European Journal of Cultural
Studies
http://ecs.sagepub.com
Security, media and multicultural citizenship: A collaborative ethnography
Marie Gillespie
European Journal of Cultural Studies 2007; 10; 275
DOI: 10.1177/1367549407080731
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://ecs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/3/275
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Citations http://ecs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/10/3/275
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3ECURITY MEDIA AND
MULTICULTURAL CITIZENSHIP
! COLLABORATIVE ETHNOGRAPHY
-ARIE 'ILLESPIE
/PEN 5NIVERSITY
@ARSQ@BS 4HIS SPECIAL ISSUE REPORTS ON A COLLABORATIVE 5+ RESEARCH
PROJECT WHICH EXAMINED HOW NEW SECURITY CHALLENGES ARE CONSTITUTED IN
THE INTERSECTING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN POLITICAL AND MILITARY ACTORS NEWS
PRODUCERS NEWS REPRESENTATIONS AND DISCOURSES AND NEWS AUDIENCES 4HIS
ARTICLE INTRODUCES THE ETHNOGRAPHIC REPORTS WHICH FOLLOW AND DESCRIBES THE
THEORETICAL PREMISES AND METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGIES OF THE RESEARCH )T OUTLINES
AN INNOVATIVE MULTI DISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGY n @)NTEGRATED -ULTIDISCIPLINARY
-EDIA !NALYSIS n WHICH INTEGRATES #OLLABORATIVE -EDIA %THNOGRAPHY A NOVEL
METHOD IN ITSELF WITH INSTITUTIONAL AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS 4HIS COMBINATION
OF MUTUALLY INFORMING APPROACHES AFFORDS UNIQUE INSIGHTS INTO SOCIAL AND
CULTURAL PROCESSES 4HE RESEARCH PROCESS BEGAN WITH EXPLORATIONS OF HOW PUBLIC
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF SECURITY ISSUES RELATE TO AND ARE SHAPED BY
EVERYDAY CULTURES OF MEDIA PRACTICE THE SUBJECT OF THE FOLLOWING REPORTS
#OMBINED WITH THE FINDINGS OF RESEARCHERS INVESTIGATING THE PERCEPTIONS
AND WORKING PRACTICES OF SECURITY POLICY AND MEDIA PROFESSIONALS AND
OTHERS WORKING ON THE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SALIENT NEWS BROADCASTS OUR STUDY
REACHES THREE MAIN CONCLUSIONS &IRST THAT RITUALIZED INTERACTIONS BETWEEN
POLICYMAKERS JOURNALISTS AND @CITIZEN AUDIENCES CONSTITUTE THE MEDIAnSECURITY
NEXUS AS A @BATTLESPACE OF MUTUAL DISRESPECT AND SUSPICION 3ECOND THAT THIS
EXACERBATES THE MARGINALIZATION AND RACIALIZATION OF MANY ETHNIC MINORITY
GROUPS BUT IN PARTICULAR "RITISH -USLIMS WHO FACE DECLINING PROSPECTS FOR
MULTICULTURAL CITIZENSHIP 4HIRD THAT SECURITY POLICYMAKERS MUST STRUGGLE
TO FIND PUBLIC LEGITIMACY IN VIEW OF THE GROWING SCEPTICISM AND HOSTILITY OF
NATIONAL AND DIASPORIC NEWS MEDIA AND AUDIENCES
JDXVNQCR CITIZENSHIP COLLABORATIVE ETHNOGRAPHY )RAQ 7AR
MULTICULTURALISM NEWS MEDIA CULTURES RACIALIZATION SECURITY @7AR ON 4ERROR
)NTRODUCTION
/UR RESEARCH PROJECT @3HIFTING 3ECURITIES .EWS #ULTURES BEFORE AND
AFTER THE )RAQ 7AR FORMED PART OF A RESEARCH PROGRAMME FUNDED BY
THE 5+S %CONOMIC AND 3OCIAL 2ESEARCH #OUNCIL %32# ON THE THEME
HMSQNCTBSHNM
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
.EW #HALLENGES TO 3ECURITY %32# AWARD NUMBER nn &ULL
PROJECT DETAILS CAN BE FOUND AT WWWMEDIATINGSECURITYCOM 4HE @3HIFT
ING 3ECURITIES PROJECT BUILT UPON PREVIOUS ANALYSIS OF NEWS COVERAGE OF
THE 3EPTEMBER ATTACKS IN THE 53! AND RECEPTION OF THE COVERAGE
AMONG TRANSNATIONAL AUDIENCES IN THE 5+ IN THE THREE MONTHS FOLLOWING
THESE EVENTS 'ILLESPIE A //- 4HAT SNAPSHOT STUDY
WAS EXTENDED IN THIS PROJECT WHICH TRACKED @SHIFTING SECURITIES AMONG
DIVERSE AUDIENCE GROUPS OVER MONTHS !PRIL TO -ARCH WHILE
INVESTIGATING TEXTUAL AND INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSIONS OF MEDIA PRODUCTION
4HIS ARTICLE INTRODUCES SELECTED REPORTS BY ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCHERS ON
THE ARTICULATIONS OF SECURITY ISSUES MEDIA USES AND PERCEPTIONS AND RELATED
SOCIAL CULTURAL AND POLITICAL CONCERNS AMONG DIVERSE AUDIENCES IN THE 5+
PARTICULARLY MINORITY ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUPS 4HE FOCUS OF THIS ARTICLE
IS ON THE METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE RESEARCH
! KEY AIM OF THE STUDY WAS TO PIONEER )NTEGRATED -ULTIDISCIPLINARY -EDIA
!NALYSIS )--! AS AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF MEDIATED POLITICAL
AND POLICY COMMUNICATION USING AN INTEGRATED METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN
WHICH ARTICULATES ANALYSES OF MEDIA PRODUCTION MEDIA TEXTS AND MEDIA
RECEPTION 4HE EVENTS AND ISSUES ADDRESSED HERE n THE INTERSECTIONS OF
NATIONAL INTERNATIONAL LOCAL AND GLOBAL SECURITY POLICY AND ITS IMPACTS
QUESTIONS OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY CITIZENSHIP SOCIAL COHESION
CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND INTEGRATION n ARE OF GREAT AND WIDE INTEREST &OR
US AS RESEARCHERS HOWEVER THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL INTEGRATION OF A
MULTIDISCIPLINARY METHOD APPLICABLE IN PRINCIPLE TO ANY TOPIC OF POLITICS
AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS HAS BEEN OF PARAMOUNT SIGNIFICANCE (OW RESEARCH IS
CONDUCTED MUST BE CONNECTED TO WHAT THE RESEARCH FINDS
4HREE RESEARCH TEAMS @3TRANDS WORKED TO A CO ORDINATED TIMETABLE
REGULARLY UPDATING ONE ANOTHER ON RESEARCH FINDINGS AND RE CALIBRATING
APPROACHES TO MAXIMIZE CONSISTENCY AND MUTUAL ILLUMINATION 3TRAND !
DEVELOPED THE METHODOLOGY OF @COLLABORATIVE MEDIA ETHNOGRAPHY PION
EERED IN THE 3EPTEMBER PROJECT ! MIX OF INTERVIEWS AND PARTICIPANT
OBSERVATION ENABLED US TO EXAMINE DIVERSE GROUPS CULTURES OF NEWS MEDIA
PRACTICE IN DEPTH AND DETAIL OVER TIME AND ACROSS PLACES 4HE INITIAL AIM
WAS TO ANALYSE THE IMPACT OF THE )RAQ 7AR ON CONCEPTS AND PERCEP
TIONS OF SECURITY IN 5+ CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE INCREASING DIVERSITY
OF NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL NEWS SOURCES AND AUDIENCES AND GROWING
CONCERNS ABOUT SOCIAL COHESION AND MULTICULTURAL CITIZENSHIP %THNOGRAPHY
AS DISTINCT FROM INTERVIEW METHODS LETS US TRACK DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WHAT
PEOPLE SAY AND WHAT THEY DO AND GIVES CLUES AS TO WHY THEY MIGHT SPEAK
AND ACT AS THEY DO 4HE MAJORITY OF INTERVIEWEES WERE KNOWN TO INTERVIEW
ERS FROM PREVIOUS QUALITATIVE SOCIAL RESEARCH PROJECTS ANDOR OTHER SOCIAL
RELATIONS RESEARCHERS DEPLOYED A VARIETY OF METHODS TO ELICIT SPONTANEOUS
SELF REVEALING SPEECH AND TO OBSERVE EVERYDAY MEDIA PRACTICES "ETWEEN
3EPTEMBER AND -ARCH SEMI STRUCTURED INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP
INTERVIEWS OF UP TO TWO HOURS WERE CARRIED OUT WITH PEOPLE IN CITIES
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
ACROSS THE 5+ AND THE 2EPUBLIC OF )RELAND 7E GATHERED MUCH COMPARATIVE
DATA ACROSS TIME n MANY PEOPLE WERE INTERVIEWED SEVERAL TIMES EG BOTH
BEFORE AND AFTER THE ,ONDON BOMBINGS OF *ULY n AS WELL AS ACROSS
DIFFERENT PLACES AND SOCIAL SPACES )NTERVIEWS WERE MAINLY CONDUCTED IN
%NGLISH BUT SOMETIMES IN TWO OR EVEN THREE LANGUAGES !RABIC 5RDU
0UNJABI (INDI 3YLHETI "ENGALI &RENCH )NTERVIEW DATA WAS SUPPLEMENTED
WITH CO VIEWING AND OBSERVATIONAL DATA SEE REPORTS AND PRELIMINARY
ANALYSES ON WEBSITE !T SEVERAL POINTS IN THE COURSE OF THE RESEARCH IMAGES
STILL AND MOVING WERE USED TO PROMPT RESPONSES AND TO TEST HYPOTHESES
ABOUT THE RELATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF IMAGES OVER VERBAL OR WRITTEN NARRATIVES
OF EVENTS IN SHAPING RESPONSES 4HESE IMAGES WERE SELECTED ON THE BASIS
OF INPUT FROM 3TRANDS " AND #
3TRAND " CONDUCTED TEXTUAL AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF NEWS PROGRAMMES
)T EXAMINED THE CONTENT OF MAINSTREAM %NGLISH LANGUAGE TELEVISION
AND INTERNET NEWS COVERAGE OF SELECTED @SECURITY SALIENT NEWS EVENTS AND
ANALYSED PATTERNS IN THE FRAMING OF POST #OLD 7AR DISCOURSES OF NATIONAL
AND INTERNATIONAL AS WELL AS SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY (OSKINS
AND /,OUGHLIN
3TRAND # CONDUCTED INTERVIEWS AND FOCUS GROUPS WITH SECURITY AND
MEDIA PROFESSIONALS IN ORDER TO DRAW OUT THEIR UNDERSTANDINGS OF THEIR ROLES
IN THE DEVELOPMENT EXECUTION MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND REPORTING OF SECUR
ITY POLICY HENCE TO EXAMINE THE ACTUAL AND PERCEIVED INFLUENCE OF SECURITY
PRACTITIONERS INCLUDING MILITARY PERSONNEL AS WELL AS DIVERSE @EXPERTS ON
THE CONTENT OF NEWS PROGRAMMES AND ON THE SECURING OF PUBLIC LEGITIMACY
FOR SECURITY POLICY AND AS IT EMERGED THEIR PERCEPTIONS OF THE DANGER TO
THE LIVES OF MILITARY PERSONNEL ENSUING FROM NEGATIVE REPORTING -ICHALSKI
AND 'OW
&INDINGS FROM EACH OF THE THREE STRANDS OF RESEARCH FED INTO THE OTHERS
ON AN ONGOING CO ORDINATED BASIS VIA VIRTUAL AND @REAL LIFE PROJECT MEET
INGS WEBSITE POSTINGS AND EMAILS 7HEN 3TRAND ! RESEARCHERS NOTED THAT
@CITIZEN AUDIENCE GROUPS WERE DISTURBED BY A CERTAIN FEATURE OF COVERAGE
OR WHEN 3TRAND # RESEARCHERS NOTED THAT SECURITY PROFESSIONALS WERE
CONCERNED THAT CERTAIN IMAGES CARRIED MESSAGES WHICH THREATENED THE
LEGITIMACY OF THEIR POLICIES OTHER RESEARCHERS WERE ASKED TO EXPLORE
THESE POINTS ,IKEWISE 3TRAND " RESEARCHERS ASKED THE ETHNOGRAPHERS TO
TEST HYPOTHESES CONCERNING RELATIONS BETWEEN NEWS PRESENTATION FORMATS
AND PERCEPTIONS OF SECURITY ISSUES !N EXAMPLE OF SUCH MUTUAL AGENDA
SHAPING IS PRESENTED IN THE @)NTEGRATED -ULTIDISCIPLINARY -EDIA !NALYSIS
CASE STUDY SUBSECTION BELOW
4HIS SPECIAL ISSUE OF %*#3 PRESENTS REPORTS FROM 3TRAND ! 4HE MAJORITY
OF 3TRAND ! INTERVIEWEES ARE MEMBERS OF ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE 5+
AND MOST ARE -USLIMS (OWEVER THE STUDY WAS EVENTS LED NOT STRUCTURED
AROUND ETHNICITY %THNICITY POLITICS SECURITY CULTURE AND CITIZENSHIP WERE
NOT TREATED AS A PRIORI CONCEPTS 2ATHER THE AIM WAS TO SEE HOW PARTICULAR
EVENTS ACTIVATED AND MOBILIZED THESE CATEGORIES AND TO ASSESS THEIR DYNAMIC
INTERPLAY IN PEOPLES TALK
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
4HE SECOND PART OF THIS INTRODUCTION @4HEORETICAL FRAMINGS PRESENTS
THEORETICAL ISSUES )T ARGUES THAT LEGITIMACY IS THE CRUCIAL CONCEPT FOR UNDER
STANDING AND ASSESSING THE MEDIATED RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN POLICYMAKERS
AND PUBLICS AND THE HEALTH OR OTHERWISE OF DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES OF DE
LIBERATION AND PARTICIPATORY CITIZENSHIP IN MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES @4OP
DOWN GOVERNMENTALITY AND SECURITY POLICY ORIENTED APPROACHES CAN
AND SHOULD BE COMBINED WITH @BOTTOM UP SOCIALLY BASED CULTURALLY
INFORMED CONSTRUCTIONIST APPROACHES TO THE EVERYDAY POLITICS OF SECURITY
!NTHROPOLOGICAL AND #ULTURAL 3TUDIES APPROACHES HAVE MUCH TO OFFER
3ECURITY 3TUDIES IN 0OLITICS AND )NTERNATIONAL 2ELATIONS 3OME OF THE
MOST GENERAL FINDINGS OF THE PROJECT ARE ALSO OUTLINED HERE 4HE THIRD
PART @-ETHODOLOGY COLLABORATIVE MEDIA ETHNOGRAPHY WITHIN )--!
