Author: Jack Rosenberry
Date: 2017-10-10T04:06:03.077119+00:00
Keywords: Social Science; Media Studies; Language Arts & Disciplines; Journalism; Communication Studies
Description: This book explores how Ireland’s community media outlets reflect and shape identity at the local level. While aspects of its culture date back centuries, the nation-state of Ireland is less than one hundred years old. Because of this and other elements of the island’s history, Irish identity is a contested topic and the island is a place where culture, identity and geography are tightly intertwined. By addressing how community media serve as agents for community building, the book examines how they in turn influence the way individuals connect with their communities.
Publisher: Routledge

Community Media and Identity in Ireland

Community media has a long-established role to play in the formation of identity and belonging. Understanding its place in Ireland’s political, cultural and social settings is an important scholarly contribution given the contestation around Irish identity and our deep connection to place.

(Kristy Hess, Deakin University Australia)

This book explores how Ireland’s community media outlets reflect and shape identity at the local level. While aspects of its culture date back centuries, the nation-state of Ireland is less than 100 years old. Because of this and other elements of the island’s history, Irish identity is a contested topic and the island is a place where culture, identity, and geography are tightly intertwined. By addressing how community media serve as agents for community building, the book examines how they in turn influence the way individuals connect with their communities.

Jack Rosenberry is a professor of media and communication at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY, USA. He is also the coauthor (with Lauren Vicker) of Applied Mass Communication Theory: A Guide for Media Practitioners (Routledge, 2017) and coeditor (with Burton St. John III) of Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen Engaged Press (Routledge, 2010).

Routledge Focus on Media and Cultural Studies

Community Media and Identity in Ireland

Jack Rosenberry

Community Media and Identity in Ireland

Jack Rosenberry

First published 2018
by Routledge
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ISBN: 978-1-138-30434-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-73009-6 (ebk)
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To my children, Sara, Sean, and Erin, whose arrivals inspired me to learn more about Irish heritage, especially my own. Also to my friends in the Irish-American community of Rochester, especially my good friend and colleague Tim Madigan, for providing me the opportunity to learn more even more about Irish history and heritage. Finally, to the many people—journalists and others—who became friends during my two different trips to Ireland, and who helped me to develop a deeper understanding of modern Ireland and its media.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Community Media and Identity in Ireland
Identity, Community, and Geography
Fundamental Constructs

Identity, Community, Symbolic Construction, and Modernization

2 Construction and Evolution of Irish Identity

Irish Ireland: Constructing Identity From Geography and Culture

Shifting Identity: Entering a Modern Age
A Nation Once Again? Or at Last?
Conclusion
3 Irish Media and Irish Identity
Media Articulations of Cultural Nationalism
Government Policy and Media Control
Opening Up: Media and Modernization
Conclusion
4 Contemporary Irish Media
Three Systems Comparative Model
Media System Overview
Conclusion

5 Community Media Theory and Project Methodology

Community Ties Hypothesis
Research Questions and Methodology
6 Local Media Reflections of Identity
No Place Like Home
“All News Is Local”
Game On!
Conclusion
7 Irish-Language Media and Identity

From Cultural Nationalism to Community Expression

Preserving “Who We Are”
Language Integration
Conclusion
8 Local Focus in a Global Society
Symbolic Construction of Identities
Problems of the Business Model
Conclusion
Appendices
Index
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1 Community Media and Identity in Ireland

1. Identity, Community, and Geography

2. Fundamental Constructs

3. Identity, Community, Symbolic Construction, and Modernization

2 Construction and Evolution of Irish Identity

1. Irish Ireland: Constructing Identity From Geography and Culture

2. Shifting Identity: Entering a Modern Age
3. A Nation Once Again? Or at Last?
4. Conclusion

3 Irish Media and Irish Identity

1. Media Articulations of Cultural Nationalism

2. Government Policy and Media Control
3. Opening Up: Media and Modernization
4. Conclusion

4 Contemporary Irish Media

1. Three Systems Comparative Model
2. Media System Overview
3. Conclusion

5 Community Media Theory and Project Methodology

1. Community Ties Hypothesis

2. Research Questions and Methodology

6 Local Media Reflections of Identity

1. No Place Like Home
2. “All News Is Local”
3. Game On!
4. Conclusion

7 Irish-Language Media and Identity

1. From Cultural Nationalism to Community Expression

2. Preserving “Who We Are”
3. Language Integration
4. Conclusion

8 Local Focus in a Global Society

1. Symbolic Construction of Identities
2. Problems of the Business Model
3. Conclusion

Appendices

1. Appendix A Quoted Interviewees

2. Appendix B Content Reviews

Index
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Guide

1. Cover
2. Title
3. Copyright
4. Dedication
5. Contents
6. Acknowledgments
7. Start of Content
8. Appendices
9. Index

Acknowledgments

While one person’s name appears on the cover and title page, a project like this is always a collaborative effort on the part of many people. So thanks and acknowledgment must start with two Taylor and Francis/Routledge editors. Laura Briskman was editor for my previous project with the company, and she fielded the first proposal for this book and forwarded it to colleagues better positioned to consider it. That person ended up being Felisa Salvago Keyes, who has been a supporter and huge help for the project from the day she got it from Laura. Editorial assistant Christina Kowalski also has been exceptionally helpful and responsive to administrative and production issues around the project.

But the real unsung heroes of this project, without whom it could not have been completed, are the many, many people in Ireland who helped with some phase of it. The following list is alphabetical and includes all of the individuals whose verbatim quoted material serves as evidence for the points made in the analysis, plus others who just provided ideas or guidance about the project or friendship and mentorship during my time in Ireland. They are David Burke, editor, The Tuam Herald; Jack Byrne, cofounder, Near FM and board member, Community Radio Forum of Ireland (CRAOL); Oliver Carroll, presenter, WLR radio; Verena Commins, lecturer, Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway; Aoibhin Fallon, presenter, WLR radio; Keith Finnegan, CEO and director, Galway Bay FM; Michael Foley, emeritus professor, Dublin Institute of Technology; Geoff Harris, presenter, WLR radio; John Horgan, emeritus professor, Dublin City University; Joe Humphreys, assistant news editor, Irish Times; Michael Lydon, doctoral candidate, Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway; Rónán Mac Con Iomaire, Irish-language group head, RTÉ; Rebecca Maher, reporter, Galway Independent; Emma Ní Chearúil, manager, Raidió na dTreabh; Michelle Ní Chróinín, press and information officer, NUI Galway; Marion Ní Shúilleabháin, news presenter, Raidió na Gaeltachta; Orla Nix, regional news producer, RTÉ; Andrew Ó Baoill, director of masters and bachelors journalism programs, NUI Galway; Martina O’Brien, project coordinator, Community Radio Forum of Ireland (CRAOL); Dave O’Connell, editor, Connacht Tribune; Padraic Ó Raighne, marketing manager, TG4; Liz Reddy, news presenter, WLR radio; Declan Varley, editor, Galway Advertiser; and Kieran Walsh, editor, Munster Express. All of these people were incredibly generous with their time and their ideas, and without them there literally would not be a book here to read. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to all of them. In addition, Kristy Hess, Verena Commins, and Marion Ní Shúilleabháin provided helpful feedback on drafts of selected chapters.

Finally, special thanks and acknowledgment to my two biggest supporters. The first is my good friend and St. John Fisher colleague Tim Madigan, director of our college’s Irish Studies Program, who was instrumental in arranging my teaching in Galway. Tim also was helpful in framing my ideas for this project and providing valuable feedback on a draft. The other is my wife, Missy, who not only steadfastly supports me in all that I do but also put up with my absence in Ireland for 4 months of 2016 and another 3 weeks of 2017 while I was doing the fieldwork for this book. Without her supporting me, none of this would be possible.

Jack Rosenberry
jrosenberry@sjfc.edu
@JackRosenberry
July 2017

Introduction

Community Values

I started my career as a community journalist, and spent 22 years at that pursuit before joining academia. My first college internship was at a weekly paper in my hometown, and my first professional job was at a small-town daily in rural central New York. Even when I reached the level of working for a metropolitan daily, the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, I spent most of my 15-year career there working with a community news section that was a weekly stand-alone in the daily paper. So it is natural that as a scholar my research interests focus on the production, presentation, and impact of community news. I can count a book, book chapter, and a number of journal articles and refereed research presentations on that topic among my publications. But why Irish community media?

The answer to that question is partly personal and partly professional. The personal side is that I am partly of Irish extraction, although several generations removed from the immigrants on my mother’s side who provide this background. But it is the part of my heritage that resonates strongest for me, and I have been involved with the Irish community in and around Rochester (NY) for more than two decades. The professional side—which, to be fair, cannot be fully separated from the personal side—relates to having the good fortune to spend 4 months in Ireland as a visiting professor at the National University of Ireland (NUI) at Galway. I was able to do this from January through May 2016 through a collaborative program of my institution with NUI Galway, and it became one of the most significant experiences of my life. As I wrote in a blog entry toward the end of my time in Ireland, “There’s a definite difference to living someplace vs. visiting it, and I feel privileged to have spent enough time here [in Galway] to incorporate the town into the fabric of my life.”

As a media scholar living in Ireland for 4 months, consuming all manner of Irish media daily, and befriending a number of local and national journalists, it was impossible for me not to notice both commonalities and differences in the Irish media system and the American one. (That is what I was trying to teach my students about, after all.) One thing that I found especially interesting was how all of the television media, several radio stations, and nearly all of the daily newspapers had national reach. This is of course a matter of scale: when it’s possible to drive coast to coast in less than three hours, it’s easy to distribute newspapers and broadcast signals nationwide. But equally fascinating was the robustness of the local media system that exists alongside this national system, providing incredibly deep community coverage. An American city the size of Galway—slightly less than 80,000 population—would be served by a small daily newspaper. Similar sized and smaller cities around upstate New York such as Ithaca, Binghamton, Auburn, and Utica all have daily papers, for example. But while Galway does not have a daily newspaper, it has three weeklies, each producing approximately 100 tabloid-sized pages of coverage a week. Galway does not have its own TV affiliate the way many small US cities do, either. But it has an extremely popular local radio station, Galway Bay FM.

And while I am most familiar with Galway from living there, research for this project proves that it’s not unique. Similar local media ecosystems exist across the country. The Republic of Ireland’s 26 counties have about 60 paid weekly newspapers, a similar number of free-distribution papers, approximately two dozen local commercial radio stations, and a similar number of nonprofit community stations. That’s more than 150 local media outlets, or an average of more than six per county when taken all together. The ways in which they serve their communities, reflecting and shaping how those communities see themselves, deserves closer examination. And that is what this project is designed to do.

Plan for the Book

As a community media scholar, my work has frequently focused on how such media concurrently reflect and shape their communities via the coverage provided about them. This is a long-standing research agenda in US journalism studies, going back to Morris Janowitz (1951, 1967), Keith Stamm (1985), and others who worked with them or used their theories in myriad investigations about what is commonly called the community ties hypothesis. According to this theory, the closeness of ties that individuals have with their communities is highly correlated with their consumption of community media. It does not suppose a causal relationship, however.

In applying these ideas to Irish media, it became necessary first to consider relationships of geography, community, and identity in Ireland. Irish identity is a notoriously complex and difficult topic, of course. This project by no means provides definitive coverage of that topic, which would be impossible in the space of a single book. In fact, the book doesn’t offer many new insights about it. Yet some background about Irishness and identity must be and is addressed—in a highly condensed way—in Chapters 1 and 2 to set the stage for discussions of media impacts on identity. The wealth of scholarship about Irish identity in fact offers material for a detailed literature review in those chapters outlining the contours of Irish identity’s construction and evolution.

In similar fashion, some excellent historical research has been done on contributions of media to emerging and evolving Irish identity from the founding of the Free State through the present day, and this literature is reviewed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 lays out the landscape of the contemporary Irish media system, and Chapter 5 discusses the theoretical bases for the project, including comparative media studies and community media models such as Stamm’s.

The major portion of the analysis, based on numerous interviews and extensive content review to determine the ways in which Irish local media do reflect and shape their communities, is presented in Chapter 6, with the special case of Irish-language media addressed in Chapter 7. The heart of the book’s findings and conclusions are in these two chapters. A summary pulling together the themes elaborated on throughout the book is in Chapter 8.

A final note about presentation of some material is in order. Large portions of Chapters 6 and 7, and some material in other chapters as well, consists of quoted material from Irish journalists, academics, and others who were interviewed as part of the project. They are acknowledged previously. However, they are not identified by name with their quotes in the main text. Instead, quotes are attributed descriptively, such as “said a weekly newspaper editor” or “a veteran radio presenter” or “a journalism academic.” This is because I thought the material would be more understandable by avoiding a word salad of names that would cause readers to ask, Who was O’Connell again? Who was Burke? Or Finnegan? Was he the radio guy, or the newspaper one? Hopefully, the descriptive attribution helps avoid these quandaries.

Also, in terms of formatting, direct quotes from interviewees are presented in italics rather than with quotation marks around them. This was done to make them more prominent and to distinguish them from quoted material from other sources (such as previous research), which does appear in quotation marks. Most interviews for the project were recorded to ensure that material could be quoted exactly as the speaker said it, aside from the occasional elliptical edits of a few words removed (“…”) or added (in [brackets]). So, italic text indicates a verbatim statement from an interviewee taken from an audio recording for verification. Hopefully, this adds richness and authenticity to the comments.

1
Community Media and Identity in Ireland

Ireland is an ancient land, but a young nation. While aspects of its culture date back centuries, or even millennia, the nation-state of Ireland is less than 100 years old, born of violent rebellion against a colonial master. The Easter Rising of April 1916 led to a war of independence against Great Britain, followed by the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Even that didn’t settle matters, as the rebellion was followed by a brutal civil war that ended in 1923. The opposing sides in that struggle were factions that accepted, and those that rejected, terms of the treaty that ended rebellion and established the Free State, but also partitioned the island, with six northern counties remaining part of the United Kingdom.

Because of this and other elements of the island’s history, Irish identity is a contested topic and the island is a place where culture, identity, and geography are tightly intertwined. From the idea that the cultural values of the peasant West represent real Irishness (Graham, 1997; Cusack, 2001; Lysaght, 2009) to the distinct political and cultural identities created by the partition of the island to the emergence of an updated sense of “Irishness” in the modern era, Ireland’s distinct yet evolving political and cultural identity remains a fascinating topic. This can be seen in research about Irish media, which is heavy on historical events and topics such as framing the way media covers religion, sports, and other cultural markers.

The birth of the Irish nation in the 1920s literally corresponded with the birth of electronic media (radio broadcasting), and the history of the era illustrates connections of media and national identity. Legislation establishing a national radio broadcaster “stressed the importance of maintaining and consolidating the national identity” for the new Free State (Gibbons, 1996, p. 70). When the station went on the air in 1926, the first broadcast was by Douglas Hyde, head of the nationalist Gaelic League, who spoke in Irish. Even the call letters of the first Irish radio station—2RN—helped reinforce cultural identity as a play on words on the phrase “to Erin” (Horgan, 2002). Similarly in print media, “post-independence, many national newspapers were effectively the organs or semi-organs of the dominant institutions within the state” (O’Brien, 2014, p. 159).

The ensuing history of Irish media and politics through the mid-20th century continued to reflect the role of media in developing national identity, and the closeness of media organizations to the political establishment. As one prominent example, Éamon de Valera served as either taoiseach (prime minister) or president of Ireland for approximately 40 of the 50 years after its founding, and is generally considered the most influential leader in the country’s history. During many of those same years, however, he was also managing director of a leading national newspaper, the Irish Press.

