Negotiating the Democratic Aspects of “Diversity” in the (Audiovisual) Media Public Policies and Political Discourses in Francophone Belgium

Derinöz, Sabri
(2025) DIGISCREENS: Conference on Identity and Democratic Values in the Age of Streaming — Location: Vilnius (23.October.2025)

Files

Derinoz_DIGISCREENS_2025.pdf
  • Open Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 1 MB
Download

Details

Authors
Abstract
The notion of "diversity" has increasingly shaped democratic and media political discourses in European media landscapes, yet remains ambiguously defined and contested (Auboussier et al., 2023; Derinöz 2023; Devriendt, 2012). This paper focuses on analyzing how "diversity" is articulated with the notion of “democracy” in political and institutional discourses surrounding media and audiovisual governance in Francophone Belgium. In the middle of the 2000s, following the dynamics of other countries, particularly France, the issue of diversity in the media was addressed in Francophone Belgium by public authorities. The government, along with the audiovisual regulatory authority, developed public policies to enforce “diversity” and “equality” in the audiovisual sector. In the following years until now, “diversity” has become a regular focal point on audiovisual and media public policies and political discourses. The notion of “diversity” in media and audiovisual related political discourse is often related to minority issues (e.g., representation, inclusion), but can also appear in terms of pluralism (variety of viewpoints), and cultural diversity (recognition of cultural groups), and is often used fuzzily and ambiguously. Drawing on a corpus spanning fifteen years, including parliamentary and governmental work and negotiated management contracts with public service media, this study uses discourse analysis methods (Krieg-Planque 2009, Maingueneau 2014), with the help of statistical text analysis software to understand how the public problem (Cefaï 1996, Gusfield 1984) of “diversity in (audiovisual) media” is (not) articulated with the notion of “democracy”. The ways in which public problems are defined is having effects on the responses given to them (Cefaï, 1996), with categorizations (Widmer, 2010) allowing for action programs (Arquembourg, 2016). By articulating (or not) the public issue of “diversity” with the notion of “democracy” , public and political actors participate in a (re)configuration of the public issue that imply or not key democratic stakes such as minority rights and the question of the representation of ideas and opinions in the “public sphere” , making, or not, the “diversity” issue a “democratic” issue.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

Derinöz, S. (2025). Negotiating the Democratic Aspects of “Diversity” in the (Audiovisual) Media Public Policies and Political Discourses in Francophone Belgium. DIGISCREENS: Conference on Identity and Democratic Values in the Age of Streaming, Vilnius. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/260584