Challenging The Media Portrayal Of Diversity In Canada

The thesis deals with the contradictory and increasingly contested relationship between the mainstream media and Canada's multicultural minorities at the level of visual and verbal representation. It argues that improvements in the quantity of minority media representations are often offset by continued misrepresentation of minorities. Four recurrent themes appear to have characterized media miscasting of minority women and men; namely, minorities as invisible, as stereotypes, as problem people, and as ornaments. This slanted coverage has had the cumulative effect of "miniaturizing" minorities as the "other", unworthy of serious attention or equitable treatment and inconsequential in contributing to Canada's society building project. The thesis interrogates media power in formulating ideologies of domination that shape public understanding of diversity. Emphasis is on analyzing the rationale behind media misrepresentation of minorities. Against the persistence of systemic institutional bias, media initiatives to improve minority representation are discussed as well, thus confirming minority demands to claim public recognition of those images by which to define themselves. The thesis concludes by affirming the process of representing diversity to be a great challenge despite modest gains in portrayal of minorities.The thesis is organized around four chapters.Chapter One is directed at multiculturalism as the backdrop of media-minority relations. Interpretation of multiculturalism at different levels of meaning is provided, namely, multiculturalism as fact, as ideology, as policy and as process. Public perceptions and reactions are also examined, with revelation to an emergentantagonism towards multiculturalism, and thus foreshadowing the difficulty of constructively engaging diversity within mass media.Chapter Two looks at the patterns of media misrepresentation of minorities. Various mainstream media processes related to newscasting, TV programming and advertising are analyzed and assessed with respect to successes and failure in the portrayal of racial and ethnic diversity.Chapter Three sees that the elusiveness of creating a multicultural and inclusive mainstream media is not personal but systemic because of its rootedness in institutional agendas, priorities, dynamics, processes, and imperatives.Chapter Four is about the suggested characteristics of an inclusive and multicultural media. Accomplishments to date in "multiculturalizing" the media through both institutional reforms and establishment of a separate ethnic media are also reviewed.