Mediatised Recognition and the ‘Other’

Abstract

Media representations of minorities and outsider groups have long been observed to involve demeaning stereotypes, discourses of denigration and symbolic annihilation. Where this is so, group claims for public recognition and social belonging are undermined and a climate is created in which fears and hatreds can flourish. But this story, like the politics of recognition more widely, is not destined to remain fixed for all time. Mainstream media are in fact capable of producing representations that give voice to the voiceless and identity to image. These representations perform an important role in the symbolic rehabilitation of former ‘others’ — whether they are, for example, asylum seekers, terrorism suspects, Aboriginal people or victims of war and famine — and they do so through journalism's performative deployment of powerful communicative modes of display and deliberation. These more progressive enactments are too often overlooked and under-theorised by critical researchers today, who remain theoretically fixated on the media's construction of the ‘other’. In an increasingly reflexive, culturally pluralistic and globalising world, it is time to acknowledge and bolster the more politically productive representations of mainstream journalism.