Riding the 'Third Wave': What's New in Minority Language Media Research

Craig Willis: One of my first direct experiences with scholars working on minority language media was my attendance at a conference in Edinburgh, organized by Miren Manias Muñoz. From there, I met researchers, who were establishing the International Association of Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR) – which my colleague Sergiusz Bober and I then joined – and then proceeded to meet online regularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. I met here Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, who became one of my PhD supervisors and it has been a journey over the last 5 years, which has led to a successful COST Action application.

Willis: The main topic of my PhD research was the role of non-speakers in the audience of minority language broadcasters. I looked at five public service channels, in Basque, Catalan, Galician, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, finding that in all cases there was a significant proportion of the audience that did not speak or understand the minority language. My conclusions were that they tune in when there is unique content, which could be through exclusive broadcasting licences – common with live sports – or a close cultural, geographical proximity to the audience – i.e. making programmes based on the region, which wouldn’t be made by majority language channels.

Willis: I suggest that within the literature on minority language media, we have begun to see a third wave emerge post-pandemic – reflecting the changing media habits on both the production and consumption sides. The first wave was largely embedded in the pre-social media age of the 1990s and 2000s, followed by a second wave in the 2010s which began to cover social media usage in minority languages but as a separate or competitive phenomenon to traditional media outlets. I argue that the third wave is partly shaped by the convergence of media outlets and individual users on the same platforms, increasingly Instagram and TikTok, whereby the traditional media outlets post content specifically for that format rather than just posting links or short clips. This is a simplification and the third wave contains other aspects, but this is the core difference I observe.

Willis: I think the report authored by Jones et al. for the Council of Europe’s COMEX is still one of the most relevant texts for this. They discuss the changing consumption habits and unpack in detail the different challenges faced by broadcasting and printed press. Unfortunately, the report was published in late 2019 and within months the Covid-19 pandemic started affecting society in a profound way – including media consumption. This clearly accelerated digitalisation trends in many instances and has led to new challenges – particularly the rise of TikTok.

Willis: Right from the application phase, we had involved many practitioners and this has continued into the implementation phase. Thus, practitioners will be part of the project throughout, attending the Action’s events, contributing to the drafting of policy papers and also disseminating these to their broader public. In this sense, we see the media outlets as a core partner but also hope that the networking opportunities of having participants from COST’s 41 member states will be of great value as well. Interested practicioners and academics can, for example, apply to participate in the working groups via the dedicated COST Action website.

Willis: Already we have multiple MIDAS members involved through editors-in-chief, and we very much encourage more to be involved – including younger journalists, who have a lot to offer in terms of their perspective of youth consumption. We also have the flexibility to organise our Action’s events in sync with others, for example a MIDAS General Assembly, and thus offer an opportunity to attend a workshop in the same week. This will hopefully make participation easier for practitioners, as we are of course aware that having the time to join can be more of an issue.