Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. Introduction
Community media are described as those that serve the community, by providing
news and information relevant to the needs of its members, while promoting access
and participation of the latter (Jankowski, 2002). Community media are also regarded
as the third voice in comparison with or in opposition to the state and the private
commercial media, fostering the voice of the ordinary people and of civil society
(Carpentier, Lie and Servaes, 2003). Also, by encouraging the expression of
minorities and marginalized groups they are claimed to build alternative news
agendas to those of the mainstream media, which demonstrate a structural bias
(McNair, 1998) in favour of the elites. In addition, their capacity to foster diversity,
intercultural dialogue and tolerance has made community media privileged partners
in peace-building, conflict resolution and reconciliation (Rodriguez, 2011).
Purpose of the present study is to examine the role a community media organization
can play in Cyprus, and to develop a roadmap for action research into the
establishment of such a community media organization. It is explored whether
community media could give voice to and promote the dialogue between the
members of the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot community, and in
combination with the generation of diverse and alternative representations of the
Cyprus problem.
Examining the characteristics community media should have in Cyprus to meet this
purpose and to better serve the particularities of the island, the idea of a bicommunity radio station based in Nicosia, the capital city that unites and divides at
the same time the two communities, is promoted. As a technology, radio is capable in
reaching large groups of people and is frequently used in Cyprus, whereas one of its
main advantages over other technologies is its familiarity, immediacy and materiality,
which are crucial elements in peace-building processes. At the same time, the
effectiveness and reach of a bi-community radio station can be enhanced by new
technologies that support (inter)connectedness, sharing and expression of opinion,
and have the dynamics to help re-establish an environment of co-existence based on
linguistic, religious and cultural diversity of the two communities.
Since its crucial for the success of such an endeavour to gain the support,
involvement and commitment of the two communities, it is considered important to
generate a dialogue-driven coalition of Cypriot stakeholders in the process, which
would set the foundations for a community radio station that would be both
sustainable (Internews, 2009) and participatory-democratic.
The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters is usually referred to by its French
acronym AMARC, or the Association Mondiale des Radio diffuseurs Communautaires. The AMARC
website can be found at http://www.amarc.org.
community media are very successful. Meadows et al. (2007) mention the existence
of more than 400 community media in Australia only. In Columbia, there are more
than 600 community radio and more than 500 community television stations licensed 2
(Rodriguez, 2011: 28) Community media have also been officially acknowledged as
the third media sector (for example, in the UK, the Netherlands, Hungary, but also in
Australia and many Latin American and African countries).
In recent years the research interest in community media has greatly increased and
several publications on the subject have appeared, including: Hintz, 2000; Downing
et al., 2001; Rodriguez, 2001, 2011; Halleck, 2002; Atton, 2002; Couldry and Curran,
2003; Howley, 2005; Jankowski and Prehn, 2002; Rennie, 2006; Bailey, Cammaerts
and Carpentier, 2008 and Coyer, Dowmunt and Fountain, 2008; Cammaerts, 2009;
Peissl and Tremetzberger, 2010; Reguero Jimnez and Scifo, 2010. Even more
recently, European policy-makers have recognized the role and value of community
media. In a report on Community Media in Europe, adopted in 2008, the European
Parliament noted that community media fulfil a broad yet largely unacknowledged
role in the media landscape, particularly as a source of local content, and encourage
innovation, creativity and diversity of content (European Parliament, 2008). In the
European Parliaments Resolution of 25 September 2008 on Community Media in
Europe that followed after the publication of the Community Media in Europe report,
community media are endorsed as an effective means of strengthening cultural and
linguistic diversity, social inclusion and local identity. The resolution also stresses
that community media promote intercultural dialogue by educating the general
public, combating negative stereotypes and correcting the ideas put forward by the
mass media regarding communities within society threatened with exclusion, and the
member states are advised to give legal recognition to community media as a
distinct group alongside commercial and public media where such recognition is still
lacking. Furthermore, in 2008 the Council of Europe also commissioned a report on
the state of community media in Europe, and its Committee of Ministers issued a
declaration in 2009. In this Declaration on The Role of Community Media in
Promoting Social Cohesion and Intercultural Dialogue, the Council of Europe (2009)
emphasizes the role of community media in guaranteeing free expression of
opinions and ideas and in contributing to effective participation in democratic
processes by many groups and individuals.
