News media and cultural dialogue: Journalism and representation of "strangeness"-from news to ethnography

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News media and cultural dialogue:
Journalism and representation of “strangeness”- from news to ethnography
Susana Borges
Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra
João Carlos Correia
Universidade da Beira Interior
1. Universalism versus social context
According Otto Grott, "anything that arouses the curiosity and the interest of man, all that
can lead him to take a position is included eo ipso in the potential content of the newspaper "(cit.
in Fidalgo, 2004, p. 5). However, the need to direct our attention to a complex world, where
there are many different events in a permanent flow, is the reverse of the ambition of universality
that motivates journalism. Journalists cannot turn their attention to all events and all their
protagonists as if they all possessed the same relevance. Rather, the relevance that one attaches
to an event or to their protagonists it isn’t something evident in itself but rather as the result of
contextual circumstances associated with ideologies, world-views, cultural particularities and
specific interests. The relevance is related with a pragmatic attitude, with the selective attention
by which we establish the problems to be solved by our thinking and praxis as social actors.
When we analyze in detail the notion of relevance we see that this is a quality that does
not emanate directly from the event. The relevance of an event is attributed in terms of social and
cultural contexts and, obviously, in terms of interests of social groups. Every society, every
community has different concepts of what can be underlined as a relevant event. Therefore the
content of the media reflects the dominant concept of news in a certain period of its history.
Journalism does not proceed to selection of facts only in terms of the immanent 'relevance' of the
facts which would be self-evident, regardless of social and historical conditions and interests of
social agents. "Journalism highlights those facts which reflects mostly the values and beliefs of
society in a given historical moment" (Oliveira da Silva, 2006, p. 94).

The studies of Walter Lippman on the use of "stereotypes" to classify reality; the
agenda setting theories (McCombs and Shaw, 1972); the studies of Nikas Luhmann about the
media role to define issues over which public opinion focuses its attention to make political
discussion possible and, finally, all the range of theories concerned with frame analysis reflect,
after all, the same concern: how media focused their attention only in a part of reality, framing it
according social values and cultural expectancies. The news, despite its vocation for
universality, it is always a choice about what is considered important: Potentially universal, the
newspaper turns out to be realized and individualized according to the interests of social actors
which used news as means of dealing with their social worlds.
But if relevance has such a contextual dimension, that seems still more clear and evident
in the news reports that are, in some way or another, related to the presentation of diversity and
otherness. Twenty millions of persons were affected by the great storms in Pakistan. But the
journalistic cover was considerably lower than in the case of hurricane Katrina. The oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico lasted four months, capturing the attention of news from around the world.
However, one oil spill in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, lasts for fifty years and failed to capture the
same kind of news attention. More than 1,000 cases of oil spillage have been filed against
energy and petrochemicals company Shell. Today, the discussion on the social and political
rights of minorities and the constant flow of people, either immigrants or refugees crossing
cultural and geographic spaces, brings to light the issues concerned with identities such as the
diversity of cultures and ways of life. Fear, xenophobia and prejudice emerge again in some
public opinion and even in some governmental policies.
This context becomes a challenge for theoretical approaches concerned with social
representation of otherness by journalism. Will the claim for universality made by journalism be
a kind of utopian goal never completely achieved? Will it be possible new movements inside
journalistic field (civic and public journalism) give more chances to the affirmation of difference
and diversity?
In order to answer to those questions we follow a theoretical approach influenced by
sociology of culture.
The phenomenology of the social world, as conceived by the Austrian philosopher Alfred
Schutz, has developed a sophisticated conceptual framework on the possibilities and limits of
intercultural communication. Throughout this text, we apply some concept of social
phenomenology (such as “life-world”, “natural attitude” and “strangeness”) to journalistic field
in order to achieve a conceptual framework adequate to the analysis of the representation of
collective identities by news media.
As Schutz has remarked the cognitive style of the everyday world is natural attitude

