Sonja de Leeuw

Race, ethnicity, and content analysis of the sports media: a critical reflection

Opinions about and attitudes towards the constructs of race and ethnicity in contemporary Western society are not only influenced by institutions such as those of academic institutions, politics, education, family or paid labour, but also by the media. Popular forms of media culture, varying from news broadcasts and talk shows to soap operas and music videos, can be highly influential in structuring ideas about race and ethnicity. Entman contended that the media ‘call attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring other elements’ (1993: 55). The media create dominant interpretations of reality that appeal to a desired or anticipated audience. According to Hall (1995, 1997), the media are not only a powerful source of dominant ideas about race and ethnicity, but should also be considered as sites of constantly shifting meanings and struggles over meaning. This is evident in the way that the media on the one hand celebrate successful African-Americans like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan, while also confirming and reinforcing racist stereotypes. According to Jessica Rhodes, a scholar in ethnic studies and mass communication, racist stereotypes have been embedded in the US mass media since the 18th century, whether it be ‘the benign and happy slave figure’, ‘the black brute who rapes white women’ or the ‘promiscuous black woman’ (1995: 36–7). This stereotypical and one-dimensional framing of

Diasporic Mediated Spaces

Within the context of migration and globalisation of media, questions concerning the transformation of culture have become manifest among communication scholars. Due to alterations in the global political and economic order, such as deregulation of the media market, the media landscape has undergone extensive transformations during last decades of the twentieth century. Moreover, processes of decolonisation and post-colonisation, the opening of borders in Europe and the outbreak of wars, have led to increased migration movements and generated a flood of people, who for different reasons are looking for new places and new homes. Cultural communities are no longer fixed in particular geographical spaces. As a result we are facing what Hall has called ‘the global post-modern’ (1996), involving the possible shifts of power relations and cultural hierarchies that in particular apply to diaspora, people connected to a cultural community, now living dispersed. What interests us here are the processes of cultural transformation that are taking place within ‘the global post-modern’ where increasing numbers of people are negotiating their identities between continuity and change, between similarity and difference. In the new place, senses of homely belonging are necessarily being constructed with references to both the new place and to what has been left behind.

Constructing Racial/Ethnic Difference in and Through Dutch Televised Soccer Commentary:

The purpose of this study was to expand on current research about ways in which race and ethnicity are socially constructed through popular media culture. In this article we explore to what extent broadcast commentary of televised soccer in the Netherlands reproduces and challenges hegemonic discourses about race/ethnicity and is congruent with findings of similar research in other contexts. We used a layered approach toward race/ethnicity instead of the frequently used Black/White dichotomy in research on sports commentary. Our findings suggest that current Dutch soccer commentary displays a number of dominant racialized/ethnicized themes that at times resonate with colonial discourses, are in part congruent with racialized/ethnicized sport media representations found in other contexts and also challenge popular Dutch discourses about ethnicity. We place these findings in a broader historical and internationally comparative perspective.

Dutch documentary film as a site of memory Changing perspectives in the 1990s

This article discusses how documentary film as site of memory has constructed the memory of the Second World War. Its focus is on Dutch documentary films produced by the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s and their relation to both the discourses of memory and of documentary representation. The construction of memory is closely related to the debate on historical representation, centred around the Shoah as an event of extreme importance. This article addresses these debates as well as the interventions made by filmmakers. With the help of several examples from Dutch documentary practice, its aim is to illustrate how representational modes in documentary film are related to the construction of memory.This article discusses how documentary film as site of memory has constructed the memory of the Second World War. Its focus is on Dutch documentary films produced by the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s and their relation to both the discourses of memory and of documentary representation. The construction of memory is closely related to the debate on historical representation, centred around the Shoah as an event of extreme importance. This article addresses these debates as well as the interventions made by filmmakers. With the help of several examples from Dutch documentary practice, its aim is to illustrate how representational modes in documentary film are related to the construction of memory.

Changing childhoods: Migrant children and the confrontation of uncertainty

‘Being a refugee means learning from your children instead of teaching them yourself’. These are the words of a 43-year-old writer from Turkey, father of three. He is a refugee in Greece, where he works as a tailor. Language, the tool of his trade, is what he can no longer use, even for his own children. In contrast to her father, 12-year-old Boran, who is fluent in both Greek and her mother tongue, sits beside her father and translates what he says, and at the same time explains how frustrated he feels that he cannot communicate with the people around him.

