Attitudes to ‘race’ in the media: evidence from Greece and the UK

This paper draws on research conducted as part of the EU-funded project RADAR (Regulating AntiDiscrimination and AntiRacism, JUST/2013/FRAC/AG/6271). It rejects the concept of ‘race’, hence the inverted commas, and sees it as a social construct aimed at dividing people into unequal, static, unchangeable categories (Witzig, 1996, and others). From this starting point, it presents selected examples of attitudes to ‘race’ in the media in Greece and the UK, based on a sample analysis of authentic material specifically collected for use in the RADAR training workshops. The material was analysed using Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA), a sub-section of Conversation Analysis originally developed by Sacks (1966; 1992). These examples highlight similarities of some mechanisms of hate communication, not only between genres, but also between countries (UK and Greece), despite clear historical, social and demographic differences. Overall, this reflection paper aims at highlighting certain ways in which ‘race’ is thematised and depicted in the media in these two countries, as well as raise awareness and initiate a discussion on hate communication, whether intentional (hate-motivated) or not.