ADDRESSES METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN MORE DETAIL IN PARTICULAR ISSUES RELAT
ING TO OUR SAMPLE AND THE SOCIAL PROFILE OF OUR INTERLOCUTORS 4HE FOURTH
PART @4HE ARTICLES INTRODUCES THE INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES WHICH FOLLOW
4HEORETICAL FRAMINGS
3ECURITY DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP A GOVERNMENTALITY
PERSPECTIVE
4HE DECISION BY THE 53! AND 5+ GOVERNMENTS TO GO TO WAR ON )RAQ IN
CREATED DEEP RIFTS IN PUBLIC OPINION ACROSS THE WORLD )N THE 5+ IT RUPTURED
LONG ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN POLITICIANS JOURNALISTS AND PUBLICS
/NE MILLION PROTESTERS IN ,ONDON ON &EBRUARY n ONE OF THE BIGGEST
DEMONSTRATIONS EVER TO TAKE PLACE IN THE 5+ n DID NOT DISSUADE 0RIME -IN
ISTER "LAIR AND 0RESIDENT "USH FROM THEIR CHOSEN COURSE 4HE IMPLICATIONS
OF OUR FINDINGS FOR POLITICAL LEGITIMACY ARE DISCUSSED IN DETAIL ELSEWHERE
'ILLESPIE B
'OVERNMENTS DEPEND ON PUBLIC TRUST BUT FOR THE 5+ GOVERNMENT TRUST
IS IN INCREASINGLY SHORT SUPPLY NOT LEAST BECAUSE OF THE WAY IT PRESENTED
THE CASE FOR WAR AND THE DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES SINCE FOR THE PEOPLE
OF )RAQ AND FOR GLOBAL SECURITY 'OW 0OWER #OMMISSION
4HE FRAGILE LEGITIMACY OF THE )RAQ 7AR HAS EXPOSED SOME OF THE INHERENT
WEAKNESSES OF SECURITY POLICIES GENERATED BY THE 53!5+ DECLARED @GLOBAL
WAR ON TERROR FOLLOWING #ONTRARY TO WIDESPREAD ASSUMPTIONS
DID NOT RADICALLY CHANGE THE RATIONALE OF SECURITY POLICY BUT ACCELERATED
THE ADOPTION OF A NEW PREVENTATIVE PARADIGM WHICH HAD BEEN EMERG
ING DURING THE S 4RANSNATIONAL SECURITY THREATS SUCH AS TERRORISM
PANDEMICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE ALONGSIDE PATTERNS OF GLOBAL
MIGRATION HAD TRIGGERED NEW PARADIGMS OF GOVERNANCE BASED ON ATTEMPTS
TO REGULATE RISKY FLOWS n FLOWS OF MIGRANTS MICROBES DIRTY MONEY AND
NUCLEAR MATERIALS "AUMAN #OOPER 3ASSEN
4HIS ALTERED THE CALCULUS OF RISK FOR GOVERNMENTS FROM A MEASURABLE
PROBABILISTIC CONCEPTION OF RISK TO NOTIONS OF CATASTROPHIC RISK IN WHICH
UNKNOWN THREATS EMERGE IN UNFORESEEABLE WAYS )N THE FACE OF GLOBAL
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
WARMING TERRORISM HEALTH PANDEMICS AND FINANCIAL CONTAGION A NEW
GENERATION OF POLICIES WAS ADOPTED BASED ON PRINCIPLES OF PREVENTION
PRECAUTION AND PRE EMPTION
4HIS NEW CONCEPTION OF RISK AND AN EVER EXPANDING CONCEPTION OF
SECURITY HAVE SERVED THE INTERESTS OF GOVERNMENTS AND MEDIA THOUGH THEIR
DISADVANTAGES HAVE BY NOW BECOME APPARENT 'OVERNMENTS INCREASINGLY
@SELL SECURITY AS A VIRTUAL COMMODITY TO CITIZENS ALTHOUGH IN THE 5+ AT
LEAST THIS STRATEGY HAS ONLY LED TO GROWING SCEPTICISM AND CYNICISM ,IKE
WISE THE MEDIA INDUSTRY REQUIRES CONSTANTLY RENEWED THREATS RISKS
AND INSECURITIES TO SUSTAIN ITSELF "UT ITS CREDIBILITY IS EQUALLY IN DOUBT AS
SENSATIONAL IMAGES APPEAR TO DRIVE THE NEWS AGENDA IMMEDIACY RULES OVER
CONTENT @BREAKING RUMOUR AND SPECULATION REPLACE FACTS AND EVIDENCE AND
THE & FORMULA PREVAILS @FIRST FASTEST BUT FLAWED 'OWING
)T WOULD BE A MISTAKE TO DISMISS THE SERIOUSNESS OF REAL THREATS AND
RISKS 'OVERNMENTS HAVE TO RESPOND TO THEM THEIR FIRST DUTY IS TO ENSURE THE
SECURITY OF THEIR CITIZENS 4HE MOUNTING CONCERN ABOUT UNPREDICTABLE UN
QUANTIFIABLE AND POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC RISKS IS WELL KNOWN "ECK
4AYLOR 'OOBY AND :INN %NVIRONMENTAL ECONOMIC TER
RORIST AND OTHER RISKS ARE BOTH INTERCONNECTED AND ALSO FOREVER @EMERGENT
REQUIRING A STATE OF ALERTNESS AND VIGILANCE FROM POLITICIANS MEDIA AND
PUBLICS .ATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURES ARE RECOG
NIZED TO BE TOO COMPLEX AND FRAGILE TO BE PROTECTED IN THE FACE OF UNEXPECTED
DISRUPTION 4HE RESULT IS A PERMANENT @WAR AGAINST CONTINGENCY $ILLON
7ARS TODAY MUST PLAY MUCH MORE BY THE RULES OF POLITICS MARKETS AND
MEDIA @WARMAKING MUST CAPITALIZE ON MARKET RELATIONS EXPLOIT DEMO
CRATIC POLITICAL FORMS AND MANAGE INDEPENDENT MEDIA ;x= 4HE BEST
WAY OF CHARACTERIZING THE NEW MODE OF WAR AS A WHOLE IS THEREFORE GLOBAL
SURVEILLANCE WARFARE 3HAW n ;ORIGINAL EMPHASIS= !S THIS GLOBAL
SURVEILLANCE TURNS WAR AND TERRORISM INTO MEDIA SPECTACLE AND AUDIENCES
INTO SPECTATORS OF MASS CIVILIAN DEATHS WHAT BECOMES OF INFORMED CITIZEN
PARTICIPATION IN DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNICATIVE PROCESSES
'OVERNMENTALITY PERSPECTIVES ARE USEFUL IN HIGHLIGHTING THE OPERATIONS
OF POLITICAL POWER AND SHIFTS IN THE STRATEGIC GOALS OF SECURITY POLICY /UR
)--! RESEARCH APPROACH DEMONSTRATES HOW NEWS MEDIA REINFORCE THIS
NEW CALCULUS OF RISK AND THREAT 4HE DISCOURSE AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS STRAND
OF OUR PROJECT 3TRAND " FOUND TWO KINDS OF LOGIC WITHIN MEDIA PRODUCTION
WHICH REFLECT THE NEW LOGIC OF SECURITY AND OF EMERGENCE AND CATASTROPHIC
RISK &IRST WHAT (OSKINS AND /,OUGHLIN CALL THE @MODULATION
OF TERROR CONTAINS FEAR AND AMPLIFIES THREATS "REAKING NEWS STORIES ARE
ACCOMMODATED INTO PRE EXISTING NARRATIVES BY DEPLOYING MEDIA @TEMPLATES
FROM PAST EVENTS FOR EXAMPLE REPORTING OF THE *ULY ,ONDON BOMBINGS
REPEATEDLY INVOKED THE @SPIRIT OF THE "LITZ n THE LEGENDARY COURAGE OF
,ONDONERS DURING 'ERMAN BOMBARDMENT IN THE 3ECOND 7ORLD 7AR 3UCH
TEMPLATES FRAME SUDDEN UNEXPECTED EVENTS TO RENDER THEM INTELLIGIBLE
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
FOR JOURNALISTS AND AUDIENCES ALIKE 9ET IF THIS CONTAINS FEARS TELEVISION
NEWS ALSO AMPLIFIES THREATS FOR INSTANCE THROUGH THE TELEVISUAL QUALITIES
OF ROLLING NEWS BROADCASTS 4HE SPLIT SCREENS JUXTAPOSITION OF MUL
TIPLE STORIES SCROLLING HEADLINES AND RAPID CUTS PRODUCE A SENSE OF A WORLD
OF INTERCONNECTED INSECURITIES 4HE CONTRADICTORY DYNAMIC OF THIS @MODU
LATION OF TERROR BY NEWS PRODUCERS IS MATCHED BY 3TRAND !S FINDINGS ABOUT
HOW AUDIENCES MANAGE ANXIETIES OFTEN TRIGGERED BY NEWS MEDIA THAT FEED
INTO A SENSE OF PROLIFERATING INSECURITIES #RUCIALLY AUDIENCES MODULATE THEIR
OWN NEWS VIEWING BY TURNING OFF AND DISENGAGING THEN TURNING ON AND
RE ENGAGING #ONTRARY TO MUCH CURRENT COMMENT AND RESEARCH THE CITIZENS
AND AUDIENCES WE WORKED WITH ARE FAR FROM DISENGAGED FROM THE POLITICAL
PROCESS "UT THE PSYCHIC AND SOCIAL DEMANDS OF MANAGING INSECURITY MEAN
THEIR ENGAGEMENTS ARE FLUID FLUCTUATING AND CONTINGENT
! SECOND MEDIA LOGIC AMPLIFYING NOTIONS OF EMERGENCE AND CATA
STROPHIC RISK IS THE INTERACTING LOGIC OF REMEDIATION AND PREMEDIATION
'RUSIN 2EMEDIATION INVOLVES REPRODUCING AND RE APPROPRIATING
NEWS MATERIALS FROM DIVERSE NEWS SOURCES TO CREATE A REPORT ! SALIENT
EXAMPLE IS THE INCREASING USE OF !L *AZEERA FOOTAGE OR WEB IMAGES ON
%UROPEAN NEWS MEDIA -OST %UROPEAN NEWS VIEWERS HAVE NEVER WATCHED
THIS !RABIC CHANNEL BUT THE REMEDIATION OF ITS IMAGES OF TERRORISM AND THE
WORDS OF TERRORISTS SUSTAINS THE SENSE OF PREVAILING THREAT AND EFFECTIVELY
ASSOCIATES IT AS A CHANNEL @FOR TERRORISM 0REMEDIATION IN CONTRAST DOES NOT
REPEAT BUT ANTICIPATES AND SPECULATES ABOUT FUTURE RISKS AND THREATS BEFORE
THEY HAVE HAPPENED )N THIS WAY TODAYS NEWS MEDIA ARE CONSTANTLY
VIGILANT KEEPING PUBLIC FEARS ALIVE 3PECULATIVE DISCURSIVE CHAINS CONNECT
THE @THREATS OF MIGRATION AND DIVERSITY TERRORISM TERRORISTS AND @THEIR
MEDIA 4HIS CHAIN OF ASSOCIATIONS SIMPLIFIES ISSUES AND POLARIZES PEOPLE
)N PARTICULAR IT REINFORCES A SENSE OF A @CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND PRESENTS
A -USLIMNON -USLIM DIVISION AS A THREAT TO THE NATION TO @%UROPE AND
TO @THE 7EST )T PROJECTS AN UNENDING FUTURE OF INSECURITIES SUSTAINING
THE GOVERNMENTAL LOGIC OF PRECAUTIONARY PRE EMPTION (OWEVER USEFUL AS
IT IS SUCH A TOP DOWN ANALYSIS FROM A GOVERNMENTALITY PERSPECTIVE NEEDS
TO BE ACCOMPANIED BY EMPIRICALLY BASED ANALYSIS FROM A CONSTRUCTIONIST
PERSPECTIVE THAT EMPHASIZES PROCESSES OF SECURITIZATION
-EDIATION SECURITIZATION RACIALIZATION A CONSTRUCTIVIST
PERSPECTIVE
4HE @3HIFTING 3ECURITIES PROJECT ATTEMPTS TO RESEARCH NEWS AUDIENCES AS
PUBLICS THAT IS TO EXAMINE WHETHER AND HOW CITIZENS MEDIA PRACTICES
AND RESPONSES TO MEDIATED POLITICAL DISCOURSES ENABLE OR IMPEDE POLITICAL
PARTICIPATION DEMOCRATIC DEBATE AND INCLUSIVE AND RESPECTFUL MULTICULTURAL
CITIZENSHIP /UR FOCUS IS ON THE INTER SUBJECTIVE AND DIALOGIC PROCESSES OF
MEDIATED COMMUNICATION THROUGH WHICH THE EVERYDAY POLITICS OF FEAR AND
INSECURITY ARE NEGOTIATED CONTESTED AND ENACTED BY CITIZENS %THNOGRAPHIC
AND CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACHES AFFORD PEOPLE AS AUDIENCES AND PUBLICS
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
VIEWERS AND CITIZENS AGENCY WITH CAPACITIES COMPETENCES AND CAPABILITIES n
CRUCIALLY WITH @VOICE n IN WAYS THAT GOVERNMENTALITY APPROACHES DO NOT
!ND VOICE AND VIEWPOINT INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION ARE FUNDAMENTAL TO THE
DELIBERATIVE AND LEGITIMATING PROCESSES THAT TAKE PLACE VIA THE MEDIA
.EWS @AUDIENCES ARE NOT IDENTICAL WITH @PUBLICS BUT THEY DO OVERLAP
4HE TERMS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH DIFFERENT ORIENTATIONS ENTERTAINMENT OR
DISTRACTION FOR AN AUDIENCE INFORMATION AND EDUCATION FOR A PUBLIC AND
THEY HAVE DIFFERENT DISCIPLINARY HOMES SOCIOLOGY VERSUS POLITICS 4HEY
ARE EQUALLY SLIPPERY CONCEPTS AND HARD TO PIN DOWN EMPIRICALLY ESPECIALLY
