KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

 

Korea is moving gradually into a multicultural society for the past decade due to diverse internal and external factors, such as the rising in-flows of foreign immigrants. This research delves into the influence of mass media on multicultural civic education as well as on social cohesion in an increasingly multicultual context. This work analyzes television news contents and news frames of foreign immigrants from three major broadcasting services as well as views' opinions in the bulletin boards of human documentary programs, which deal with multicultural issues. Additionally, this research examines German and French cases focusing on the role of mass media on multicultural civic education and further conducted in-depth interviews with multicultural program producers and policy makers.

 This multi-dimensional research, focusing on the educational role of mass media in a multicultural context, aims to reveal the possible policy options to make Korea better prepared for a harmonious multicultural society. Findings suggest that dominant frames in the news are sympathy-based frames as well as binary frames, which make foreigners(Others) distinguished from Koreans(Us). “Othering” processes are also observed in human documentary programs' bulletins in that views tend to support assimilation of foreigners into Korean society and express binary perceptions, which make foreigners “permanent Others.” In-depth interviews with program and policy makers imply that there are insufficient efforts to use mass media for multicultural civic education and social cohesion in Korea. Program makers and policy makers related to multicultural contents suggest that the number of multicultural programs in Korean media should be increased and the contents should focus more on positive sides of foreign immigrants' lives in Korea.

 In conclusion, it is a necessity to develop and implement a participation-based coordination system to make possible more efficient multicultural civic education and social cohesion. This coordination system, based on participations from government agencies, citizens(NGOs), media institutions and immigrants, can lead to a harmonious multicultural society by educating citizens/journalists as well as regulating media contents for multiculturalism.

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