which assumes a reliable premise in the permanence of the structures of the world. Those who
participated in the everyday life world of the dominant group share a system of knowledge that it
appeared to them as sufficient coherent, clear and consistent to give everybody a reasonable
chance of understanding and being understood. On the opposite, the “Strangers” are those that
do not share the common knowledge of everyday life-word and its basics assumptions.
Applying those concepts to the role of mass media, one finds that the critical problem of
mediated communication is to learn how to deal with strangeness and otherness. In everyday
journalistic practice, news organizations develop a set of procedures to assure the report of well–
defined subjects. Using Schutz concepts, Tuchman (1978) assures that the construction of
informative reality is defined as the outcome of professional routines and discursive practices
that function as tipifications of reality. Those tipifications are established standards of behaviour,
procedures which assure that journalists, under the pressure of time, can quickly turn the event
into a news story. Therefore, tipifications allow journalists to act “as always” in face of identical
circumstances.
Conceptually related with tipifications, news frames are standard guidelines for
submission, selection and emphases used in journalistic discourse. They call attention to certain
topics and exclude others, emphasize the data provided by certain sources over others. The
inclusion or exclusion of certain details of events, and the evaluation of what is relevant or not in
the description of an event depends on its classification or categorization.
This particular approach leads some epistemological and ethical problems. If natural
attitude is related with common sense knowledge it may spread a certain logical conformism in
what concerns to the media representation of everyday life-world. How to maintain the
sensibility in face of what appears as strange? With the contribute of another theoretical
approach – critical analysis of discourse - news analysis shows that several kinds of strategies
are used in the representation of social groups that aren’t part of the everyday life world of the
hegemonic groups.
Throughout some examples of Portuguese news focused on crime and its alleged
connection with ethnic minorities, we will try to make a practical demonstration of how frame
and tipifications are articulated in news discourse in order to make sense of social world, dealing
with the representation of the «stranger».
Finally, we try to explore some affinities between journalism and ethnography in order to
search for new practices and attitudes that allow journalist to deal with strangeness and
otherness..

1. Life-world and strangeness
.
The community is founded on an experience of life based on familiarity, on 'typicality'
and, finally, on an intersubjective dimension. When we refer to the familiarity, we mean the
character taken for granted of our social knowledge. "I trust that the world as it has been known
to me will remain and that, consequently, the body of knowledge obtained from my successors
and formed by my own experiences will continue to preserve its fundamental validity "(Schutz
and Luckmann, 1973:7)
.As Schutz has remarked (cf. Schutz, 1976: 72) the natural attitude works with the
"certainty" of agents, operating pragmatically in relation to the social world. That attitude is
characterized by pragmatism in which the individual looks to the social world as something with
an objective meaning, without questioning its basic premises and accepting it in its evidence.
This does not mean that people have no doubts concerning what they see on daily world. But,
they need some kind of logical conformism to deal with the many occurrences of life-world.
There is a kind of naïf trust about our perceptions. The cognitive style of the everyday world is
works with the "certainty" of agents, operating pragmatically in the social world.
By 'typicality', we understand that all activity is typified in a way that each actor's
experience occurs within a horizon of familiarity and pre-knowledge. The perception of common
sense itself is made based on types. "We structure the world according to types and typical
relationships between types" (Schutz, 1975 b: 94-95). The objects of the social world are
constituted within a frame of recognition that provides a repertoire or a stock of available
knowledge which source is fundamentally social. In other words, in the face of each new
situation, the actor will act in the same way on the assumption that things will remain identical. .
. So, it emerges the concept of "tipifications" as scheme of classification in which are taken into
account certain basic characteristics for the solution of practical tasks that are presented to the
social actors. Tipifications are interpretative schemes that are organized according to the
experiences of our past that come in configurations of meaning of the kind “what is already
known" (cf. Schutz, 1967: 84).
Finally, the constitution of the world of everyday life within a specific community
implies the sharing of intersubjective meanings. The everyday life-world therefore calls for a
shared belief that everyone understands the social reality as something that has an objective
meaning equally perceived by all social actors.
. Frequently, a significant part of the natural attitude of the everyday world shared by
community members implies the negation of the “other” through mechanisms ranging from the
formulation of abusive stereotypes to his representation as a latent threat. Drawing on his