AS MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES TEXTS CONTEXTS OF RECEPTION AND PATTERNS OF MEDIA
USE MULTIPLY AND DIVERSIFY .EWS AUDIENCES ARE INCREASINGLY HARD TO DEFINE
AND STUDY WHILE THE CONCEPT OF A PUBLIC CAN CONNOTE ANYTHING FROM A SHARED
UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD OR A COMMON IDENTITY TO A CLAIM TO INCLUSIVE
NESS OR A CONSENSUS ABOUT COLLECTIVE INTERESTS ,IVINGSTONE )N
RESEARCHING @NEWS CULTURES AND MEDIA PRACTICES WE HOPE TO BRIDGE THE
DIVIDE .EWS CULTURES AND POLITICAL CULTURES ARE MUTUALLY CONSTITUTIVE
THEY INTERACT IN SYMBIOTIC FASHION )T IS VERY RARELY POSSIBLE TO DISENTANGLE
@EFFECTS OF NEWS MEDIA FROM PRIOR CONVICTIONS n EVEN IF MANY PEOPLE DO
CLAIM THAT CERTAIN NEWS STORIES @OPENED THEIR EYES OR POLITICIZED THEM
4HROUGH USING NEWS MEDIA PEOPLE MAY EXPERIENCE MEMBERSHIP OF A
PUBLIC OR OF MULTIPLE NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL PUBLICS IF ONLY TEM
PORARILY "UT THEY MAY NOT !UDIENCES ARE NOT ALWAYS PART OF A PUBLIC FOR
REASONS WHICH INCLUDE CENSORSHIP LACK OF CULTURAL OR EDUCATIONAL CAPITAL
OR PERSONAL PREFERENCE
4HE INCREASING ARRAY OF TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA AND GROWING USE OF THE
INTERNET MAKES IT MUCH HARDER FOR GOVERNMENTS TO GET THEIR POLICY MES
SAGES ACROSS AND SO SECURE LEGITIMACY SEE 'ILLESPIE B #ONVERSELY IT
IS GETTING MUCH EASIER FOR NEWS AUDIENCES TO FORGE @MICRO PUBLIC SPHERES
IN WHICH ONE HEARS AND SEES ONLY WHAT CONFORMS TO AND CONFIRMS A PRE
EXISTING WORLD VIEW 2ITUALISTIC USES OF MEDIA ARE EMBEDDED WITHIN THE
@ONTOLOGICAL SECURITY MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES OF AUDIENCES 4HIS CAN LEAD
TO INSULAR RIGID FORMS OF THINKING WHICH AUGMENT AN OFTEN FRAGILE THOUGH
EMPHATICALLY ASSERTED SENSE OF CERTAINTY AND SECURITY !KSOY "UT
WE FIND ALSO THAT MANY MINORITY ETHNIC 5+ CITIZENS ESPECIALLY THOSE WITH
MULTILINGUAL CULTURAL CAPITAL USE TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA TO SUPPORT HIGHLY
ENGAGED FORMS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 3OME SEEK OUT AND USE ALTERNATIVE
SOURCES OF NEWS AND INFORMATION DISPLAYING HIGHLY FLEXIBLE MODES OF
REASONING AND PARTICIPATING IN MULTIPLE NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL PUBLIC
SPACES OF COMMUNICATION AND SOCIO POLITICAL ACTION n NEGOTIATING PLURAL
FORMS OF AUTHORITY AND BASES OF LEGITIMACY ) REFER TO THESE MULTILINGUAL
GLOBAL NEWS USER PRODUCERS AS @CRITICAL COSMOPOLITANS #OMPARING AND
CONTRASTING DIFFERENT NEWS SOURCES THEY CONSTRUCT THEIR OWN NARRATIVES
WHICH MAY NOT CONFORM TO THOSE OF POLITICIANS AND JOURNALISTS 02S AND @SPIN
MERCHANTS IN ANY ONE COUNTRY #RITICAL COSMOPOLITANS PARTICIPATE IN AND
TRANSLATE ACROSS MULTIPLE NATIONAL GLOBAL AND DIASPORIC PUBLIC SPHERES
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
DISPLAYING INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY FLEXIBILITY AND @WORLD OPENNESS 4HEY ARE
MOTIVATED BY A CONCERN WITH SOCIAL JUSTICE AND POLITICAL CHANGE 4HEY USE
NEWS MEDIA CRITICALLY MOBILISING COSMOPOLITAN CULTURAL CAPITAL AND
TRANSCULTURAL COMPETENCES TO ENGAGE IN COLLABORATIVE POLITICAL AND MORAL
JUDGEMENTS AIMED AT EFFECTING CHANGE )N CONTRAST AMONG INSULAR PAROCHIALS
AND PASSIVE CYNICS NEWS AVOIDANCE SOCIAL INSECURITY AND RIGID AND DOGMATIC
MODES OF REASONING ARE MORE COMMON 'ILLESPIE A 4HESE ARE BUT
TWO ALBEIT STRONG TENDENCIES ACROSS A WIDELY VARIABLE SPECTRUM OF RESPONSE
TO MEDIATED POLITICS IN OUR STUDY
!S MENTIONED THE PROJECT WAS @EVENTS LED 4HE SALIENCE OF SECURITY
NEWS DEPENDS ON THE NATURE OF RESPONSES TO @CRITICAL EVENTS 4HIS IS A TERM
USED BY 6EENA $AS TO REFER TO EVENTS INVOLVING STATE TERROR AND
POLITICAL VIOLENCE THAT PROPAGATE SOCIAL TRAUMA AND SUFFERING INEQUALITY
AND EXCLUSION ESPECIALLY AMONG MARGINALIZED MINORITIES /UR VARIABLE AND
SHIFTING SENSES OF PROXIMITY OR DISTANCE PHYSICAL CULTURAL AND AFFECTIVE
TO THOSE EVENTS DEFINE THEIR SECURITY SALIENCE 0ROXIMITY AND DISTANCE TO
EVENTS ARE CREATED BY MEDIA IMPOSED BY STATES AND NEGOTIATED BY
AUDIENCES 4HEY ARE NOT OPPOSITE ENDS OF A SPECTRUM BUT WORK TOGETHER
CREATING TENSION AND AMBIVALENCE SEE 1URESHIS ARTICLE -ODULATING
COMPLEMENTARY OPPOSITES @DISTANT PROXIMITIES DEFINE OUR RELATIONSHIP
TO MEDIATIONS OF SECURITY THREATS 2OSENAU
4HE TERM MEDIATION IN THIS CONTEXT REFERS TO THE MULTIPLE INTERACTING
SETS OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN NEWS MEDIA PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF POLITICAL DEBATES POLICY FORMATION PROCESSES
AND OTHER DIMENSIONS OF @PUBLIC AFFAIRS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE @VISIBLE
IN MEDIA TEXTS )T IS FOR THIS REASON THAT 3TRAND # OF OUR PROJECT INVOLVED
OFF THE RECORD INTERVIEWS WITH PERSONNEL IN THE 5+ AND 53 MILITARY
SECURITY SERVICES AND GOVERNMENTS 5SING THE TERM IN THIS WAY AVOIDS
THINKING OF GIVEN MOMENTS IN THE POLITICAL COMMUNICATION PROCESS AS
SEPARATE AND SEPARABLE RESEARCH DOMAINS -EDIATION IS AN IRREDUCIBLY
POLITICAL PROCESS CULTURAL AND SYMBOLIC POWER AND THE CAPACITY TO CONTROL
MANAGE AND CHANGE IMAGES AND NARRATIVES IS UNEVENLY DISTRIBUTED )T
IS NOTABLY DENIED TO RACIALIZED MINORITIES AND THOSE WITHOUT ELITE EDUCA
TIONAL CAPITAL "UT DOMINANT IMAGES AND NARRATIVES ARE OFTEN RESISTED
RE APPROPRIATED OR CHALLENGED BY ALTERNATIVE MEDIA PRACTICES PRODUCTIONS
AND REPRESENTATIONS 3ILVERSTONE AND 'EORGIOU n -EDIA IN
MULTICULTURAL POLITIES HAVE GREAT POWER TO INCLUDE AND EXCLUDE MARGINAL
IZE OR MAGNIFY GLORIFY OR REIFY 4HROUGH AND IN MEDIA IDENTITIES ARE
CLAIMED FRAMED OR DENIED AND SECURITIES SOUGHT OR UNDERMINED -EDIA
ARE CRUCIAL TO PUBLIC DEBATES ON QUESTIONS OF DIFFERENCE COMPETING RIGHTS
AND DUTIES VISIBILITY RACISM INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION RESPECT AND RE
COGNITION 2ESEARCHING MEDIATIONS OF SECURITY POLICY AND PUBLICS IN
MULTI ETHNIC POLITIES REQUIRES AN INTEGRATED RESEARCH DESIGN IF WE ARE
TO UNDERSTAND THE SUBTLETIES AND CHANGING NATURE OF THESE RELATIONSHIPS
AND TO JUDGE THE HEALTH AND STATE OF MULTICULTURAL DEMOCRACY 4HIS IS A
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
POINT TO WHICH WE WILL SOON RETURN AND ONE ON WHICH ALL THE FOLLOWING
REPORTS COMMENT
/UR RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT @SECURITY NEWS HAS ESPECIALLY HIGH SALIENCE
FOR RACIALIZED MINORITIES PRECISELY BECAUSE IT IMPLICATES THEM AS THREATS
TO SECURITY 4HE TERM @RACIALIZED IS USED TO EMPHASIZE THAT @RACE IS NOT A
USEFUL ANALYTICAL TERM IT CANNOT EXPLAIN SOCIAL OR CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
2ATHER IT IS A SOCIAL PROCESS A WAY OF ASCRIBING INFERIOR STATUS TO A GROUP
ON THE BASIS OF PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES RESULTING IN DISCRIMINATION SEGREGATION
AND MARGINALIZATION -URJI AND 3OLOMOS 3INCE PROCESSES OF
RACIALIZATION AND SECURITIZATION HOW THREATS ARE IDENTIFIED CONSTRUCTED AND
TREATED AS SECURITY ISSUES WORK HAND IN HAND (UYSMANS AND "UONFINO
4HEY ARE BOLSTERED BY MEDIATIONS HOW THREATS ARE PRIORITIZED
FRAMED AND REPRESENTED BY THE MEDIA AND INTERPRETED BY AUDIENCES
(OW DO OUR INTERLOCUTORS DISCUSS AND RESPOND TO THESE PERCEIVED DYNAMICS
4WO STRONG PATTERNS OF RESPONSE ARE APPARENT ACROSS ALL OUR INTERVIEWS AND
CHARACTERIZE THE NEWS CULTURES AND PRACTICES OF "RITISH -USLIMS AND OTHER
RACIALIZED MINORITY INTERVIEWEES &IRST INTERVIEWEES PERCEIVE THE "RITISH
GOVERNMENT AS @OBSESSED A FREQUENTLY USED TERM WITH MAINTAINING HIGH
LEVELS OF PUBLIC FEAR ABOUT THE LIKELIHOOD OF A TERRORIST ATTACK !S THEY SEE
IT THE 5+ MEDIA SERVE THE GOVERNMENT IN THIS REGARD 3ECOND THE MEDIA
ARE SEEN AS SYSTEMATICALLY DEMONIZING -USLIMS ASSOCIATING )SLAM WITH
VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AND REPRESENTING -USLIMS AS THE @ENEMY WITHIN
4HIS TRIGGERS DEEP EMOTIONAL AND POLITICAL RESPONSES ANGER ALIENATION
DESPAIR A SENSE OF HOPELESSNESS AND POWERLESSNESS IN LOCAL NATIONAL
TRANSNATIONAL AND GLOBAL CONTEXTS 4HE )RAQ 7AR HAS DEEPENED THE SENSE
OF OUTRAGE INJURY INSULT AND VICTIMIZATION THAT HAS COME TO DEFINE -USLIM
SENSIBILITIES DESPITE ALL EFFORTS TO ESCAPE THIS ASCRIBED ROLE &ACING AND
DEALING WITH IMPLICIT AND OR EXPLICIT ACCUSATIONS OF TERRORISM HAS BECOME
AN EVERYDAY TASK MANY INTERVIEWEES EXPLAINED 4HIS QUANDARY MOTIVATES
NEW POLITICIZED ASSERTIONS OF -USLIM IDENTITY 9ET MANY COMMENT THAT THE
PERVASIVENESS AND THE TOTALIZING QUALITY OF THE RACIALIZATION SECURITIZATION
AND MEDIATION FACED BY -USLIMS IN THE 5+ TRAP THEM IN A @GAME OF IDEN
TITY POLITICS WHICH THEY CAN NEITHER ESCAPE FROM NOR WIN
4HE SECOND WIDESPREAD PATTERN OF RESPONSE COMBINES SCEPTICISM TO
WARDS STATE AND MEDIA DISCOURSES OF THREAT WITH GENUINE FEAR )NTERVIEWEES
OF BOTH DOMINANT AND MINORITY ETHNICITIES ARE HIGHLY CONSCIOUS OF THE
MANIPULATION OF THE TERRORIST THREAT BUT THEY STILL FEAR THAT AN ATTACK MIGHT
OCCUR 3OME USE A MINIMIZING TEMPLATE STRATEGY RELATING THE CURRENT
TERRORIST THREAT TO PREVIOUS OR MORE IMMEDIATE OR PROXIMATE THREATS BE
IT )2! TERROR THREATS OF THE S AND AFTER THROUGHOUT THE 5+ SEE ESPE
CIALLY (ERBERTS ARTICLE OR THE -ADRID BOMBINGS OR MOST TYPICALLY SUCH
RELATIVELY @COMMONPLACE FEARS AS UNEMPLOYMENT POVERTY AND PAEDOPHILIA
