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Abstract: This paper explores the role media play in safeguarding cultural diversity, promoting cultural dialogue, facilitating the exercise of cultural rights, fostering cultural understanding and cultivating intercultural citizenship in the age of globalization. The paper highlights several interconnected leverage points: media content, practices, processes, ownership, education, structures, and policies. It argues that fostering cultural diversity in and through the media can go a long way toward bringing a civic discourse which favors tolerance and facilitates co-existence. It can contribute to the breaking down of cultural barriers, the initiation of cultural dialogues, the empowerment of marginalized groups, and the practice of good governance. At the same time, this paper argues, the celebration of difference does not preclude the valuation of a common cultural core or a common humanity which brings people together in spite of their differences.
Key Words: Media, Communication, Representation, Cultural Diversity, Cultural Rights, Globalization, UNESCO
The free flow of information in our contemporary societies has greatly enhanced connectivity and facilitated globalization, but it has also brought with it the threat of cultural standardization. The advent of new information and communication technologies has empowered previously disenfranchised individuals, marginalized groups and peripheral communities, but it has also added to the existing anxiety vis-à-vis hegemonic inclinations which seek to instill conformity, perpetuate sameness and efface difference. In an age marked by the imposition of the culture of media industries which breed homogeneity, the threat of cultural uniformity is more real than ever before. This paper examines the role media play in safeguarding cultural diversity, promoting cultural dialogue, fostering cultural understanding and cultivating intercultural citizenship. Focusing on key leverage points which shape the media environment today, it explores the ways in which media can facilitate "the exercise of cultural rights" (UNESCO, 2001) and promote cultural diversity. Fostering cultural diversity in and through the media can go a long way toward bringing a civic discourse which promotes tolerance, facilitates coexistence and enriches the human existence. It can contribute to the breaking down of cultural barriers, the initiation of cultural dialogue, the promotion of global reconciliation, the empowerment of marginalized groups, the strengthening of social cohesion, and the practice of good governance. At the same time, this paper argues, the celebration of difference does not preclude the valuation...