The Republic of Ireland is a small country; with just 27,140 square miles, it’s about the size of the 41st largest of the United States (West Virginia) or the southern third of the United Kingdom (Manchester/Sheffield area south to the Channel). It’s possible to drive coast to coast (Dublin to Galway) in less than three hours. Because of this, it has an interesting duality in its contemporary media structure. It has fewer than 10 daily newspapers, all but one of which circulate nationally. (The number of titles available for consumption, however, is larger because of imported British dailies.) All television broadcasts are nationwide as well; unlike in the United States and many other countries, there are no such things as local TV stations broadcasting their own content. In fact, only since the late 1980s has Ireland had any outlet other than national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) to supply TV and radio content. Commercial radio first appeared in Ireland in 1989 and the first commercial television station wasn’t established until 1998. (Again, this refers to indigenous production; a wide array of British, American, and other imports is available via cable and satellite. And both before and since RTÉ predecessors Raidió Éireann and Teilifís Éireann went on the air, BBC broadcasts from western England, Wales, and Northern Ireland have reached the country.)

This small number of national outlets is augmented by a robust community media in the form of local and regional weekly newspapers and a growing number of local and regional radio stations. However, the literature about Irish media lacks a comprehensive look at its community media and their contributions to identity formation. Such relationships have been thoroughly explored for US media, addressing how community media serve as an agent for community building and how media influence the way individuals connect with their communities (e.g., Byerly, 1961; Janowitz, 1967; Stamm, 1985; Lauterer, 2006; Reader & Hatcher, 2011).

Comparable research has not been conducted about Irish community media. In describing the growth of the Irish provincial press, Cullen noted that regional newspapers “stimulated both new-fangled nationalism and local identity in ways which still remain to be studied” (1984, p. 27). The purpose here is to do exactly that, though in a contemporary setting rather than a historical one. Community media can be defined in any number of ways to describe media with different forms and functions (Hess & Waller, 2013, p. 121). Community in the context of this project is construed as social interactions within a localized geographic space, and community media therefore are the local outlets (mostly newspapers and radio stations) that reflect those interactions and processes in their work. Previous research has demonstrated that community journalists maintain a close bond with the areas they cover (Reader, 2012), an approach that has been elsewhere applied to European community media (e.g., Hatcher & Haavik, 2014).

Because of its position at the periphery of Europe, throughout its colonial era and early independence in the early 20th century, Ireland was one of the continent’s most isolated and insular areas. Historical scholarship on media and identity describes efforts to preserve this isolationism (e.g., Horgan, 2002). Less than 100 years after its founding, though, Ireland was ranked by the World Economic Forum as the most globalized nation in the world (Nicol, 2015). This rapid evolution makes questions such as “What is Irishness?” or “What influences Irish identity?” all the more significant.

Identity, Community, and Geography

In evaluating community media’s intersection with identity, it becomes necessary first to determine baseline meanings for constructs such as “community” and “identity” and also to examine how they interact with one another. Because community media often have a geographic component, “place” is another key construct that must be taken into account, as well as the idea that identity, community, and even place are subject to a process of symbolic construction, the notion that individual and collective perceptions of the social world come from how that world is symbolically described or represented. Popular media are a common means by which symbolic representation of the world is articulated, and community media play a central role in defining the symbolic geography of the areas they serve.

These constructs relate to one another in a rich web of overlapping influences. For example, communities are defined by their boundaries, which may be geographic (a particular region or locality), or merely symbolic (customs, beliefs, or rules about what constitutes membership in the community). Sometimes an aspect of individual identity, such as ethnicity or religion, may define membership in a community (e.g., a worship community or, as will be seen, speakers of a particular language). But association with a location can affect identity, for example being a “New Yorker.” (Or, as will also be seen, being Irish.) And even “place” can be symbolically constructed, in the sense that symbolic representation helps to determine what living somewhere means to residents.

Examining these fundamental principles in relation to one another adds richness and context to each on its own and develops synergies that appear when they are considered together. Such an examination also creates a framework for adding two other important dimensions to the analysis: (a) that the meaning and application of these concepts evolve over time as underlying circumstances change; and (b) that all of them have a specifically Irish articulation relevant to the analysis presented here.

Fundamental Constructs

Identity

The concept of identity has to do with uniqueness, of a person or other entity, such as a locality or even a nation. Dictionary definitions of identity use terms such as “oneness,” “specificity,” and “individuality” to convey its sense and meaning. In a work about how identity is articulated, it offers a logical starting point for reviewing the constructs under consideration. Place, community, and symbolic construction all have important roles in how identity is formed.

Place as a Component of Individual Identity

Among the factors that influence how identity develops, place or location has particular relevance to the current analysis because “all aspects of identity will, to a greater or lesser extent, have place-related implications” (Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996, p. 206). Murray similarly contends that “‘locality,’ as a social construction, remains a key determinant of identity” (2007, p. 117). Proshansky et al. (1983) combined these concepts into a notion of “place identity,” which Devine-Wright and Lyons described as “influenced by social meanings and beliefs yet individually constructed” (1997, p. 34). Place even can be seen as a social category because “people use place identifications in order to distinguish themselves from others” (Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996, p. 207). Speller and Twigger-Ross (2009) say this is way that place affects identity. Socialization has a significant impact on formation of identity, and when place becomes a social category or socialization mechanism, it has a doubly significant impact on the identity process.

Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996) outlined a taxonomy of characteristics by which location or place influences identity as follows:

- distinctiveness, because place identification helps people to distinguish themselves from others;

- continuity, because living in one place for some time helps provides a sense of personal grounding or rootedness;

- self-esteem, which comes from people feeling proud of the place where they live; and

- self-efficacy, because familiarity with their surroundings helps people live their lives most effectively.

Gustafson similarly maintains that “meaningful places emerge in a social context and through social relations. They are geographically located and at the same time related to their social, economic, cultural, etc. surroundings” (2001, p. 6). Murray adds that “‘place’ provides both physical and geographical references for identity formation, as well as invoking a sense of shared history and culture” (2007, p. 125). While this research is directed at formation of individual identities, the principles apply to how identity forms at larger scales also.

Identity and Community

In discussing place as an aspect of cultural identity, Graham extends beyond the individual level to note that “the concept of socially constructed place is intrinsic to renditions of individual and group identity…. Representation of place is a key component in communal identity, whatever the scale” (1997, p. 6). “Symbolic geographies” and dimensions of personal and group identity provide criteria—that is to say, set boundaries—for inclusion and exclusion. As will be discussed shortly, a fundamental feature of community is the boundaries that define it.

In the same way that Irish identity is a complicated and difficult topic, so is cultural identity overall. Grossberg notes that identity politics is one of the most widely covered areas of cultural studies because for societies to exist they require a “common albeit constantly rearticulated and renegotiated culture” (2011, p. 88). Development of political and cultural identity is a key feature of modernization, and subject to evolution over time, two characteristics that also are emblematic of Ireland. In a modernist context, “identity is always constructed out of difference. The modern makes identities into social construction” (Grossberg, 2011, p. 93). Further, Grossberg maintains, “identity is always a temporary and unstable effect of relations which define identities by marking differences. The emphasis here is on the multiplicity of identities” (2011, p. 89).

Identity, then, is more than innate characteristics. For individuals and collective groups, it is subject to external influences. In terms of such collectives, the next concept to consider is community, which Cohen describes as “the arena in which people acquire their most fundamental and substantial experience of social life outside the home” (1985, p. 15).

Community

Friedland and McLeod say that “the concept of community lies at the core of the sociological tradition” (1999, p. 201). However, Cohen (1985) and others (e.g., Hillery, 1955) have noted that community is difficult to define precisely as a social science construct. McMillan and Chavis (1986) and Stamm (1985) both developed their working definitions by drawing on work from Hillery (1955). In that project, Hillery identified 94 distinct definitions of community, which he boiled down to 16 key components. Stamm (whose work on community and media is addressed in Chapter 5) noted that the component of “process”—social interaction—was especially important in understanding how community operated. Cohen’s approach likewise emphasizes social interactions, using a definition focused simultaneously on similarity and difference. Specifically, he defines community as “a group of people [that] (a) have something in common with each other that (b) distinguishes them in a significant way from members of other putative groups” (Cohen, 1985, p. 12). Obst and White (2005) take a similar approach, noting that community members share one or more aspects in common.

Expanding from these definitions, the key features of community can be identified as shared experiences, inclusiveness versus exclusion, and the boundaries that define who is part of the community versus who is not. But as a construct, “community” also has significant interactions with other constructs such as identity (as just discussed) and with place. Finally, the role that symbolic communication plays in community processes is another construct that cannot be overlooked.

Place as a Component of Community

Community is not synonymous with geography. Nonetheless, “place” is often the first thing that comes to mind in conceiving community, as in a community institution (e.g., a school or library) that serves a limited geographic area or a community event (e.g., a fair or festival) taking place in a specific location. So while place is a key component of identity in general and of individual identity in particular (Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996; Speller & Twigger-Ross, 2009), it also plays a part in defining community and shaping community identity.

Cohen describes local geographic communities as “a reality invested with all the sentiment attached to kinship, friendship, neighboring, rivalry, familiarity [and] jealousy as they inform the social process of everyday life” (1985, p. 13). Gustafson notes that “places often become meaningful because of the respondents’ relations with people living there—friends, acquaintances, relatives—and the sense of community that such social relations create” (2001, p. 9). Friedland and McLeod (1999) describe community as the point where integration of individuals’ social interactions occurs. Note how even these definitions that incorporate geography as an element of community also emphasize the human interactions that occur within that geographic space.

Expanding the scale of community from the local to larger geographies introduces the concept of nation. Hayward explicitly connects the two, saying the notion of community “inspires the conception of a group with a collective identity known as the nation” within a prescribed geographic border (2009, p. 20).

Symbolic Representations of Community: Setting Boundaries

Community is created by establishing the boundaries that define similarity and distinguish difference. “Boundaries continue to distinguish members from nonmembers and provide emotional safety” (McMillan, 1996, p. 315) and “relate to the content of communication” among the group. This echoes Cohen’s view that boundaries are largely symbolic, existing in the minds of those inside and outside the community and “filled with the meanings that members impute to and perceive in them” (1985, p. 19). The importance of this rests in creating the sense of shared consciousness necessary for the community to succeed. “The reality and efficacy of the community’s boundary—and therefore of the community itself—depends upon its symbolic construction…. People’s experience and understanding of their community thus resides in their orientation to its symbolism” (Cohen, 1985, pp. 15–16). Symbolic markers help distinguish a community from those outside of it by expressing particular meanings a community has about itself and about those outside the boundaries.

Building on this, in an article that developed a theory about psychological sense of community, McMillan notes that “in order to obtain smooth functioning and integration in the social life of a modern community, a community must provide a common symbol system. Groups use these social conventions to create boundaries” (1996, p. 323). He elaborates that “stories, music, and other symbolic expressions represent the part of a community that is transcendent and eternal. They represent … values that outlive community members and remain a part of the spirit of the community” (p. 323). Cohen extrapolates this to its logical conclusion by defining community as “a phenomenon of culture … which is meaningfully constructed by people through their symbolic prowess and resources” (p. 38). Combining this with Hayward’s conception of nation as a large-scale community grouping leads to the conclusion that symbolically represented culture can be a means for defining nationhood, what Anderson (1983) refers to as “imagined community.”

Notions of space/geography, as well as symbolically constructed boundaries that define membership, are the key components of creating community at any given scale. This process of symbolic construction thus requires further consideration.

Symbolic Constructionism

The idea of a symbolically constructed reality is one of the most ubiquitous concepts in the social sciences. Sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luck-mann theorized decades ago that social reality is based entirely on shared meanings and understandings that come about through symbolic communication (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 60). As previously discussed, symbolic representation is a key element of individual and community identities because it is crucial to the vital tasks of establishing boundaries by defining aspects of commonality and difference. However, even places can have a symbolic element to them, and symbolic representation supplies a unifying thread for constructs of place, community, and individual identity.

Building from Proshansky et al.’s (1983) concept of place identity, Devine-Wright and Lyons explore “the meanings associated with or symbolized by certain places, as constructed by different groups of people” (1997, p. 33). Graham similarly builds his work around “the social elaboration of place,” further contending that

all places [are] imaginary in this sense because they cannot exist for us beyond the socially constructed images which we form of them in our minds…. Place therefore forms part of the individual and social practices which people continuously use to transform the natural world into cultural realms of meaning and lived experience.

(1997, pp. 3–4)

Symbolic representation becomes increasingly significant with geographic scale, in fact. As Graham (1997) and Anderson (1983) both suggest, large-scale sense of community—that is, nationhood or national identity—must be an imagined or symbolically constructed thing. National identity constitutes “assertion by members of a group of autonomy and self-government for the group … of its solidarity and fraternity in the homeland, and of its distinctive history and culture” (Boyce, 1991, p. 19). Expanding on this, Hayward says that “national identity involves an imaginary process based on myth, symbols, and emblems of the historical nation and drawing a connection between the experience of the contemporary members of the nation and their ancestors” (2009, p. 22). More succinctly, she defines nationhood as the “embodiment of a collective identity” (p. 22).

Summary: Fundamental Constructs

Symbolic representation is the unifying thread through all of the key constructs described throughout this section—individual and group identity; community; and place, including national “places.” The meanings that a place has for individuals or communities can be related only through symbolic construction. In a succinct summary of the matter, Cohen noted that “people construct community symbolically, making it a repository of meaning and a referent of their identity” (1985, p. 118). As an imagined construction, however, this reality is subject to change over time as different circumstances have impacts upon it.

Identity, Community, Symbolic Construction, and Modernization

An old adage, sometimes attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, says that the only thing constant in life is change. Modernist social progression in many forms—political, economic, technological, sociological, epistemological—affects identity, community, and symbolic construction of social interaction. Graham, for example, describes identity as a “situated, socially constructed narrative” that can be transformed over time (1997, p. 7). So can the other fundamental constructs examined so far.

The Impersonal Touch

The trend line of human social development (a.k.a. modernization) often has been conceived as a shift from the personal to the impersonal. This is what Tonnies referred to as gemeinschaft versus gesselschaft, or the shift from a society dominated by intimate, personal interactions to one built around impersonal, transactional ones (Cohen, 1985; Friedland & McLeod, 1999). The same general thrust lies behind Durkheim’s view of modern social orders built around increasingly specialized division of functions, expressed as mechanical versus organic solidarity (Durkheim, 2010), as well as Weber’s theory of bureaucratic specialization within larger organizations, up to and including entire societies (Littlejohn, 1999). In all of these theories of social organization, fragmented social interaction replaces a holistic approach as societies modernize and social orders expand in size and complexity.

In terms of human geography, gemeinschaft community has declined over time through migration of people from intimate rural lifestyles to more fragmented urban ones, a process that began with the 19th-century Industrial Revolution and accelerated through the 20th century. The 1920s-era sociological inquiries at the University of Chicago directed by Robert Park examined this migration, theorizing that close-knit relationships such as those found in rural areas constituted true community, as contrasted with urban life (Cohen, 1985, p. 27). Researchers at the school used the city of Chicago as a laboratory for sociological investigation, focusing on its neighborhoods as analogies to close-knit rural areas and examining social interactions there versus the city at large. Morris Janowitz, for example, studied community newspapers at the neighborhood level, which he said maintained local consensus by emphasizing common values. They succeeded largely because of the personal communications and social contacts that linked the newspaper’s personnel, the community leaders, and readers, a gemeinschaft approach versus the gesselschaft of the city’s metro dailies (Janowitz, 1967). On a global level, this march toward gesselschaft is reflected in theories of international organization that emphasize differences of the core and periphery (e.g., Galtung, 1971; Wallerstein, 2004).

In short, modernization inevitably disrupts personalized social interactions. The weakening of ties to place in modernity “has put a greater burden on the (modern) individual to construct meaning in the world” (Entrikin, [1991, p. 63]; as cited in Buchanan [2009, p. 64]). The current manifestation of the trend, with even less local connection and more international integration, is usually called by the term “globalization” (Kayode, 2012).

Modernization of Place, Community, Identity

Widespread migration associated with globalization makes national identity subject to shifting meaning over time, and gradual replacement with an updated identity reflecting different values (Jelen, 2011). But national identity remains a relevant concept in the globalized era nonetheless. “Contrary to the deterritorialization and cosmopolitan arguments the social construction of ‘place’ and the local community remains a primary source of identity formation in the age of globalization” (Murray, 2007, p. 132). Gustafson reports the same findings from his work, saying that “meanings of place also often involve a temporal dimension … where places become connected to the life path of the individual through origin, length of residence, important events or life stages, or frequent visits” (2001, p. 13). This is not necessarily a passive process, he adds: “Place and meanings of place stand forth as an ongoing process. Indeed at times, the respondents take an active part in the process of giving places meaning.”