experiences as emigrant exiled during the II World War, Alfred Schuz, in an extraordinary essay
called precisely the "The Stranger” built the type of the "stranger" as someone who does not
share the beliefs and tipifications of the everyday world of the dominant community. The
stranger doesn't share the objective meanings that structures social reality. In that essay, Schultz
(1976: 91-105) makes a point saying that a well-integrated community has an appearance of
clarity and consistency for those who participate in it, although many times is only covered by a
blanket of conventional assumption. The "stranger" is someone to whom the culture of the
dominant group was never part of his personal biography. He is, by definition, excluded from
past experiences that have allowed the construction of this culture and its assimilation by the
people who belong to it. His fleeting presence makes him a frequenter of a social space
ambiguously defined. Finally, in moments of crisis "the stranger" that can be excluded or even
persecuted.
2. Routines and tipifications in journalism
Accordingly to many theoretical approaches, journalism chooses as its main objective, to
assign relevance to current issues and events that are attractive to the community. For this
purpose, journalists use a framework that can be understood by the largest number of receptors,
easily to be read and assimilated. The concern shown by the journalistic style to make the
narratives easily understood and recognizable would be related with some kind of search for an
ideal harmony with the daily lives of citizens.
The journalistic professionalism is trained to produce a type of report based on
assumptions that are acceptable to “all”, that’s to say to the dominant believes of the inside
group. One can watch as the natural attitude is vigorously trained in a way that allows
journalism to proclaim his identification with the life-world’ audience. In journalism, this search
for familiarity leads to a conventional vision associated to common sense.
Journalism works with the previous knowledge about rule and deviance inside of a
community. This kind of knowledge presupposes shared horizons of meaning and a reciprocity
of expectations that allows for the intelligibility of discourse. Journalism is deeply related to
everyday life world, and professionals try to achieve the maximum of synchronisation with
cultural presupposes of social agents. The language of journalistic contains a special relation
with the daily world, reconstituting it in a way that emphasizes some of its features.
In the domain of Journalism Theory, Gaye Tuchman shows how everyday news work can
be seen as a question of "routinizing the unexpected." As part of the process of routinisation,

journalists make use of different news categories and tipifications in order to reduce the
contingency of news work, making the world comprehensible for everybody. "News workers
use tipifications to transform the idiosyncratic occurrences of the everyday world into raw
materials that can be subjected to the routine processing and dissemination of news" (Tuchman,
1978: 50). This set of procedures implies the learning on accumulated experience, to allow for
stability in what concerns the approach for similar events. The critical problem is that
tipifications are artificial constructs, which may lead reporters to apply stereotypes, easy
simplifications and incorrect labels.
Tipifications and the instauration of routines assist the possibility of creation of common
horizons of meaning, constructing society as a consensus, a consensus that admits a certain
conflict since this does not jeopardize the central system of values. Media voices with higher
range of influence and penetration institute a narrative web that seems destined to restrict
meaning, Journalists intend to create the belief that a particular way of seeing corresponds to the
natural, “true” representation of society, raising social representation of reality to an universal
level that surpasses the perception of difficulties, tensions and particularizations. Along this
process, the journalist appeals to rhetorical devices, stereotypes expressed in narratives
conventions (susceptible of being studied at the level of discourse) and organizational practices
that become visible in “news-value” and newsworthiness.
3. From tipifications to Frames
.
Following the concept of tipifications of Alfred Schutz, scholars such as Goffman
(1986), Gitlin (1980) and Tuchman (1978) says that frames are basic cognitive structures which
guide the perception and representation of reality. Frames are not consciously manufactured but
are unconsciously adopted in the course of communicative processes. The cognitive notion of
frame appears, generally, as a set of presuppositions or evaluative criteria within which a
person's perception of a particular issue seem to occur (cf.Goffman, 1986: 10). In journalism
theory, frames have also made a strong appearance as cognitive elements structuring which parts
of reality will become noticed. Todd Gitlin is responsible for a widely quoted elaboration of the
concept: "Frames are principles of selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit
theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters" (Gitlin, 1980: 6).
Frames turn unrecognizable happenings into a discernible event. They allow us to see the
figure against the ground. Tipifications are related to frames but in a more practical way, telling
us how to act in front of a recognizable and already framed event. While frames help us to

