Intros: Stereotypes

Sabine Schiffer

By talking about stereotypes in Western media, Sabine Schiffer talks simultaneously about the Muslim world and the growing rifts. There may not be many boundaries of speech for Western people but certainly for the ones being stereotyped. After the Danish cartoons ridiculed their religion, Muslims were confronted with the Western freedom of speech. Suddenly the argument of free speech became a boundary for those who tried to articulate their offence. But for Western democratic principles this was difficult to comprehend. Stereotypes have a psychological, rather than a financial or military quality, which makes them even harder to grasp. At the same time that they are framing the communication with the Muslim world, they are what international reporting is struggling with. By focusing on them, Schiffer shows its effects – hopefully a first step in breaking their ungraspable, psychological quality.
Presentation: How media trespasses selectively boundaries of free speech and creates new stereotypes

Amitai Sandy

Amitai Sandy’s “Antisemtic cartoon contest” deals with stereotypes as boundaries. The outcry in the Arab world following the publication of the Danish cartoons in 2006 ridiculing Islam, was also a reaction to stereotypes. In a Western newspaper, the religion of an eastern culture was reduced to a few negative aspects: terrorism, fundamentalism, primitivism. Sandy talks about humour and how it correlates with holy terms, like the untouchable aspect of the Holocaust. However, the main reason why his initiative belongs to a debate about boundaries of free speech is because it gives an example of how to break them. By putting up an alternative media sphere in which Jews were ridiculing themselves, he shows two things at once: 1. Humour only works on an equal basis. Just as the cartoons about Jews by the German Nazis were a product of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim cartoons aroused similar feelings of humiliation. 2. Maintaining stereotypes is often in the hands of those who have the power of speech, like the Danish newspaper. By using alternative media, the internet, however, an empowerment of speech took place which echoed back into mainstream media and discourses.
Presentation: The Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest: Possibilities of Conflict Resolution through Alternative Media

Don Alphonso

The position of articulation in the blogsphere is in many ways different to mainstream media. Don Alphonso embraces the main aspects of alternative media with his stories about the German blog-world, his own views and his writing style. Blogging dives right into personal views. Objectivity is already a myth, identity and the political discourses over it become the main platform. The very moment these debates take place, usual boundaries of speech, communicative rules of diplomacy or objectivity have to be broken. Don Alphonso writes about the middle East conflict, as a Jew in Germany. While doing this, dynamics on the web arise which display interesting political positions and strategies to shape reality. He is attacked by commentators on his blog for being Jewish and yet again for criticizing Israeli politics. The breaking of boundaries in the blogosphere is followed by a new kind of boundary: the production of radical identities that hardly leave any space for moderate opinions. A new source of stereotypes?
Presentation: Fighting For identity – Boundless Communication in the Blogosphere