News of the Other Tracing Identity in Scandinavian Constructions of the Eastern Baltic Region

News of the Other Tracing Identity in Scandinavian Constructions of the Eastern Baltic Region Kristina Riegert (ed.) NORDICOM News of the Other News of the Other Tracing Identity in Scandinavian Constructions of the Eastern Baltic Sea Region Kristina Riegert (ed.) NORDICOM News of the Other Tracing Identity in Scandinavian Constructions of the Eastern Baltic Sea Region Editor: Kristina Riegert Northern Perspectives 6 (Nordiska medieforskare reflekterar 6) Series editor: Ulla Carlsson © Editorial matters and selections, the editors; articles, individual contributors; Nordicom ISSN 1650-5131 ISBN 91-89471-26-1 Published by: Nordicom Göteborg University Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Cover by: Roger Palmqvist Cover Photo: © Joachim Koester. Photo taken from the series, The Kant Walk, C-print, 2003 Printed by: Grafikerna Livréna i Kungälv AB, Sweden, 2004 Contents Foreword 7 Kristina Riegert Introduction 9 I. Identity in a Globalizing World Ullamaija Kivikuru Identities. An Apparatus for Re-membering and Dis-membering 19 Jan Ekecrantz In Other Worlds. Mainstream Imagery of Eastern Neighbors 43 Kristina Riegert & Patrik Åker Knowing Me, Knowing You. Mediated Identities in the Eastern Baltic Sea Region 71 II. Mediated Definitions of the Other: Then and Now Madeleine Hurd Placing Good and Evil. Revolutionaries, Streets, and Carnival in German and Swedish Newspapers, 1918-1919 93 Kristina Riegert Swedish and Danish Television News of their Baltic Neighbors 1995–2000 125 Pentti Raittila Representations of Otherness in Finnish Culture. Media Images of Russians and Estonians 151 III. Mechanisms of Identity Anker Brink Lund The Mass-Mediated “We” in Danish Journalism 169 Patrik Åker Newspapers’ Picture of the World. The Domestic Family of Man 185 Merja Ellefson & Eva Kingsepp The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Stereotyping Russia, the Western Way 203 Maja Horst & Mette Lolk The Dramaturgical Need for Closure. Mass-Mediated Stories of Risk 223 The Authors 241 5 Foreword This book is the result of a multinational research project that has surveyed and analysed identity mechanisms in journalistic constructions of the Other over time and between different countries in the Baltic Sea Region. It deals not only with the ways in which news stories and images reflect the societies reported on, but more often than not with how such stories reflect the societies doing the reporting. The principle mechanism that accom- plishes this involves invoking various aspects of identity – local, regional, ethnic, national or transnational identities – to make unfamiliar societies familiar to the ‘ideal’ viewer. The project traces and compares the manner in which identity finds expression in Scandinavian television news coverage of their Eastern Baltic Sea neighbours after the end of the Cold War. Foreign news is one site where national identity mechanisms have been most manifest in the media, where a government’s actions represent the nation, acting and react- ing to events and issues on the international stage. However, in an increasingly globalized world, it is no longer a given that identity is national or local. The boundaries of identity are not static, but must be continuously negotiated and legitimized in different historical periods. Indeed, changes in popular perceptions of ‘national characteristics’, in what are considered key historical events or in who are defined as Others are typical responses to civil unrest, the collapse of multi-ethnic states, war or major changes in the international system. For this reason, it is important to study where and how the boundaries are drawn between Us and Others in times of transition. Let me conclude by thanking Dr. Kristina Riegert and all the contributors who have made this book possible. Thanks, also, to the Nordic Council of Ministers without whose financial support the book would never have seen the light of the day. The Nordic Council of Ministers prioritizes questions concerning identity and the multicultural society as well as questions concerning the relation between Scandinavia and the Baltic States. It is our hope that this book will be of value in increasing our understanding of identity and the media. Göteborg in November 2004 Ulla Carlsson Director Nordicom 7 Introduction Kristina Riegert As this book goes to press, celebrations are taking place all over Europe over the addition of ten mainly eastern European countries to the European Union.1 From Tallinn to Dublin, and from Berlin to Nicosia, May 1st, 2004 is said to be an historic day, the end of “fifty years of economic separation” between East and West. Aside from covering these joyous media events, many jour- nalists are taking this opportunity to introduce the new countries to audiences in the existing member states. The reports exude an enthusiasm typical of what Jan Ekecrantz calls “fertile meetings” between cultures, where increased trade, mutually beneficial contacts, and economic growth lead to hopes of a brighter future for all parties