A 5+ WIDE SOURCE OF LOCAL AND SOMETIMES NATIONAL PANIC -OST REFUSE TO
ALLOW ANY FEAR OF TERRORISM TO IMPINGE ON THEIR DAILY LIVES 3OME YOUNGER
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
INTERVIEWEES HOWEVER NURSE A MILLENARIAN SENSE OF A DISASTROUS FATE
AWAITING THE WORLD FORGE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN GLOBAL THREATS THE !SIAN
TSUNAMI THE WAR IN )RAQ ADVANCED MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES AND LOCAL THREATS
RACISM CRIME AND POVERTY IN THE %AST %ND AND ABSORB TERRORISM INTO THIS
NARRATIVE OF IMMINENT APOCALYPSE SEE !L 'HABBANS ARTICLE 3UCH VIEWS
AND VISIONS CANNOT BE GENERALIZED BUT THEY INDICATE HOW A PARADOXICAL
SENSE OF THREATS AS BOTH CONSTRUCTED AND REAL CAN ENGENDER RESPONSES BOTH
OF POWERLESSNESS @THERES NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT AND OF PRAGMATISM
@WEVE GOT TO GET ON WITH OUR LIVES
-OST INTERVIEWEES FEEL THAT THEY HAVE BECOME MORE INSECURE IN RECENT
YEARS AND MOST ARE MORE AFRAID OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF SECURITY POLICY THAN
OF TERRORISM 4HESE INCLUDE @CASUAL EVERYDAY RACISM STATE SURVEILLANCE
ARREST AND DETENTION CREEPING MILITARISM AND THREATS TO CIVIL RIGHTS AND
TRADITIONS OF DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW 7ITH THE *ULY BOMBING INTER
VIEWEES REPORTED FEARS OF TERRORISM INTENSIFIED ONLY TO DISSIPATE SOON AFTER
! LARGE PROPORTION OF RACIALIZED MINORITIES BASE THEIR FEARS ON PERSONAL
EXPERIENCE OF STOP AND SEARCH IDENTITY CHECKS AND TEMPORARY DETENTION
-USLIM WOMEN IN PARTICULAR REPORT VERY HIGH LEVELS OF DIRECT @CASUAL
RACIST AGGRESSION NAME CALLING SPITTING ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE THEIR HIJAB
SEE 3ADAF 2IVZIS ARTICLE .EARLY ALL INTERVIEWEES CAN RECOUNT SEVERAL
STORIES OF RACIST ABUSE TOLD BY A FRIEND OR RELATIVE /THERS CLAIM INDIRECT
KNOWLEDGE OF RACISM @HEARD STORIES /NE OF OUR MAJOR FINDINGS IS THAT
ALL -USLIMS AND MOST OTHER ETHNIC MINORITIES REPORT FEARS OF EXPRESSING
THEMSELVES IN PUBLIC AND IN THE WORKPLACE DUE TO POSSIBLE AGGRESSIVE OR
VIOLENT RESPONSE 4HIS HAS LED TO MASSIVE SELF CENSORSHIP AND A DIMINISHING
SENSE OF PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC LIFE AND OF NATIONAL AND LOCAL BELONGING 4HIS
IS PERHAPS THE REASON SO MANY INTERVIEWEES APPRECIATED THE OPPORTUNITY
TO HAVE THEIR VIEWS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT
)T IS NOT HARD TO SEE HOW SUCH SENTIMENTS ARE LINKED TO POLITICAL AND NEWS
MEDIA DISCOURSES AND REPRESENTATIONS )N ORDER TO LEGITIMATE THE @WAR ON
TERROR THE TERM @SECURITY HAS COME TO BE USED IN AN INCREASINGLY WIDE SET
OF SENSES AND CONTEXTS BLURRING MANY SOCIAL CATEGORIES AND DISTINCTIONS
!N ASSOCIATIVE CHAIN LINKS MINORITIES MIGRANTS REFUGEES ASYLUM SEEKERS
CRIMINALS TERRORISTS AND ENEMIES WITHIN 2ACISM AND RACIALIZATION FLOURISH
WHEN THREATS FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE ARE CONFLATED 4HE SEEMINGLY LIMIT
LESS POLYSEMY OF THE TERM @SECURITY REDUCES ITS ANALYTICAL USEFULNESS FOR
RESEARCHERS BUT FOR MANY INTERVIEWEES THE CONNOTATIONS OF INSECURITY MILIT
ARISM TERRORISM AND RACISM HAVE A MESSAGE THAT RINGS LOUD AND CLEAR
-ANY REPORT A DIMINISHING SENSE OF SECURITY EXACERBATED BY A FEELING
THAT THE BOUNDARIES ARE BLURRING BETWEEN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS OF SECURITY
INSIDE AND OUTSIDE NATIONAL BOUNDARIES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACES PHY
SICAL AND VIRTUAL SPACES CORPORATE AND POLITICAL SPACES AND SO ON 4HE
@STATE OF EXCEPTION !GAMBEN BRINGS NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY INTO
EVERYDAY LIFE AS A THREAT TO PERSONAL SECURITY /NE INTERVIEWEE RETIRED
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
WHITE MIDDLE CLASS MALE SPEAKS OF LIVING IN A STATE OF CONTINUAL AND IN
CREASING UNCERTAINTY OF @A THOUSAND PIN PRICKS OF INSECURITY IN DAILY LIFE
AS LONG STANDING TAKEN FOR GRANTED ASSUMPTIONS ARE CHALLENGED BY SOCIAL
CULTURAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES 'ILLESPIE B &OR RACIALIZED MINOR
ITIES LIVING IN METROPOLITAN CENTRES THE CONSEQUENCES OF SECURITY POLICIES ARE
FAR REACHING AND UNPREDICTABLE AS MOST OF THE REPORTS SHOW MANY FEEL THEIR
5+ CITIZENSHIP AND THE PROMISE OF MULTICULTURALISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY CALLED
INTO QUESTION BY CURRENT SECURITY POLICY WHICH RAISES TROUBLING QUESTIONS
FOR THE FUTURE CHANCES OF LIVING IN A PEACEFUL MULTICULTURAL STATE
-ETHODOLOGY COLLABORATIVE MEDIA ETHNOGRAPHY
WITHIN )--!
! SUMMARY TABLE OF INTERVIEWEES SOCIAL BACKGROUND DETAILS IS PROVIDED IN
THE APPENDIX 4HE PROJECT WEBSITE OFFERS MORE DETAILED TABLES SEE WWW
MEDIATINGSECURITYCOM 4HIS VERY BROAD SOCIOLOGICAL SKETCH MUST BE READ
WITH CAUTION )N DUE COURSE WE WILL ANALYSE THE QUANTITATIVE ALONGSIDE THE
QUALITATIVE DATA BUT FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SPECIAL ISSUE THIS IS A QUALITA
TIVE EMPIRICAL STUDY /UR UNDERSTANDING OF THE DYNAMICS OF IDENTITIES AND
IDENTIFICATIONS IS BASED ON QUALITATIVE DATA AND PREMISED ON THE ASSUMP
TION THAT ALL SOCIAL BEINGS HAVE MULTIPLE OVERLAPPING AXES OF IDENTIFICATIONS
0ARTICULAR FORMS OF IDENTIFICATIONS MAY BE ACCENTUATED IN SOME CONTEXTS
BUT RECEDE IN OTHERS )DENTIFICATIONS ARE SHIFTING BUT NOT INFINITELY FLUID
4HEY ARE STRATEGICALLY MOBILIZED IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS AND IN RESPONSE TO
DIFFERENT EVENTS .O ONE SOCIAL CATEGORY FOR EXAMPLE ETHNICITY OR RELIGION
DEFINES A PERSONS SOCIAL IDENTITY 4HE IDENTIFICATION OF RELIGION AS A CULTURAL
CATEGORY IN THE CONTEXT OF A PROJECT ON SECURITY COULD BE HIGHLY PROBLEMATIC IF
USED IN A CULTURALLY DETERMINISTIC WAY (ERE IT IS INTENDED ONLY AS A VERY BROAD
CLASSIFICATION AND SHOULD NOT BE READ AS EITHER DETERMINING OR DOMINATING
3OME OF OUR INTERVIEWEES OF WHITE %NGLISH ETHNICITY DESCRIBE THEMSELVES
AS HAVING A #HRISTIAN EDUCATION OR BACKGROUND BUT NOT AS @#HRISTIAN PER SE
)N THE SAME WAY SOME DESCRIBE THEMSELVES AS -USLIM BUT SEEK TO QUALIFY
THAT CATEGORIZATION IN A HOST OF WAYS 3OME DESCRIBE THEMSELVES AS @SECULAR
OR @NON PRACTISING AND WOULD INSIST THAT THIS IS MORE OF A CULTURAL AND SOCIAL
IDENTIFICATION THAN A RELIGIOUS ONE /THERS MADE THE POINT QUITE STRONGLY
THAT THEIR FIRST IDENTIFICATION IS NOT AS -USLIM BUT RATHER THEY ARE AND WOULD
WANT TO BE KNOWN AS "ANGLADESHI OR 3OMALI OR %NGLISH OR "RITISH
!LTHOUGH PERCENT OF OUR INTERLOCUTORS WERE OF -USLIM BACK
GROUND WE CHOSE NOT TO GIVE PRIORITY TO THIS FACT IN ORDER TO AVOID DETERMIN
ISTIC AND REDUCTIONIST ANALYSES )NSTEAD WE HAVE AIMED TO ANALYSE UNDER
WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES AND IN RELATION TO WHICH EVENTS -USLIM IDENTITY CAME
TO THE FORE !NY EXCLUSIVE FOCUS ON AN INDIVIDUALS IDENTITY AS @-USLIM MIS
REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OF SELF IDENTITY EXPRESSED BY OUR INTERVIEWEES -EDIA
REPRESENTATIONS OF @-USLIMS AS IF THIS IDENTITY SUBSUMED ALL OTHERS WERE
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
A FREQUENT SOURCE OF CONSTERNATION AND DISTRESS 4HE LABEL @-USLIM MUST
BE READ ALONGSIDE OTHER FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION SUCH AS AGE GENDER PLACE
OF BIRTH NATIONALITY RESIDENCE AND OCCUPATION AS WELL AS IN THE CONTEXT OF
HUGE VARIATIONS IN BELIEFS AND PRACTICES
#LASS IS ANOTHER HIGHLY PROBLEMATIC CATEGORY 4HE INTERPLAY OF ECONOMIC
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL IS DYNAMIC 7E HAVE DOCUMENTED THE PROFESSIONAL
AND CLASS SELF IDENTIFICATIONS OF RESPONDENTS BUT WE ARE RELUCTANT TO ATTEMPT
TO AGGREGATE STATISTICS WHERE RESPONDENTS HAVE CATEGORIZED THEMSELVES
IN DIVERSE WAYS !CCESS TO ECONOMIC EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL MAY
SHAPE MODES OF ENGAGEMENT WITH NEWS BUT IT DOES NOT DETERMINE THEM 4HE
MOBILIZATION OF COSMOPOLITAN CULTURAL CAPITAL IS REFLECTED IN THE ABILITY
TO TRANSLATE ACROSS DIFFERENT LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS AND TO ACT AS
CULTURAL MEDIATORS AND BROKERS IN WAYS WHICH ENHANCE COMMUNICATION
AND UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN DIVERSE GROUPS
4HE TABLES IN THE APPENDIX AND ON OUR PROJECT WEBSITE DOCUMENT
INTERVIEWEES MAIN NEWS SOURCES /FTEN THESE ARE CLUSTERS OF SOURCES WITH
INTERVIEWEES NAMING NO OUTSTANDING TRUSTED SOURCE .EVERTHELESS WE HAVE
BEEN SURPRISED BY THE FREQUENCY WITH WHICH 5+ MAINSTREAM SOURCES THE
""# 3KY AND #HANNEL RECUR DESPITE THE AVAILABILITY OF MULTILINGUAL
AND TRANSNATIONAL NEWS SOURCES 4HIS SUGGESTS A STRONG DESIRE ON THE PART
OF MINORITY ETHNIC AND "RITISH -USLIM GROUPS TO PARTICIPATE IN PUBLIC AND
NATIONAL DEBATE EVEN IF FEAR OF SPEAKING OUT AND POWERFUL EXCLUSIONARY
FORCES COMBINE TO ENCOURAGE SELF CENSORSHIP AND THE SEEKING OUT OF ALTER
NATIVE NEWS SOURCES
%ACH INTERVIEW WAS RECORDED AND TRANSCRIBED AND AN INTERVIEW REPORT
AND PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS SUBMITTED TO THE PROJECT WEBSITE 5SING A QUALI
TATIVE DATA ANALYSIS SOFTWARE PROGRAMME .6IVO ALL INTERVIEW DATA
WAS CODED AND CATEGORIZED 4HE .6IVO DATABASE WAS MADE AVAILABLE TO
ALL RESEARCHERS ON THE PROJECT AS WELL AS TO SEVERAL OTHERS %THNOGRAPHERS
ACCESSED IT TO COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE FINDINGS OF THEIR DOMESTIC AND