Symbolic Reconstruction

This process of reasserting meaning, of course, is symbolically constructed. Symbols are used to reestablish community and its boundaries when changes threaten them. In fact, they are the only thing that can accomplish this. For local communities, that consciousness is symbolically constructed most potently by the local media that serve them. Modernization and its associated industrialization, urbanization, centralization, and expansion of personal and social mobility undermine the bases of community boundaries. “As the structural bases of boundary become blurred, so the symbolic bases are strengthened” (Cohen, 1985, p. 44). This reassertion often is embodied in rituals that “create a consciousness of community” (Cohen, 1985, p. 53), which is a primary purpose of local media. Also of consequence is how culture—the sum total of a society’s symbolic constructions—lies at the center of waves of social change (Graham, 1997, p. 2).

Especially in Ireland.

References

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2
Construction and Evolution of Irish Identity

Geographic and symbolic construction of community boundaries are perhaps the two strongest factors in formation of identity at all levels, and interplay of these forces drove the development of Irish identity around the turn of the 20th century. Graham contends that “the relationship between the island’s geography and culture are fundamental to understanding the confusions and contestations of identity that fracture its peoples” (1997, p. 2). Graham also explains that “identity is about discourses of inclusion and exclusion” (1997, p. 5) and that defining a strong boundary for Irish identity was a key feature of emergent Ireland in the early 20th century. This closely parallels Cohen’s definition of community and incorporates Hayward’s and Anderson’s notions that nationhood embodies many of the same principles as community (see Chapter 1).

In other words, the Irish identity that began to develop around the turn of the 20th century was constructed by symbolical representation of boundaries that defined Irishness from “otherness,” notably British identity, in a process that may be referred to as creating “an Irish Ireland.” This was articulated along a number of dimensions, including:

- geographic (West vs. East, and rural versus urban; this amounted to essentially the same thing under two different guises, since the western part of the island was mostly rural and major urban areas were in the eastern part);

- religious (Catholic vs. Protestant);

- cultural (Gaelic vs. British); and

- linguistic (Irish vs. English, closely related to the Gaelic/British cultural division).

An “Irish-Ireland” identity, then, was constructed of overlapping elements of place and culture rooted in an Irish-speaking, Gaelic/Catholic ethos geographically represented by the rural West of the island. What started out as a cultural definition for identity later added a political dimension as this constructed identity of “Irishness” became associated with nationalist causes, shaping Irish identity for approximately half a century. When the cause of nationalism led to rebellion and succeeded in the formation of an Irish state set apart from Britain, this constructed identity of “Irish Ireland” was adopted by the new nation as a means to establish and legitimize itself:

In its attempts to create a nation the government emphasized what distinguished Irish people, in general, from others, specifically the English. This distinctiveness involved speaking a different language (Irish), having different religious beliefs and practices (Catholicism), playing different sports (hurling, Gaelic football, etc.) and even having a different socio-economic structure built around a rural agricultural society.

(Watson, 1997, p. 214)

This was in essence an antimodernist agenda, rooted in tradition and the past. Therefore, this identity had to adjust when Ireland sought to catch up to the rest of the world technologically and economically in the mid-20th century. Over time Irish identity came to embody modernized values better aligned with a state that socially, culturally, and economically sought to become a part of the contemporary European community and the world at large.

Although the sense of what it means to be Irish has evolved, it retains elements of traditional Irish-Ireland identity—even if it is something that ordinary Irish people may not pay much attention to, according to interviewees for this project. One journalist offered the view that I don’t know whether we agonize about what it means to be Irish any more than any other nation. On the other hand, however, a journalism professor described the relationship Irish people have with their national identity as more complicated than other nationalities, such as Americans.

The main change over time centers on a liberalization of cultural attitudes and integration with the European Union and world economy, reflecting development of a “multiplicity of identities” (Grossberg, 2011, p. 89). This process has altered the general sense of “Irishness” for national identity, something that filters down to the community level as well. Factors in the change, as discussed in scholarly literature on Irish identity and reinforced by comments from interview subjects, included:

- declining authority and influence of the Catholic Church;

- waning association of nationalism with Republicanism, especially after completion of the Belfast Agreement (or Good Friday Agreement) in 1998; and

- development of an identity that is both European and Irish, aided by outward-facing economic and demographic changes.

One Irish sociologist summarized these changes by saying “Ireland has been through a period of significant change: the old order has given way.” She continued:

What was a slow, traditional society has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world. What was 50 years ago [i.e., in the 1950s; comments date to 2007] a predominately rural society revolving around small farms has become a cosmopolitan, urban society oriented around a global economy…. The pace of change has been quite dramatic; very few societies have undergone such rapid social, economic and cultural change in such a short time.

(O’Sullivan, 2007, p. 1)

What this combination of factors yields is evolution to an individual and collective self-confidence that diminishes the need for Irish self-definition based in “otherness.” The central aspect of this “otherness” was what Hyde called de-Anglicization: disassociating with everything British, starting with the English language, in favor of an Irish-Ireland outlook. Irish Ireland is still a component of identity but an aspect that has been “diluted,” as one interviewee put it. As two other interviewees said, the stereotype of the typical Irishman as a good Republican dressed in a tam and a sweater sipping a Guinness in some pub in a western county no longer holds.

Watson (2003) defines this evolution of identity in terms of three eras: a “traditionalist” period from the founding of the Free State and early Republic in the 1920s through roughly the 1950s; a modernization of economic and cultural approaches in the 1960s and 1970s; and then adoption of a neoliberal, globalized attitude in the 1980s and beyond.

Irish Ireland: Constructing Identity From Geography and Culture

For Ireland to be a place, it first had to be an idea. “A nation-state is a construct of imagination and interaction,” according to Hayward (2009, p. 18) and around the turn of the 20th century, “the ‘revival’ of cultural elements of Irish nationality, such as the Gaelic language and myths, fitted with the search for a new vision of social order in Ireland” (Hayward, 2009, p. 70). A key feature of defining identity is establishing boundaries (e.g., Cohen, 1985), and the main boundary set up in this process differentiated Irishness from Britishness.

It is accepted that the Irish are a nation with essential features which distinguish them from other nations. Yet the features which distinguish the Irish nation were largely constructed by 19th century nationalists to distinguish the Irish from the English.

(Watson, 2007a, p. 360)

The dimensions chosen for this were both geographic and sociocultural, notably religion, language, sports, and economics.

Even if all Irish people were not Catholic, were not members of the GAA, did not live and work in the countryside and could not speak Irish, at least these could be presented as common features and held as symbols of shared identity.

(Watson, 2003, p. 2)

This identity, Watson adds, “reinforced the power and legitimacy of the new state and the new elite that replaced the earlier British power holders” (2003, p. 2).

Geographic Identity: Valorizing the West

Ireland can be seen as “a complex diversity of regions and localities, each with their own orientations, experiences and mentalities.” As a result, “the insular qualities of Ireland as place have meant that many different experiences have had to be contained and shared within a narrow, often introverted ground” (Smith, 1997, p. 19). The island’s long history of existing in this fragmented state actually makes it difficult to tell when a sense of Irish nationhood began to develop (Boyce, 1991). “The establishment of an independent Irish state was severely complicated by the fact that there was not an Irish nationalism seeking an Irish nation-state as such but rather a range of nationalisms competing for political space and influence” (Hayward, 2009, p. 65; emphasis in original).

The role that geography plays in formation of identity has been well documented, as discussed in Chapter 1 (e.g., Speller & Twigger-Ross, 2009; Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996; Murray, 2007). Geography especially impacts characteristics such as distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. In the Irish context, geography had particular effects on the development of a singular national identity, taking into account all of these factors but especially distinctiveness (creating an “Irish Ireland”) and continuity (drawing on historical traditions for aspects of a current identity). It also could be said that the significance—or need—for developing a national identity was related to self-esteem and self-efficacy for a colonial and postcolonial society, as well as the new political entity of the Irish Free State (and later Republic). Ultimately, “the hegemonic image of the West of Ireland as the cultural heartland of the country was an essential component of the late 19th century construction of an Irish nationalism” (Graham, 1997, p. 7).

Morag (2008) explains how this national identity rooted in the traditional values of the West evolved. Friendlier topography, more resources, and proximity to Great Britain made the eastern side of the island more susceptible to imported cultural influences from outside settlers. Thus, the West preserved its Gaelic identity (especially language) far longer than the eastern part of the island. That region could therefore serve as an “integrative symbol of national identity” (Brown, 1985, p. 98). This was in fitting with the times, because across Europe and (elsewhere) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “traditions were invented to promote nationalist agendas of new emerging nation states where ‘national’ identities were promoted as culturally unified” (Foley, 2011, p. 44). Boyce supports this idea by arguing that “the Gaels possessed a strong sense of cultural identity which, under the impact of colonization, was transformed to a sense of national identity” (1991, p. 19). Falling back on words and images familiar to the population is a way of “providing a ready-made identity and immediate credibility” (Cusack, 2001, p. 221).

As a natural extension of this, western peasants were presumed to represent “authentic” Ireland (Cusack, 2001), creating a sense of Irish homogeneity with the small farmer or the “virtuous countryman” as the image of the nation (Lysaght, 2009). Graham contends that a “manipulated”—which is to say, symbolically constructed—portrayal of landscape can shape an ideology of identity that is “central to discourses of inclusion and exclusion and to definitions of the Other and Otherness” (1997, p. 192). Building a national identity from the portion of the island that was least colonized, and therefore least “colonial” in values and attitudes, became a means to this end. The West “became defined as a repository of the Gaelic language and values, providing the cultural matrix used to define a de facto Catholic Irish-Ireland and to differentiate it from Britain” (Lysaght, 2009, p. 61).

This idealized western-based identity merged traditional aspects of Gaelic culture with Catholicism, another separation point from the mostly Protestant British and Anglo-Irish elites. The “narrative of place” and accompanying nationalistic rhetoric over time “became that of ‘one-nation’ Irish-Ireland, its ultimate corollary an exclusion of any social groups not encompassed with an ideology eventually wholly Gaelic and Catholic in ethos” (Graham, 1997, p. 195).

Cultural Nationalism

This invention of national identity focused on the West was expressed most vividly in art, literature, and language around the turn of the 20th century. This developing national identity “included an emerging image of Irishness, derived primarily from literary sources, which anchored it in the landscape of the western seaboard” (Johnson, 1997, p. 181). Promoting traditional Gaelic culture via music, dance, sports, literature, and especially language presented “a positive and culturally unified image of Ireland” (Foley, 2011, p. 45).

Drawing on Moran (2006), Lysaght concluded that “cultural nationalists constructed an Ireland divorced from its settler past, attempting to wipe clean the national imagination of all trace of its Anglicized history and to create a new dominant imagery of an ‘Irish-Ireland’” (2009, p. 61). This gave shape to a powerful symbolic expression of the “otherness” that was at the heart of growing Irish identity, which came to be known as de-Anglicization, or disassociation with anything related to the British colonizers who had controlled the country for centuries before 1922. The concept had been brought to the foreground by Gaelic League founder Douglas Hyde in an 1892 talk in Dublin, in which he argued that Irish nationalism depended on its cultural identity (Boyce, 1991, p. 238).

For Hyde, the Irish language was at the center of de-Anglicization, and the Irish language became a part of the construction-of-identity project. “The relationships articulated between language and cultural identity in Ireland are exemplars of broader attempts across Europe to establish ‘imagined communities’” (Johnson, 1997, p. 174). Johnson adds that language is “an external badge” (1997, p. 177) that expresses individual and collective identity and thus could be politicized in developing nationalist discourses. Ireland’s particular example of this began with the founding of the Gaelic League in 1893. “The impact of the League rested in its ability to raise popular consciousness about the Irish language and to provide one ideological rationale for the Irish independence movement” (Johnson, 1997, p. 180).

All of this had a definite congruence with the idea of using the West to represent authentic Ireland. Irish-language usage was more common in the West (as it still is to this day), and nationalist writers such as W.B. Yeats took inspiration from their western surroundings. “It is through literature and its readings, as well as its geography, that Irish place is defined and redefined, constantly negotiated as society is contested along its many and varied axes of differentiation” (Duffy, 1997, p. 81). “The image and—ultimately—myth of the West was a central motif in the Irish cultural nationalism which evolved toward the end of the 19th century. The West was represented as containing the soul of Ireland” (Duffy, 1997, pp. 67–68).

Promoting the rural West over the urban East in cultural expression was closely related to the process of separating Irish identity from that of the colonial masters as well. “As harbingers of cultural nationalism, the Gaelic League and the Literary Revival both played significant roles in articulating an Irish ‘imagined community’ and in allowing the West to act as a synecdoche of Irish identity” (Johnson, 1997, p. 180). Dublin, as the symbol of British domination, was depicted as seedy and desperate in the work of nationalist authors such as James Joyce and Sean O’Casey (Duffy, 1997).

The movement extended beyond literature into other arts as well. Although the Gaelic League’s

primary objective … involved the re-establishment of the Irish language as the primary spoken language of Ireland, ancillary to this was the promotion of Irish-language literature and indigenous cultural practices such as Irish singing, Irish traditional music and dancing.

(Foley, 2011, pp. 44–45)

“The centrality of the ‘nation’ in republican nationalism was reflected in an emphasis on the cultural elements of nationhood” (Hayward, 2009, p. 69).

Sports offer another arena for the construction, maintenance, and challenge of identities through imagined—that is, symbolically constructed—communities. Maguire and Tuck maintain that “sport and nationalism are inextricably linked and play a key role in defining Irish nationalism” (2005, p. 95). Bairner similarly observes that

sport has given the Irish a sense of their own unique identity. Alongside other cultural practices … the Gaelic games movement has been of enormous significance in terms of the construction and reproduction of a particular reading of Irishness.

(2005, p. 204)

The primary way this was articulated was through promotion of certain traditional sports to the exclusion of others, under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). “The GAA was seen by its founders as a defender of Irish culture against the penetration of ‘foreign’ English imperialist culture (and sports) into Ireland” (Maguire & Tuck, 2005, pp. 94–95). This was accomplished by endorsing and promoting traditional sports of Gaelic football (which bears a resemblance to rugby but has distinct rules that set it apart) and especially the ancient sport of hurling. “Hurling was adopted as an official Irish sport in the late nineteenth century as part of a nationalist resistance to the imperialist impetus of British sports such as football [soccer] and rugby” (Cobley, 2004, p. 218). Bairner adds that “the GAA provided Ireland and the Irish with a distinctive sporting identity…. They helped set the Irish apart not only from the British but most other people within the British empire” where English sports dominated (2005, p. 195).

Through sport, in fact, de-Anglicization, Catholicism, and cultural/national identity merged in a mutually reinforcing manner. For example,

Protestants of all denominations played rugby and hockey; Catholics played Gaelic football and hurling—the games of the intensely nationalist Gaelic Athletic Association…. Rugby and soccer—the ‘foreign games’ GAA players were forbidden to play or attend—were the only ones played in Protestant schools.

(Butler & Ruane, 2009, pp. 77–78)

Political Legitimacy: Traditional Identity Underpins the Free State

As this geographically situated national identity developed in popular culture, it inspired those who thought de-Anglicization should extend to the level of political self-determination. “History and the symbolic meanings of place were manipulated to create the new collective identities demanded by the political transformation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries” (Graham, 1997, p. 17). The 1916 Easter Rising “gave the cultural movements of republican nationalism a political significance” (Hayward, 2009, p. 69). This applied to constitutionalists (supporters of Home Rule) and Republicans (supporters of full separation from Britain), all of whom “viewed Irish cultural identity as a motivation for independence” (Hayward, 2009, p. 72). However, “independence” and the means to achieve it meant different things to each of them; after a war for independence ended with a treaty setting up the Irish Free State, the divisions were severe enough that they led immediately to a civil war.