involved. It might well seem possible that the changes of the past fifteen years have now once and for all altered Cold War frameworks, Orientalist stereotypes, and the attendant spot news of threats and crises from the East. On the basis of the research presented in this volume, however, this is not very likely. Despite the fundamental changes that have been taking place in the Baltic Sea Region since 1989, Scandinavian media continue to depict our eastern Baltic neighbors as fundamentally different from us and “backward”, as the chapters in this book demonstrate. Thus, it may not be surprising to discover that such stereotypes are little different from those found in Swedish news coverage 80 years ago, long before 1989. Whether the Other is seen as threat- ening (as in the case of Russia) or simply lesser developed than we are (as in the case of Estonia) is perhaps less crucial than the fact that these countries are in fact our neighbors, and not distant places with which we’ve had little contact. While it is a truism that identities are distinguished by defining who “we” are in contrast to those we are not, there still is value in studying how our neighbors are “othered” by the media – that is, how they are defined as “those we are not”. We thereby not only learn about the presumptions of those actually doing the reporting (perhaps more than the events and people reported on); but we also chart the articulation and the legitimization of the boundaries of identity in these different countries, in different time pe- 9 KRISTINA RIEGERT riods, something which is not simply valuable as case material for the theo- retical explorations of the book, but which is interesting in itself. The focus in this volume is on describing, analyzing and comparing the manner in which identity is constructed in Scandinavian journalism from, and about, the Baltic Sea Region. We also attempt to demonstrate how political, social, and cultural contexts impinge on, interact with, and form the basis for these journalistic constructions. The underlying assumption here is that identity processes in modern societies are largely shaped by, through, or in relation to the media. The media provide the symbolic spaces for identity formation, they play a key role in the production and circulation of ideas, and they cultivate a community’s sense of itself through versions of a common “collective” memory. Especially in times of political change, the role of the media in the reconstitution of local, national, and transnational communities is a key site of investigation. While recognizing that collective identities can be local, ethnic, or pro- fessional, the focus for most of the chapters has been on national identity, simply because the nation-state has been intimately associated with the development of journalism. This does not mean that, in this increasingly globalized world, the identities the media purvey and cultivate are national only. Events and issues originating in a specific geographic place can be re- contextualized to cover broader national or international geographic spaces, as happens with international issues when they become part of local contexts (Becker, Ekecrantz and Olsson, 2000: 13). In fact, the permeability of these contexts is the rule, to the extent that it is seldom the case that local media are merely local, be it because of influences on format or content, or because of their being a part of regional or international conglomerates. In this way, changes in media routines, format, genre, and audiences cannot be discussed without taking the global media landscape into account (Hjarvard, 2000). Since globalization forms the backdrop to any study of the news media, several of the chapters deal with the interrelated concepts of universaliza- tion, domestication and Westernization, and how these relate to various news genres in the different countries. Among the dichotomies that recur most often in the globalization literature is that between, on the one hand, Anglo-Ameri- can cultural imperialism, which results in global homogenization of media content and formats, and, on the other hand, national/local “resistance” – either via the domestic framing of media content, or in audiences’ polysemic interpretations of media texts. While a number of examples of both sides of this dichotomy can be found in the pages that follow, the dichotomy itself is found to be too limiting. Globalization processes can also include the inter- action between both sides of this dichotomy, and a focus on just one side of globalization excludes the richness of the stratification of the local, regional, and international media flows. Ekecrantz finds, for example, that local news stories about Estonia differ radically from national news discourse, the former emphasizing people-to-people contacts, common projects and mutually beneficial cultural exchanges, whereas national news stories are more remi- 10 INTRODUCTION niscent of “the Western media’s stereotypical description of Other nations” in terms of the problems of “post-Communist” transition.

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