Interreligious Dialogue in Public Service Broadcasting. A Case Study in Catalonia (Spain)

Amparo Huertas Bailén

doi:10.3390/rel11090441

Abstract

This text addresses how the media deals with interreligious dialogue based on the case study of the Catalan public television stations. Our theoretical framework revolves around the concept of mediation, which is regarded as a communicative concept that emphasizes the socializing power of the mass media as well as its potential contribution to social cohesion. A quantitative and qualitative analysis is presented of a sample of 41 multi-religious audiovisual pieces broadcast between 2015 and 2018, which were located in the Corporation’s on-demand online service. The religious diversity that currently exists in European cities is reflected in the media content. Although it is true that the Catholic religion features in 63% of the sample, it only becomes the focal point on less than half of the occasions in which it appears. The religious options with more presence are Catholicism in relation to Islam and atheism in relation to Catholicism, but these cases only account for 26.8% of the sample. Interreligious dialogue appears as the main focus of the discourse in only 14.6% of the sample and, in general, the tendency towards a Euro-Catholic-centric discourse has been detected.

Highlights

This text reflects on the role of the mass media as mediators of values and knowledge in relation to religious beliefs
We address this aspect based on the case study of the Catalan public television stations, included in the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA)1
Religious pluralism is present in Catalan public television, as the sample analysed shows a real concern for covering religious diversity in its programming, which is reflected in the variety of religious beliefs included in the pieces found

Summary

Introduction

This text reflects on the role of the mass media as mediators of values and knowledge in relation to religious beliefs. Our focus is on one specific aspect of that mediation, namely the way in which the media treats interreligious dialogue and the kind of relationship that the media’s discourse gives rise to among religions in audio-visual narratives. We address this aspect based on the case study of the Catalan public television stations, included in the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA). According to data from Kantar Media, in 2019 its audience share was 14.6%, with Galicia’s television in second place (9.3%) and the Aragonese network in third (8.8%) In this country, the average consumption of regional television stations during the year 2019 was 8.2%

Methods

Results

Conclusion