evaluate a situation, tipifications are more connected with a stock of practical knowledge, very
similar to receipts. Where frames are generally related with culture an ideology, tipifications are
more operative and directed to the achievement of practical tasks in social life. Finally both
concepts are commonly regarded as intersubjective constructs, built in everyday common life by
common man, in order to rule its practical purposes within the world.
4. From frames to ideology
Making an attempt of theoretical bridge between frame analysis and ideological critique,
Reese (2001: 9) suggests that media studies should accentuate the ideological character of news
frames, considering the dimension of their relations with society.
There are thus two basic components in the system by which the press identifies and
interprets the events. A) Firstly, there is a operative framework that allows the classification of
events in stories such as politics, human interest and so on; B) Secondly, there is a conceptual an
evaluative framework that shapes the meaning of the event, making it understandable to the
ideological system and setting it implicitly in a number of ways: as legitimate or illegitimate, as
moral or immoral, as right or wrong, as patriotic or no patriotic, as adjusted or not to the
community interests and so on. This does not mean absence of autonomy from the news
workers, as some theories such as the propaganda model, suggest: the codes for the use of
ideology are provided by the imperatives of professional journalism. However the ideological
meaning is defined a priori and it can coexist with professional codes. This happened when the
American media accepted the definition of El Salvador as a case of national security, or during
the Gulf War, when the Bush Administration was able to restrict the political debate in the media
to the discussion of the appropriate option to punish Iraq for its aggression against Kuwait or,
more recently, when the American media accepted the expression "abuse" instead of the word
"torture" to define the events inside the prison of Abu-Ghraib.
To make our point more precise, we find interesting to consider the contribute from Teun
van Dijk on the concepts of frame and ideology. In the words of van Dick, the features of
ideology are those:
a) There are episodical beliefs and social beliefs. The social and cultural beliefs are those
we share with others as members of an organization or group culture. The ideology is typically
understood as belonging to the latter, i.e. the cultural and social beliefs.

b) The ideologies do not merely reproduce the social domination. It is incorrect to accept
the ideology as a mere symbolic transcription of the social relations of domination (cf. van Dijk
1997, 25). Ideology also creates solidarity and organizes struggles for recognition and opposition
movements (cf. van Dijk, 2000 138; van Dijk, 2003, p. 16).
c) The ideology has a group nature. It’s a set of fundamental beliefs of a group and its
members (cf. van Dijk, 2003: 14). It is characterized mainly by its function of ensuring cohesion,
and cooperation of members of a group. It ensures that group members can act in the same way
in similar circumstances, especially in situations of competition or threat that might lead to the
disintegration or to the defeat of the group (cf. van Dijk, 1997: 26).
c) The ideology plays an axiomatic role inside the group. It can be defined as the basis of
social representations shared by members of the group. It is applied to fundamental dimensions
of the group, such as its relations with external groups, particularly with enemies or opponents
defining criteria for membership, typical activities and general objectives, normative standards
and so (cf. van Dijk, 2003: 27)
d) The ideology have an agonistic component: generate differences of opinion, conflicts
and struggles, in dialectic of inclusion and exclusion among "Us" and "They."
While social and cultural knowledge can be defined as the set of all those beliefs that are
shared by virtually all competent members of a given culture (cf. van Dijk, 2000: 37), ideology
represent the interests of some groups. Thus, if that not all knowledge is ideology, there is much
knowledge of the group that is ideologically founded, including one that concerns the criteria on
what is considered knowledge (cf. van Dijk 2000: 114). While there is a lot of knowledge that
almost reach universality, ideologies can inclusively to lead our attention to be focus on a given
issue instead of other (for instance, environmentalism affects our knowledge on nature). Finally
some social and cultural knowledge when is accepted with naïf trusts forgetting its origins can
turn itself into ideology. The idea of nation could turn itself in many ideological forms: with an
emancipator tune against colonialism or imperialism; vaguely xenophobic against the presence
of “others”; “hysterically” and violently nationalist or even destructively racist (leading to
genocide). During those very different moments, with many different cultural and affective
meanings and nuances, ideologies are expressed through cultural schemes (frames and

