The panel titled 'Discriminatory Discourse and The Role of The Media' organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation in collaboration with Istanbul Bilgi University Sociology Department has been realized. Prof. Teun van Dijk, one of the world's most prominent scholars in the field of critical discourse studies and Prof. Charles Husband, internationally known with his work on media and ethnic diversity gave two talks under the moderation of Prof. Arus Yumul, professor of sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University.
Prof. Teun A. van Dijk presented the basic framework for how racism, nationalism, sexism and other forms of domination are produced and reproduced in the society through discourse in the mass media, political discourse, and educational discourse. He started by saying that he finds the usage of the term "hate speech" wrong as it emphasizes a human emotion which is very personal. Racism and other forms of domination cannot be reduced to individual forms of hate but rather are related with group processes such as power relations between dominant and dominated groups and reproduction of domination in the society, he added. Dijk drew attetion to the process of news production where only the dominant groups' representatives are referred to as the news source while the representatives of minority groups are taken as unreliable and biased. He then emphasized the fact that racist and sexist ideologies are learned through public forms of discourse and that they can also be unlearned again through discourse which makes education very significant in combatting with such discourse.
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