Media and Minority Rights. The role of media in promoting social cohesion and enforcing human rights of ethnic minorities in nation states

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to investigate the role of media in shaping national identity, analyzed through the media practices on ethic minorities and the medias portrayal of these minorities. The thesis is that since the rise of the modern nation state, a false, imagined, homogenous picture of the nation has been disseminated, first through the printing process and books, and in our days, through massmedia outlets. If media would disseminate a more heterogenous picture of the nation and change its discourse on ethnic minorities and the identity of the nation, it would ultimately lead to a more diversified society where the ethnic minorities would be subjected to a lesser degree of discrimination and prejudices.