At the tail end of 2024, Eurac Research and the European Centre for Minority Issues held a long-anticipated conference at Villa Vigoni in Menaggio, Lake Como. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Villa Vigoni under its ‘German-Italian Cooperation in the Humanities and Social Sciences’ programme, the two-day conference brought together 20 researchers from Germany and Italy but also across Europe under the title “The digital transition for minority language media in Italy and Germany: a knowledge exchange with European partners”. It marked another milestone in the cooperation between Eurac Research and the ECMI as well as furthering the institutions’ shared focus on minority language media. Moreover, it came at a timely point both in terms of the intensifying work our network of scholars has reached through the recent successful COST Action, PLURILINGMEDIA, but also at a time of media change and uncertainty within social media regulation. As such, there were many salient topics ready to be discussed across the two days at Lake Como.
The event had been in the planning since the application phase in December 2022, then accepted in autumn 2023 before eventually being held on 3rd and 4th December last year. Owing to the competitiveness of the Call for Applications, Villa Vigoni has a packed schedule hosting dozens of events every year. It felt well worth the wait as the 20 participants finally arrived for an intensive two days of dialogue, both in the formal programme but also throughout the food breaks within the enclosed setting of the Villa Vigoni grounds. Our group of participants was anchored in the German and Italian contexts - broadly defined to include German and Italian kin-state minorities as well - with 12 of the 20 falling into this category. The remaining 8 participants offered a wider European perspective, bringing expertise on Basque, Catalan, Galician, Hungarian in Romania, Mirandese, Ruthenian, Swedish in Finland and Welsh.
Organised as a series of roundtable discussions, day one featured four thematic panels focusing first and foremost on the German and Italian contexts. Commencing with a general overview of the minority languages in the two states, three panellists gave opening statements which outlined the similarities but also the differences between the two. Both have a mix of kin-state and non-kin state minorities within their states but also kin-minorities abroad, resulting in quite some asymmetries between the media provisions per community. An additional factor was the role of the Council of Europe’s treaties, whereby Italy has not ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages but Germany has. Our second session looked more in detail at legacy media in the two states, with three more panellists summarising the broadcast and printed press available, including availability of media from a kin-state. It became very apparent that even within the same state, the provision of media in a minority language varied immensely, with the situation of the German-speaking minority in Italy being close to functional completeness (aided by accessing neighbouring states’ broadcasting) compared with the fragility of spheres such as Sorbian or Sardinian which are much less served by traditional media. Nonetheless, there were many issues which all spheres appear to share - digitalisation and its related challenges being a significant one. One significant recommendation was that qualitative indicators ought to be considered more substantially rather than relying on headline quantitative statistics which do not capture the nuances of language protection and use.The afternoon sessions moved to more precise themes, firstly of legislation and standards and then of social media usage. This allowed us to increase the comparative focus in terms of input on different linguistic minorities outside of the German / Italian contexts. The two sessions also overlapped in that many of the shortcomings of current legislation relate to the new and evolving challenges presented by social media.Despite this,there were many positive examples discussed, highlighting good practice by certain broadcasters in adapting to the latest social media trends such as TikTok and an increase in audiovisual, in-app, content.
After an evening of fine dining and consolidating the day’s findings in the ambiance of Villa Vigoni, the second day began with a session focused specifically on youth consumption of media. Here the analytical setting was laid with a universally present phenomenon of youth migrating away from the traditional media formats such as print newspapers, magazines or even broadcasting, towards social media content. The discussion has made it clear that not in every linguistic sphere such attractive content is available, nevertheless several good practices were mentioned such as Welsh-language format Hansh. Since the ability to deliver content responding to the youth’s preferences and through their media channels of choice is a critically important prerequisite for recuperating this audience sector, it was argued by the participants that reassessment of employment patterns within the minority language media sector is necessary. The current landscape too frequently shows a generational gap, characterised by overrepresentation of journalists better adapted to work with more traditional media formats. This laid ground for the following session which was specifically focused on journalism in minority languages. The thematic framework allowed the group to explore a number of critical aspects, beginning with the field of education. Although a comprehensive training would be beneficial to the field as a whole due to the specificities of minority language journalism combining classic journalism with aspects closer to language and minority-rights activism, only some of the spheres are capable of providing that, either those with a significant number of speakers (like Catalan) or with well-established educational and media institutions (like Swedish in Finland). Even there, on the other hand, a challenge remains in the shape of largely bilingual young journalists considering work for majority language outlets due to offering a wider array of potential thematic opportunities. As mentioned during the panel, in some other contexts additional pressure is resulting from the politicisation of broader minority issues and a spill-over effect on media, making journalists leave the profession due to constraints on their professional freedom. In terms of potential recommendations, it was clear that policy-makers need to provide more resources for the training of journalists, as well as better address the dilemma of supporting media in minority languages with public means, whilst allowing them to operate without interference. This was considered as clearly depending on broader political conditions in a given country, and thus reaching universal solutions might be very difficult.
Focus on Germany and Italy
Due to the aforementioned conceptual design of the conference both days featured a strong presence of topics linked to minority language media-dynamics present in Germany and Italy. As for the former context, it was argued that the complex socio-linguistic and legal situation of minorities results in unequal media provision for the protected communities and languages, with potentially dire consequences for some of them. The case in point is the situation in Schleswig-Holstein, a region hosting three of the country’s national minorities - Danish, North Frisian and Sinti and Roma, where ca. 75% of the inhabitants are also relatively comfortable users of Low German.