In the early years of the Free State, “the invented geography of Irish-Ireland thus paralleled other dimensions of nationalism to create an Irishness that empowered and legitimized the new state” (Graham, 1997, p. 8). Political leaders naturally realized the value in promoting and maintaining this identity. “The fostering of a distinctive cultural identity was duly enshrined as a central objective of the new state that was created following the upheavals of 1916–23” (Connolly, 1997, p. 43). “After political independence from Britain in 1922, the ‘new’ Irish national identity rested upon values of Gaelicism and Catholicism as a reaction to dominant British values” (Devine-Wright & Lyons, 1997, p. 36). By the early 20th century, Irish nationalism had become closely associated with Catholicism (Kennedy, 1988). The Catholic religion thus was also a feature of what it meant to be Irish in the emerging consciousness of Irish identity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Preservation of the Irish language was another building block in the cultural construction project. Irish language was a central feature of the de-Anglicization promoted by Hyde (1892), and Devine-Wright and Lyons point out that preservation of the Irish language has been “the cornerstone of state cultural policy” (1997, p. 36) for the Irish government since the founding of the state. (This is still the case, as explored in Chapter 7, although the scale and implementation are different now.)

The efforts of the new state were concentrated upon three aims: to maintain Irish in those parts of Ireland where it continued to be the language of everyday use; to restore Irish as the language of popular use in the rest of Ireland; and to provide the infrastructure necessary for the maintenance of the language in the Gaeltacht and its revival in the rest of Ireland.

(Ó Riagáin, [1988]; as cited in Mac Giolla Chríost, [2012, pp. 399–400])

A culturally defined sense of nation animated the new Free State in more than one way, as it sought to preserve the traditional notions of identity, as well as draw on them for a model of the nation under construction. This had much to do with the leading national figure of the time, Éamon de Valera. A participant in the 1916 Rising and founder of the Fianna Fáil political party in the 1920s, de Valera served as taoiseach (prime minister) for all but a handful of years between 1932 and 1959. After he retired from the Dáil in 1959, he was president (a largely ceremonial position) until 1973.

“For de Valera, the imagery of the rural, Irish-speaking West defined the essence of Irish nationhood” (Duffy, 1997, p. 68). One of the most frequently cited articulations of this identity’s association with the young nation and with de Valera is a radio broadcast that, in Cusack’s description, “evoked a pre-modern golden age of Christian devotion and simple non-materialist living” (2001, p. 232). Presented on St. Patrick’s Day in 1943, marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Gaelic League in 1893, de Valera invoked

the Ireland that we dreamed of … a land whose countryside would be bright with cozy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens.

(Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry a)

A combination of this folk society and Catholicism “constituted the foundation of the nationalist myth in Ireland—where the sacred element was literally integral to national identity” (Cusack, 2001, p. 222). As de Valera’s radio broadcast illustrates, “the fledgling Irish Free State derived strength, legitimacy and a unity of purpose from its exploitation of the hegemonic image of the West of Ireland and Ireland’s cultural heartland” (Graham, 1997, p. 196).

Shifting Identity: Entering a Modern Age

The national identity constructed in the era shortly after independence—as elaborated on thus far—was built upon insular, conservative conceptions born of postcolonialism and based on establishing Irish identity apart from the British. Cusack notes that “the Irish Free State government and the Catholic Church shared an anti-modern cultural agenda” to distinguish the new nation from the Anglo-Irish. “In promoting an ideology of the rural, the Irish state consciously rejected a modern image of urban-industrial progress … associated with colonization and Englishness” (2001, pp. 230–231).

Just 80 years later, though, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Ireland as the most globalized society for 3 years in a row, from 2002 to 2004 (Morash, 2010, p. 220). A few years after that, Ireland also was ranked by the World Economic Forum as the most globalized nation in the world (Nicol, 2015). This rapid absorption of modernity affected Irish identity at all levels. In the current era, “a modernizing, increasingly secular state now looks beyond the Otherness of Britain to inclusion within the EU and a markedly more integrated Europe” (Graham, 1997, p. 8). Graham notes that this trend dates to around the 1960s, when the “symbolic universe of the traditional Irish-Ireland … defined by Gaelicism and Catholicism” had begun to dissolve (Graham, 1997, p. 7). Lysaght notes that

the construct of an Irish-Ireland has come under increasing pressure due to the forces of secularization, urbanization, increased economic prosperity and large-scale migration into Ireland from the 1990s onward. As exclusive constructs of Irishness have come under pressure, more space exists within which to renegotiate or discuss the terms of belonging to the contemporary Irish nation-state.

(2009, p. 62)

Hayward argues that this evolution is beneficial, saying Irish nationalism “has been enhanced rather than damaged by a declining emphasis on rural, Gaelic and Catholic identities of modern Ireland” (2009, p. 4). In the process, Ireland has moved significantly away from the rural, conservative ideal of the Free State and early Republic era exemplified by de Valera’s “cozy homesteads.” This “renegotiation”—to use Lysaught’s term—of components of Irish identity has happened in a number of arenas, but none so significant as the declining institutional power of the Catholic Church in Irish civil society.

Adieu to the Parish?

For many historical, cultural, and political reasons (as alluded to earlier in the chapter but beyond the scope of this project to discuss in great detail), the Irish-Ireland identity that emerged with cultural nationalism in the revolutionary/early Free State era was uniformly Roman Catholic. As a result, the Church exerted strong influence over both the state and the general culture (Inglis, 2007; Morag, 2008; Lysaght, 2009). Economic and social liberalization beginning in the 1960s led to a loosening of those ties. The process was accelerated by, but not a direct result of, scandals that tarnished the reputation of leading Catholic clergy and the institution of the Church overall (Inglis, 2007). The net result is that Ireland today remains culturally Catholic but at the same time is a country in which the once-dominating institutional influence of the Church has all but withered away.

“The Church was once the backbone of strong, cohesive family networks and community structures that created a sense of identity and belonging,” Inglis writes. “The Church was also a major institutional player. In many important social fields such as family, education, health, and social welfare it rivalled the state” (Inglis, 2007, p. 67). But the same author notes that “Catholic Ireland is not what it used to be” (p. 67). Rather, he states, “the influence of the Church in Irish society has declined significantly. It no longer has the same influence over politicians, the state, the market, the media and public opinion” (2007, p. 69).

Ireland is still a largely Catholic country. In the 2016 census, 78 percent of the population identified themselves as Catholic. However, that was a decline from 84 percent in the 2011 census. The next-largest category of religious affiliation reported by the 2016 census was “no religion,” at 9.8 percent of the population, up from 5.9 percent in 2011 (Central Statistics Office, 2017, p. 72). A 2010 European Social Survey reported that about half the Irish population—48 percent—attended Mass once or more a week. Another 30 percent attended occasionally or on holy days (Faith Survey, 2017). Contrast this with a generation earlier in 1974, when 91 percent of the Irish population attended weekly Mass and 80 percent engaged in daily prayer (Inglis, 2007, p. 78). Thus, the Church is still influential but “plays third fiddle” (Inglis, 2007, p. 68) to cultural influences of the market and the media that promote different social values.

This change of fortune for the Church is often attributed to revelations in the 1980s and 1990s about topics such as priests being sexual predators (Doyle, 2010) or otherwise dishonoring their vows, and the Church’s role in protecting them (Lyall, 2009). One such high-profile scandal was the revelation by a prominent bishop in 1992 of a sexual affair in which he fathered a child (O’Mahony, 2017). But the scandals often blamed for undermining Church influence were just one factor that came toward the end of “structural transformations that began in the 1960s and which slowly but surely ate away at the base of the church’s power and influence that had been established in the 19th century” (Inglis, 2007, p. 68).

Over the last half of the 20th century, the state, the market, and the media have slowly eroded the influence of the Catholic church. This has mainly occurred through these institutions propagating discourses and practices that were antithetical to Catholic Church teaching.

(Inglis, 2007, p. 78)

His insights are supported by other research regarding evolution of Irish religiosity and identity (e.g., Lysaght, 2009).

The past several decades have seen the break of the Catholic-nationalist monolith of the post-independence period, which means that Protestants no longer face a single, uniform Catholic community…. There are now many different kinds of Catholics and Protestants.

(Butler & Ruane, 2009, p. 79)

Boyce notes that while Catholicism is still an important aspect of Irishness “the idea that the Church should work towards turning Ireland into a model Catholic state was gradually relaxed and, in the 1960s, virtually abandoned” (1991, p. 360). This process was abetted by the state, at that time moving to “abandon its Catholic vision of Irish society and to push through a new phase of modernization based on economic growth” (Inglis, 2007, p. 69). The resultant growth of individualism and secularization of social life “broke through the sandcastle walls which the Church had built to keep Ireland holy and Catholic” (Inglis, 2007, p. 76). This happened with the development of a Catholic middle class that attained social and political leadership and allowed these influences to penetrate the previously insular society, a progression facilitated by media influences. “The arrival of the television into the heart of Irish homes was the death knell of Catholic Irish society,” Inglis maintains, as “adults and children were being swamped with secular messages and role-models which led to new forms of personal identity and alterative conceptions of what was right and wrong” (2007, p. 77). The resulting liberal, individualist, materialist ethos embodied “the very things against which the church has preached so vehemently for generations” (Inglis, 2007, p. 69). As a result, “Ireland is now liberal and pluralist in a way unimaginable a few decades ago, and if it is not post-Catholic or post-nationalist, Catholics are a lot more relaxed in their Catholicism and their nationalism” (Butler & Ruane, 2009, p. 84).

These findings about the evolution of the Church’s centrality in Irish society were reinforced by the observations of interviewees in the field research portion of this project. An RTÉ television producer called religion a la carte, at the moment. A veteran radio newswoman flatly stated that the authority of the church doesn’t exist anymore. She added that people are more open; they’re not led by the church…. They’re more willing to be more open-minded. Similar thoughts were expressed by a weekly newspaper editor, who said that greater sophistication meant people were not going to just accept what was handed down from the altar. A veteran radio announcer in his late 50s, who pointed out he is not Catholic, observed that in times past, political and religious leaders collaborated to run the country with an iron fist, and that older generations went along with it. That’s a whole thing we’ve managed to get over and get on the other side of, he said. An editor from a national newspaper, however, said this attitude has generational and geographic variables. Attendance and general support for the Church is stronger among older people and in rural areas, he said, which is supported by census data. He also noted that people still are going to the church for the main events of their lives. So you know it hasn’t completely disappeared; people maybe are just less overtly religious or keen to express their spirituality in the open.

26 + 6 = 1? Maybe Not

Another shift that has taken place, though mostly more recently, is disassociation of Irish identity with the Republican goal of a United Ireland. The 1922 treaty that established the Irish Free State created it to include only 26 of the island’s 32 counties, a decision with ramifications for nearly all aspects of the island’s history since.

It is important to recall that even as a sense of Irish nationalism developed through the 19th and early 20th centuries, leading eventually to revolution and formation of the Free State, independence never had universal support among the populace. A substantial minority of the population favored continued union with the United Kingdom based on fear or distrust of Catholicism and a belief that Ireland would be stronger economically and politically if it remained part of the United Kingdom (Kennedy, 1988). Unionists and nationalists could be found in all parts of the island, but the unionists were most heavily concentrated in a portion of northeastern Ulster that was geographically, politically, and culturally closest to Great Britain. (Unionists were least common, not surprisingly, in the West.) When the treaty ending the Irish rebellion and creating the Free State was enacted, those Ulster unionists were accommodated by allowing the six counties where they were concentrated to remain part of the United Kingdom.

The price that was paid for this accommodation was a brutal civil war that broke out in the newly formed Free State between factions of the former revolutionaries who disagreed about the partition. One side thought it was an incomplete resolution to the drive for independence while the other faction accepted it as one that was the best deal possible under the circumstances, and also an outcome that left Free State Ireland politically and religiously more homogeneous with the largest contingent of pro-Union Protestants fenced off outside the new state’s borders. The civil war ended in 1923, several months after the creation of the Free State, with those who supported the treaty and associated partition coming out on top. But the issue of reunification was never far from the surface of Irish politics in the nation’s first few decades. This fact of Ireland’s history “endowed its official nationalism with a powerful, actual significance” because partition meant Irish nationhood developed alongside, yet excluded, Northern Ireland (Hayward, 2009, p. 2). Leaders of the faction that opposed the partition settlement soon founded a political party, Fianna Fáil, which went on to control the Free State government for most of its first quarter century. During this time, the country in 1937 adopted a constitution claiming continued sovereignty over the six counties of Northern Ireland.

To the degree that reunification was a feature of Irish nationalism, it became folded in with the other aspects of constructed identity. Partition theoretically could have created grounds for northern unionists “to develop positive attitudes and policies” toward their southern neighbors. But in practice “unionists went to great length to distance themselves from the rest of Ireland and from any concept of Gaelic nationalism” (Kennedy, 1988, p. 5). Hayward adds that “the stronger the assertion of the unique characteristics of the Irish nation, the clearer its distinction from those of others. Thus as the Irish state became ‘more Irish,’ so those outside the jurisdiction, including Northern Ireland, became automatically less so” (2009, p. 79).

Religious differences were of course part of this. “Irish nationalism always emphasized its Catholicism and Unionism its Protestantism” (Ding-ley, 2009, p. 369). Northern unionists perceived nationalism as an existential threat, which “helped promote the rigidifying of the political divide inside Northern Ireland along religious lines, perpetuating the concept of the Catholic minority as disloyal” (Kennedy, 1988, p. 229). This was perhaps never more apparent than during a 30-year period (1968–1998) colloqui-ally known as the Troubles. The era began with protests advocating civil rights for the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. When ruling forces sought to stifle the protests and things turned violent, it escalated into northern nationalists—many of them from poorer Catholic areas of Northern Ireland—waging a long-running guerilla war. Decades of deep distrust, fear, and ongoing violence were the result. During this time, the ruling Protestant elites and the British military (sent by the UK government to keep the peace) faced thousands of attacks from a newly reconstituted Irish Republican Army. Unionist paramilitary forces and the British soldiers fought back. By one account (McKittrick et al., 2001) more than 3,700 people lost their lives before it all was ended by a 1994 cease-fire and 1998 peace settlement known as the Belfast Agreement (or Good Friday Agreement). A notable provision of the agreement, which was approved by government bodies and by separate referendums north and south of the border, required the Republic of Ireland to rescind its constitutional claim to the six northern counties. In return, a power-sharing arrangement of the nationalist and unionist factions was set up to govern Northern Ireland.

As with so many other elements of national identity, the divisions of Northern Ireland and the Republic can be seen as culturally constructed—a construction that changed over time, but especially since implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. “The cultural identity of unionists in Northern Ireland has been traditionally excluded from the ideal model of the Irish nation as a consequence of nation-state building in the 26 counties,” according to Hayward (2009, p. 120). Graham notes that over time “Ireland became less divided by the actual border than by the juxtaposition of an increasingly confident Irish identity (in the south) and a confused and heavily qualified sense of Britishness (in the north)” (Graham, 1997, p. 8).

It would appear that in the same way materialism and consumerism undermined the influence of the Catholic Church (Inglis, 2007), economic development and growing middle classes on both sides of the border played a role in diminishing the importance of partition and facilitating the end of the Troubles.

In the past, Irish nationalism was focused on ending partition and retaking the fourth green field or Ulster. Today, however, the traditional discourse slides over into economic nationalism where we assume that if Ireland wins the battle for competitiveness it must be a good thing.

(Allen, 2007, p. 232)

Similarly, on the other side of the border,

The version of Northern Irish society that emerged from three decades of the Troubles is one that differs radically from that which existed when the conflict initially erupted…. The emergence of a confident and largely contented nationalist middle class open to the possibility of a deal that would leave partition intact created an important precondition of a political settlement in Northern Ireland.

(Coulter & Shirlow, 2007, pp. 176–177)

Interview subjects, all of them old enough to recall the Troubles, had similar perspectives on the era and the current state of the partitioned island. Two local newspaper editors observed that during 1970s and’80s Ireland was known worldwide mostly for the conflict in Northern Ireland. A 42-year-old manager from RTÉ added that when he was growing up in the 1980s, Unity and 32 counties and Republicanism was a national issue and it was part of Irish identity. Since the Good Friday agreement, however, that talk is alien now, he added. Echoing Coulter and Shirlow, he said economic advancement helps to dampen virulent politics. When you have something to lose, he explained, you are less likely to look for upheavals that will upset the status quo.

