Media and Diversity: A Century-Long Perspective on an Enlarged and Internationalized Field of Research

Abstract

What is the influence of the mass media on the social cohesion of diverse societies?Do the mass media contribute to hindering or damaging relationships between the social groups composing diversified societies -be it in terms of "race", ethnicity, culture or gender?Or, on the contrary, can they improve it?For nearly a century these questions have penetrated the academic and political spheres of numerous countries at various times and in various social and political situations but with a constant resurgence up to the point of delineating a large internationalized area of research.2 Anglo-Saxon countries have been one step ahead on this issue, in particular the United States, where, in the very early days of sociology and communication sciences, scholars investigated the link between mass media and interracial and intercultural relationships.While contributing to the reflection on "Americanization", Robert Ezra Park first inaugurated this specialized field by furnishing an in-depth documentation of the foreign-language press, and its role in encouraging or hindering new immigrants to become Americans.1 In 1946, Bernard Berelson, the founding father of content analysis, delved with another researcher into hundreds of pieces of popular fiction appearing in mass magazines to determine what kinds of people appeared in short stories in terms of their racial, religious, and national backgrounds, and how they were treated, with the ambition to investigate the existence and nature of differential treatment accorded to various ethnic groups.Their content analysis revealed that the "100% Americans", whom they defined as "people of 'pure American stock' -white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxons", were better treated, quantitatively and qualitatively, than minorities, in which category they included American Negroes, Jews, Mexicans, Italian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Irish-Americans. 2 In 1947, Paul Lazarsfeld, renowned as the Media and Diversity: A Century-Long Perspective on an Enlarged and Internatio...

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