Media has long played a crucial role in preserving and revitalising minority languages. But as national policies, digitalisation, and economic forces increasingly tilt in favour of majority languages, the space for linguistic diversity is narrowing. At NordMedia25, the newly formed Temporary Working Group Media and Linguistic Minorities will make its debut, exploring the relevance of media for linguistic vitality, among other topics.
Anna Pacholczyk (AP): The Nordic linguistic landscape is a mosaic of national, minority, and migrant languages – Sámi, Faroese, Greenlandic, Yiddish, and Arabic – all threading their way into the region’s cultural fabric. What importance do media hold for linguistic vitality? From your perspective, does the topic of media and linguistic minorities receive sufficient recognition and attention, both within academic circles and beyond in the Nordic region?
Maarit Jaakkola (MJ): Media, particularly publicly funded media, plays a vital role not only in preserving languages and making them visible and hearable in the public sphere, but also in revitalising historical languages, often referred to as national minority languages. By creating public spaces where the use of minority languages is encouraged and normalised, journalistic media helps shape the identities of minority communities, enhances their visibility and legitimacy, and contributes to the enrichment of their cultural identities. Also the symbolic presence of other languages than the official majority languages in public can contribute to a consciousness of multilingualism among people.
As shown in a recent study, of which I wrote for the ECMI research centre’s blog, public service media also serves as the provider of learning resources in national minority languages. For example, for very small language communities such as Yiddish – in Sweden, there are only 18 pupils who receive tuition in this language – public service media can make a significant contribution, while textbook publishers cannot, as the market is too limited for them.
There are research communities for the different linguistic communities, but media research may not occupy a central role in them, while in media research, linguistic dimensions may remain in the background. This is why our newly established TWG is needed. We will bring together scholars from different scientific disciplines with specialisation in languages to discuss the specific matter of minority media and related media research.
For example, in Sweden, as in all Nordic countries, there are networks for Sámi researchers, national minority language researchers, researchers interested in migrant languages and foreign languages, second languages and multilingualism, as well as researchers studying media and linguistic matters in the lesser spoken languages of autonomous or self-governing regions in the Nordic countries, namely Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Åland Islands. These networks do not necessarily meet each other and gather around the common issue of media, as there has so far been no common forum for them.
AP: Minority-language media across the Nordic region faces not only visible hurdles, such as limited funding and small audiences, but also deeper, often invisible challenges like linguistic erosion and digital homogenisation. The newly established TWG, Media and Linguistic Minorities, chaired by you with three co-chairs, plans to address these complexities, among other issues. What specific questions do you hope to bring into focus at NordMedia25?
MJ: Our first intention is to establish a new forum at NordMedia that can extend the scope of Nordic media research by inviting researchers from different background disciplines to be part of the leading Nordic media and communication research conference. We, the founders of the TWG, are all part of a recently launched EU-funded COST Action Network called PLURILINGMEDIA, which has a focus on minority languages and media. We are currently also planning the next conference of the International Association for Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR), which will take place in June 2026 in Gothenburg.
AP.: As you prepare for your debut at NordMedia25, which academic disciplines beyond media and journalism do you view as vital to deepening the discussion on minority-language media? Whose voices, be it policymakers, practitioners, or members of minority communities, do you hope will join and contribute to the conversations your TWG aims to foster at this year’s conference in Denmark?
MJ: Disciplines that are relevant for addressing minoritised languages and minority-language media are linguistics, especially applied linguistics such as media linguistics and sociolinguistics. In addition, educational sciences, including teachers’ education, as well as history, anthropology, Nordic or Scandinavian studies, and different subdisciplines in social sciences can be interesting and relevant for our new TWG.
At a general level, I guess that all researchers who themselves come from linguistic minorities may find this TWG an interesting channel to discover new aspects of media research. All of us co-founders have experience as speakers of minority languages in our respective countries. I am myself a native Finnish speaker, and Finnish is one of the five national minority languages in Sweden, as well as part of the bigger Finno-Ugric language family that constitute many historical minority languages in the Nordics (the nine different Sámi languages, the Kven language spoken in Norway, Meänkieli spoken in the Swedish Tornedalen, and Karelian language spoken in Finland). Jenny Stenberg-Sirén comes from the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland and Johann Roppen from the New Norwegian minority, while Sergiusz Bober is originally a speaker of Polish who is working in the Danish-German border area, keeping an eye on media developments in relation to Danish and German as minority languages.
More information about the TWG can be found here. The group is now accepting oral presentations, papers, and panels for NordMedia 25.
About the NordMedia Conference
The NordMedia25 conference is set to take place on 13–15 August 2025, with a pre-conference for doctoral students scheduled for 12 August.
This conference is being co-hosted by Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). There will be a local organising committee and a Nordic academic committee that consists of the representatives of the national research associations from Sweden (FSMK), Finland (Mevi), Norway (NML), and Denmark (SmiD), and Nordicom.
NordMedia is a biennial conference for Nordic media and communication researchers organised by the national Nordic media researcher associations together with Nordicom. It was organised for the first time in 1973.
For information about NordMedia25 go to: https://nordmedianetwork.org/nordmedia-conference-2025/
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