Reflecting what Dingley and Kennedy had observed about nationalism and religion, another newspaper editor said that postindependence, Ireland was keen to forge out its own identity; part of that was [that] being overtly Catholic was wound up with being Irish nationalistic. He continued: There were sound political reasons for us to emphasize those differences…. For a lot of people Irishness meant supporting the aspirations for United Ireland and being very much anti-British. [During] the Troubles…. You wore your Irishness on your sleeve to some degree on that issue. However, he observed, the general attitude has swung 180 degrees such that now, for many people,

They’d be very skeptical about the merits of a United Ireland. People in the Republic would say “Do we really want a United Ireland? Think of all the problems that would bring … best leave things well enough alone.”… People who have lived through the Troubles even from the distance of Dublin would be a lot less gung-ho about the idea of a United Ireland on that basis…. A lot of people would say, “Look, it’s not really all that important for Ireland to be united. It’s more important for Ireland to be at peace and for Ireland to stay in contact with the broader world.”

Becoming European

A final facet in Ireland’s evolution away from a traditional, insular identity is integration into the European community of nations. The Irish Republic joined the European Union’s forerunner, the European Economic Community, in 1973. (The EEC was renamed the EU as part of a new treaty in 1993 altering its governance and creating the euro as a common currency.) Northern Ireland also was a member as part of the United Kingdom.[1] Involvement in the EU contributed to the Republic of Ireland advancing from the impoverished, rural condition that characterized the country from its founding through the mid-20th century. The economic and ideological shift to a more commercial and more liberal country that had begun 10 to 15 years earlier—in the late 1950s and early 1960s—was reinforced by deeper ties to the rest of Europe (Watson, 2008).

This advancement was never more evident than during the Celtic Tiger economic expansion, a boom time for Ireland from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s. The rapid expansion of the Irish economy at this time was largely the result of foreign direct investment in which multinational firms dramatically expanded Irish operations, bringing jobs and other economic benefits (Allen, 2007). In this era, “neoliberalism [a focus on individual economic success within an institutional framework of strong property rights, free markets, and free trade] became increasingly identifiable as the dominant ideology across Irish political, business and economic thought” (O’Sullivan, 2007, p. 2). Instead of an economic nationalism focused on isolation, the Irish aggressively sought to be actors on a global stage. This, more than perhaps anything else, swept away the idea that “true” Ireland was rooted in the rural West, isolated and insular. The change brought both benefits and challenges but unequivocally altered the way Ireland viewed itself. As one analysis stated it,

The “imagined community” which emerged during the early years of the Republic embodied a highly restricted notion of citizenship and ethnicity which, despite undergoing significant modification during the economic boom, has remained essentially exclusionary. Since the foundation of the state, Irishness and citizenship have been correlated with whiteness and Catholicism which implicitly acted as the measure against which difference was constructed. However, this restricted, hegemonic view of “Irishness” is now coming into conflict with the labor market imperatives of the increasingly globalized Tiger economy.

(Loyal, 2007, p. 46)

A provincial, insular Irish identity also was out of step with the general ethos of the EEC (later EU), which represented Europe as a whole shifting from a nationalist model to a citizenship model. Such a model is more inclusive because it does not require individuals to have certain personal identity characteristics (e.g., religion, language) that match those associated with national identity (Watson, 2003, p. 40). Becoming more integrated into Europe especially undermined the idea of defining Irishness as first and foremost non-Britishness. Being part of an international community where the Irish coexisted with their former colonial masters on an equal basis meant that “instead of exhibiting a sense of group disgrace, the Irish now claim a widening field of identification and a more confident group charisma” (Maguire & Tuck, 2005, p. 86). This also entailed

the increased recognition of the plurality of identities and traditions on the island of Ireland, including the elements of British identity among unionists…. Irish identity is not directly defined as against “Britishness” in official discourse but is conceived in relation to it in the context of co-operation and equality between different nations.

(Hayward, 2009, p. 140)

She added, “The concept of diversity in unity helps to shape the new ideal model of Irish identity or, to be more precise, Irish identities which relates to the European model of multidimensional identities” (p. 140, emphasis in original).

On these topics as well, interviewees for the project as residents of contemporary Ireland shared views similar to those documented in the literature. The nationalist streak has been watered down by membership in the European Union because people would see benefits from that, said an editor from a national newspaper. Really, being Irish is only one potential identity; you can also be European…. People could have multiple identities and the Irish one isn’t necessarily the one that trumps all the others. Hindsight and history show that the Celtic Tiger boom was a bubble built on overextended credit, especially in the property-development market. The bubble eventually burst, and the Irish economy collapsed and went through great difficulty from 2009 to 2015. But the confidence that the boom built didn’t necessary evaporate with the crash, said the 42-year-old manager from RTÉ. As the economy slowly recovered, he said, I think we’re more assured and less needing of validation as a country as a whole.

Immigration that has contributed to the Republic’s ethnic diversity is a related component to Irishness shifting away from Irish-Ireland identity. This migration, taking place under freedom-of-movement rules associated with EU membership, has been especially heavy from Eastern Europe (notably Poland). But migrants also have come from Africa and other places. The 2016 census reported that 810,000 people out of a population of approximately 4.8 million—or 17 percent of the total—were foreign born (Central Statistics Office, 2017, p. 46).

This change in population corresponds with a change in cultural outlook from a more conservative to a more liberal perspective, the national newspaper editor said. A lot of people would see the two as interrelated: the more liberal society [fits with] with the more multicultural society. He added that not everyone sees this as a good thing, but he does think most people see it as a positive development. The schools are an example of this synergy because students now learn about other cultures. This was not the case when he was in school a generation ago. Schools then taught an essentially Catholic curriculum with a patriarchal, patronizing view of other cultures such as collecting pennies for “mission babies.” Now, schools have African immigrants bringing their history and heritage to Ireland and helping their classmates learn about it firsthand.

A Nation Once Again? Or at Last?

Perhaps the most important element of evolving of Irish identity, though, has been the development of an identity for the Irish state as successor to that of the Irish nation. Developing a sense of national identity and trying to associate it with the state, as de Valera and other early nationalists did, was a necessary precursor to forging an identity for the modern Irish political state. But now,

this hegemonic representation is increasingly irrelevant as the Republic is transformed into an energetic, outward-oriented member of the European Union and a markedly more secular state, in which the exclusivity of ethnic nationalism is gradually being replaced by the inclusiveness of civic nationalism with its notions of a people linked by a communality of laws and institutions of citizenship rather than sectarian ethnic markers.

(Graham, 1997, p. 193)

Boyce observes that in the early 1960s, as the end of the de Valera era approached, his Fianna Fáil party that had controlled the government for most of the previous 30 years “managed to be both a nationalist party, emphasizing the values of rural Ireland, while at the same time modernizing that society” away from those values (1991, p. 357). It may be worth noting that this happened mostly after de Valera was succeeded as taoiseach by his protégé, Seán Lemass, in 1959. Watson (2003) calls this a turning point for Irish leadership. In a biography of Lemass, Evans (2011) describes the efforts of Lemass, first as a member of de Valera’s cabinet and later as taoiseach, to modernize the country, especially economically. Hayward’s analysis further documents the efforts of political leaders from both Fianna Fáil and its leading rival, Fine Gael, to emphasize continuity between the traditional conception of Irish identity while reconciling it with the identity of the modern state in ways that made the two identities seem complementary rather than contradictory. Integration into the European Union contributed to this process, as did adoption of the Good Friday accords that removed the Republic’s constitutional claim over Northern Ireland.

In addition to those factors, the EU policy of respect for national cultures stands directly opposed to the colonial relationship Ireland had with Great Britain. As a result, the sense of Irish Ireland set apart from all things British that animated the traditional conception of national identity takes on far less significance as Ireland sees itself as part of a broader community of nations, and on equal terms with Great Britain as a fellow EU member for more than two decades. While the Free State may have been founded on a basis of cultural nationalism, over time identity as expressed in traditions and culture became distinct from nationhood as defined by territory, polity, and membership in a broader community of nations. Or as Boyce puts it, the constructed traditionalist identity was a natural and necessary precursor but only a stop along the road to current conditions in which “the final essential ingredient of nationalism in Ireland [was] the experience of statehood” (1991, p. 361). “Only with the founding of the Free State and its development in the modern era did a true, single nation finally emerge” (Boyce, 1991, p. 23).

Conclusion

Identity at any level—whether individual, community, or national—is influenced by a cross-current of factors, not the least of which is geography. But at the same time, identity is an imagined, symbolically constructed thing, especially since the sense of shared purpose that set the boundaries for a community or the common purposes of a nation are defined symbolically. National identity must be imagined because even in the smallest of cases, not all members of a nation can possibly know each other (Graham, 1997, p. 5).

In Ireland’s case geography entered the process most prominently by providing a location—the rural West—that both inspired and situated the symbolically constructed identity that would emerge in the decades leading up to rebellion and independence. This identity carried over into the early years of the Free State and Republic. Prominent aspects of western life, notably Gaelic culture, Irish language, and Roman Catholic faith, were significant in this cultural construction. Imagery of the West was prominent in culturally nationalist literature and art that helped to define Irish identity as it emerged. So was the idea of the close-knit, bucolic rural lifestyle as superior to harried urban living. This nationalism was conjoined with politics, first as an ideal to rally around in the drive for independence, and then, after the founding of the Free State, as an aspiration for a newly formed nation seeking its purpose.

Because symbolically constructed identity is malleable and subject to change over time, however, the national identity or constituents of essential “Irishness” are different in the early 21st century than they were when the state was founded nearly 100 years earlier. But most importantly, the imagining and symbolic construction of identity continue to happen within the expression of cultural artifacts, including popular media.

Note

1 At the time of this writing, the United Kingdom was planning its separation from the EU (colloquially known as “Brexit”) but the division had not yet been implemented.

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3
Irish Media and Irish Identity

When Teilifís Éireann made its debut on the final day of 1961, President Éamon de Valera spoke to the nation, in both Irish and English, about his hope that the service would “build up the character of a whole people, inducing sturdiness and vigor and confidence.” A few moments later he expressed the desire that those in charge of the service “bear in mind that we are an old nation and that we have our own distinctive characteristics and that it is desirable that these should be preserved” (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry b). The Irish Press the next morning focused on this thought, with a headline reading “Keep our distinctive characteristics alive, Mr. de Valera says” (Irish Press, 1962, p. 1). The event echoed one 36 years earlier, when the television service’s forerunner Raidió Éireann went on the air on New Year’s Day 1926. Douglas Hyde, best known for his work with the Gaelic League to “de-Anglicize” early 20th-century Ireland, spoke to the nation in Irish about his hope for radio as a unifying force for Irish listeners (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry c).

Unquestionably, these national leaders saw the purpose of the state-chartered broadcast media as preserving and protecting a traditional form of Irish identity: rural, Gaelic, and Catholic in nature. This was reflected in other elements of Teilifís Éireann’s opening-night programming. The “test pattern” that went over the airwaves prior to the 7 p.m. live broadcast took the form of a St. Brigid’s cross (Cork Examiner, 1962). Opening remarks from de Valera and other government officials were followed by dramatists Siobhán McKenna and Micheál Mac Liammóir reading the works of Padraic Pearse, a poet and executed leader of the 1916 Rising, and W.B. Yeats, Ireland’s most famous nationalist writer (Irish Press, 1962). The broadcast included benediction from a Catholic bishop, and shortly after midnight it “fittingly concluded with an address by his Eminence Cardinal D’Alton, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland” (Cork Examiner, 1962, p. 1).

This reflects a sense that Irish media have a role to play “with respect to those manifestations of culture which are categorized by ourselves and outsiders as being distinctively or uniquely Irish” (Ó Tuathaigh, 1984, p. 98). Ó Tuathaigh further observes that

these most recognizable elements of an Irish culture are no doubt what Douglas Hyde had in mind when, in launching the new Irish radio service in 1926, he spoke of broadcasting’s obligation to cultivate “the heritage of the Os and the Macs, derived from one of the oldest civilizations in Europe.”

(1984, p. 98)

Quoting from the 1960 Broadcasting Act that created Teilifís Éireann, Ó Tuathaigh points out that the new TV service was directed to “bear constantly in mind the national aims of restoring the Irish language and preserving and developing the national culture” (1984, p. 98). Such directives are typical of nationally chartered public-service broadcasting systems such as Britain’s BBC (Hajkowski, 2010) and Canada’s CBC (Collins, 1990).

In the same article, however, Ó Tuathaigh goes on to argue that key markers of traditional Irish identity and culture—including the Irish language, Catholic religion, and traditional music—are generally not well represented in contemporary Irish media. The one exception he cites is traditional sports. It would appear that while Irish media started out reflecting and supporting the traditional Irish identity that was built through cultural nationalism, it has changed in the face of the same modernizing influences that contributed to the general evolution of Irish identity.

Media Articulations of Cultural Nationalism

The concept of cultural nationalism is usually applied to literature and arts, citing especially the influences of towering figures such as W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. But the popular media, notably newspapers in the prerevolutionary period and broadcasting (radio) in the early years of the Free State, had no small part in the development of this national consciousness as well. “The creation of an active nationalist press and publishing houses played an important role in the development of both Catholic-Irish and Ulster-British identities. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish countryside was flooded with books, newspapers and other publications” (Morag, 2008, p. 269). Similarly in broadcast, “during the early years of the state, Irish music, sports, language and religion were to be heard on radio. These were the central elements of national identity” (Watson, 2003, p. 14).

Nationalism and the Regional Press

The earliest development of the Irish press happened, as would be expected, in Dublin as the commercial and political center of the island. But local newsletters had begun to appear by the mid-1700s in places such as Cork, Kilkenny, and Belfast (Nowlan, 1984). As time went on, “local weeklies flourished even more strikingly than Dublin papers, and they were able to reach a wider audience” (Cullen, 1984). In 1830, 66 newspapers were being published with 4 million annual copies distributed, and by 1841 there were 81 newspapers with a distribution of 6 million copies (Morag, 2008, p. 269, citing figures from Clark, 1979). Legg (1999) notes that by the 1860s, communities of any reasonable size usually had multiple newspapers. Belfast and Waterford each had four papers, Cork and Limerick each had three, and Galway was one of eight towns that had two newspapers.

As this growth occurred, regional newspapers started to take on a nationalist character. “In Ireland, the rise of the cheap press after 1860 coincided with the rise of nationalism, and over time the number of papers that expressed nationalist ideas began to rise” (Legg, 1999, p. 33). By the 1880s many provincial papers forthrightly claimed their nationalist politics, which meant coverage of policies related to the emerging nationalistic character, including protectionism, support for the Irish language and literature, alignment with the Catholic Church, and rejection of British influence over Irish affairs (Legg, 1999, p. 51). As the ideal of the rural West and historical Gaelic culture became more of an animating force in Irish culture and the accompanying cultural nationalism, those ideas made their way into the regional papers—especially those in the West. “Mid [19th] century journalists used their newspapers to recount the lives of heroes, and projected the nation as looking out of an immemorial past…. Journalists and historians used the past as a tool to create the idea of Ireland’s present” (Legg, 1999, pp. 73 & 97). This was local media expression of the same themes addressed by the literary revival and other aspects of growing Irish cultural nationalism. Around the same time, explicit and implicit support for Catholicism as a component of nationalism was common among these papers as well. The Leinster Independent, for example, had the motto “Faith and Fatherland” (Legg, 1999, p. 81).

Ward’s examination of two minority viewpoints in the prerevolutionary provincial press—a unionist paper in Galway and a nationalist one in Derry in 1912—serves further to illustrate how these outlets contributed to identity formation. “The importance of the provincial press to the creation of the nationalist or unionist imagined community in Ireland cannot be overstated,” he maintains (Ward, 2014, p. 64). This happened through local media construction of a binding community narrative, as per Cohen (1985), but a community narrative colored strongly by national concerns.