The social gain stemming from community media activities includes enhanced
participation in the media system itself, and through community media in society, the
strengthening of media independence and pluralism and increased opportunities for
media literacy. Community media offer platforms for civic engagement and
opportunities for citizens to play an active role in community life as they act as a
catalyst of a diversity of activists, artists and civil society organizations. Community
media thus activate citizenship and have been called a significant component of
participatory democracy (KEA, 2007: 5). Moreover, community media are seen to
strengthen community identities and social cohesion but also inter-community
exchange across ethnic, linguistic and cultural frontiers (Fraser and Restrepo
Estrada, 2001: 18). The different aspects of the relationship between participation,
pluralism and community media can be illustrated by looking at the four different
approaches used in the literature for the study of community media (as discussed in
2
These numbers are complicated by the tendency of non-community media to hold community media
licenses.
Carpentier, Servaes and Lie, 2003; Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier, 2007).
These challenges refer to a set of core concerns within the community media sector,
namely effectiveness and sustainability. Moreover, these challenges also exemplify
the need for caution towards a too celebratory approach on community media.
Community media do not provide with catch-all solutions for all societal problems,
although they can play a significant role in strengthening the democratic tissue of a
society, and (as the following part will argue) contributing to peace-building, conflict
resolution and reconciliation.
priming in the news agendas of most media, a common reality both on the North and
the South is a rather similar way of coverage, not on the perspectives and positions,
as they often oppose each other, but on the practices resulting in the construction of
their respective mediated reality (Christophorou, S ahin and Pavlou, 2010). In
addition, the way Greek and Turkish media cover news about each other and present
the Cyprus Problem is largely reproduced in Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot
media as well, as it regards agenda-setting, rhetoric, framing and interpretation of the
presented issues.
When the media reports on the Cyprus Problem, there is little or no
differentiation on either side; stereotypical phrases, expressions, and the
position that our side is the good one who strives for a solution, its the
others who are negative, characterize both media. The selection of news and
voices on most issues, i.e., who is given access and whose views are
presented, is similar in both the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot media
(Christophorou, Sahin and Pavlou, 2010: 7).
Also, as Bailie and Azgin (2008: 57) note, the Cypriot media embrace a conflictcentered approach to peace efforts by shaping news that contributes to the increased
mystification of the conflict and to a retrenching of divisive attitudes, sympathetic to a
cementing of division. The shaping takes place indirectly through the selection of
quotes from elite sources that re-present dominant points of view from within each
community.
Bailie and Azgin, agree with Wolfsfeld (2004), that the dominant criteria for editorial
decision making, that of immediacy, drama, simplicity and ethnocentrism, also
preeminent in Cypriot media practices, are far from favourable towards a peace or
conciliatory oriented coverage of the Cyprus problem. In the same direction, on her
analysis about the coverage of the Imia/Kardak Greek-Turkish crisis and the
depiction of the other, Kostarella (2007: 30) points that the editorials of the Greek
newspapers studied appeared emotional and aggressive, with lack of argumentation
and focus on provoking strong sentiments, while the framing of Turkey was episodic
and event dependent.
Studies on news values and newsroom practices have long shown that conflict,
negativity and crisis are inherently considered newsworthy, whereas specific events
and actions are preferred over processes, in favor of simplicity, and long-term
policies and complex issues are conveniently reduced in two-sided dispute (Epstein,
1973; Tuchman, 1973; McManus, 1994; Harcup and O'Neill, 2001; Soloski, 1989).
Intertwined with newsworthiness is the news gathering process. As the mainstream
media rely heavily on official sources, that is mainly members of the major elites of
society (political, economical, cultural, etc.) for news gathering (Gans, 1979;
Berkowitz, 1997; Ericson, Baranek and Chan, 1989) they demonstrate a structural
bias (McNair, 1998) in favour of these elites, not only as it regards the agenda of the
public issues, but also the framing and interpretation of the latter.
Especially in the coverage of news of national politics there are rarely systematically
divergent agendas and definitions between the media and the official state policies.