LOCAL STUDIES AGAINST WIDER PATTERNS AND TRENDS EMERGING ACROSS THE STUDY
4HUS WHILE SOME SAMPLES MAY APPEAR TO BE VERY SMALL AND THE ANALYSES
MAY SEEM TO MAGNIFY EVERYDAY MICRO PROCESSES OF POLITICAL TALK RESEARCHERS
HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DISCUSS AND SITUATE THEIR FINDINGS IN THE WIDER CONTEXT
OF THE OVERALL PROJECT !N E DISCUSSION GROUP ENABLED ONGOING SHARING AND
RE EVALUATION OF EMERGENT FINDINGS AS DID OUR NUMEROUS PROJECT MEETINGS
4HIS KIND OF COLLABORATIVE MEDIA ETHNOGRAPHY REMAINS METHODOLOGICALLY
UNIQUE AND AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE KIND OF INTEGRATED RESEARCH DESIGN
)--! THAT ENABLES MEDIATIONS PUBLICS POLICIES AND POLITICS TO BE STUDIED
AS ASPECTS OF THE SAME COMPLEX PROCESS
)NTEGRATED -ULTIDISCIPLINARY -EDIA !NALYSIS CASE STUDY
/NE EXAMPLE MAY SERVE TO ILLUSTRATE HOW THE INTEGRATED RESEARCH APPROACH
WORKED IN PRACTICE ! 3TRAND # FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW IDENTIFIED TELEVISION
PRESENTATION OF A SPECIFIC NEWS STORY AS A SOURCE OF CONCERN AMONG 5+
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
SECURITY AND MILITARY POLICYMAKERS 4HE STORY WAS BASED ON IMAGES OF A
53 MARINE WHO APPEARED TO BE SHOOTING AN )RAQI CIVILIAN IN A MOSQUE
IN &ALLUJAH FILMED BY ."# JOURNALIST +EVIN 3ITES IN .OVEMBER
4HE POLICYMAKERS WERE WORRIED THAT NO CONTEXT WAS GIVEN IN NEWS REPORTS
AS TO THE TYPE OF OPERATION OR THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT 4HEY FEARED THAT THIS
DEPICTION OF @COLD BLOODED MURDER WOULD ADD TO THE MOUNTING NEGATIVE
REPORTING OF MILITARY OPERATIONS IN )RAQ
3IX TELEVISION NEWS PRESENTATIONS OF THE FOOTAGE WERE THEN ANALYSED
BY 3TRAND " RESEARCHERS 4HEY FOUND THAT ALL WERE TO SOME EXTENT @SANITIZED
TYPICAL OF WAR COVERAGE IN MAINSTREAM %NGLISH LANGUAGE MEDIA 4HERE WAS
INDEED LITTLE CONTEXTUALIZATION OF THE KIND SOUGHT BY MILITARY POLICYMAKERS
(OWEVER THERE WAS MUCH MORE VARIATION IN THE WAY THE FOOTAGE WAS PRE
SENTED THAN HAD BEEN PRESUMED BY THE POLICYMAKERS 4HE IMAGES OF THE
SHOOTING WERE NOT SIMPLY OR UNIFORMLY REPRESENTED AS MURDER
3IX CLIPS FROM THE FOOTAGE WERE THEN SHOWN TO DIVERSE GROUPS OF INTER
VIEWEES BY 3TRAND ! RESEARCHERS 3EVERAL INTERVIEWEES EXPRESSED SURPRISE
THAT THEY HAD NOT REGISTERED THIS PARTICULAR INCIDENT AT THE TIME OF ITS OCCUR
RENCE 4HEY AGREED THAT THIS WAS PROBABLY BECAUSE IT FITTED A DOMINANT
NARRATIVE NEWS PATTERN OF 53 ABUSE AND ATROCITY @WE HAVE HEARD SO MUCH OF
WHAT GOES ON IN )RAQ OF THIS NATURE "UT SOME FOUND THE FOOTAGE SHOCKING
EVEN @TOO GRAPHIC )NTERVIEWEES WERE DIVIDED OVER WHETHER IT HAD BEEN
NECESSARY TO SHOW THE SHOOTING BUT AFTER DISCUSSION MOST JUDGED THAT IT
WAS @IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST TO SHOW THE WHOLE SEQUENCE
3TRAND ! INTERVIEWEES RECOGNIZED THAT VARIOUS @SANITIZING DEVICES
HAD BEEN USED IN PRESENTING THE FOOTAGE SUCH AS BLACK SCREENS AND CUTTING
THE SOUND TRACK AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH (OWEVER RATHER THAN SANITIZE THE
EVENT THESE DEVICES WERE SEEN TO DRAMATIZE CONSCIOUSNESS OF IT 4HIS PER
CEPTION CORRELATED WITH RESPONDENTS MORE GENERAL VIEWS ON THE USE OF
OTHER KINDS OF ROUTINE SANITIZING DEVICES SUCH AS EDITING OUT THE MOMENT
OF EXECUTION FROM TERRORIST BEHEADING VIDEOS 4HESE TOO WERE CONSIDERED
TO EXACERBATE RATHER THAN ASSUAGE FEELINGS OF REPULSION AND DISGUST )NTER
VIEWEES REPORTED VIVIDLY IMAGINING THE SCENES OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH
UNDERLYING THE BLANKED OUT SCREENS AND SILENCES
3OME INTERVIEWEES JUDGED THE INCIDENT TO BE AN ACT OF @MURDER BASED
ON HOW IT WAS ANCHORED WHAT THEY SAW AND WHAT THEY THOUGHT IT MEANT
/THERS PROBLEMATIZED ANY EASY EQUATION BETWEEN SEEING AND KNOWING
AND ARGUED THAT CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION MIGHT HAVE BEEN OMITTED FROM
THE REPORT FOR EXAMPLE THE MARINES ACTION MIGHT BE JUSTIFIABLE BECAUSE
@THE GUY WAS JUST ABOUT TO EXPLODE A GRENADE "OTH REPRESENTATION AND
INTERPRETATION OF EVENTS CAN BE MORE VARIED AND MORE CRITICAL THAN THE
MILITARY INTERVIEWEES SUPPOSED !UDIENCES ARE OFTEN MORE REFLECTIVE THAN
PROFESSIONALS ASSUME 4HE VALUE OF INTEGRATED RESEARCH IS SHOWN HERE BY THE
WAY IN WHICH AN ITERATIVE AND REFLEXIVE APPROACH CAN LAY THE FOUNDATIONS
FOR A MORE ROUNDED ANALYSIS
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
4HE ARTICLES
+AREN 1URESHIS ARTICLE ESTABLISHES THEMES WHICH RECUR IN MANY OF OUR
REPORTS 3HE ADDRESSES QUESTIONS OF @CITIZENSHIP AS BELONGING BY COMPARING
THE MEMORIES HOPES AND CONCERNS OF TWO FAMILIES LIVING IN %DINBURGH
A @WHITE #HRISTIAN FAMILY AND A 0AKISTANI -USLIM FAMILY WITH SIMILAR
CLASS POSITIONS EDUCATIONAL AND ECONOMIC CAPITAL BUT RADICALLY DIFFERENT
IN TERMS OF FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND FEELINGS OF HUMAN SECURITY AS WELL
AS POLITICAL AWARENESS @4HERE WAS A TIME ) WOULD HAVE BEEN PREPARED TO
DIE FOR THIS COUNTRY n THIS IS A COUNTRY THAT HAS GIVEN ME EVERYTHING "UT
THE WAY n THERE HAVE BEEN A FEW INCIDENTS HAVE HAPPENEDx -ASOOD
IN HIS S GOES ON TO DESCRIBE HOW AN ENCOUNTER WITH AIRPORT CUSTOMS
WHERE HE WAS SINGLED OUT AND HARASSED LEFT HIM FEELING DIMINISHED (IS
FEELINGS OF ATTACHMENT TO "RITAIN HAVE CHANGED (E FEELS HIS STATUS AS A
"RITISH CITIZEN IS UNDER ATTACK (E AND HIS FAMILY NO LONGER FEEL SAFE IN
THEIR HOME -EDIA REPRESENTATIONS LINKING -USLIMS WITH TERROR MAKE
HIM ASK @7ILL THERE COME A TIME WHEN WELL GET SENT BACK TO 0AKISTAN
&OR THE @WHITE %DINBURGH FAMILY UP THE ROAD HOWEVER LIFE PROCEEDS
AS NORMAL DESPITE DIFFUSE CONCERNS ABOUT @"RITISHNESS BEING ERODED BY
@MULTICULTURALISM AND ABOUT THE PURPORTED POWER OF -USLIMS TO CHANGE
THE #HRISTIAN ETHOS OF THE COUNTRY 0OLITICALLY INDIFFERENT MOST OF THE
TIME THE FAMILY FEELS ENGAGED AND INSECURE ONLY ONCE DURING THE RESEARCH
PROCESS WHEN THE FATHERS WORKPLACE IS TEMPORARILY BESIEGED BY ANTI
GLOBALIZATION PROTESTORS 1URESHIS ARTICLE DESCRIBES ALARMING POLARIZATIONS
AS TWO SIMILAR @QUIET WEE FAMILIES EXPERIENCE SHIFTS IN GLOBALnLOCAL POWER
RELATIONS IN VASTLY DIFFERENT WAYS
!MMAR !L 'HABBAN A TEACHER IN 4OWER (AMLETS IN THE %AST %ND OF
,ONDON INVESTIGATES HOW YOUNG PEOPLE MAINLY YOUNG WOMEN FEEL ABOUT
THE NEWS THAT COMES AT THEM FROM ALL ANGLES IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES 4HEY
COME ACROSS AS INTERESTED IN ACCESSING THE TRUTH BUT PREFERRING TO HAVE
IT TRANSMITTED TO THEIR MOBILE PHONES IN BITE SIZED CHUNKS /NE GROUP OF
YOUNG WOMEN SPEAK OF THE NEWS AS APOCALYPTIC HERALDING THE END OF THE
WORLD /THERS JUST PUT BAD NEWS OUT OF THEIR MINDS 3OME OF THE YOUNG
"ANGLADESHI WOMEN INTERVIEWED TAKE THE THREAT OF TERROR ATTACKS MUCH
MORE SERIOUSLY THAN @WHITE "RITISH WOMEN WITH A SIMILAR CLASS AND LOCAL
BACKGROUND -OST TEENAGERS COMBINE A REVOLTED FASCINATION WITH IMAGES
OF TORTURE AND CYNICISM ABOUT WHAT IF ANYTHING IS TO BE BELIEVED 9ET
CYNICISM CAN FEED INTO DOGMATIC THINKING AND BELIEFS AND TO A FORM OF
CONSPIRACY PARANOIA WHICH IGNORES THE STATE ITS NON LEGITIMACY TAKEN FOR
GRANTED AND FOCUSES ON THE VENAL DECEPTIONS OF MEDIA CORPORATIONS
3ADAF 2IVZIS ARTICLE SHOWS HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO OPEN UP COMMUNICATIVE
SPACES FOR -USLIM WOMEN MARGINALIZED IN POLITICAL DEBATE 4HE GROUPS
OF WOMEN WHO CONGREGATED IN EACH OTHERS HOUSES AND CHATTED WITH 3ADAF
WERE MAINLY 5RDU AND 0UNJABI SPEAKING HOUSEWIVES SPANNING A WIDE
AGE RANGE WITH VERY DIFFERENT LIFE STORIES 3ADAF USES CONCEPTS PROVIDED BY
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
HER INFORMANTS AS ANALYTICAL TERMS n ESPECIALLY THE NOTION OF APNA WHICH
ROUGHLY TRANSLATES AS @BELONGING TO PEOPLE LIKE US )N THIS REVEALING AND AT
TIMES POIGNANT ARTICLE THE WOMEN HEROICALLY RESIST THE RESEARCHERS WELL
INTENTIONED EFFORTS TO COAX THEM TO EXPRESS THEIR VIEWS INDEPENDENTLY OF
THOSE OF THEIR SONS HUSBANDS AND OTHER MALE RELATIVES TO WHOM 2IZVI IS
CONSTANTLY BEING REFERRED
$AVID (ERBERTS ARTICLE SHOWS HOW ATTITUDES TOWARDS TERROR IN .ORTHERN
)RELAND HAVE BEEN DE ROMANTICIZED BY THE EVENTS OF AND ITS AFTERMATH
(E EMPHASIZES THE CROSS CUTTING LEGITIMACY OF THE ""# SEEN AS THE ONLY
REASONABLY RELIABLE SOURCE OF NEWS IN THE 5+ BUT ALSO THE EXTENT TO WHICH
NEWS OF TERRORIST EVENTS IN .ORTHERN )RELAND IS NOW KEPT OUT OF THE 5+
MEDIA BECAUSE IT NO LONGER SUITS THE NEW SECURITY POLICY AGENDA OF THE
"RITISH GOVERNMENT
:AHBIA 9OUSUFS ARTICLE BASED ON INTERVIEWS WITH PEOPLE IN )NDIAN HOUSE
HOLDS IN ,ONDON AND .ORTHERN )RELAND MAKES IMPORTANT COMPARATIVE
POINTS ABOUT PLURAL IDENTIFICATIONS OVERLAPPING AND SOMETIMES CONFLICTING
BETWEEN "RITISHNESS AND OTHER FORMS OF BELONGING 3HE EXAMINES HOW
MULTILAYERED IDENTIFICATIONS SHAPE UNDERSTANDINGS AND FEELINGS OF AND TO
WARDS "RITISHNESS BELONGING AND CITIZENSHIP AND IMPACT ON JUDGEMENTS
AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE LEGITIMACY OF STATE SECURITY POLICY
4HE LAST TWO ARTICLES REFLECT OUR CONCERN WITH TESTING EXPERIMENTAL
METHODOLOGIES (ABIBA .OOR USES A MEDIA PRODUCTION SIMULATION EXERCISE
WITH YOUNG -USLIM WOMEN IN ,ONDON AND .EW 9ORK IN ORDER TO EXPLORE
PERCEPTIONS OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS MEDIA AND LOCAL AUDIENCES OR AS .OOR
PUTS IT HOW THESE YOUNG WOMEN SITUATE THEMSELVES IN RELATION TO @A TRANS