European Television History Online: History And Challenges

Increasingly television heritage is being digitized and made accessible to non- industry user, enabling ‘the archival turn’: the study of online archives so as to revisit the dominant discourses in television historiography. This article discusses both conceptual and practical perspectives on online television heritage within a broader European frame- work. It starts from the notion of connectivity, pointing to the development of the archive as a network of connections and continues to address the dynamics involved in the trans- formation of the television archive into an online presentation including the most relevant actors. With the help of examples from Dutch and European television heritage projects the article discusses how the new archive is capable of mediating between the past and present, between history and memory, between curatorial perspectives and popular uses. It concludes on the challenges that (European) online television heritage offers in the field of television historiography and theory.

In-Vision Continuity Announcers: Performing an Identity for Early Television in Europe

In-vision continuity announcers have played central – yet understudied – roles in early television history. Through their performances on and off the screen, they mediated the identity of the televisual medium in the 1950s and 1960s, popularizing it as a medium of sound and vision, a domestic and gendered medium as well as a national and transnational institution. Focusing primarily on Dutch and Romanian female in-vision continuity announcers in the 1950s and 60s and making extensive comparisons with other countries in Europe, this article illustrates how these early professionals of television performed as part of a European-wide phenomenon of defining the identity of the new televisual medium.

Television Fiction: A Domain of Memory

The most remarkable Dutch television event in 2001 was the top-listed production Wilhelmina, on the present queen’s grandmother. A conventional historical drama series in four parts, it traces the story of the queen’s life until her abdication in 1948. The series focuses especially on her role during the Second World War, reflecting the ongoing public debate on the question whether her decision to leave the country (for England) was well chosen. Its number-one ranking can be explained by the way this series brings together the two main points of reference in Dutch national history: the relationship between the state and the monarchy, and the Second World War. This series demonstrated how Wilhelmina wanted to stay to help her people, but could not due to the circumstances. Moreover, the series showed how tough her struggle was against the male politicians around her and how she demanded the utmost of her self to really become the motherly symbol of her country in the times of occupation. The popularity of the series can also be found in the way it celebrates the nation’s unity in post-modern times. It stresses the importance of historical drama in telling and retelling the stories of the recent past, from different points of view, including its controversies and its changes.

TRANSNATIONALITY IN DUTCH (PRE) TELEVISION

This paper focuses on how Dutch television pioneer Erik de Vries operated within the fields considered relevant in the construction of television over time (the industrial–technological, the cultural and the political) and did so from a transnational perspective. That is to say, it examines his role in developing ideas and practices of television as a cross-border medium par excellence and in encouraging a flow of cultural exchanges that he believed to be the mediums primary aim. De Vries took a position in the centre of the arena where the formation of television took place, being a technician (developing television for the industry), a creative professional and a ‘televisionary’ at the same time. Discussing this position as a site of agency the paper sheds light on the dynamics that arose from the clash between conservative attitudes and the development of television as modern medium.This paper focuses on how Dutch television pioneer Erik de Vries operated within the fields considered relevant in the construction of television over time (the industrial–technological, the cultural and the political) and did so from a transnational perspective. That is to say, it examines his role in developing ideas and practices of television as a cross-border medium par excellence and in encouraging a flow of cultural exchanges that he believed to be the mediums primary aim. De Vries took a position in the centre of the arena where the formation of television took place, being a technician (developing television for the industry), a creative professional and a ‘televisionary’ at the same time. Discussing this position as a site of agency the paper sheds light on the dynamics that arose from the clash between conservative attitudes and the development of television as modern medium.

Negotiating Television's Cultural Potential as Commercial Asset : Early Experimental Commercial Television in the Netherlands.

outside Eindhoven. They were treated on local news, performances by national artists, local sports, popular science, and commercial entertainment: the art of lower arrangement, presented by the local lower company. After the successful premiere Philips, from 1 April until 10 July 1951, realized a regular commercial television broadcast under the name of Philips Experimental Television (PET), lead by Philips employee and Dutch television pioneer Erik de Vries. PET had no national coverage. Still the commercial experiment that Philips presented can be considered a key event indicating the dynamics involved in television in the making. It played a crucial role in the public debate evolving around the rise and growth of television and its structural embedding in the 1950s. Apart from Philips, two other parties were leading in the debate: the government and the existing broadcasting companies (at the time for radio only), all persistently addressing the relationship between public and commercial television.