tipifications) that help us to classify events and actors and to deal with them.
5. From Ideology to discourse.
The critical analysis of discourse also built a model to the structural analysis of some
dimensions of news discourse. This model of description implies the use of macro-semantics,
which deal with global meanings and allow us to describe the meanings of whole paragraphs,
sections or chapters within discourse. These topics are related each other in a hierarchal
structure, defined by macro-rules. Macro-rules reduce information, deleting the details
considered not relevant to the text, replacing a sequence of propositions for a more abstract
generalization, or summary, of a sequence of propositions. In conjunction with macro-semantics
there are macro-syntactic structures that characterize the overall forms of discourse, structures
that van Dijk labels schemata or superstructures, such as headlines, leads, and so (1988: 26).
Here, van Dijk explicitly argues for a cognitive complement of the theory of
macrostructures, which implies a clear reference to the analysis of frames (van Dijk, 1998: 34).
In the building of discourse, there is a top - down processing that must to be activated by frames
that arise from the social knowledge of world and sometimes or many times from ideological
interests of groups. The cognitive element “frame” will be expressed not only in the topic but
also in all the choices that are going to be made in order to present the described event. In the
discourse of news there are some semantic features - that is, the headline and lead - that give us
the kernel of the frame, because of their high level of generalization and abstraction. The frame
is also present in general paragraphs or propositions concerning with details and specifications
and stylistic and rhetorical choices and strategies.
5. Stranger inside our borders.
Some of these strategies came to light in many successes of the first decade of the century
in Portugal, a decade marked by in its first half by strong migration and also by signs of cultural
conflicts even in a quite country generally signed for having a progressive law on migrant’s
rights. In the case of Brazilian emigrants, the major community inside Portugal, many studies,
(Luciana Pontes, 2004, Willy Filho, 2006) find a strong association between gender and
nationality in the representations of women in Brazilian Portuguese media. These kind of
processes generally have a background of unequal relations between countries, where relations
center- periphery are expressed in symbolic representations in the field of tropical and exotic. In
the representation of Brazilian identity in Portugal, this process results, sometimes in an

