC Introduction When we first started thinking about a book on teletext, a medium that has been very much part of people’s everyday lives across Europe for over forty years, we were surprised by the lack of scholarly attention or even interest. We could find very few studies or even general reflections on the medium, and asking colleagues about their knowledge of work on teletext not only confirmed the lack of interest but created disbelief (and even laughter) at our interest in 15 T H E N O R D I C I N F O R M A T I O N C E N T E R F O R M E D I A A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N R E S E A R C H Nordicom Provides Information about Media and Communication Research Nordicom’s overriding goal and purpose is to make the media and communication research undertaken in the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – known, both throughout and far beyond our part of the world. Toward this end we use a variety of channels to reach researchers, students, decision-makers, media practitioners, journalists, information officers, teachers, and interested members of the general public. Nordicom works to establish and strengthen links between the Nordic research community and colleagues in all parts of the world, both through information and by linking individual researchers, research groups and institutions. Nordicom documents media trends in the Nordic countries. Our joint Nordic information service addresses users throughout our region, in Europe and further afield. The production of comparative media statistics forms the core of this service. Nordicom has been commissioned by UNESCO and the Swedish Government to operate The Unesco International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media, whose aim it is to keep users around the world abreast of current research findings and insights in this area. An institution of the Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordicom operates at both national and regional levels. National Nordicom documentation centres are attached to the universities in Aarhus, Denmark; Tampere, Finland; Reykjavik, Iceland; Bergen, Norway; and Göteborg, Sweden. NORDICOM Göteborg University, Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg Phone: +46 31 773 10 00 (vx) Fax: +46 31 773 46 55 E-mail: [email protected] Medierne, minoriteterne, og det multikulturelle samfund. Skandinaviske perspektiver Nordiska medieforskare reflekterar 3 ISSN 1650-5131 ISBN 91-89471-16-4 Publicerad av NORDICOM Göteborgs universitet Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Redaktör: Thomas Tufte ©2003 NORDICOM, Göteborgs universitet Omslag: Roger Palmqvist Tryck: Grafikerna Livréna i Kungälv AB, Sweden, 2003 CONTENTS Contents Preface 7 Introduction Thomas Tufte 9 I THE DISCOURSES OF ETHNICITY Etnicitet og mediernes skildring af de etniske minoriteter. Et antropologisk perspektiv Peter Hervik 23 Oplysninger til danskerne om samfundet Flemming Røgilds 39 II REPRESENTATION IN THE MEDIA OF AND BY ETHNIC MINORITIES Den mystiska kulturkrocken. ”Invandrarkillen” och ”invandrartjejen” i mediehändelsernas mitt Ylva Brune 49 The Long Distance Runner and Discourses on Europe’s Others. Ethnic Minority Representation in Feature Stories Elisabeth Eide 77 Media Representation of Ethnicity & the Institutional Discourse Mustafa Hussain 115 Hvordan lyder en kultur? Musikalsk (selv)iscenesættelse i det offentlige rum og dets betydning for relationen mellem gruppe og individ Eva Fock 133 III USES OF MEDIA AMONGST ETHNIC MINORITIES Tv-nyheder fra hjemlandet – integration eller ghettoisering? Om transnationalisme og nyhedsforbrug Connie Carøe Christiansen 157 Minority Youth, Media Uses and Identity Struggle. The Role of the Media in the Production of Locality Thomas Tufte 181 5 CONTENTS Being a Computer User. What Does that Mean? A Discussion About Young People’s Talk About Computers and Themselves Ingunn Hagen 197 IV INTERNET USES FOR THE CULTIVATION OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY, FOCUSING ON ISLAM Svenska cybermuslimska miljöer i början av det 21 århundradet Göran Larsson 227 Danmarks Forenede Cybermuslimer og italesættelsen af islam Jørgen Bæk Simonsen 241 The Authors 255 6 TITLE Preface This book project grew out of the Scandinavian seminar ‘The Media, The Minorities and The Multicultural Society,’ which I organized at Magleaas Kursuscenter, Denmark, in April 2001. It included about 25 Scandinavian scholars working within this field, and was held in the context of the re- search project ‘Global Media Cultures’ hosted at the Department of Media Studies at University of Copenhagen and coordinated by Stig Hjarvard. ‘Glo- bal Media Cultures’ has generously contributed to the publication of this book. I would especially like to thank NORDICOM, not least Ulla Carlsson, for taking on this book project, providing constructive feedback during the editorial process and for NORDICOM bearing the bulk of the financial costs. Mention should be made of the period in which this book was written. In the year and a half during which it materialized, a range of major events took place, in particular those of September 11 2001 and the subsequent ‘war against terrorism’. These events, the media coverage of them and peo- ple’s mediated ways of experiencing them, have only underlined the neces- sity of critically and continuously assessing the role of the media, in terms of how they represent conflicts, tensions and change in society, as well as how they articulate sentiments and action. How do the media contribute to the way we understand the world we live in and the people we live among? Hopefully, you will find such issues reflected upon in this book. Copenhagen in December, 2002 Thomas Tufte 7 INTRODUCTION Introduction Thomas Tufte This book is about belonging. It analyses media uses, media representation, globalization and cultural change. But fundamentally, it is a book about identity politics and practices of the Scandinavian societies and people. One of the largest challenges the Scandinavian societies have been strug- gling with during recent years is how to respond – politically, socially and culturally – to the growing number of immigrants and refugees, and their descendants, in societies traditionally conceived of as culturally rather ho- mogeneous. So, in some sense, this book is a story of identity formation – of identifying and analysing some of the conditions and characteristics upon which the citizens of Denmark, Norway and Sweden negotiate and con- struct their histories, identities, social orders and cultural practices, as well as their ontological securities. The relative newcomers in the Scandinavian societies have many origins, be they immigrants or refugees. Many immigrants from Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan and India arrived in the late 1960s and onwards, invited by Scandinavian welfare states to take jobs in industry and partly in the service sectors. Other newcomers were increasingly refugees fleeing from the Viet- nam war, the Latin American dictatorships, the Lebanese war and the Mid- dle East Conflict around Israel/Palestine, the Iranian fundamentalist regime, the conflicts between Iran-Iraq, the Gulf Wars, the Kurds fleeing the conflictuous struggle for a free Kurdistan, the ethnic conflicts and starvation in Somalia and the disintegration of the Balkan countries. These are just some of the main origins of people who have been granted asylum in Scandinavia, where many have settled down, become citizens, and today have children and grandchildren in their new homes and countries. This process of both refugees and immigrants arriving in Scandinavian countries, and many staying on, settling down in Norway, Denmark or Sweden, has of course appeared recurrently in the media and received political and public attention – however not with the volume and intensity seen in the 1990s and particularly in the past few years. Considering the past year, the period in which this book has materialized, there has been a 9 THOMAS TUFTE broad range of events tightly linked to this complex of problems in one way or another – events that bring the issue of ethnic minority rights to the forefront. • First and foremost, the 11 September 2001 and the subsequent ‘war against terrorism’, launched by US President George W. Bush. It has impacted tremendously on the representations and perceptions of es- pecially Arab Muslims, particularly in the Western world. The concept of terrorism has gained new and much broader meanings and facilitated unprecedented forms and means of control with particularly ‘suspicious persons’ not just in the US, but also in the Scandinavian countries.