Minorities in a narrow and multiculturality in a broad sense are places of learning for a future society. As such, both are a political and cultural challenge to the media or the ability of communication of a society respectively.
Multiculturality is a term describing the worldwide change in which micro- and mesocultures do not longer exist in a delimited and isolated way but in coexistence and sociostructural mixture with other cultures, traditions and worlds of ideas.
Multiculturality, however, also stands for minorities which do not always have enough social lebensraum and political room in superior political and cultural contexts of life. Multiculturality implies that the media construct a universal symbolic world which mixes topics and cultures and so crucially changes the individual and collective perception of the cultural, social and political world.
The structural change of society also takes place in increasing migrations, not only in Europe after the decline of the communist central administrations, but also between countries offering economical or political possibilities and people from countries looking for those.
The situation of the minorities - actually of all minorities - in public consciousness is mostly bad. This can be seen in many facts, in particular in restrictive residence permits for foreigners in European countries, in increasing acts of violence against minorities, in several laws disadvantaging minorities in Europe, the USA and other states as well as in the public tolerance for hostile attitudes of politicians or other representatives towards minorities.
Efforts of organizations, the media or of some individual journalists respectively to create at least a tolerant if not even an interculturally interested public consciousness have not been very successful until today.
A socially committed communication research must respond to these developments. On the one hand it should offer analyses and solutions for problems by means of research and training, on the other hand it must work out stable practices. With regard to this social phenomenon, new job-models in the communication field have to be prepared which are able to reduce subjective and collective lacks of comprehension of minorities and which simultaneously are authentic communication channels for the minorities themselves.
Societies live out of the identities and personalities of their people, groups and communities. By the same token, society does not become identifiable for the individual as long as its face has not got clear and recognizable features. This can only be reached by a communication as unfeigned as possible.
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