Book part:

Die Kontroverse um die Mediennutzung von Migranten: Massenmediale Ghettoisierung oder Einheit durch Mainstream? / The Controversy about Media Usage by Minorities: Media Usage and Integration of Turkish Migrants in Germany

Communication Science plays a minor role in the debate about immigration and integration. But Communication Science is considered to be an important discipline when it comes to media coverage of terrifying violence against migrants: Media research explores the role that media plays for the integration of migrants. Two aspects are central to the focus of this research: – the portrayal of foreigners in the German mass media: How does it create, change or abolish prejudices and thus social distance? – the relation of individual media usage and successful integration: Mass Communication is considered to be a mediator that distributes information and knowledge about the different ethnocultural groups, thus creating a common basis of values that constitute a common society. The relation of media usage and integration has been explored in a poll among Turkish people in Hannover. Results point to a clear but nevertheless faint integrative function of mass media. The predominant usage of German media and great interest for German topics can be positively associated with the interviewees’ level of integration; usage of Turkish newspapers and TV programms is highly distinctive with those interviewees who are less integrated. But age and socialization play a more dominant role than media usage.