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE OF -USLIM REPRESENTATION 4HIS FORMS PART OF .OORS
LARGER PROJECT IN WHICH DIVERSE RESEARCH SUBJECTS CONSTRUCTED THEIR OWN
SEQUENCES OF VIDEO IMAGES AND SCRIPTED VOICEOVERS REGARDING THE )RAQ WAR
6IDEOS CAN BE VIEWED ON THE PROJECT WEBSITE WWWMEDIATINGSECURITYCOM
!KIL !WANS REPORT IS UNIQUE IN NOT BEING BASED ON INTERVIEWS (E
ATTEMPTS A @VIRTUAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF @JIHADIST SITES -ANY SUCH SITES AS WELL
AS THEIR VISITORS DESIGNERS AND SERVERS HAVE BEEN HARASSED AS PART OF THE
WAR ON TERROR !NY SITE WHICH SURVIVES FOR A LONG TIME IS DEEMED BY VIRTUAL
JIHADISTS TO BE #)! FUNDED AND THUS PART OF A CONSPIRACY TO PRESENT RADICAL
-USLIMS AS THE MAIN ENEMIES OF 7ESTERN DEMOCRACY !WAN ARGUES THAT
UNDERSTANDABLE FEELINGS OF FRUSTRATION FEAR RAGE AND UPSET REGARDING THE
SUFFERINGS OF )SLAMIC COMMUNITIES WORLDWIDE CANNOT SIMPLY BE @SHUT DOWN
/THER MORE VIOLENT FORMS OF EXPRESSION MAY BECOME MORE ATTRACTIVE IF
THE VIRTUAL JIHADIST MOVEMENT IS BLOCKED !CTS OF INTERNET COMMUNICATION
ARE NOT VIOLENT IN THEMSELVES THOUGH JIHADIST VISUAL AND TEXTUAL CONTENTS
MAY BE !WAN DOUBTS WHETHER EXPOSURE TO JIHADIST SITES COULD EVER @TURN
ANYONE INTO A TERRORIST BUT WHEN STATE VIOLENCE IS CONDONED SOME WILL
DEEM RETALIATORY VIOLENCE BY NON STATE ACTORS LEGITIMATE n VIOLENCE BREEDS
VIOLENCE
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D T Q N O D @ M I N T Q M @ K N E B T KS T Q @ K R S T C H D R
&INALLY THREE PIECES BY %UROPEAN SCHOLARS RESPOND TO THE RESEARCH
REPORTS 4HE AIM IS TO EXPAND THE POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL RESONANCES OF
THIS VOLUME BEYOND THE 5+ (ELEN (INTJENS WRITING FROM 4HE (AGUE
EXPRESSES DISMAY AT THE @BESIEGED SITUATION OF MINORITIES AND THE EXCLU
SIONARY FORMS OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE @BRAVE NEW %UROPE AS ITS FORTRESS WALLS
ARE DRAWN NOT JUST AROUND BUT EVERYWHERE WITHIN 3HE VIEWS THE ARTICLES AS
SUGGESTING THAT CITIZENS ARE INCREASINGLY OBJECTS AND TARGETS OF PROPAGANDA
RATHER THAN INFORMED BY NEWS MEDIA AND THAT DECLINING STATE LEGITIMACY
CANNOT EASILY BE RESTORED
!RND -ICHAEL .OHL WRITING FROM (AMBURG FROM A MEDIA EDUCATION
PERSPECTIVE ADDRESSES THE ISSUE OF WHAT CONSTITUTES LEARNING FROM NEWS
AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NEWS MEDIA AUDIENCES AND THE DELIBERATIVE
PRACTICES OF PUBLICS AND CITIZENS 4HE STUDY OF MEDIATED DEMOCRATIC EN
GAGEMENT REQUIRES AN ANALYSIS OF INFORMAL AS WELL AS FORMAL PROCESSES OF
DELIBERATION AND THEIR IMPACT (E ARGUES THAT THE CONCEPT OF @CULTURES OF
MEDIA PRACTICE AND OF @MEDIA BILDUNG ARE USEFUL IF WE ARE TO GRASP THE
CREATIVE AND TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF INFORMAL LEARNING FROM NEWS
&INALLY 7ERNER 3CHIFFAUER WRITING FROM "ERLIN POINTS TO THE TROUBL
ING CONVERGENCE OF EXCLUSIONARY STATE PRACTICES AND POLICIES DIRECTED AT
%UROPEAN -USLIMS DESPITE SHARP DISTINCTIONS IN APPROACHES TO MULTICUL
TURALISM IN THE 5+ AND 'ERMANY 4HIS CONVERGENCE HE ARGUES AIMS AT
AN EXCLUSIONARY %UROPEAN IDENTITY PREMISED ON A POLARIZATION BETWEEN
-USLIMS AND NON -USLIMS (E TOO SEES THE REPORTS AS REFLECTING THE
INCREASINGLY PRECARIOUS AND PROVISIONAL QUALITY OF THE CITIZENSHIP STATUS OF
RACIALIZED MINORITIES )S A RETREAT INTO DEFENSIVE IDENTITIES AND A RELUCTANCE
TO ENTER INTO PUBLIC DEBATE SURPRISING IN THIS CONTEXT .O !ND DOES THIS
NOT UNDERMINE THE VERY IDEA OF MULTICULTURAL DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP
3ADLY OUR RESEARCH GIVES US REASON TO THINK THAT THIS IS THE CASE 9ET THE
PASSION WITH WHICH THE NEW POLITICS OF SECURITY IS CONTESTED OFFERS A MEAS
URE OF HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
!CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
3PECIAL THANKS TO $R 4OM #HEESMAN FOR HIS EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE THROUGHOUT
THIS SPECIAL ISSUE 4HE SECTION ON HOW THE INTEGRATED RESEARCH DESIGN WORKED
IN PRACTICE IS TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM THE FINAL PROJECT REPORT TO THE %32# AUTHORED
JOINTLY BY -ARIE 'ILLESPIE *AMES 'OW AND !NDREW (OSKINS WITH ASSISTANCE FROM
"EN /,OUGHLIN AND )VAN :VERZHANOVSKI TO ALL OF WHOM GO MANY THANKS
3PECIAL THANKS ARE DUE TO $R "EN / ,OUGHLIN FOR HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE
ETHNOGRAPHIC STRAND OF THE PROJECT AND TO THIS ARTICLE 4HANKS TOO TO $R !NDREW
(ILL AND TO $R $ORLE $RACKLE FOR THEIR COMMENTS ON EARLY DRAFTS ) WOULD ALSO LIKE
TO THANK $R (ELEN - (INTJENS AND 0ROFESSORS !RND -ICHAEL .OHL AND 7ERNER
3CHIFFAUER FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS .EEDLESS TO SAY THIS SPECIAL ISSUE WOULD NOT
HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE COMMITMENT AND ENERGY OF THE RESEARCHERS WHO
CONDUCTED THE RESEARCH )T HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE TO PUBLISH ALL THEIR WORK SO ) WOULD
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F H K K D R OH D D C H SN Q R H M S QN C T B S H N M
LIKE TO THANK 3OMNATH "ATABYAL .OUREDDINE -ILADI AND !TIF )MTIAZ FOR THEIR
WORK ON THE PROJECT "UT MOST OF ALL WARM THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO PARTICIPATED
IN THE STUDY AND OFFERED US INSIGHTS INTO THEIR PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIVES )T IS TO
THEM THAT WE DEDICATE THIS SPECIAL ISSUE
2EFERENCES
!GAMBEN ' 3TATE OF %XCEPTION TRANSLATED BY + !TTELL #HICAGO ),
5NIVERSITY OF #HICAGO 0RESS
!KSOY ! @4RANSNATIONAL 6IRTUES AND #OOL ,OYALTIES 2ESPONSES OF
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"AUMAN : ,IQUID -ODERNITY #AMBRIDGE 0OLITY
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0UBLICS AND THE )RAQ 7AR )NTERNATIONAL 2ELATIONS n
'OW * $EFENDING THE 7EST #AMBRIDGE 0OLITY
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International Journal of Cultural
Studies
http://ics.sagepub.com
Popular media as public 'sphericules' for diasporic communities
Stuart Cunningham
International Journal of Cultural Studies 2001; 4; 131
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://ics.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/131
Published by:
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ARTICLE
INTERNATIONAL
journal of
CULTURAL studies
Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks,
CA and New Delhi
Volume 4(2): 131–147
[1367-8779(200106)4:2; 131–147; 017215]
Popular media as public ‘sphericules’ for
diasporic communities
●
Stuart Cunningham
Queensland University of Technology
● The dynamics of ‘diasporic’ video, television, cinema, music
and Internet use – where peoples displaced from homelands by migration,
refugee status or business and economic imperative use media to negotiate new
cultural identities – offer challenges for how media and culture are understood in
our times. Drawing on research published in Floating Lives: The Media and Asian
Diasporas, on dynamics that are industrial (the pathways by which these media
travel to their multifarious destinations), textual and audience-related (types of
diasporic style and practice where popular culture debates and moral panics are
played out in culturally divergent circumstances among communities marked by
internal difference and external ‘othering’), the article will interrogate further
the nature of the public ‘sphericules’ formed around diasporic media. ●
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
●
diaspora
●
ethnic minorities
●
media
●
public sphere
The research team that authored Floating Lives: The Media and Asian
Diasporas (Cunningham and Sinclair, 2000) mapped the mediascapes of
Asian diasporic communities against the background of the theoretical and
policy territory of understanding media use in contemporary, culturally
plural societies. In this article, I will take further than Floating Lives the
nature of the public spheres activated around diasporic media as a specific
form of public communication, by engaging with public sphere debates and
assessing the contribution that the research conducted for Floating Lives
might make to those debates.
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The public sphere, in its classic sense advanced in the work of Jürgen
Habermas (1989 [1962]), is a space of open debate standing against the state
as a special subset of civil society in which the logic of ‘democratic equivalence’ is cultivated. The concept has been used regularly in the fields of
media, cultural and communications studies to theorize the media’s articulation between the state and civil society. Indeed, Nicholas Garnham
claimed in the mid-1990s that the public sphere had replaced the concept
of hegemony as the central motivating idea in media and cultural studies
(Garnham, 1995). This is certainly an overstatement, but it is equally certain
that, almost 40 years since Habermas first published his public sphere argument, and almost 30 years since it was first published in outline in English
(Habermas, 1974), the debate continues strongly over how progressive
elements of civil societies are constructed and how media support, inhibit
or, indeed, are coterminous with such self-determining public communication.