The provincial, partisan, narratives of the Derry Journal and the Galway Express are a part of the national narrative of Ireland…. Articles published in the Galway Express and the Derry Journal during 1912 illustrate the tension and growing alienation felt by both communities as the political landscape was being reshaped in front of them.

(Ward, 2014, pp. 60–61)

Legg similarly concludes that “the character of the press, its policies and its position in the community underlies the importance of localism in the development of Irish nationalism” (1999, p. 173) and that activities of the 19th-century Irish provincial press “helped create a new self-image of Ireland in the next century” (p. 175).

Nationalism and the Metropolitan Press

Morash notes the same connection between regional news consumption and growing nationalism, especially how it helped connect nationalist cultural identity with political identity. “Buying a nationalist [local] newspaper was, in its own right, a political act” (Morash, 2010, p. 117). But the same was true in Dublin, where the nation’s largest and most influential papers had distinct audiences along demographic lines that were reflected in their politics. The Irish Times was the paper of the Protestant elite, with a unionist outlook. The Irish Independent, after its purchase by transportation magnate William Martin Murphy and relaunch in 1905, was nationalist in outlook and had a Catholic readership among the middle class and farmers. But “nationalist” in this context should not be confused with “Republican.” To be nationalist in this era generally meant to favor Home Rule.

The 1916 Easter Rising and subsequent war for independence that led to the formation of the Free State disrupted this established media landscape but did not “fundamentally alter” it (Horgan, 2002). Even after the Rising, mainstream media were conservative, with nationalist papers supporting Home Rule and unionist ones opposing it. Some staunchly Republican publications were founded in this era, but were short-lived. During the 1922–1923 civil war, Republicans also would threaten and attack unsympathetic publications and sometimes force them to publish Republican statements. When the progovernment Freeman’s Journal had its presses destroyed by Republican forces, the Independent scooped up many of its readers. The Journal struggled after that and the owners of the Independent eventually bought out the paper.

When the treaty opponents/Republican irregulars finally gave up in May 1923, ending the civil war, Irish politics and media moved into a new phase as the faction that lost the war split further. Under the leadership of Éamon de Valera, those among them who wanted to have a hand in running the new country founded a new political party in 1926 that would go on to dominate government for most of the next 40 years. The party, Fianna Fáil, first took control of the government in 1932 and did not relinquish it for 16 years; overall it controlled the government for all but a few short intervals from 1932 until the early 1970s.

As part of this strategy of electoral politics, de Valera in 1931 also founded a newspaper, the Irish Press, to promote the interests of the party. It was connected to the party via de Valera’s positions as chairman of the board and managing director of the paper while still serving as Fianna Fáil party leader. But it was not, strictly speaking, a party organ. It was formally organized apart from the party and relied on advertising and subscription revenue rather than party funding. This separation was meant to increase the credibility of the Press by preserving at least the appearance of independence and so it could proclaim itself a paper that reflected the Irish nation (Horgan, 2002, p. 29). Perhaps not surprisingly, given the heavy influence of de Valera, the Press served its target audience of the Catholic working class and farmers with innovative coverage of sports (notably GAA football and hurling) and a propensity to publish Irish-language material. Thus did it reflect a certain vision of the Irish nation, aligned with the components of traditional Irish Ireland. The Press was not alone in this approach. Newspapers generally supported the political and social establishment, to the point of rarely publishing anything “that challenged the dominant narrative that Ireland was a unique monoculture characterized by religious virtue and Gaelic ideals of ruralism and language restoration” (O’Brien, 2014, p. 160).

Nationalism and Radio Broadcasting

The Irish Free State and the radio-broadcasting era came into existence at virtually the same moment. In fact, the founding date of the Free State (December 6, 1922) was just 3 weeks after the beginning of daily radio broadcasts by the BBC (November 14, 1922). (The beginnings of commercial radio in the United States are generally placed a couple of years earlier, but regular broadcasts in France [1922] and Germany [1923] date to around the same time as the BBC’s inaugural shows.) Thus, one of the first matters the new government had to address was broadcast policy, meaning the new state and its broadcast regime literally grew up together.

The forward-thinking British had inserted provisions in the Free State treaty that prohibited Ireland from fielding radio stations whose signals could reach England (Horgan, 2002, p. 15). But the reverse did not apply, so the first radio coverage to reach Ireland came from BBC transmitters on England’s west coast, and also from Belfast where the BBC had set up operations in 1924. Irish radio was not far behind, though, beginning with a broadcast on station 2RN from Dublin on January 1, 1926. The first broadcast was made by Douglas Hyde, best known for his work in founding the Gaelic League about 30 years earlier and for his interests in “de-Anglicization” during the prerevolutionary period. It’s no surprise then that his address, in Irish, was devoted to the idea that radio could preserve traditional culture (Ó Tuathaigh, 1984, p. 84). Even the station name, as a wordplay on “to Erin,” served to reinforce that idea (Horgan, 2002, p. 18). A second station, 6CK in Cork, went on the air in 1927 (Morash, 2010).

While the United States developed a commercial radio system overseen by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), Great Britain took a different approach with a publicly owned and operated system known as the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC. The BBC began regular broadcasts in 1922 but was formally established by a royal charter in 1927. Its first managing director, John Reith, set its guiding principles as to “educate, inform and entertain,” an ethos it has maintained ever since.

As the new Irish Free State was considering its options for radio broadcasts, it settled on the BBC model of a state-chartered rather than a commercially controlled system. On one level, this is not surprising because despite the significance of de-Anglicization in the emergent Irish identity, the fledgling government copied many structures from the system it knew best: that of former British overseers. Administratively, broadcasting came under jurisdiction of the postal ministry, later renamed the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. In a 1923 report, Postmaster General J.J. Walsh had expressed concern over the commercial arrangement then developing in the United States and backed the idea of a BBC-style service. Primary funding would come from a license fee charged to listeners for the privilege of owning a radio set, an idea also used by the BBC.

The Dáil committee charged with following up on Walsh’s report to determine what the new nation should do with its broadcasting created a vision that Horgan describes as “hyper-Reithian” (2002, p. 16) because of its heavy emphasis on education (e.g., lectures) while downplaying the value of entertainment. The costs to the state also were a concern in the debate over how to organize the new radio service. So it was decided that, unlike the British system it was modeled upon, Irish radio would augment the license fee with advertising revenue. Nevertheless, the new state recognized the value in using radio to legitimate itself. “From the beginning, policy formation in Irish broadcasting operated under the assumption that the nation was already in place: only the state awaited completion as part of the unfinished business of securing a coherent Irish identity” (Gibbons, 1996, p. 71). And Irish radio had a role to play, specifically “in attracting listeners away from ‘foreign’ broadcasts and protecting the Irish from their influences, and at the same time disseminating Irish identity by including the symbols of that identity” (Watson, 2003, p. 4).

When radio 2RN debuted, the program schedule was not especially Reithian, though. Postmaster Walsh believed that without audience appeal no one would listen to, or pay for, the new radio service (Horgan, 2002, p. 17). So rather than educational lectures it included a healthy proportion of music (classical, rather than Irish traditional); some Irish-language programming, including lessons; and sports, including live broadcasts of GAA contests. The station did no real news gathering or news reporting, although it did broadcast information repurposed from newspapers and the BBC (Morash, 2010). To improve reception around the country, a new transmitter on high ground close to the geographic center of the country in Athlone was built in 1933.

Despite a legislative mandate that “stressed the importance of maintaining and consolidating the national identity” (Gibbons, 1996, p. 70) and a debut with an Irish-language speech about using radio to preserve traditional culture, the degree to which the new Irish broadcasting service managed to do those things in its first few years was spotty. It did carry Irish-language programming, including lessons in the language, but not a large amount of it. In 1935, under new managing director T.J. Kiernan, the station sought to promote indigenous content by establishing county committees that could select musical groups whose performances would be showcased on the national radio. However, Kiernan insisted on quality programming, saying “the old is good, but it is not good to live entirely on the old,” and that it was not “a form of national sacrilege to question the artistic value” of poorly done traditional music (Cathcart, 1984). Because many performances by local artists were mediocre, the project was not successful. This relative inattention to preservation of culture and identity on the airwaves is ironic given that broadcasting exists under such strong government control.

Nationalism and Television Broadcasting

As the 1950s dawned, Irish officials and media consumers experienced a bit of déjà vu, with a new broadcast medium—this time television—reaching the country first from abroad. As with radio, Ireland was a bit behind its British neighbors in adoption of television technology, which meant signals from across the Irish Sea and from Northern Ireland were coming to the Republic before any that originated at home. The BBC began televising from Belfast in 1952, starting with retransmission of what was on the main channel in England but later adding locally produced programs (Morash, 2010, p. 168).

Television had been demonstrated conceptually as early as 1926 by Scottish engineer John Logie Baird and was used to telecast some material in prewar Germany, including portions of the 1936 Munich Olympics. World War II interrupted widespread development of the new medium, though. When television finally was popularized in the United States and United Kingdom from the late 1940s through early 1950s, it took on the same organizational scheme as radio. That is, it became a largely commercial enterprise overseen by the FCC in the United States and a public-service broadcaster under the umbrella of the BBC (and its Reithian principles) in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, this time period in Ireland was marked by discussion on two levels: the potential impact of television on the conservative culture and national identity, especially if the new service was commercially driven, and also the cost and complication of establishing a state-run system if it was desirable to avoid a commercial one. As the debate stretched through the mid-1950s, Finance Minister Séan Lemass resisted the idea of a state service because of the cost. However, after he became taoiseach he supported the idea and the new service was adopted, like Raidió Éireann, on a BBC-style model (Horgan, 2002; Morash, 2010). Also like its sister radio service, television would not be purely state supported; advertising helped cover the costs. As with radio three decades earlier, the coming of television was seen as an opportunity to promote more widespread use of Irish language, and much debate in the Dáil featured this subject as well.

The addition of an entirely new service provided the opportunity for a new governmental structure to oversee it. Legislation authorizing television service, the 1960 Broadcasting Act, created a new body, the Broadcast Authority of Ireland (BAI) to oversee both Raidió Éireann and the new Teilifís Éireann. (They would be combined and renamed to the current organization Raidió Teilifís Éireann [RTÉ] in 1966.) The legislation creating the BAI directed it to “bear constantly in mind the national aims of restoring the Irish language and preserving and developing the national culture” (Mac Conghail, 1984, p. 66).

The dictates of legislation urging Teilifís Éireann to support Irish cultural distinction notwithstanding, the new service soon began introducing outside influences into the Irish cultural landscape, especially American ones. Organizationally it borrowed heavily from the BBC model, as radio had done three decades earlier. Many early Teilifís Éireann employees even were BBC veterans because of the additional administrative and technical expertise required for television as compared to radio. The station did produce Irish original programming, such as broadcast productions of stage plays by Irish dramatists, including nationalists such as J.M. Synge. Dramatic productions modeled on the BBC were also common. But the costs and complications of producing for television were vastly greater than radio. Thus, while most radio programming was original, only about half of Teilifís Éireann programs were, making Ireland a ready market for American TV series reruns. “Without American TV, there would have been no Irish TV,” Morash maintains (2010, p. 175).

As Chapter 2 discusses, the 1960s saw the beginnings of Ireland’s economic and cultural modernization, which helped alter its insular, conservative national identity (Boyce, 1991; Hayward, 2009). Coming on the air when it did near the beginning of the decade, Teilifís Éireann reflected and contributed to these changes. The decade was marked by declining taboos in print and electronic media along with proliferation of content sources, such as the availability of BBC programming and the rebroadcast of American shows to fill TÉ airtime. Both of these presented substantial competition to locally produced programming in ways that they might not have in other countries because of their high quality and, especially, the absence of a language barrier (Horgan, 2002).

In this environment, Irish-language content and religious programming became points of contention for TÉ. It faced complaints that it was not fulfilling its mandate to promote the Irish language. Yet with the need to build audiences to earn advertising revenues in the face of growing programming alternatives, devoting significant airtime to Irish-language material that only a fraction of viewers would even understand (meaning most therefore would not watch) would place it in a difficult position commercially. Catholic Church leaders also pressed the government for more devotional programming and kept careful watch on the moral content of what did go on the air. It was largely to no avail, in either case, as RTÉ devoted little attention to Irish-language or Catholic offerings (Ó Tuathaigh, 1984).

A watershed production in this breakdown of taboos was the Late, Late Show, a talk and variety show that debuted in 1962 and is still among RTÉ’s most popular offerings. In the early years of the show, host Gay Byrne delighted in addressing subjects that were not often discussed in public—especially sex, politics, and religion. As a largely unscripted presentation, Late, Late Show had a free-form nature that lent itself to pushing the envelope on these topics. And since it was broadcast live, censorship of the material was impractical. The sheer controversy made the show popular as people tuned in for fear of missing out. The simple fact that such topics were reaching such a public forum helped create “a new orthodoxy, which challenged the old, Gaelic and somewhat authoritarian one, or at least constructed an alternative lens through which it might be viewed” (Horgan, 2002, p. 89).

So by the 1960s through the Late, Late Show’s toppling of cultural taboos and in other ways, television was contributing to a social evolution underway in other areas, notably economically. But the history of government intervention directed at controlling moral purity and other aspects of media products through legal restriction stretched back literally to the beginning of the Irish state.

Government Policy and Media Control

One area in which the new Free State government was expansive in exercising its powers in the 1920s was legislation to influence media content in ways that fit with the conservative Catholic moralist view of Irish identity. This included not only broadcasting, run by a government ministry, but also print media. Military censorship had been part of the government’s interaction with newspapers throughout the World War I and revolutionary period. As that period passed, restrictions just shifted to ones based on social or moral rationales instead of military imperatives (Horgan, 2002, p. 12). This included investigative commissions about media presentations, tariffs on imported (i.e., British) printed media that were considered “immoral,” several different pieces of censorship legislation, and a provision in the written constitution supporting freedom of expression only when it would not be detrimental to morals or the public order.

Print Controls

Censorship efforts were among the first actions of the Free State as it settled into self-administration after the end of the civil war in 1923. One of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new government restricted the then-new medium of film. Building on that, and spurred on by Catholic clergy, the justice minister in 1926 appointed a Committee on Evil Literature. Its findings were the basis for a more general censorship act approved in 1929, which established a Censorship of Publications Board. The censorship had a prudish, Catholic character behind it, “a moral and cultural Sinn Feinism which requires self-sufficiency in ideas and literature” coupled with “a strong element of puritanical righteousness” that ran through the new leaders of the Free State (Murphy, 1984, p. 51). The legislation and actions of the board had the greatest impact on imported British publications. In line with its Catholic ethos, the board was especially keen to limit information about contraception; advertisements for birth control were common in the British papers reaching Ireland and the board was eager to suppress them. Of course, in the same era broadcasting was put under direct control of the government.

When Fianna Fáil took control of the government for the first time in 1932, de Valera used the opportunity for a move that responded to nationalist and moralistic concerns and also was congruent with his protectionist economic policy. This was the imposition of a tariff on imported newspapers and magazines that ultimately affected about 200 publications, mostly British ones (Horgan, 2002, pp. 34–35). The tariffs would stay in place for nearly 40 years, being lifted only in the early 1970s when Ireland was preparing to join the European Economic Community. Another political initiative of de Valera’s was the adoption of a written constitution in 1937. It included a clause “preserving the rightful liberty of expression” of the media—but only as long as free expression did not “undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State” (Article 40.6.i of the Constitution, cited in Horgan, 2002, p. 40).

When World War II began, de Valera’s government stayed neutral, rather than aligning with either the Allied or Axis sides. But even then, the government had censorship measures under an Emergency Powers Act. (The war era is known as “The Emergency” in Irish history.) The purpose was to suppress content that would suggest anything other than a policy of strict neutrality, for fear of angering either side. This control extended even to weather forecasts, which could be seen as strategically important for North Atlantic shipping (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry d). The censorship lasted until May 11, 1945, three days after Germany’s surrender.

