ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some aspects of the media experiences collected by people with an ethnic minority background, concentrating on how mediated definitions work or how identities are represented by the journalists and on what subjects one is allowed to speak. It explains a larger project where the main endeavour has been in-depth interviews with minority actors. A guide for semi-structured interviews had been developed and tested, and this guide allowed for specific improvised questions to each individual informant. Banal journalism is hegemony; it caters to us and presents one view as the worldview of an entire society or nation. Faced with unprecedented cultural diversity, transnational ties, and conflict over the role of religion, high unemployment numbers among many immigrant groups, and a revitalization of traditional nationalism, the societal responses are mixed, and in both countries new cosmopolitan attitudes are confronted with territorial and ethnocultural nationalisms, multiculturalisms of varying shades and identity politics among the minorities.