essentialist configuration whose main attributes are the joy, sensuality, sexual availability and
sympathy. One example happened in the years 2003-2004, during the case of the Braganza
Mothers.
The Braganza Mothers was the name of a group of women of Braganza ( a town from the
Interior of Portugal, located in a rural and traditional district with a strong influence of the
Catholic Church) that, in 2003, launched a crusade against the increasing number of brothels
with Brazilian girls working there. During this period of huge controversy, according to the
extent literature on the subject supported by High Commissioner for Immigration and Ethnic
Minorities, from 224 TV pieces broadcast by TV (fourth chanell) on the issue immigration and
ethnic minorities, 48 (21.4%) addressed to it referring in some way to prostitution, mostly
involving Brazilian Girls. The extensive corpus of analysis and research developed with the
support the High Commissioner (mostly content analysis) reveal macro-dominant narratives
about Brazilian women traffic for prostitution in Portugal The dominant issue concerning
with Brazilian emigration was the women traffic and the dominant tune was tabloid language
exploiting sex and stereotypes on people from tropical countries, without any analysis on the
phenomena and on the conditions of human slavery frequently related with the phenomena.
Brazilian women became easy target criteria of newsworthiness that emphasize the issues related
to prostitution, in contrast to other immigrant communities that have been portrayed using other
issues such as work and everyday cultural practices.
The Portuguese mass media alluded to sexuality practiced by exotic brunettes,
particularly sensuals, coming from the Brazilian tropics, attributing them a great seductive
power. The image below, taken from the magazine Visão de 16/10/2003 has the caption:
"BRAZILIANS: its arrival has changed Braganza." This demonstrates how the representation of
Brazilian women in the media may be attached in a generalized way with prostitution.

The phenomenon caught the attention from Time Magazine that sent its correspondent Amanda
Ripley to Braganza who publishes 12 October 2003 an article, establishing a dichotomy between
the southern of Europe, mediterranic, catholic and conservative and the women from tropics
sexy and open minded. Doing so, the Time Magazine also mirrors some the conflicts verified in
Braganza. Those Portuguese women that called themselves "The Mothers of Braganza," allocates
specially the female sexuality in motherhood, and reproductive self, associated with domesticity,
child care, etc. So, the complainants were associated with feminine attributes of the "Mother"
(complementary opposite of the image of prostitutes attributed to Brazilian women), while the
Brazilian women were assigned with the connotations of their profession: dissolute life, greed,
vanity, voracious sexuality and threatening corrupting social order.
Some facts are established in the Time Coverage:
1. The south of Europe is Catholic, conservative and rural.
2. The women from Braganza are not sufficiently attractive and sexy for their husbands.
Because of their conservative mentalities they have a poor relation with sexuality.
3. The meninas (Time always use this expression) from Brazil are much more available,
attractive, funny and sexy.

4. The women traffic and prostitution is almost an unavoidable consequence from globalization.
Both communities where equally tipified in a strictly rigid dichotomy between two
worlds: a stereotyped “clash of cultures”.
10 June 2005 - This date was a milestone in what concerns to these kind of issues, with
the coverage of an `attack by a teen street gang' on Carcavelos Beach, allegedly perpetrated on
the Portuguese National Day (10 June 2005). According to the media, this attack involved about
500 young Africans from the quarters (slums) surrounding Lisbon. An `attack by teen street
gang' is a possible translation for the word arrastão, the name publicly given to the phenomenon,
based on similar events in Brazil. That was since the beginning the dominant news frame.
In the afternoon of 10 June, Portuguese broadcasters opened their news programmes with
reports that an organized robbery of great dimensions had taken place on Carcavelos Beach.
According to RTP (Radio Televisão Portuguesa),"groups of 30 to 50 young African boys,
simultaneously and in apparently organized actions, had assaulted and attacked the swimmers in
different parts of the beach." For SIC (Channel 3), it was a "scene of a film"; for TVI (Channel
4), it was "one afternoon of terror and panic in Carcavelos".
According to the mdia (Correio da Manhã, 11 June 2005) "The terror started when about
500 youngsters and girls, organized in groups, started `to sweep' the beach of Carcavelos, where
there were thousands of people, stealing from and attacking however they wanted.."
A news frame was consolidated on the first day. This frame contains several elements
that drive the discursive macrostructures:
1. Hundreds of youngsters launch panic in Carcavelos Beach, near Lisbon.
2. They come from the slums of Lisbon, so are very likely to be black people.
3. They use the same modus operandi from black street kids from the favelas in Rio.
. The macrostructures of all the news discourse on arrastão were completely visible and
emphasized these ideas.. The most general proposition is provided by several headlines, for
instance: "Terror on the Beach" (CM, 11 June 2005), and "Arrastão in Carcavelos Beach" (DN,
11 June 2007).
The leads in these articles were followed by very similar descriptions (written in the
present tense, as if we were following live coverage) of policeman, armed with machine-guns,
surrounding and watching hundreds of black youngsters, and detailing the development of the
event (CM; DN). An article on the cover of CM was given the headline: "Arrastão comes from
Brazil". This kind of angle was only a pretext to reinsure the factuality of the descriptions,
establishing a precedent that can be useful to provide more details about "this kind of crime".