According to Tili (2006: 23), Greece and Greece-related issues tend to be
constructed in the Turkish media in a rather nationalistic way whereas changes in
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the style and content of the Turkish media reports on Greek-Turkish relations were
mainly due to changes in the policy of the Turkish government and state officials and
how they currently engage with Greece [] The way that something is defined as
news and the way it should be reported are strongly influenced by the top officials of
Turkey when Turkish media report about Greece.
As Nossek (2004: 343) remarks, when a foreign news item is defined as ours then
journalists professional practices become subordinate to national loyalty; when an
item is theirs, journalistic professionalism comes into its own. Thus, [] there is an
inverse relation between professional news values and the national identity of the
journalist [] the more national the report is, the less professional it will be.
This last point brings into focus the notion of national identity and the role of the
media in its construction and preservation. The Cyprus Problem is inextricably
intertwined with the discourse on national identity. According to Anderson (2006: 3),
[n]ation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time
and media function as guards of the nation state idea (in multiple levels) and as main
mechanisms in the construction and legitimation of national identity. Anderson (2006:
37-46) argues that the nation is a construction enabled through the print media,
which generated a sense of simultaneity and created the possibility of imagined
communities.
National identity can be seen as a specific form of collective identity that is sustained
by a dual process: one of inclusion that provides a boundary around us and one of
exclusion that distinguishes us from them (Schlesinger, 1991: 300). According to
Kostarella (2007: 26), collective imagination depends on a dialectic opposition to
another identity, with the media serving this binary oppositional scheme of us
versus them in national identity building.
The media in Greece and Turkey, as Ozgunes and Terzis (2000: 408) note, are
used to reinforce the myth of the unitary state, on one hand by emphasizing the
similarities among the members of the nation, and on the other hand by creating a
fear of the other. Under this prism, the systematic use of stereotypes and negative
representations of the other by the Greek media has been used as a common
framework for approaching and explaining Greek-Turkish relations (Kostarella, 2007:
23).
Through the demonization of the other and the restriction of the possibilities of
recognizing internal complexity and plurality [] the Greek mass media have
been reinforcing the binary divisions between good and bad which prevail in
popular consciousness and in the nationalistic imaginary [.]. In this context
the other is perceived as the aggregate of internal and external opposition, in
the form of an imaginary enemy. Internal dissidents and political adversaries
are therefore transformed into national enemies (Tsagarousianou, 1997: 278279).
In Cyprus, nationalistic discourse through the media develops in similar patterns,
accentuated by the unresolved division of the island. Anastasiou (2002: 588-589),
building on the work of Ellul (1973: 34-38) argues that [i]n Cyprus, the nationalist
propaganda that has been either consciously or indirectly assembled and
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disseminated over the years by the means of mass communication has transformed
the experiences, perceptions, and interpretations rooted in the history of the conflict,
from scattered suggestive tendencies, from implicit and individual references, to
collectivized, crystallized stereotypes and explicit meanings that in turn have come to
integrate and condition public culture.
An analysis of the programme of three radio stations on the north part of Cyprus in
2010 showed that they do not favour unification with the Republic of Cyprus, even
though it is, according to the author, currently highly popular with the majority of the
population, promoting thus discourses that do not reflect the peoples sentiment
(Way, 2011a: 29): To this end, stations recontextualise events to promote two
different discourses of national identity, one that is Turkish and one that is based on
an independent Turkish Cyprus (Way, 2011b: 15).
At the same time, the Cyprus problem is affecting the practice of journalism, putting
forward questions about the role of the journalist. Not rarely, in areas and countries
where there is conflict, issues of objectivity and fairness are juxtaposed to those of
providing service to the public/country. As Blsi (2004: 9) argues: [a]ctors on ones
side who question their countrys position and propose alternative forms of conflict
resolution are condemned and [o]ften they are denounced as disloyal.
There is a consensus in the Cypriot political scene, in society and largely in the
media that if someone is very open and conciliatory towards the other she/he may be
detrimental to the interests of the community, hence to the public interest. Under this
burden, journalists in Cyprus engage in censorship and self-censorship practices
(Sofokleous, 2008: 170; Vassiliadou, 2007: 211).
