ScienceBlogs
Home

Riding the 'Third Wave': What's New in Minority Language Media Research

1
1
Riding the 'Third Wave': What's New in Minority Language Media Research
Craig Willis at the official kick-off meeting of the COST Action PLURILINGMEDIA on 2 October 2024 in Brussels.Credit: Stanislav Černega/ECMI | All rights reserved

Craig Willis is a researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues, where he focuses on the topic of minority language media. In this interview, he talks about his research and the newly founded research network PLURILINGMEDIA.

Your research focuses on the topic of minority language media. How did you actually get into it?

Craig Willis: One of my first direct experiences with scholars working on minority language media was my attendance at a conference in Edinburgh, organized by Miren Manias Muñoz. From there, I met researchers, who were establishing the International Association of Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR) – which my colleague Sergiusz Bober and I then joined – and then proceeded to meet online regularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. I met here Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, who became one of my PhD supervisors and it has been a journey over the last 5 years, which has led to a successful COST Action application.

Thus, I see the main difference that minority language media have to be concerned with language in a way that majority media do not.

Craig Willis

How do minority language media differ from majority language media?

Willis: As a guiding principle in this field, I refer to one of the founding scholars of the topic, Mike Cormack, who stated that minority language media is concerned with ‘how media can be used to help languages’, and he stressed the need for it to be its own field of study rather than ‘simply a part of mainstream media studies that happens to look at minority languages’. I feel that this applies also to the practitioner side as well as for academics.

Whilst he was writing in the context of non-kin state minorities, I think it also applies to contexts such as German in South Tyrol or Swedish in Finland. The reason is that the media outlets often carry the burden of being the only one available in that given community. If German-language media in South Tyrol were to disappear then it is not as simple as just consuming German media from Austria or Germany – the community aspect is missing. Thus, I see the main difference that minority language media have to be concerned with language in a way that majority media do not.

What topics exactly do you deal with in your research?

Willis: The main topic of my PhD research was the role of non-speakers in the audience of minority language broadcasters. I looked at five public service channels, in Basque, Catalan, Galician, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, finding that in all cases there was a significant proportion of the audience that did not speak or understand the minority language. My conclusions were that they tune in when there is unique content, which could be through exclusive broadcasting licences – common with live sports – or a close cultural, geographical proximity to the audience – i.e. making programmes based on the region, which wouldn’t be made by majority language channels.

Credit: Stanislav Černega/ECMI | All rights reserved
The launch of PLURILINGMEDIA was also celebrated at an event held at the Cymraeg/Welsh representation office in Brussels (2 October 2024).

The constant change in the media world also affects minority language media. You often talk about the ‘third wave’ in this context. What do you mean by that?

Willis: I suggest that within the literature on minority language media, we have begun to see a third wave emerge post-pandemic – reflecting the changing media habits on both the production and consumption sides. The first wave was largely embedded in the pre-social media age of the 1990s and 2000s, followed by a second wave in the 2010s which began to cover social media usage in minority languages but as a separate or competitive phenomenon to traditional media outlets. I argue that the third wave is partly shaped by the convergence of media outlets and individual users on the same platforms, increasingly Instagram and TikTok, whereby the traditional media outlets post content specifically for that format rather than just posting links or short clips. This is a simplification and the third wave contains other aspects, but this is the core difference I observe.

What new challenges do you see minority language media facing? How can they meet them?

Willis: I think the report authored by Jones et al. for the Council of Europe’s COMEX is still one of the most relevant texts for this. They discuss the changing consumption habits and unpack in detail the different challenges faced by broadcasting and printed press. Unfortunately, the report was published in late 2019 and within months the Covid-19 pandemic started affecting society in a profound way – including media consumption. This clearly accelerated digitalisation trends in many instances and has led to new challenges – particularly the rise of TikTok.

The problem is accentuated by the fact that there is so much content online, not just in the majority language but also global languages – typically English.

Craig Willis

Recently, you have also increasingly taken up the topic of minority language media and social media in your research, also in relation to TikTok. What are your observations?

