The European Language Equality Network, the international civil society organization working for the protection of European minoritized and endangered languages, held a side-event with the European Centre for Minority Issues on minoritized language media at last week’s UN Forum for Minority Issues at the UN in Geneva.
The packed side-event, featuring a panel of media and legal experts, covered a range of topics ranging from the rapid impact of digitalization, the exponential rise of hate-speech on social media, and the need for new legislation to guarantee a future for minoritized language media.
Speakers at the side-event were UN Special Rapporteur for Minority Issues Nicolas Levrat, ELEN President Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, ELEN Vice-President Elena Jiménez i Botías (Omnium Cultural), Sergiusz Bober (ECMI), Craig Willis (ECMI), with moderation by ELEN Secretary-General Davyth Hicks.
Opening the meeting, the UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Nicolas Levrat, spoke at length on the importance of media for minoritized languages and how it is evolving. He stressed the importance of minorities in general being part of broader society and their contribution to it and noted the tendency on social media for majorities and minorities to develop a silo mentality where people become disconnected from each other, a situation exacerbated by algorithms that tailor content to fit individual user preferences.
ELEN President Prof. Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones underlined the importance of media in providing vital “breathing spaces” for minoritized language communities. She underlined that: “Access to social media algorithms must be democratised. Otherwise, content in minoritised languages won’t fulfill its potential to reach all speakers. Speakers must be able to find content in their languages, and that content has to be able to find the speakers.”
Dr. Sergiusz Bober (ECMI) discussed how, “media creates a public sphere for a minority language community, it helps to normalise language use as well as increasing self-esteem. Media gives status to a language and makes a space for that community’s creativity.” He referred to the successful Galician news site Nos Diario, with its passionate journalists producing amazing content, and how that had created the space for language activists to help consolidate the language community. He noted how the transition from print media to digital had been a challenge but that there had been success in attracting a younger readership in many cases.
Dr. Elena Jiménez i Botías (Omnium Cultural) focused on the Catalan media which, while Catalan is a relatively widely spoken language and has had success in increasing digital media content, continues to be marginalised in some areas of the media and is subject to political and judicial attacks. An overarching concern was the steady rise in cases of hate-speech against Catalan speakers, particularly on social media. She gave the example of the recent attacks against the FC Barcelona footballer Aitana Bonmati who was subject to a storm of hate speech simply because she spoke her own language, Catalan, while accepting the Ballon d’Or award a few weeks ago.
Dr. Craig Willis (ECMI) spoke about the new COST Action project on minoritized language media entitled “Plurlingmedia”. All issues raised in the UN side-event, from the impact of rapid digitilisation to dealing with hate-speech, will be topics discussed by the project over the next four years and he urged interested stakeholders to participate in the project.
Closing the session, ELEN Secretary-General Davyth Hicks emphasised the importance of media for minoritized language speakers in providing essential language “breathing spaces”. He underlined the need for new legislation that will ensure media space for minoritized languages and that existing Treaties such as the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, drafted in the pre-digital age, needed to be updated to take account of the enormous changes that the digital revolution has brought to the media domain globally, as well as dealing with hate-speech and the need to ensure that social media algorithms are developed that cater for minoritized language speakers. (Eurolang 2024)
ELEN – ECMI side event poster