Broadcasting Controls

By setting up a public system, the government maintained final authority for broadcasting content by literally running the operation out of a government department, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. When the Broadcasting Authority was created in 1961 to oversee both radio and television service, it placed responsibility outside of direct ministerial control but not outside of government authority. In setting up the BAI, the Dáil reserved some important authority to itself, including the length of the broadcast day, limitations on advertising, and licensing decisions (Horgan, 2002, p. 82). In a 1966 speech before the Dáil, Taoiseach Lemass noted that RTÉ was established by the government with “an obligation to ensure that programs not offend against public interest or conflict with national policy” (Mac Conghail, 1984, p. 66).

But perhaps most significantly, the 1960 Broadcasting Act’s Article 31 gave the government an absolute right of censorship over RÉ and TÉ content by allowing it to “direct the Authority in writing to refrain from broadcasting any particular matter” (quoted in Morash, 2010, p. 191). The provision was invoked in 1971 to prohibit RTÉ from broadcasting material that might promote organizations involved in political violence. Without mentioning the organization by name, this was pointedly directed at coverage of anything having to do with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at a time when sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was beginning to heat up. The ban would remain in effect until 1994. A revision to the Broadcasting Act in 1976 extended the limitation to interviews of anyone affiliated with not only the IRA but its political wing, the Sinn Féin party, as well as unionist paramilitaries (Horgan, 2002, p. 120).

Opening Up: Media and Modernization

Even as Article 31 restrictions censored public affairs coverage related to the IRA and the Troubles, an expanding diversity of sources opened the Irish media landscape to a variety of cultural influences from the early 1960s onward. This contributed to the general evolution of Irish identity away from its insular, rural, Gaelic-Catholic ethos during an era in which “the authority of any single piece of information was open to question in a way that had not been true in preceding decades” (Morash, 2010, p. 182).

This especially could be seen in the expansion of broadcast outlets. British services reaching Ireland grew, both from the BBC—which added a second TV channel in 1964—and from the commercial ITV (Independent Television), which expanded in 1959 from England to Northern Ireland. (There, it was called UTV, for Ulster Television.) RTÉ finally expanded its televised offerings in 1978 with Channel 2, which was designed to present original programming but also aired imported material, especially from BBC, ITV, and American programmers.

Another source of alternative broadcast content was so-called pirate radio, unauthorized broadcasts that provided programs which audiences desired but could not find on RTÉ radio, especially popular music. The same happened in Great Britain, where pirates broadcast content unavailable on the BBC (Chapman, 1990). In Ireland, pirate broadcasts included Irish musicians who used a pop approach, as well as groups that combined the modern and traditional musical styles (Morash, 2010). About 25 such stations were in operation by the late 1970s, appealing to “an audience of young people tired of traditional radio” (Horgan, 2002, p. 125). To attract this audience, RTÉ Radio 2 went on the air in 1979 and Lyric FM joined the airwaves in 1999. Pirate radio was effectively outlawed in Ireland, as it was in Great Britain, with legislation in 1988 that made it illegal to advertise on pirate stations, thus depriving them of their financial support. The same legislation authorized issuance of commercial radio licenses. Once it became possible to broadcast legally in a commercial format, some of the former “pirates” simply went legitimate and applied for the new commercial licenses. Others became the backbone of the community radio movement (Day, 2007).

Irish “pirates” also forced the issue to some extent regarding Irish-language broadcasts when they set up Saor Raidió Chonamara (Free Radio Connemara) to present material over the airwaves in Irish. At least partly in response to the pirates, RTÉ in 1972 started its Irish-language station, Raidió na Gaeltachta, which operated from the same Irish-speaking Connemara region where the pirates had set up. It would take nearly 20 more years before a television station specifically devoted to Irish programming would be added, with Teilifís na Gaeilge (later TG4) debuting in October 1996. Like Raidió na Gaeltachta, it was (and still is) based in Connemara.

Pirate radio may have forced the government’s hand in both the commercial and Irish-language arenas, but still Ireland was perhaps unique in the developed world for the length of time it took for a commercial broadcast sector to develop. In part, this may reflect vestiges of the conservatism and fears that commercial media would lead to coarsening of culture that were central to the Dáil debates in the 1920s (radio) and 1950s (television) over beginning broadcast services. But those concerns were accompanied by fears over what commercial competition could do to RTÉ’s revenue base given that advertising was a necessary component above the license fee to keep the service solvent. As a result, Ireland’s first commercial radio did not appear until July 1989 with stations in Dublin and Mayo. This did, as feared, cut into RTÉ radio’s listenership, with some local stations quickly outdrawing the national broadcaster in their area (Morash, 2010, p. 207). Irish authorities took even longer to allow development of commercial television, with the first station (TV3) not going on the air until September 1998.

This combination of myriad content sources—many imported—and technological advances, especially satellite television and the Internet, meant that the “culture of censorship” in Irish media that began in the 1920s was no longer sustainable (Morash, 2010, p. 215). Membership in the European Union further eroded the government’s control over broadcasting because of EU regulations superseding national ones. With that, “the sense that Ireland could live within its own little media bubble was given another dent” (Morash, 2010, p. 216).

Conclusion

Both tradition and state policy—enforced when necessary with legislation authorizing censorship—were historically directed toward maintaining an Irish media system that reflected and supported the traditional, conservative, Irish-Ireland identity developed by the cultural nationalists that animated the country’s first several decades. However, the evolution of Irish media, especially broadcasting, from approximately 1960 onward helped to reverse the two dominant features of that identity dating to the 19th century: isolation from the rest of the world, and the cleavage of Irish/British language and culture (Morash, 2010, p. 221). This reversal made for a certain level of “culture shock,” but ultimately it was a beneficial one.

Irish culture had for so long been haunted by the notion of its own insularity, provinciality and a certain kind of prudishness that even though the sudden immersion in a new kind of instantaneous global culture felt threatening…. It also carried with it an invigorating sense of liberation.

(Morash, 2010, pp. 216–217)

In the current age, “it is arguable that the defining feature of Irish culture in the early 21st century is neither prosperity nor its opposite but a deeply engrained mediated connectedness between Ireland and the rest of the world” (Morash, 2010, p. 225). The nation’s preeminent media organization, RTÉ, recognizes the part it has to play in that interconnected environment. “RTÉ has responsibility for framing the agenda through which people in Ireland (and in the diaspora) will develop their understanding of what it means to be Irish, and of what form Irish identity should take in the 21st century,” its board chairwoman wrote in a 2016 newspaper opinion column. “Public service broadcasting has a central role to play in the re-imagining of the nation and in developing—for all—a sense of cultural citizenship” (Doherty, 2016).

References

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Cathcart, R. (1984). Broadcasting: The early decades. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 39–50. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

Chapman, R. (1990). The 1960s pirates: A comparative analysis of Radio London and Radio Caroline. Popular Music, 9(2), 165–178.

Clark, S. (1979). Social origins of the Irish land war. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cohen, A. (1985). The symbolic construction of community. Chichester, England: Ellis Horwood Ltd.

Collins, R. (1990). Culture, communication, and national identity: The case of Canadian television. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Cork Examiner. (1962). Great hopes in TV service. Cork Examiner, Jan. 1, 1962, p. 1.

Page PDF. Retrieved from: www.irishnewsarchive.com/wp/radio-eireanns-television-31-december-1961/.

Cullen, L.M. (1984). Establishing a communications system: News, post and transport. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 18–29. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

Day, R. (2007). Community radio and community development. In Day, R., Bicycle highway: Celebrating community radio in Ireland, 55–68. Dublin: Liffey Press.

Doherty, M. (2016, Dec. 10). We need to talk about the Irish mediascape. Irish Times online. Retrieved from: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/moya-doherty-we-need-to-talk-about-the-irish-mediascape-1.2899971.

Gibbons, L. (1996). Transformations in Irish culture. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Hajkowski, T. (2010). The BBC and national identity in Britain, 1922–53. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Hayward, K. (2009). Irish nationalism and European integration. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Horgan, J. (2002). Irish media: A critical history since 1922. London: Routledge.

Irish Independent. (1962). Irish TV opens on high note. Irish Independent, Jan. 1, 1962, p. 1. Page PDF. Retrieved from: www.irishnewsarchive.com/wp/radio-eireanns-television-31-december-1961/.

Irish Press. (1962). President opens Irish TV: Keep our distinctive characteristics alive, says Mr. de Valera. Irish Press, Jan. 1, 1962, p. 1. Page PDF. Retrieved from: www.irishnewsarchive.com/wp/radio-eireanns-television-31-december-1961/.

Legg, M. (1999). Newspapers and nationalism: The Irish provincial press 1850–1892. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Mac Conghail, M. (1984). The creation of RTÉ and the impact of television. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 64–74. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

Morag, N. (2008). The emerald isle: Ireland and the clash of Irish and Ulster-British nationalisms. National Identities, 10(3), 263–280.

Moran, D. (2006). The philosophy of Irish-Ireland. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.

Morash, C. (2010). A history of the media in Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Murphy, J. (1984). Censorship and the moral community. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 51–63. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

Nowlan, K. (1984). The origins of the press in Ireland. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 7–17. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

O’Brien, M. (2014). Other voices: The Bell and documentary journalism. In O’Brien, M. & Larkin, F. (eds.) Periodicals and journalism in 20th century Ireland, 158–172. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Ó Tuathaigh, G. (1984). The media and Irish culture. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 97–110. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

Raidió Teilifís Éireann. (Undated b). RTE archives, De Valera exhibition. President First On New Television Service 1961. Retrieved from: www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/681-history-of-rte/704-rte-1960s/139351-opening-night-presidents-address/.

Raidió Teilifís Éireann. (Undated c). RTE archives, 1920s exhibition. Douglas Hyde Opens 2RN 1 January 1926. Retrieved from: www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/681-history-of-rte/682-rte-1920s/289997-first-radio-broadcast-from-2rn-1-january-1926/.

Raidió Teilifís Éireann. (Undated d). RTE archives, 1940s exhibition. RTE 1940s. Retrieved from: www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/681-history-of-rte/684-rte-1940s/.

Ward, B. (2014). Border identities in Galway and Derry. Irish Studies Review, 22(1), 53–62.

Watson, I. (2003). Broadcasting in Irish: Minority language, radio, television and identity. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

4
Contemporary Irish Media

In their well-regarded model for comparative media studies, Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini group Ireland with the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the North Atlantic (liberal democracy) portion of the model (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). This makes logical and intuitive sense, given that all three countries have fully developed economies with extensive systems of commercial and public-service media; high standards of living with thorough integration into the global economy; and a common heritage of language, culture, and law in the English tradition. As Hallin and Mancini demonstrate, the media systems of these four nations are substantially akin to one another, and also substantially different from media systems of other countries in Western Europe. (Their analysis excludes other parts of the world.) Those other European nations fall into two groupings, the democratic corporatists of northern Europe and the polarized pluralists of southern Europe.

But a more interesting application of this model with regard to Ireland shows that over a relatively short time frame, the Irish media system has demonstrated characteristics of all three categories within the model. The evolution from one system to the next closely matches the time frame that can be observed with regard to evolving characteristics of Irish identity as per Watson (2003). The eras, as he defines them, are a “traditionalist” period from the 1920s through roughly the 1950s; modernization in the 1960s and 1970s; and adoption of a neoliberal, globalized approach from the 1980s to the present. Media evolution through the distinctions in Hallin and Mancini’s framework overlapping those time periods thus offers another lens to examine the Irish media system’s development from one tightly integrated into the national identity to a more diverse modern system relating to a more pluralized identity. That development over time is examined here to introduce an overview of the contemporary Irish media environment.

Three Systems Comparative Model

Hallin and Mancini’s stated purpose in defining their model is to “develop a framework for comparing media systems and a set of hypotheses for how they are linked structurally and historically to the development of the political system” (2004, p. 5). As a starting point they use another well-regarded model of media systems called the Four Theories of the Press in which media reflect and shape aspects of the social and political structures in which they operate (Siebert et al., 1956). The four theories are libertarian, social responsibility, authoritarian, and totalitarian, representing a spectrum of government control and political integration of the media ranging from least to greatest. The libertarian model, for example, is marked by an absence of government control of media. The United States, with the First Amendment to its Constitution barring government restrictions on media, comes closest to this model. The United States is not a “pure” libertarian model, however, because the US government still maintains some legal authority over media operations, such as Federal Communication Commission regulation of broadcasting and Federal Trade Commission regulation of advertising. Under the social responsibility theory—often associated with the United Kingdom and the BBC—a free-press model exists, but within a framework of substantial government control to protect against irresponsibility. In the United Kingdom, for example, libel laws are more restrictive than in the United States. In an authoritarian system, government controls up to outright censorship dictate what the media may present. Under the totalitarian theory, media are not only censored but used as a propaganda tool for totalitarian governments.

In updating the Four Theories model with their comparative framework, Hallin and Mancini say their purpose is not to classify individual systems but rather to identify patterns of relationships for media, politics, and economics within and among countries. They deny a quest for a normative model, saying instead that studying patterns and relationships is useful in understanding normative questions such as the relationship of commercialism and political influence to media independence. They also emphasize that even within the identified groupings, variability can be found. Taking the four North Atlantic/liberal countries, for example, all have vigorous commercial media and strong press freedom. But the United States is the most commercialized and also the one with the strongest institutional and legal barriers against state intervention in the media, notably the First Amendment.

A good example of these differences can be seen in the regulation of each country’s broadcast system. The United States does regulate its broadcast system through the FCC, notably through issuance of licenses for television and radio broadcast stations to use frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Such licenses are granted as a public trust, with those holding them bound to use them in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” Yet within those bounds, license holders are almost entirely commercial entities. (The “almost” qualification is because some are held by nonprofit organizations, notably Public Broadcasting System affiliates but also independent nonprofit organizations such as college radio stations. This is a small fraction of the overall US broadcast system.) However, the United States has nothing like the state-chartered and government-funded public broadcast systems of Canada’s CBC, Ireland’s RTÉ, and the United Kingdom’s BBC. Additionally, the US First Amendment would prevent enactment of anything remotely like Article 31 of Ireland’s 1960 Broadcast Act, which allowed the government to censor RTÉ on its coverage of the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles. So, while the media systems of the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom are more alike than they are different, differences among them do exist.

Hallin and Mancini’s model uses four characteristics (which they call “dimensions”) to define differences among media systems:

- media markets, measured primarily by the historical development and prevalence of mass circulation newspapers;

- political parallelism, which is the degree of connection between the media and political parties or other political actors such as labor unions;

- the degree of journalistic professionalism found in a country, by which they primarily mean level of independence and public-service orientation (one way to think of this is how thoroughly journalists follow the characteristics set out by Siebert, Petersen, and Schramm’s social responsibility theory); and

- the degree of state involvement in the media.

In using these dimensions to evaluate the media systems of various nations in Western Europe (plus the United States and Canada), Hallin and Mancini find three groupings, which follow roughly geographic lines (2004, p. 67):

Mediterranean countries (France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain) are said to comprise a polarized pluralist model, with lower newspaper circulation and more of it focused on elite readership than mass read-ership, a high degree of political parallelism, relatively weak journalistic professionalism (independence), and strong involvement of the state in the media system.

North Atlantic countries (United States, Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom) in the liberal democracy model are essentially a mirror image of the Mediterranean ones, with strong development of commercially supported mass circulation newspapers, low levels of political parallelism, strong journalistic professionalism and independence, and relatively low involvement of the state with media.

Northern European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland) follow a democratic corporatist model situated between the other two with high newspaper circulation and strong journalistic independence, but accompanied by high levels of political parallelism (notably strong party presses) and high involvement of the state in the media system, especially in the form of press subsidies and strong public-service broadcasting systems. (Although it is grouped with the other North Atlantic countries, the United Kingdom’s strong partisan press and powerful BBC means it comes close to fitting in this grouping also.)

Finally, these models and characteristics, especially as applied to any individual country, are not static but subject to evolution over time. Generally speaking, that trend has been toward the liberal model. This can be attributed partly to American cultural imperialism influencing European media values and systems, especially since the 1960s (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 256). But another influence is the gemeinschaft to gesselschaft transformation implicit in social modernization, specifically a form of it called differentiation theory. Hallin and Mancini use this theory, based on ideas from Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons about specialization of functions in society, to explain media evolution concurrent with social evolution.

