Four of PLURILINGMEDIA’s Management Committee members participated in the NordMedia conference held in Odense, Denmark earlier this month. After establishing a ‘temporary working group’ on Media and Linguistic Minorities, Maarit Jaakkola, Sergiusz Bober, Johann Roppen and Jenny Stenberg-Sirén organised three panel sessions throughout the conference.
The four also held a business meeting during the conference programme, providing an opportunity to also introduce PLURILINGMEDIA to interested conference participants and discuss future cooperation around the topic of media and linguistic minorities in Nordic settings. Sergiusz Bober, in his role as Publications Manager, highlighted the future publishing plans of the Action and how new members can get involved – including external outlets we have cooperation with, such as the ECMI Minorities Blog or the MIDAS blog.
The NordMedia conference was also seen as a priority for the PLURILINGMEDIA Grant Awarding Committee, with Jenny Stenberg-Sirén being supported by a dissemination conference grant. Jenny leads Working Group 4 in PLURILINGMEDIA, focused on journalism, and showcased some of her related research on Swedish language newspapers in Finland. Her three presentations were as follows:
- ‘Towards a definition of minority language journalism’
- ‘Who cares about media ownership? How audiences experienced Bonnier News’ acquisition of the two largest Swedish-language media organizations in Finland’ (with Klas Backholm, Jens Berg and Carl-Gustaf Lindén).
- ‘Walking a fine line? Minority language newspapers and politics at the local level’ (with Sergiusz Bober).
