Joo, Jaewon
(2012)
The discursive construction of discrimination: the representation of ethnic diversity in the Korean public service broadcasting news.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
Globalisation has intensified the international movement of labour and South Korea is
no exception. Korea, which in the past was itself a labour-exporting country, has seen a
reversal in human mobility since the late 1990's with a rapid growth in immigration and
a transformation of a previously almost ethnically homogenous society. However,
studies on migrant and ethnic minority groups in Korea have primarily focussed on
such areas as industrial law and social policy. In this context, the important questions
about the cultural and political implications associated with the construction of minority
representations in the media have remained highly unexplored. The starting point of
this study is an examination of the vital role of public service broadcasting (PSB) in
Korean society, where ethnic minorities have increasingly become visible. Korean
PSB's mandate, following the BBC model, emphasises the broadcaster‟s responsibility
to represent and reflect the range of public opinion and experiences beyond class, age,
ethnicity and ideological orientation. Despite this commitment what this study shows is
that PSB in South Korea has failed to fairly represent the culturally diverse groups
within Korean society.
The main purpose of this study is to empirically examine the means through which PSB
generates discourses of We-ness and Otherness at times of change in the Korean society.
Empirically, the study focuses on primetime PSB news visual and textual
representations of migrants and ethnic minorities. With the use of critical discourse
analysis (CDA) it demonstrates that PSB gives a concrete form to the ideological
constructions of Otherness, sometimes transforming subtle cultural or social differences
into fundamental and oppositional ones. Korean PSB appears to be ideologically biased
toward nationalism, while in its visual and textual representations it constructs
ideological systems of social and racial stratification, with Southeast Asian migrants
constantly represented as the ultimate Others. The study shows the significant role of
PSB in representing cultural diversity in public debates and the ways in which such
representations and their dissemination reflect media power.
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