The debate is marked out at either end of the spectrum by those, on the
one hand, for whom the contemporary western public sphere has been tarnished or even fatally compromised by the encroachment of particularly
commercial media and communications (for example, Schiller, 1989). On
the other hand, there are those for whom the media have become the main,
if not the only, vehicle for whatever can be held to exist of the public sphere
in such societies. Such ‘media-centric’ theorists in these fields can hold that
the media actually envelop the public sphere:
The ‘mediasphere’ is the whole universe of media . . . in all languages in all
countries. It therefore completely encloses and contains as a differentiated
part of itself the (Habermasian) public sphere (or the many public spheres),
and it is itself contained by the much larger semiosphere . . . which is the
whole universe of sense-making by whatever means, including speech . . . it
is clear that television is a crucial site of the mediasphere and a crucial mediator between general cultural sense-making systems (the semiosphere) and
specialist components of social sense-making like the public sphere. Hence
the public sphere can be rethought not as a category binarily contrasted with
its implied opposite, the private sphere, but as a ‘Russian doll’ enclosed within
a larger mediasphere, itself enclosed within the semiosphere. And within ‘the’
public sphere, there may equally be found, Russian-doll style, further countercultural, oppositional or minoritarian public spheres. (Hartley, 1999:
217–18)
Hartley’s topography has the virtue of clarity, scope and heuristic utility,
even while it remains provocatively media-centric. This is mostly due to
Hartley’s commitment to the strictly textual provenance of public communication, and to his greater interest in Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere than Habermas’ modernist understanding that the public sphere
stands outside and even against its ‘mediatization’.
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Cunningham ● Popular media as public ‘sphericules’
I will complicate that topography by suggesting that minoritarian public
spheres are rarely subsets of classic nationally bound public spheres but are
none the less vibrant, globalized but very specific spaces of self- and community-making and identity (see, for example, Husband, 1998). I agree with
Hartley, however, in his iconoclastic insistence that the commercial realm
must be factored into the debate more centrally and positively than it has
been to date. Diasporic media entrepreneurs and producers are mostly uninterested in or wary of the state, in part because the copyright status of much
of their production is dubious.
I will also stress another neglected aspect of the public sphere debate
developed by Jim McGuigan (1998: 92) – the ‘affective’ as much as ‘effective’ dimension of public communication, which allows for an adequate
grasp of entertainment in a debate dominated by ratiocinative and informational activity. McGuigan speaks of a ‘rather softer’ conception of the
public sphere than is found in the work of Habermas and others (1998: 98)
and develops these ideas around the significance of affective popular politics expressed through media mobilization of western responses to poverty
and aid campaigns. Underdeveloped, though, and tantalisingly so, is the role
played by the entertainment content of the media in the formation and
reproduction of public communication (McGuigan, 1998: 98, quoting
Garnham, 1992: 274). This is the domain on which such strongly opposed
writers as McGuigan and Hartley might begin to at least share an object of
study.
Todd Gitlin has posed the question as to whether we can continue to
speak of the ideal of the public sphere as an increasingly complex, polyethnic, communications-saturated series of societies develop around the
world. Rather, what might be emerging are numerous public ‘sphericules’:
‘does it not look as though the public sphere, in falling, has shattered into
a scatter of globules, like mercury?’ (Gitlin, 1998: 173). Gitlin’s answer is
the deeply pessimistic one of seeing the future as the irretrievable loss of
elements of a modernist public commonality.
The spatial metaphor of fragmentation, of dissolution, of the centre not
holding, assumes that there is a singular nation-state to anchor it. Thinking
of public sphericules as constituted beyond the singular nation-state, as
global narrowcasting of polity and culture, assists in restoring them to a
place – not necessarily counter-hegemonic but certainly culturally plural and
dynamically contending with western forms for recognition – of undeniable
importance for contemporary, culturally plural societies and any media, cultural and communication studies claiming similar contemporaneity.
There are now several claims for such public sphericules. One can speak of
a feminist public sphere and international public sphericules constituted
around environmental or human rights issues. They may take the form of ‘subaltern counterpublics’, as Nancy Fraser (1992) calls them, or they may be
termed taste cultures, such as those formed around gay style (which doesn’t
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I N T E R N AT I O N A L journal of C U LT U R A L studies 4(2)
of course exclude them from acting as ‘counterpublics’). As John Hartley and
Allen McKee put it in The Indigenous Public Sphere (2000: 3), these are possibly peculiar examples of public spheres because they are not predicated on
any nation that a public sphere usually expresses – they are the ‘civil societies’
of nations without borders, without state institutions and without citizens.
These authors go on to suggest that such public spheres might stand as a model
for developments in late modern culture generally, with do-it-yourself citizenship based on culture, identity and voluntary belonging rather than based on
rights derived from, and obligations to, a state.
My present argument is in part a contribution to the elaboration of just
such a project. However, there are still undeniably relations of dominance,
and ‘mainstreams’ and ‘peripheries’; the metaphor is not simply a series of
sphericules, overlapping to a greater or lesser extent. Although this latter
explanatory model goes some distance in explaining the complexity of overlapping taste cultures, identity formations, social commitments and specialist understandings that constitute the horizon of many if not most
citizens/consumers in post-industrial societies, there are broad consensuses
and agenda-setting capabilities that cannot be gainsaid in enthusiasm for
embracing tout court a ‘capillary’ model of power. The key, as Hartley and
McKee identify, is the degree of control over the meanings created about
and within the sphericule (2000: 3, 7) and by which this control is exercised.
In contrast to Gitlin, then, I argue that ethno-specific global mediatized
communities display in microcosm elements we would expect to find in ‘the’
public sphere. Such activities may constitute valid and indeed dynamic
counter-examples to a discourse of decline and fragmentation, while taking
full account of contemporary vectors of communication in a globalizing,
commercializing and pluralizing world.
Ongoing public sphere debates in the field, then, continue to be structured
around dualisms which are arguably less aids than inhibitors of analysis:
dualisms such as public–private, information–entertainment, cognition–
affect or emotion, public versus commercial culture and – the ‘master’
dualism – public sphere in the singular or plural. What follows is no pretence at a Hegelian Aufhebung (transcendence) catching up these dualisms
in a grand synthesis, but rather a contribution to a more positive account
of the operations of media-based public communication – in this case,
ethno-specific diasporic sphericules – which place a different slant on highly
generalized debates about globalization, commercialization and the fate of
public communication in these contexts.
The ethno-specific mediatized sphericule
First, they are indeed ‘sphericules’; that is, they are social fragments that do
not have critical mass. Nevertheless, they share many of the characteristics
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of the classically conceived public sphere – they provide a central site for
public communication in globally dispersed communities, stage communal
difference and discord productively, and work to articulate insider ethnospecific identities – which are by definition ‘multi-national’, even global – to
the wider ‘host’ environments.
The audience research for Floating Lives was conducted in communities
in Australia. Although Australia is, in proportional terms, the world’s
second-largest immigrant nation next to Israel, the relatively low numbers
of any individual group (at present, more than 150 ethnic groups speaking
over 100 different languages) has meant that a critical mass of a few dominant Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) groupings has not made
the impact that Hispanic peoples, for example, have made in the United
States. No one non-Anglo Celt ethnic group has, therefore, reached ‘critical
mass’ in terms of being able to operate significantly as a self-contained community in the nation. For this reason, Australia offers a useful laboratory
for testing notions of diasporic communities that need to be ‘de-essentialized’, adapted to conditions where ethnicities and sub-ethnicities jostle in
ways that would have been unlikely or impossible in their respective homeland settings or where long and sustained patterns of immigration have produced a critical mass of singular ethnicities.
Sinclair et al.’s (2000) study of the Chinese in Floating Lives posits that
the sources, socioeconomic backgrounds and circumstances of Chinese
immigrant arrivals in Australia have been much more diverse than those of
Chinese communities in the other great contemporary immigrant-receiving
countries such as the United States, Canada, Britain and New Zealand, or
earlier immigrant-receiving countries in Southeast Asia, South America,
Europe and Africa. To make sense of ‘the’ Chinese community is to break
it down into a series of complex and often interrelated sub-groupings based
on geographical origin – mainland (PRC), Southeast Asia (Indonesia,
Malaysia and Singapore), Taiwan, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia),
Hong Kong – together with overlapping language and dialect use.
Similarly, Cunningham and Nguyen’s (2000) Vietnamese study shows that
there are significant differences among quite a small population along axes
of generation, ethnicity, region of the home country, education and class, and
recency of arrival and conditions under which arrival took place. And for the
Fiji Indians in Manas Ray’s work (2000), if it was legislated racial discrimination that compelled them to leave Fiji, in Australia they find themselves
‘othered’ by, and othering, the mainland Indian groupings who contest the
authenticity of Fiji Indian claims to rootedness in Indian popular culture.
The formats for diasporic popular media owe much to their inscription
within such ‘narrowcast’ cultural spaces and share many significant attributes: karaoke, with its performative, communal and de-aestheticized performative and communal space (Wong, 1994); the Vietnamese variety music
video and ‘Paris/Sydney/Toronto by Night’ live show formats; and the
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typical ‘modular’ Bollywood film and accompanying live and playback
music culture.
Against the locus of examination of the ‘diasporic imagination’ as one of
aesthetically transgressive hybridity produced out of a presumed ‘ontological condition’ occupied by the migrant subject, these are not necessarily
aesthetically transgressive or politically progressive texts. Their politics
cannot be read off their textual forms, but must be grasped in the use to
which they are put in the communities. In Floating Lives we see these uses
as centring on popular culture debates – where communities contend around
the politics, identity formations and tensions of hybrid popular forms
emerging to serve the diasporas.
Much diasporic cultural expression is a struggle for survival, identity and
assertion, and it can be a struggle as much enforced by the necessities of
coming to terms with the dominant culture as it is freely assumed. And the
results may not be pretty. The instability of cultural maintenance and
negotiation can lead, at one extreme, to being locked into a time warp with
the fetishized homeland – as it once might have been but no longer is or can
be; and, at the other, to assimilation to the dominant host culture and a loss
of place in one’s originary culture. It can involve insistent reactionary politics and extreme overcommercialization (Naficy [1993: 71] cites a situation
in 1987 when Iranian television in Los Angeles was scheduling more than
40 minutes advertising an hour) because of the need to fund expensive forms
of media for a narrowcast audience; and textual material of excoriating
tragedy (the [fictional] self-immolation and [actual] atrocity scenarios
played out in some, respectively, Iranian and Croatian videos), as recounted
by Naficy and by Kolar-Panov (1997).
Second, there is explanatory pay-off in pursuing the specificity of the
ethno-specific public sphericule in comparison with other emergent public
spheres. Like the classic Habermasian bourgeois public sphere of the café
society of 18th- and 19th-century France and Britain, they are constituted
as elements of civil society. However, our understanding of civil society is
formulated out of its dualistic relationship to formal apparatuses of political and juridical power. Ethno-specific sphericules constitute themselves as
potentially global civil societies that intersect with state apparatuses at
various points (immigration law, multicultural public policy and, for the
irredentist and the exilic, against the regimes that control homeland
societies). It follows that ethno-specific public sphericules are not congruent
with international taste cultures borne by a homogenizing global media
culture. For diasporic groupings were parts of states, nations and polities
and much of the diasporic polity is about the process of remembering, positioning and, by no means least, constructing business opportunities around
these pre-diasporic states and/or nations.
It is out of these realities that the assumption grows that ethnic minoritarian publics contribute to the further fragmentation of the majoritarian
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public sphere, breaking the ‘social compact’ that subsumes nation and
ethnicity within the state; a process that has been foundational for the
modern nation state. Irredentist politics and ‘long-distance’ nationalism,
where the prime allegiance continues to be to an often-defunct state or
regime, are deemed non-progressive by most commentators – classically
captured by Susan Sontag in her celebrated essays on the Cubans in
Florida. However, a focus on the popular culture of diasporas and its place
in the construction of public sphericules complicates these assumptions,
as it shows that a variety of voices contend for recognition and influence
in the micro-polity, and great generational renewal can arise from the
vibrancy of such popular culture.
Sophisticated cosmopolitanism and successful international business
dealing sit alongside long-distance nationalism – the diasporic subject is
typically a citizen of a western country, who is not stateless and is not
seeking the recognition of a separate national status in their ‘new’ country,
like the prototypal instances in the European context such as the Basques,
the Scots or the Welsh. These sphericules are definitively transnational, even
global in their constitution but are not the same as emerging transnational
polities and cultures of global corporate culture, world-spanning nongovernmental organizations and international bodies of governments.
Perhaps the most consistent relation, or non-relation, that diasporic
media have with the various states into which they are introduced concerns
issues of piracy. This gives another layer to the notion of civil cultures standing against the state, where ‘public’ is irreducible to ‘official’ culture. Indeed,
given that significant amounts of the cultural production exist in a paralegal penumbra of copyright breach and piracy, there is a strong desire on
the part of the entrepreneurs who disseminate such products to keep their
distance from organs of the state. It is apparent that routinized piracy makes
of much diasporic media a ‘shadow system’, as Kolar-Panov (1997: 31) dubs
such minority video circuits as they are perceived from outside. They operate
‘in parallel’ to the majoritarian system, with few industry linkages.
Third, they reconfigure essentialist notions of community and reflex anticommercialism. These sphericules are communities in a sense that goes
beyond the bland homogeneous arcadia that the term community usually
connotes. On the one hand, the ethno-specific community assumes an
importance that is greater by far than the term usually implies in mainstream
parlance, as the community constitutes the markets and audiences for the
media services – there is almost no cross-over or recognition outside the
specific community in most cases of diasporic cultural production. The
‘community’ therefore becomes an economic calculus, not only a multicultural demographic instance. The community is to an important extent
constituted through media (see Hartley and McKee, 2000: 84) in so far as
media performance is one of the main reasons to meet together, and there
is very little else available as a mediator of information and entertainment.