It is notable that the presence of Danish there in the strict minority language media sense is limited to a daily newspaper Flensborg Avis, an outlet financially subsidized only by the kin-state, and its short daily radio news bulletin. The recently launched TV magazine Grænzenlos (a Danish-German co-production involving regional broadcasters NDR - Norddeutscher Rundfunk and TV Syd), although strongly featuring Danish, is produced outside of the organizational structures of the Danish minority and thematically focusing on the Danish-German border region more broadly.
North Frisian, on the other hand, arguably enjoys a stronger broadcasting presence, albeit it can be still considered as limited when NDR’s offer is holistically assessed. This is to a certain degree compensated by bottom-up initiatives, such as the community radio Friisk Funk which currently is enjoying more stable financial conditions due to the funding provided through the Friesenstiftung. Whilst the content in Romani is basically absent from the media landscape, the situation of Low German is significantly stronger, due to NDR providing a monthly TV magazine, several radio programmes, podcasts, as well as other resources.
As highlighted during the Villa Vigoni event, within Schleswig-Holstein minority communities frequently argue that their media situation is comparably worse than that enjoyed by the Sorbian community in the eastern part of the country, not least due to the TV and radio content offered by the regional broadcasters MDR - Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk and RBB - Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, alongside available print media offer. This critique was nuanced by some of the panelists, highlighting that within the Sorbian community the level of broadcasting provision is not considered as satisfactory, while more traditional media formats struggle with the maintenance of their readership base. When discussing potential improvements, it was a widely shared opinion that policymakers should do more to provide equal media opportunities for all minority communities, with the increased provision capable of resulting in positive developments concerning language revitalisation and maintenance, due to increased visibility and prestige. This is particularly important for languages with limited educational opportunities.
In Italy, the situation of minority language media is significantly influenced by the different levels of protection afforded to linguistic minorities. The best-protected groups are those whose regions benefit from special safeguards under autonomy statutes, such as the German- and Ladin-speaking minorities in South Tyrol. In South Tyrol there are additional funding schemes specifically for local media, not least because of the Autonomy Statute. At another level, from a legal point of view, there are twelve historical linguistic minorities that Italy recognised by law in 1999: Albanian, Catalan, Germanic, Greek, Slovenian, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian. For example, the law allows agreements for programmes in these twelve minority languages in public broadcasting. However, the Roma and Sinti communities have no specific legal protection as minorities, which highlights the asymmetry of the system. These differences between minorities are also indirectly reflected in media funding for minority language newspapers and online news outlets. For 2023, the relevant budget of around €12.6 million has been allocated only to German, Slovenian and Ladin media.
Meanwhile, the Italian public broadcaster Rai does not offer programmes in all recognised minority languages, focusing instead on German, Ladin, Slovenian, Friulian, French and Sardinian. Even among these, the number and range of programmes varies considerably.
While these differences are acknowledged, it is also noted that Italy’s financial support for minority language media is to some extent seen as an international model, as other European countries do not offer this kind of funding. However, the discussions at Villa Vigoni also revealed that the unequal situation of minority media in Italy ultimately depends on the numerical size of the linguistic groups. Smaller minority languages, such as Ladin, face challenges such as a lack of journalistic training in the minority language and a limited availability of qualified journalists. Other small minorities may even need to prioritise education in the minority language before they can afford further expenditure in the media sector. Italy was also discussed at the conference as an example of minorities supported by kin states, which provide additional media resources. South Tyrol, for example, benefits from agreements that allow it to receive television and radio broadcasts from Austria, Germany and Switzerland, providing the province with excellent local and international German-language media coverage. Austria’s public broadcaster, ORF, even produces a special news programme for South Tyrol, an example of support from the kin state.
Future relevance
The final sessions of the two days were dedicated to considering how best to move forward with this topic and the challenges identified. We first conducted a ‘world cafe’ style session where participants were divided into four groups led by members of the PLURILINGMEDIA COST Action and its four working groups. This therefore followed the themes of audience and content creator habits, legislation and standards, language vitality and journalism. The leaders led discussion rounds of how the preceding sessions could fit into the activities of the PLURILINGMEDIA activities and deliverables, including potential future research projects and publications. As the COST Action will run until 2028, there was a long-term perspective on these themes and the world cafe identified many collaborative ideas including with the German / Italian context. Subsequently, the last session was a whole group again and allowed for a tour-de-table where all participants gave their main takeaways and hopes for the future. It was evident that there was a lot of potential for future collaborative activities as well as a general optimism that the group’s expertise and energy could make a difference in the field. The topics discussed in detail were: the need for qualitative indicators which depart from macro figures like audience share; strengthening and updating platform regulation; the need for an EU agency for media; the plausibility of a new thematic commentary from the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ACFC); the need to differentiate between small and large minority language communities; the role of digitalisation in creating opportunities for actors hitherto not involved in media content production, the so-called third-sector producers; the opportunities for new media formats such as website-only, podcasts, short-form videos.
Overall it was an extremely fruitful exchange between researchers focused on many different linguistic minorities and their media across Europe. It made clear that the challenges facing the communities and the media outlets were stark but in many instances contained elements of optimism that improvements could be made and that there were positive examples from certain communities which could be followed. A core stress was placed upon the need for continuing exchange and the importance of international networks, both of scholars and practitioners. Examples such as the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) offer key avenues for this and encouraging media as a topic of focus in broader networks such as the European Language Equality Network (ELEN) can also play a role in increasing the prominence of minority language media and its challenges as a theme of debate.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors and does not represent the position of the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) or Eurac Research.
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This blog is supported by the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS). MIDAS was founded in 2001 to provide assistance to minority language newspapers and nowadays has members all over Europe. MIDAS serves as a platform for exchange, uniting minority language newspapers to present a collective voice to the European institutions.
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