At the micro-level, the uses of implicature and presupposition are omnipresent in almost
all the texts: the references in both newspapers to the slums of Lisbon, most of them inhabited by
African migrants, the comparisons with Rio de Janeiro, and the ideas that the slums of Lisbon are
both problematic and well known to the Police, implies a lot of d shared knowledge about the
kind of crime and the profile of criminals. Without saying anything explicitly, the `”migration
problem' is raised as the real issue.
On June 30th, the Office of Emigration released a documentary entitled "Once Upon a
Time ...an Arrastão" (Era uma vez um Arrastão), produced by Diana Adringa, an RTP journalist.
The documentary included some interviews that translated significant doubts on the existence of
the attack. Later, on July 7th, Diana Adringa interviewed the Metropolitan Commander of the
Lisbon PSP, who revealed that "an Arrastão did not happen". More specifically, Oliveira Pereira
said he "already knew this about one hour later. However, when I wanted to communicate this, to
clarify the official notice, it was very difficult." On July 19th, the PSP (Public Security Police)
finally formally denied the existence of any attack by teen street gangs in Carcavelos Beach, in a
report presented to the Parliamentary Commission of Civil Rights and Freedoms.
During the first half of decade, several examples could be given: association of
migration with crime and social deviance are specially visible in what concerns with Brazilian,
Gypsy and African Communities, although there are some minor occasional minor episodes with
eastern emigrants. However, accordingly with Ferin, Santos, Filho e Fortes (2008), noticed that
in retrospective one can observe that over the years analyzed, 2003-2006, the coverage patterns
of the issue Immigration and Ethnic Minorities have been changing. If in the two initial years
these patterns of coverage were concentrated on the issue “crime”, in the institutional players and
in official sources, using a negative tone, with predominantly securitarian arguments, now there
is a growing reliance on sources from the civil society and immigrants and the tone is
predominantly factual.
6. Journalism, deliberation ad diversity
Today we saw the presentation of a set of proposals seeking to overcome some of the
pathologies related to the daily practice of journalism, trying to reconcile it with more inclusive
social practices and democratic deliberation. Among these proposals are the so-called citizen
journalism and civic journalism. In the civic model, news media provide information that helps
citizens communicate their needs to government, hold government accountable, and foster
deliberation and debate. This is accomplished by providing a two-way system of communication

between government and citizens, acting as a monitor on governmental behavior, and providing
information from many perspectives. To do this, newsrooms must demonstrate autonomy and
diversity in the perspectives they present to the public. Civic journalists propose that the purpose
of news is to improve situations, rather than merely report on problems. In some countries, this
approach tries respond to growing frustration among many groups who feel their voices have not
been heard and their issues have not been presented fairly within news coverage (Wallack,
Woodruff, Dorfman & Diaz, 1999). In terms of ethnic relations, the purposes of civic journalism
journalists aim to facilitate the participation of minority communities in the identification and
framing of collective issues and decision-making processes.
However, several scholars accuse public journalism projects of forgetting social
exclusion and endorsing consensual solutions to problems wrongly presumed to be suffered
equally by all social groups. These critics claim public journalism’s pursuit of consensus is likely
to suppress awareness of conflicting interests among social groups, or even bolster agendas that
masquerade as representing the interests of all citizens (cf. Haas and Steiner, 2006: 239- 246).
. One of the biggest challenges of public journalism is to choose those approaches in the
presentation of the issues that offer greater opportunities to stimulate a critical attitude and to
encourage the diversity of social representations. So, any proposal aiming to change journalism
practices must consider a lot of steps: not only the agenda setting, but also the routines and
tipifications interiorized by newsrooms and also a need critical attitude that admits the chance of
look for a strong diversity of angles. News workers must be open to other provinces of meaning
besides that of everyday life world. Thy must be open to strangeness. Journalistic processes
involving the naming of issues and silencing of voices have very real implications for the
position of minorities in society and their rights and life chances (Hall, 1997). In exploring how
media coverage preserves social structures that are harmful to people one must find instruments
of critic on abuses of symbolic power and discriminatory representations.
Accordingly, public journalism’s long-term viability depends on the presence of broad-
based newsroom support and also on the institutionalization of an all range of new practices and
perspectives within its information-gathering and reporting routines. The achievement of this
goals involves highly demanding changes.
6. From journalism to ethnography: becoming closer to strangers.
To be open to strangeness implies in our view to explore, at least, some features of the
relationship between the practice of journalism and the method of ethnography. In the present