Willis: This is acutely related to the third wave which I describe, whereby there is not only a convergence of actors on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram but also there has been a growing divergence of audiences in terms of the platforms they use. Persons under 35 are using Facebook and Twitter/X much less compared to TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, whilst the older generations are slower to adapt to these new, typically audiovisual, platforms. This presents an extra challenge for traditional media outlets who – depending on their target audience groups – need to cover a larger number of social media platforms. And it is not so simple as to share the same style content across all platforms, as TikTok relies heavily on the audiovisual format and the need to create ‘catchy’ content which is immediately appealing – otherwise users will simply ‘scroll’ past.

This situation is not unique to minority language media but the problem is accentuated by the fact that there is so much content online, not just in the majority language but also global languages – typically English. And then there is also the issue of algorithms and software being designed in majority languages, making it harder for minority languages to be detected to the same degree.

The COST Action PLURILINGMEDIA, which you are leading as chair, was recently launched. What is it all about?

Willis: It is funding from the EU under the research and innovation framework, with the aim of establishing an academic network on a given topic. In the proposal phase, we had a group of 31 persons from 25 countries, featuring both academics and practitioners. I think this put us in a strong position and we were then fortunate to be approved as one of sixty new actions starting this year – an approval rate of less than 15%. The funding is for all sciences, so we were up against many proposals from natural sciences and beyond – in that sense we were very pleased to have made the cut!

The Action will now run until October 2028 and has an annual budget aimed at holding networking events, providing funding for participants to attend external conferences but also to hold our own workshops with the aim of producing policy papers on a number of subtopics related to minority language media.

How can minority language media benefit from the PLURILINGMEDIA project? Can they also become a part of it?

Willis: Right from the application phase, we had involved many practitioners and this has continued into the implementation phase. Thus, practitioners will be part of the project throughout, attending the Action’s events, contributing to the drafting of policy papers and also disseminating these to their broader public. In this sense, we see the media outlets as a core partner but also hope that the networking opportunities of having participants from COST’s 41 member states will be of great value as well. Interested practicioners and academics can, for example, apply to participate in the working groups via the dedicated COST Action website.

What can an association like MIDAS contribute to the project?

Willis: Already we have multiple MIDAS members involved through editors-in-chief, and we very much encourage more to be involved – including younger journalists, who have a lot to offer in terms of their perspective of youth consumption. We also have the flexibility to organise our Action’s events in sync with others, for example a MIDAS General Assembly, and thus offer an opportunity to attend a workshop in the same week. This will hopefully make participation easier for practitioners, as we are of course aware that having the time to join can be more of an issue.

Note: This article gives the views of the author and does not represent the position of the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) or Eurac Research.

About the interviewee

Craig Willis is a researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues as well as a PhD candidate at the Europa-Universität Flensburg. His research focuses on minority language communities, in the context of media, activism and civil society. He has recently been elected as Action Chair of the Language Plurality in Europe's Changing Media Sphere (PLURILINGMEDIA) action which will run until 2028.

Jakob Volgger

Jakob Volgger

Jakob Volgger is a junior researcher at the Center for Autonomy Experience of Eurac Research. His work there focuses on issues related to autonomy and minority protection in South Tyrol. As part of his activities for the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS), he also studies the topic of minority language media.

Citation

https://doi.org/10.57708/bcqc5l-_crlaeod242eiczw
Jakob Volgger. Riding the 'Third Wave': What's New in Minority Language Media Research. https://doi.org/10.57708/BCQC5L-_CRLAEOD242EICZW
alt

This blog is supported by the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS). MIDAS was founded in 2001 to provide assistance to minority language newspapers and nowadays has members all over Europe. MIDAS serves as a platform for exchange, uniting minority language newspapers to present a collective voice to the European institutions.

Related Post

Children Should Grow up Without Fear of Bombs
ScienceBlogs
midas

Children Should Grow up Without Fear of Bombs

Bojan BrezigarBojan Brezigar
The Minority Safepack Is Not a Dull Piece of Butter With a Short Expiration Date
ScienceBlogs
midas

The Minority Safepack Is Not a Dull Piece of Butter With a Short Expiration Date

Bojan BrezigarBojan Brezigar
Ladin on Your Phone: A Technological Leap for a Tiny Language
ScienceBlogs
midas

Ladin on Your Phone: A Technological Leap for a Tiny Language

Hatto SchmidtHatto Schmidt