Ethnic communities and multiculturalism: Negative associations increasingly present in the media
Montreal, January 12, 2007 - Influence Communication today released the results of an analysis on how the Canadian media cover news about Canada’s cultural communities.
A significant drop in the media’s coverage of multiculturalism in the country has been noted in the past six months. In fact, news on multicultural events, immigrants to Canada and cultural diversity has decreased by more than 40% since June 2006.
The study, which spans a period of two years, focuses on news related to multiculturalism and Canadian ethnic communities. The study concludes that in 2006, themes related to multiculturalism and ethnic communities were mentioned in relation to controversial subjects or conflict situations in 72% of cases. This is up significantly from the 2005 figure of 66%.
Among the subjects most often associated with Canadian cultural diversity, the study identified the association of various groups with terrorist movements, the wearing of the hijab, the wearing of kirpans, the issue of reasonable accommodation, the repatriation of Canadians during the Israel-Lebanon conflict, and the debate on dual citizenship.
The question of reasonable accommodation was also front-page news in Quebec for a number of weeks in the last quarter of 2006. This contributed to the Quebec media being that which most often associated conflicts and controversy with multicultural and ethnic community themes. In fact, between 2005 and 2006, Quebec jumped from 9th to 1st place in front of Alberta on the national scale. "While the trend was fairly consistent throughout the country, the change was greatest in Quebec," stated Jean-François Dumas, president of Influence Communication.
| Negative associations |
2006 (rank) |
2005 (rank) |
| Quebec |
77% (1st) |
63% (9th) |
| Alberta |
76% (2nd) |
76% (1st) |
| Newfoundland |
75% (3rd) |
65% (5th) |
| British Columbia |
74% (4th) |
67% (3rd) |
| Ontario |
71% (5th) |
65% (6th) |
| Saskatchewan |
68% (6th) |
70% (2th) |
| Manitoba |
67% (7th) |
65% (7th) |
| Nova Scotia |
66% (8th) |
61% (10th) |
| New-Brunswick |
63% (9th) |
66% (4th) |
| P.-E.-I. |
61% (10th) |
65% (8th) |
"Our work does not involve passing judgment on the prevailing socio-political climate in the country or even on the work done by journalists," concluded Mr. Dumas. "However, our analysis clearly reveals a change not only in the type of stories being covered by the media but also the in the angles taken on these stories."
About Influence Communication
Established in 2001, Influence is Canada’s top information broker. From its head office in Montreal, Influence conducts media monitoring and analysis for the majority of Canada’s largest corporations. With its Interactive Communication Environment (ICE) system and network of partners across Canada and in 120 countries, Influence offers comprehensive monitoring, aggregation and analysis of newspapers, radio, television and more than 7,000 Internet news sites. Each day, Influence Communication collects over 700,000 news items from around the world.
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