point of our discussion to talk about bout ethnographic journalism can give as some clues but we
want to go far and open a research on what is ethnographic in journalism. There is a key concept
central to comprehensive human sciences and to ethnography that must be embraced by any kind
of journalism that shares some kind of epistemic and ethical concerns with the representation of
other: only from a group member’s perspective could an authentic account be achieved (Weber,
1947). In Ethnography the observed group validates or challenges the ethnographer’s
interpretation of events, because members of that group are considered the ultimate authorities
regarding the significance of events and practices pertaining to the group (Gamble, 1978; cit. in
Crammer and Dewitt, 2004). The adoption of this point of view at least in some situations (as a
kind of ideal-role–taking) challenges some journalists’ understanding of objectivity, neutrality,
and balance. However, a serious contemplation on ethnographic methods suggests that the
telling of authentic stories requires some critical reflection about the relationships between
reporters and their own social locations. The Hutchins Commission supported as mission of the
press the “projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society” (1947, p.
26 cit. in Crammer and Dewitt, 2004). So, reports must in some ways transcend not only
professional conventions and reporting habits but also their own demographic profiles, trying
from the point of view of marginalized groups to counterbalance the dominant perspectives of
mainstream news media. This approach becomes highly problematic, because formal education,
training, and professional socialization positions many reporters closer to the insider views of
dominant groups than the views of the socially disadvantaged (cf. idem, ibidem).
In conclusion, we feel it is necessary to support a project of interdisciplinary research
within journalism studies.. As part of this research, we feel that some hypotheses must be tested
and studied. Among them we emphasize the following:
a) There is a close relation ship between epistemology, methodology and social control.
b) The media are powerful ideological institutions that allow people to share social
beliefs. In this narrow sense, they turn ideology into common sense to be shared by average
people and vice-versa.
c) Ideologies are systems of beliefs about identity - that is to say they employ criteria of
inclusion and exclusion in social groups. Hence, ideology must also be studied as a cognitive

phenomenon.
d) Frames and tipifications must also be studied as cognitive phenomena, rooted in
everyday life through communicative interaction. Their study must be coupled with the study of
ideology in order to study the up-down movement of cognitive processing of social data.
e) The articulation between these two levels of cognitive phenomena has political
consequences concerning the relationships between media and representation of identities.
f) In turn, this has methodological consequences, because it requires an integration of
ethnographic methods and discourse analysis. Ethnographic methods will be used to understand
the newsmaking practices and to identify routines and tipifications. Discourse analysis will help
us to identify frames and ideological assumptions.
f) Finally, ethnographic methods will be used to find new angles and perspectives that
includes the other as subject of its own story and not as an exotic stranger.
Of course, it’s very difficult to achieve this. We can do it in some kinds of alternative
journalism and in some experiences carried occasionally in mainstream journalism in specific
circumstances.
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