Conclusion

Abstract

Racism and Anti-Racism are powerful twin social forces that will continue to shape news communications through the twenty-first century. They operate in many different ways across differing national and international contexts, and there is still much work to be done to map this complicated terrain. Trans-nationally, global news communications are a rapidly-changing environment where representations of race are subject to dynamic movement, with old images and messages continually being rehearsed and reshaped in conjunction with the production of new images and messages of both inclusion and exclusion. Examination of the proliferation and variety of these racialised themes and messages in both British and American news has been a key focus here, with ample evidence to show that race remains a strong binding thread in many news stories. Globally, the news media play a key role in both challenging established identities and related worldviews, and in initiating and transmitting ideas and images which influence and shape new world-views (Gabriel, 1998: 187). Yet the forces of migration, ethnicity and racism also remain powerful, continuing to inspire conflict and war, seemingly untouched by the new power of global communications.