Welcome to our Medimap video which will focus on the democratic importance of media representation. In this video we'll first discuss what representation is and then we will zoom in on the democratic importance of media representation. Representation is a very complicated notion and it needs to be carefully unpacked. One reason why it is a complicated concept is because we use it in two main ways which are very different. First we use representation to talk about we in a democracy delegate power to particular leadership. In democracies we elect our parliamentarians who represent us in Parliament. But even in other situations we can select someone to speak on our behalf at a meeting, in school or at work. Also there they represent us. But this is not the meaning of representation we want to address in this video. Representation has a second meaning which refers to how we make something visible, how we give it presence. The diversity of media plays a major role here, as they show us the world. This is not only about news, but for instance also about documentaries and about popular culture with its Hollywood films, its romance novels, its pop music, its reality TV programs, its talk shows and so much more. And media are not the only ones to generate representations. Also textbooks in schools, literature, paintings, museums and so many other fields offer representations of the world and they do that in always particular ways. This particularity of representation is important. No representation is ever total and complete. No photograph, no written text and no speech can capture the entire world. There is always something that escapes it. This is not always the intention of the producers, but simply a limitation of all representations. It also does not mean that representations are necessarily wrong or that they are lies. They can be, but many of them are honest, truthful and legitimate. Journalists, for instance, driven by professional ethics, try to offer the best possible perspective of the world. But also those are always partial and incomplete. Ideology plays an important role in all this, as people with a different ideology will see the world differently, will find different things important and will thus produce different representations. We should also not forget about the audience. We do not interpret everything in the same way. I am sure you had the experience where you and a friend talked about a film, a film you have both just watched and it feels that you have seen a completely different film even though it was the very same film you watched. This is because audiences interpret representations differently. After all, we are all different with different experience, feelings, personalities and this also affects how we interpret the representations we hear and see. This also means that audiences will not necessarily interpret representations as the producers intended them to be interpreted. Also, they can be very different. Why are media representations then so important for democracy? The basic idea is that our knowledge about the world and representations help us to build that knowledge about the world. Also as political relevance. Most obviously when citizens go to vote, how they see the world significantly matters. This does not mean that people blindly follow what they see on television or read on social media. But these representations do play a role, especially on themes where we have little other sources to rely on. One important idea is that we should be able to trust the information that is offered to us, especially at the level of facts. But also how these facts are framed and that is what representations do is important. When thinking about the democratic importance of media representations, though, there are two main areas, which are the social and the political. Representations of the social are about how we think about society and about its social subgroups. Here the main danger consists of a situation where we have a continuous flow of negative representations about the same group and this group is reduced to these stereotypes. This kind of stereotyping does not do justice to the dignity of these groups and eventually risks harming them. And also simply ignoring particular groups, which is called symbolic annihilation, has the potential to do damage to them and can be considered a form of symbolic violence and that can lead to the social exclusion. The idea behind these problematizations is that society and all social subgroups are characterized by diversity. And that it is unfair to reduce people to an often negative characteristic. Democracy is served much more by representations that show this diversity about society as a whole and about all social subgroups. That is why reductionist representations of society and its subgroups are a problem for democracy and why blue reform representations serve democracy better. on representations serve democracy better. The second area that matters to democracy is the representation of the political. In other words, how democracy itself and the political system is represented also matters. Media can play an educational role here in representing and explaining the inherent complexities of democracy and its many struggles. Making democracy work is not an easy task and showing these difficulties to reach agreements and the frustrations that this causes is important. Media can also play a role in defending particularly values which are vital to democracy such as for instance peace, freedom, equality, dignity and justice. Of course media also have a key role to play as watchdog of the political system. It needs to report on whatever goes wrong. But there is also a need for media to find a balance between negativity and more positive approaches, which show the importance of democracy, even though it is imperfect. This brings us back to the need to avoid stereotypical representations about, for instance, politicians. Reducing them to profiteers who always focus on the self-interest or who are liars does not do justice to the diversity of politicians we have, who are very different people, driven by very different motivations. And again, we need pluriform representations about the political, to serve and protect democracy. One of the main questions for the citizen parliament is how responsible we want media to be. What do we expect from media content and the ones that produce it? Do we want media which produce stereotypes and forget about diversity, who feed fear and hate? Or do we want media that actively seek to represent the complexities and diversities of our social and political realities? And even when the citizen parliament can, and arguably should, produce resolutions which address media organisations directly, the citizen parliament also has to deal with the question of the regulation of media content. The autonomy of media organisations, media freedom, is important. And the question thus becomes when the state needs to intervene and impose limits on the damage that media can potentially inflict to democracy.