According to the study of Christophorou, Sahin and Pavlou (2010: 7), focussing on
the way the Annan Plan was presented by the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot
media: [w]ith the passage of time, intra- and inter-community polarization appears to
have deepened, with a blame-game directed by some not only against the other
side but also against those with different views as well. Any view diverging from the
official line was sometimes seen as damaging and undermining the communitys
cause to the benefit of the enemies; also, responsibility for unfavourable
developments in ones own community was attributed to those with views different
from the official view.
3.2 The potential contribution of a bi-community radio station in Cyprus to the
peace process
In the case of multi-community countries, as in Cyprus, the difficulty of identifying with
the nation state and create a unique national identity is greater. In such
environments, the media often engage in nationalistic discourse also as a result of
their lack of interest or inability of putting into context issues of (national) identity
outside the logic and rhetoric of the (well defined and clear) nation state. Creating
multi-community national spheres is arduous, not consistent with the commercial
nature of mainstream media, and incompatible with the dilemmatic, oppositional and
unconciliatory rhetoric both political actors and media espouse in national politics.
Given the capacity of community media to enhance communication, to organize
11
At the time of writing no data was available for the north of Cyprus.
12
13
15
The radio programmes produced during the content production workshops should be made available
as podcasts, giving early visibility to the project.
16
3.
4.
5.
6.
5. Concluding remarks
As argued in this paper, the Cypriot mainstream media do not foster reconciliation
between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot community. On the contrary, they
embrace a conflict-centered approach to peace efforts and help in the deepening of
intra- and inter-community polarization, serving the binary oppositional scheme of us
versus them in national identity building. Through their representational politics they
keep the wounds of a 40 (and more) year old (cultural) trauma open. In constructing
symbolic barriers between populations (how different they may be), they contribute to
the continuation of conflict and violence in Cyprus.
From a more humanist perspective we want to defend a societal model based on
dialogue, tolerance, human rights and other democratic values, looking for what
unites people, and less for what divides them. Within this societal model, it becomes
crucial to avoid the reduction of individuals to one (national) identity. In contrast, there
is a need to acknowledge and celebrate Cypriot diversity, and to come to terms with
the memory of pain, war and conflict, without forgetting it. In this context, given the
capacity of community media to enhance communication, to promote dialogue, and
to contribute to conflict resolution, within and amongst communities, the
establishment of bi-community media organization in Cyprus, serving both the GreekCypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot community (in all their diversities) could offer
alternative spaces of cultural and political dialogue and participation, fostering
(re)conciliation. As within community media the multiple identities of the community
are not imposed from the top down but are shaped collectively by its members, these
media organizations allow for environments of coexisting multicultural perspectives
within the realm of democracy, encouraging the articulation of common multiidentities and supporting the idea of multiculturalism of belonging not only and
exclusively to the nation-state but to different multicultures (Plansak and Volcic,
2010: 83).
Establishing such a bi-community media organization is far from easy, and requires a
slow process to ensure community ownership. One of the choices to be made
concerns which media technology will form the main basis of this media organization.
Easiness of radio to produce and to reach large groups, its familiarity, immediacy and
materiality, as well as existing examples of community radio stations in multiethnic
regions and countries of conflict and post-conflict, are amongst the reasons that we
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like to promote the idea of a bi-community radio station as the type of community
medium that would better adapt to the Cypriot reality. A bi-community radio station
based in Nicosia could help bringing people from the two communities, which
currently live largely isolated, physically together, rebuilding bridges of multilingual
and multiethnic communication and cooperation. At the same time, the choice for
radio should not be exclusive. The community radio stations scope could be
enhanced by the implementation of new technologies, which would strengthen the
outreach and dialogical possibilities of the radio station.
However, any attempt for any kind of medium for and by the community lacking the
support, commitment and psychological ownership of the community/ies addressed
to or involved, is doomed to fail. Also, any attempt to swiftly impose a model is
equally problematic. For these reasons we think that the form of organisation and
structure of such a medium should be the product of a dialogue-driven coalition of
Cypriot stakeholders, allowing the Cypriot communities, facilitated through action
research (as described in this roadmap) to construct their own community radio
station.
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