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These media and their entrepreneurs and audiences work within a deessentialized community and its differences as a condition of their practice
and engagement.
Diasporic media are largely commercially driven media but are not fully
fledged markets. They are largely constituted in and through a commercial
culture but this is not the globalizing, homogenizing commercialism that has
been posed by neo-Marxist political economists as threatening cultural
pluralism, authenticity and agency at the local level. With notable exceptions
such as global Chinese popular cultural forms such as cantopop and Hong
Kong cinema, which has experienced significant cross-over into both dominant and other emerging contemporary cultural formations, and the Indian
popular Bhangra music and Bollywood cinema which is still more singularly
based in Indian homeland and diasporic audiences, this is small business
commercialism that deals with the practical specificities of cultural difference
at the local level as an absolute precondition of business viability.
The spaces for ethno-specific public communication are, fourth, mediacentric, and this affords new configurations of the information–
entertainment dualism. Given the at times extreme marginalization of many
diasporic groupings in public space and their lack of representation within
leaderships of influence and persuasion in the dominant forums of the host
country, ethno-specific media become, by default, the main organs of communication outside of certain circumscribed and defined social spaces, such
as the Chinatowns, Koreatowns, the little Saigons, the churches and
temples, or the local video, spice and herb parlours.
The ethno-specific sphericule is mediacentric but, unlike the way that
mediacentricity can give rise to functionalist thinking (media are the cement
that forms and gives identity to the community), it should be thought of
rather as ‘staging’ difference and dissension in ways that the community
itself can manage. There are severe constraints on public political discourse
among, for example, refugee-based communities such as the Vietnamese.
The ‘compulsive memorialisation’ (Thomas, 1999: 149) of the precommunist past of Vietnam and the compulsory anti-communism of the
leadership of the Vietnamese community are internalized as unsavoury to
mainstream society. As part of the pressure to be the perfect citizen in the
host society (Hage, 1998: 10), there is considerable self-censorship in the
expression of public critical opinion. This filtering of political partisanship
for external consumption is also turned back on itself in the community,
with attempts by members of the community to have the rigorous anti-communist refugee stance softened (by the mid-1990s, only 30 percent of the
Vietnamese community in Australia were originally refugees) met with harsh
rebuke. In this situation, Vietnamese entertainment formats, discussed
below, operate to create a space where political and cultural identities can
be processed in a self-determining way, where voices other than the official,
but constitutive of community sentiment, can speak.
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Mediacentricity also means, in this context, a constant blurring of the
information–entertainment distinction, giving rise to a positive sense of a
‘tabloidized’ sphericule wherein McGuigan’s affective as well as effective
communication takes on another meaning. The information–entertainment
distinction – usually maintained in the abundance of available media in
dominant cultures – is blurred in the diasporic setting. As there is typically
such a small diet of ethno-specific media available to these communities,
they are mined deeply for social cues (including fashion, language use and
so on), personal gossip, public information as well as singing along to the
song or following the fictional narrative. Within this concentrated and contracted informational and libidinal economy, ‘contemporary popular media
as guides to choice, or guides to the attitudes that inform choices’ (Hartley,
1999: 143) take on a thoroughly continuous and central role in information
and entertainment for creating a negotiated habitus.
The Vietnamese
The Vietnamese are by far the largest refugee community in Australia. For
most, ‘home’ is a denigrated category while ‘the regime’ continues in power,
and so media networks, especially music video, operate to connect the dispersed exilic Vietnamese communities. As Cunningham and Nguyen (2000)
argue in our chapter in Floating Lives, there are obviously other media in
play (community newspapers, Hong Kong film and video products) but
music video carries especial significance and allows a focus on the affective
dimension of public communication. Small business entrepreneurs produce
low-budget music videos mostly out of southern California (but also Paris),
which are taken up within the fan circuits of the United States, Australia,
Canada, France and elsewhere. The internal cultural conflicts in the communities centre on the felt need to maintain pre-revolutionary Vietnamese
heritage and traditions; find a negotiated place in a more mainstreamed
culture; or engage in the formation of distinct hybrid identities around the
appropriation of dominant western popular cultural forms. These three cultural positions or stances are dynamic and mutable, but the main debates
are constructed around them, and are played out principally within variety
music video formats.
Although by no means exhausting the media diet of the Vietnamese diaspora, live variety shows and music videos are undeniably unique to it, as
audio-visual media made specifically by and for the diaspora. These media
forms bear many similarities to the commercial and variety-based cultural production of Iranian television in Los Angeles studied by Naficy in his benchmark The Making of Exile Cultures (1993), not least because Vietnamese
variety show and music video production is also centred on the Los Angeles
conurbation. The Vietnamese grouped there are not as numerous or as rich
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as Naficy’s Iranians and so have not developed the business infrastructure to
support the range and depth of media activity recounted by Naficy. The business infrastructure of Vietnamese audiovisual production is structured around
a small number of small businesses operating on very low margins.
To be exilic means not, or at least not ‘officially’, being able to draw on
the contemporary cultural production of the home country. Indeed, it
means actively denying its existence in a dialectical process of mutual
disauthentification (Carruthers, forthcoming). The Vietnam government
Figure 1 Asia Video 21, ‘Songs from the Era of Wartime’. A 1998 music video
compilation by Asia Productions. Remembrance of the heroic loss of the Vietnam
War remains a normative element of Vietnamese diasporic popular culture.
Reproduced with kind permission.
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proposes that the Viet Kieu (the appellation for Vietnamese overseas which
carries a pejorative connotation) are fatally westernised. Ironically, the
diasporic population makes a similar counter-charge against the regime,
proposing that the homeland population has lost its moral integrity
Figure 2 Paris by Night 36. A high production value 1996 release, ‘Houston’
(based on one of the regular live shows throughout the diaspora, this time in
Houston), by the main Vietnamese production house in the United States, Thuy
Nga Productions. Reproduced with kind permission.
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through the wholesale compulsory adoption of an alien western ideology
– Marxism-Leninism.
Together, the dispersed geography and the demography of a small series
of communities frame the conditions for ‘global narrowcasting’ – that is,
ethnically specific cultural production for widely dispersed population fragments centripetally organized around their disavowed state of origin. This
makes the media, and the media use, of the Vietnamese diaspora fundamentally different from those of the Indian or Chinese diasporas. The last
revolve around massive cinema and television production centres in the
‘home’ countries that enjoy international cachet. By contrast, the fact that
the media uses of the Vietnamese diaspora are globally oriented but commercially marginal ensures that they flourish outside the purview of state
and major commercial vectors of subvention and trade.
These conditions also determine the small business character of the production companies. These small enterprises run at low margins and are constantly undercut by piracy and copying of their video products. They have
clustered around the only Vietnamese population base that offers critical
mass and is geographically adjacent to the much larger ECI (entertainmentcommunications-information) complex in Southern California. There is evidence of internal migration within the diaspora from the rest of the United
States, Canada and France to Southern California to take advantage of the
largest overseas Vietnamese population concentration and the world’s major
ECI complex.
During the course of the 20 and more years since the fall of Saigon and
the establishing of the diaspora through flight and migration, a substantial
amount of music video material has been produced. Thuy Nga Productions, by far the largest and most successful company, organizes major live
shows in the United States and franchises appearance schedules for its highprofile performers at shows around the global diaspora. It has produced
more than 60 two- to three-hour videotapes since the early 1980s, as well
as a constant flow of CDs, audio-cassettes and karaoke discs, in addition
to documentary specials and re-releases of classic Vietnamese movies. The
other companies, between them, have also produced hundreds of hours of
variety music video (see Figures 1 and 2).
Virtually every overseas Vietnamese household views this music video
material, most regularly attend the live variety performances on which the
video material is based, and a significant proportion have developed comprehensive home libraries. The popularity of this material is exemplary,
cutting across the several axes of difference in the community: ethnicity, age,
gender, recentness of arrival, educational level, refugee or immigrant status,
and home region. It is also widely available in pirated form in Vietnam itself,
as the economic and cultural ‘thaw’ that has proceeded since the government’s so-called Doi Moi policies of greater openness has resulted in extensive penetration of the homeland by this most international of Vietnamese
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forms of expression. As the only popular culture produced by and specifically for the Vietnamese diaspora, these texts attract an emotive investment
in the overseas communities which is as deep as it is varied. The social text
that surrounds, indeed engulfs, these productions is intense, multi-layered
and makes its address across differences of generation, gender, ethnicity,
class and education levels and recentness of arrival.
The key point linking attention to the textual dynamics of the music
videos and media use in the communities is that each style cannot exist
without the others, because of the marginal size of the audience base.
From the point of view of business logic, each style cannot exist without
the others. Thus, at the level of both the individual show/video and
company outputs as a whole, the organizational structure of the shows
and videos reflects the heterogeneity required to maximize the audience
within a strictly narrowcast range. This is a programming philosophy congruent with ‘broadcasting’ to a globally spread, narrowcast demographic:
‘the variety show form has been a mainstay of overseas Vietnamese anticommunist culture from the mid seventies onwards’ (Carruthers, forthcoming).
In any given live show or video production, the musical styles might range
from precolonial traditionalism to French colonial era high modernist classicism, to crooners adapting Vietnamese folksongs to the Sinatra era and to
bilingual cover versions of Grease or Madonna. Stringing this concatenation of taste cultures together are comperes, typically well-known political
and cultural figures in their own right, who perform a rhetorical unifying
function:
Audience members are constantly recouped via the show’s diegesis, and the
anchoring role of the comperes and their commentaries, into an overarching
conception of shared overseas Vietnamese identity. This is centred on the
appeal to . . . core cultural values, common tradition, linguistic unity and an
anti-communist homeland politics. (Carruthers, forthcoming)
Within this overall political trajectory, however, there are major differences to be managed. The stances evidenced in the video and live material
range on a continuum from ‘pure’ heritage maintenance and ideological
monitoring; to mainstream cultural negotiation; through to assertive
hybridity. Most performers and productions seek to situate themselves
within the mainstream of cultural negotiation between Vietnamese and
western traditions. However, at one end of the continuum there are strong
attempts both to keep the original folkloric music traditions alive and to
keep the integrity of the originary anti-communist stance foundational to
the diaspora, through very public criticism of any lapse from that stance.
At the other end, Vietnamese-American youth culture is exploring the
limits of hybrid identities through the radical intermixing of musical
styles.
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The Fiji Indians
In a remarkably short time, essentially since the coups of the late 1980s
which pushed thousands of Fiji Indians out of Fiji and into diaspora around
the Pacific Rim in cities such as Vancouver, Auckland and Sydney, the community in Sydney has fashioned a vibrant popular culture based on consumption and celebration of Hindi filmdom and its associated music, dance
and fashion cultures. It is an especial irony that a people ‘extracted’ from
mainland Indian polity and culture a century or more ago – for whom the
relationship with the world of Hindi film is a purely imaginary one – should
embrace and appropriate such a culture with far greater strength than those
enjoying a much more recent connection to the ‘homeland’.
Manas Ray’s analysis of the Fiji Indian public sphericule in Floating Lives
(2000) is structured around a comparison with the expatriate Bengalis. The
two groups are contrasted on a caste, class and cultural consumption basis,
and Ray stresses that, given that there is no critical mass of sub-ethnicities
within the Indian diaspora in Australia, cultural difference is definitional.
The Bengalis are seen as locked into their history as bearers of the Indian
project of modernity which they assumed centrally under the British Raj.
The once-unassailed centrality that the educated, Hindu Bengali gentry, the
bradralok, had in the political and civic institutions of India has been challenged in the decades since independence by the subaltern classes:
Figure 3 Fiji Times, February and March 1999. The most popular free
magazine among Fiji Indians in Sydney. Reproduced with kind permission.
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It is from this Bengal that the bradralok flees, either to relatively prosperous
parts of India or, if possible, abroad – to the affluent west, taking with them
the dream of a nation that they were once so passionate about and the cultural baggage which had expressed that dream. (Ray, 2000: 142–3)
The Bengali diaspora, argues Ray, frames its cultural life around the high
culture of the past, which has become a ‘fossilized’ taste culture (2000: 143).
In startling contrast to the Fiji Indian community, which is by far the
highest consumer of Hindi films, for the Indian Bengalis, Indian-sourced film
and video is of little interest and is even the subject of active disparagement.
The literature and other high cultural forms, which once had ‘organic links
to the independence movement and to early post-independence hardship
and hope’, have fossilized into a predictable and ageing taste culture that is
remarkably similar whether the Bengali community is in Philadelphia,
Boston, London, Düsseldorf, Dubai or Sydney (Ray, 2000: 143). The issues
of inter-generational deficit as the young turn to western youth culture are
evident.
The politics of popular culture are fought out across the communal fractions and across the generations. The inter-communal discord between
mainland Indians and Fiji Indians, which are neither new nor restricted only
to Australia – where many mainland Indians continue to exhibit deeply
entrenched casteist attitudes and Fiji Indians often characterized mainland
Indians with the same kind of negativity they were wont to use for ethnic
Fijians – are often played out around media and film culture. There are
elements of fully blown popular culture debates being played out. At the
time of a particularly vitriolic controversy in 1997, the editor of the mainland Indian Post argued that while the Fiji Indians are ‘good Hindus’ and
‘they are the people who spend’, their ‘westernised ways’ and ‘excessive
attachment to filmy culture’ bring disrepute to the Indian community as a
whole (Dello, 1997). The resolution to these kinds of issues is often found
in the commercial reality that Fiji Indians are the main consumers of the
products and services advertised in mainland Indian shops (see Figure...
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