Directing diversity

Abstract

• This article sets out to examine and evaluate the Finnish and Swedish public service broadcasting companies’ cultural diversity management and implementation. Diversity policies have been in place in Europe since the 1960s. At present, in the 2000s, there are a variety of strategies to increase the representation of minorities and the recruitment of journalists with minority backgrounds into mainstream media. European collaboration is both taking inspiration and ideas from national experiences and disseminating ‘good practices’. This article analyses how and for what purposes diversity discourses are used, and how cultural/mission and economic/market arguments are articulated within the companies’ cultural diversity media policies. Interviews with managers responsible for cultural diversity issues in both Finnish YLE and Swedish SVT broadcasters and policy documents are scrutinized using critical discourse and policy analysis. Both companies have replaced their multicultural policies aimed at providing specific services for minority groups with integrationist policies aimed at mainstreaming cultural diversity. This shift has led to a collapse of the opposition between ‘public’ and ‘market’ values, although this is articulated differently in the two companies. •

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