Under differentiation theory, as societies modernize, social functions become differentiated and separated, such as governance from religion (separation of church and state) or governance from economics (development of a free economy). Increased specialization of social functions increases the adaptability of society, contributing to modernization. But for differentiation to succeed, integrating structures such as a more independent and specialized communication system must emerge (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, pp. 76–77). This helps to explain the general shift they identify in which media systems demonstrate more characteristics of the liberal model as societies modernize. Liberal model characteristics such as journalistic independence, commercial pluralization, and separation of state and media conform more closely to more modernized, specialized social structures (p. 30).

Comparing Ireland’s Media Systems Over Time

As described in Chapters 2 and 3, modernization of Irish society beginning in the 1960s was paralleled by evolution of Irish national identity from an “Irish Ireland” rooted in Gaelic-Catholic-rural values toward a more cosmopolitan view. The Irish media system underwent a similar evolution from being tightly controlled by custom and by government (to reflect and support the traditional Irish-Ireland identity) into being more open and plural-istic. The characteristics of Hallin and Mancini’s three models provide a framework for better understanding of this evolution.

Early Years: Polarized Pluralism

Examination of Ireland’s media, political, and cultural systems in the pre-revolutionary period and early era of the Free State clearly show it to be operating in a polarized pluralist manner at that time. Cultural nationalists and political leaders sought to symbolically construct an Irish-Ireland identity built around Gaelic-Catholic values and the idyll of the West. This was seen in the work of the Literary Revival and Gaelic League but also through provincial newspapers that were nationalist in their outlook (Legg, 1999). It’s also worth noting that even in the highly nationalist rural West, newspaper readership could be split along political lines, as Ward (2014) illustrates in his analysis of a unionist paper in Galway and a nationalist one in Derry. Metropolitan papers in Dublin also took sectarian sides, with the Irish Times being unionist and the Irish Independent being nationalist (favoring home rule). This fulfills the first criterion Hallin and Mancini set out in describing a polarized pluralist environment. Rather than having early development of mass-circulation newspapers, as the United States did with its mid-19th-century “penny press,” Ireland had a more fragmented system of elite, niche readership into the early 20th century.

As the Irish-Ireland identity took hold, it was converted for political purposes, starting with the 1916 Easter Rising but also becoming the animating spirit of the Free State in its early years (Hayward, 2009). In this environment, a strong degree of political parallelism can be identified, another characteristic of the polarized pluralist model. Metropolitan and provincial presses remained partisan, including the logical extension of having a newspaper, the Irish Press, controlled by the leaders of a major political party, Fianna Fáil. Finally, in its early years the evolving Irish media system featured strong state involvement, a third characteristic of the polarized pluralist framework. During this time, the government was not the least bit shy about deep intervention in the media system, from the Film Censorship Act in 1923 to the 1926 Committee on Evil Literature and subsequent 1929 Censorship Act to a constitution (in 1937) allowing free expression only to the degree that it would not undermine public order or morality. Setting up a state-run radio system with a specific charge of “maintaining and consolidating the national identity” (Gibbons, 1996, p. 70) is consistent with this approach.

Differentiation theory offers a similar perspective. The fledgling state first adopted, then maintained and even promoted, a national identity that was symbolically constructed by cultural nationalists as a means of establishing Irish uniqueness. By design and policy, the Irish media/political/cultural system of the early Free State era was as undifferentiated as it could be. This lack of differentiation offered fertile ground for a polarized pluralist media system to take root.

Midcentury Shift to Democratic Corporatism

Although Ireland did not have early development of a mass-circulation press, which is a hallmark of the democratic corporatist and liberal democratic models, it did have eventual development of one. As modernization began to come to Ireland in the mid-20th century, the Irish Times and Irish Independent went from being Dublin publications for elite readers on the unionist and nationalist sides, respectively, to being popular and widely circulated national papers focused on professional journalistic coverage. But in the democratic corporatist model, such newspapers exist alongside party presses and also those associated with other organized social groups. In this era, de Valera’s Irish Press served as the voice of Fianna Fáil, targeted to the party’s voters, and publications such as the republican An Poblacht also could be found. Significantly, however, de Valera insisted that the Press not be a pure house organ but one organized separately from the party and financially self-supporting to maintain a degree of journalistic credibility (Horgan, 2002). In this sense, even that paper was dedicated to one of the hallmarks of democratic corporatism, namely journalistic professionalism and independence.

Hallin and Mancini summarize the democratic corporatist system as one in which “media are seen to a significant extent as social institutions for which the state has responsibility, and press freedom coexists with relatively strong state support for and regulation of media” (2004, p. 74). In such a system, journalistic professionalism is high, while strong commercial media share the audience space with state-affiliated media. The introduction of Teilifís Éireann in the 1960s reflected the Irish media system following these principles. Teilifís Éireann, like its predecessor Raidió Éireann, came into being as a state-run service, and one that government officials kept carefully controlled. Although the new TV service would have advertising to help cover its costs, government officials opted for a state-chartered service largely because they feared negative social impacts would result from a purely commercial service. It would be nearly three decades before Ireland had commercial broadcast media, but through the 1960s and’70s RTÉ did share the broadcast marketplace with expanding offerings from the United Kingdom (both BBC and commercial stations), and also commercially supported pirate radio. National and local newspapers were all commercially based as well, of course. So, the state’s RTÉ service existed alongside commercial competitors, a key characteristic of the democratic corporatist system.

Growing press freedom and independence can be seen in this era, also. The government retained a theoretically powerful control over media with the stated but proscribed constitutional protection of the free press and an explicit right of censorship over RTÉ broadcasts in Article 31. But this power was exercised judiciously, with no general controls of the press and only a single Article 31 declaration, narrowly directed at RTÉ coverage of Irish Republican Party activities.

If the polarized pluralism era for the Irish media system can be seen as starting with the foundation of the state and lasting roughly until the introduction of Teilifís Éireann in the early 1960s, then the democratic corporatist period can be seen as running from then to the introduction of commercial broadcast media in the 1980s and’90s.

Liberal, Differentiated Media in the Modern Era

Hallmarks of the liberal model for the press are strong press freedom, commercial dominance of media, low political parallelism, wide diversity of media sources, and low state involvement with the media. This unquestionably describes Ireland today, which is why Hallin and Mancini classify it in the liberal model along with the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.

RTÉ remains the country’s dominant, and preeminent, media organization. But as Ireland has become one of the more thoroughly globalized countries of the world in the 21st century, its commercial media system has exploded alongside the state-run service. On its own website, RTÉ says that it “sits at the heart of Irish life and at the center of an increasingly interdependent Irish media sector” (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry e). RTÉ’s two main English-language television stations plus Irish-language station TG4 are augmented by Ireland’s own TV3 (offering three separate channels), along with the United Kingdom’s ITV and BBC. Satellite and cable expand the offerings to include hundreds more channels, including ones from Europe and the United States. In radio, RTE’s four core stations plus five more specialized digital stations are augmented by two commercial national stations and dozens of regional operations around the country (both commercial stations and low-power, nonprofit ones). In print, eight daily national newspaper titles, eight Sunday-only titles, and a multitude of commercial magazines are available, along with more than 100 local or regional papers (roughly half paid and half free distribution). Irish readers also consume a variety of imported newspapers and magazines, mostly from the United Kingdom. This system clearly reflects strong commercial influences, creating a wide diversity of sources characteristic of the liberal North Atlantic model.

Press freedom is strong in Ireland, with the country placing 14th out of 180 countries worldwide in 2017 as ranked by Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) (https://rsf.org/en/ranking). The United States, by comparison, ranked 43rd despite the presence of the First Amendment. Journalistic autonomy and professionalism also are high across the spectrum of reporting in Ireland, assisted by the Press Council that serves as an ombudsman for complaints of journalistic bad practice (www.presscouncil.ie/). As a result of all these factors, political parallelism and state intervention in the media system are both low, especially since the long-running Article 31 limitation against RTÉ coverage of IRA activities was lifted in 1994. Now, RTÉ’s mission statement calls for it to be an independent, accurate, and impartial news service (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry f).

As just one example of the changing times, one of the Republican leaders forbidden from appearing on RTÉ for the 23 years that the Article 31 ban was in place was Sinn Féin politician Gerry Adams. When the ban was lifted he became one of the first beneficiaries via an appearance on the Late, Late Show in 1994. Fast forward to 2016, and Adams was a near-constant presence on RTÉ and commercial news shows for several weeks early in the year. As national party leader for Sinn Féin, he was frequently interviewed on news shows and participated in several nationally televised party-leader debates during the time leading up to a Dáil general election in February 2016. Adams’s shift in status from persona non grata on RTÉ to one of the most recognizable faces on TV is emblematic of the Irish media system’s evolution.

Media System Overview

According to a 2016 report by the Reuters Institute for Digital News, presented with cosponsorship of the Broadcast Authority of Ireland, the Irish media ecosystem had 10 free-to-air TV channels (5 from RTÉ), 11 national radio stations (9 of them owned by RTÉ) and 31 commercially owned regional radio stations (Kirk et al., 2016). Approximately two dozen low-power community radio stations also served parts of the country. These broadcast outlets were accompanied by 8 national daily newspapers (each with an online counterpart), 8 national weekend titles, and more than 100 regional newspapers. Additionally, statistics for television viewership, radio listenership, and newspaper readership indicate that the Irish are voracious media consumers.

Although Ireland has developed robust commercial media, any discussion of the media system must begin with its still-dominant national broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann.

RTÉ: A Dominant Force

Reflecting some of the values set out when radio 2RN was created in the 1920s with BBC-inspired Reithian values, RTÉ still describes its vision as “to enrich Irish life; to inform, entertain and challenge; [and] to connect with the lives of all the people.” The organization reports its four-part mission is to:

- “deliver the most trusted, independent, Irish news service, accurate and impartial, for the connected age”;

- “provide the broadest range of value for money, quality content and services for all ages, interests and communities”;

- “reflect Ireland’s cultural and regional diversity and enable access to major events”; and

- “support and nurture Irish production and Irish creative talent.”

(Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry f).

The organization meets this mission with two primary television offerings, RTÉ One and RTÉ 2, along with a children’s channel RTÉjr and a 24-hour news channel, RTÉ News Now. Both RTÉ One and RTÉ 2 are also available in high definition versions, while RTÉ One +1 offers the main channel’s programs on a 1-hour delay.

Radio has four primary channels with distinct purposes:

- RTÉ Radio 1: “To remain the national flagship radio station through a mixed genre speech and music schedule for an adult audience”;

- RTÉ 2FM: “To grow its audience of 20–44 year olds through innovative programming, excellent music scheduling and increased sport and comedy content”;

- RTÉ lyric fm: “To provide a unique alternative listening choice for an audience of classical, world music and arts lovers”; and

- RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta: “To provide a national Irish language service that connects listeners to a personalized, authentic Gaeltacht and Irish language world.”

(Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry g, p. 5).

It also maintains five exclusively digital radio stations: RTÉ Radio 1 Extra, RTÉ Pulse, RTÉ Gold, RTÉ 2XM, and RTÉjr Radio.

The organization’s website features updated news postings (general news, sports, business, and entertainment) along with program descriptions, online streaming for TV and radio, and other services. RTÉ is funded by a household license fee of €160 per year, plus advertising revenues. The organization says that 92 percent of the country’s households are licensed, enforced by a penalty of €1,000 for owning an unlicensed television. RTÉ also operates Saorview, a free-to-air digital television service that carries RTÉ One, RTÉ 2 HD, RTÉ News Now, RTÉjr, RTÉ One +1, and all of RTÉ’s FM and digital radio services. Saorview also carries three channels from commercial television provider TV3, as well as the Irish-language station TG4 and a channel devoted to government programming called Oireachtas TV. RTÉ is the most watched and most listened to broadcast outlet, and the nation’s number one choice as a news outlet (Kirk et al., 2016). But it’s not alone in the field.

Other Broadcasting

By the standards of other parts of the developed world, Ireland’s commercial broadcasting sector was late in developing. The country had no indigenous commercial radio until 1989 and no commercial television until 1998, although signals from the United Kingdom’s Independent Television network (ITV) could reach the country from western England and Wales and from Northern Ireland (where it was known as UTV, for Ulster Television).

Commercial Television

The first Irish-based commercial station, TV3, was started by Canadian media company Canwest Global Communications and went on the air in September 1998. It went through several ownership changes over the years before being purchased in 2015 by Virgin Media Ireland, a division of US-based Liberty Media. It was not until 2015 that ITV (as UTV) finally came to Ireland, and its presence didn’t last long. Less than 18 months later, in mid-2016, UTV Ireland was also purchased by Virgin, and rebranded as be3. It joined flagship channel TV3 and channel 3e to make for a three-channel set of offerings within the TV3 group (Slattery, 2016a). So, Ireland essentially has a two-firm oligopoly structure for broadcast television consisting of RTÉ and Virgin Media. Hundreds of other channels including UK and US imports such as Sky TV, Comedy Central, Fox, and Netflix reach consumers via satellite and cable. However, the market control extends there also because Virgin is a major supplier of Internet and cable TV services, serving more than a quarter of the nation’s 1.7 million households. In early 2017 the company had more than 450,000 subscribers, most of whom had Internet/cable bundles (Slattery, 2017).

Commercial Radio

Commercial radio in Ireland was made possible by a revision to the Broadcasting Act in 1988 that put an end to then-popular pirate radio by making it illegal to advertise on unauthorized stations. But the same legislation authorized the Broadcast Authority to issue commercial licenses, and the first commercial stations went on the air on opposite sides of the country (Dublin and Mayo) a few days apart in July 1989. Alongside RTE’s stable of offerings, the commercial system has now grown to include 2 national stations and approximately 30 regional/local stations, including several in Dublin and the remainder around the country.

One of the first commercial licenses that was issued went to Denis O’Brien, who used it to launch what is now the nationally broadcast Today FM 100–102. O’Brien’s media operations over time have grown into the holding company Communicorp, which owns a wide range of other media properties including more than 50 broadcast stations spread across 10 countries, mobile phone services, and newspapers. Its Irish radio properties include both Today FM and the country’s other national station, Newstalk 106–108, plus three regional stations (two in Dublin, one in Limerick). Irish radio isn’t as concentrated as TV but does have some chain ownership, including UK-based News Corp’s ownership of seven local/regional stations.

Community Radio

Alongside local commercial stations are a number of nonprofit community radio stations, generally serving smaller geographic areas or specialized niches. These include college, religious, and Irish-speaking audiences. Community radio licensing was authorized in the same 1988 Broadcasting Act that outlawed the pirates and led to commercial stations. It took somewhat longer for the first community stations to be established, however. In 1995, 6 years after the first commercial stations went on the air, 11 licenses of 18 months each were issued in a pilot program for community stations designed to cover more limited service areas. At the end of the trial, nine of them—including three college stations—were fully licensed by the Broadcast Authority (Kissane, 2007).

From the beginning community radio operators saw themselves as filling a different niche in the media ecosystem than their national counterparts, certainly, but even different from local commercial stations.

Commercial media have little interest in non-commercial matters, so it falls to community radio to provide the town hall, the market square, the agora or the public forum for people to define themselves, construct their own identities and to decide together how to deal with issues of interest or concern.

(Byrne, 2007, p. 21)

For many of those involved with the stations, the goal was community building and community development, using radio as a tool that would complement other community-development enterprises such as education and job-skills training. As Rosemary Day, a longtime advocate for and chronicler of community radio, described it,

Media do not create community but they can help build it…. Community radio seeks to connect the entire community to itself and to enrich the entire community as a whole…. [Community stations] are seen as providing a communications link for the community and of presenting the community to itself in a positive light. The aim of building the community which they serve is the primary aim of all community radio stations.

(Day, 2007, pp. 60–61)

Many of the current community stations are affiliated with each other through the Community Radio Forum of Ireland, also known as CRAOL. This organization provides support, training, and liaison to the government broadcast regulators for these stations. On its website (www.craol.ie/about) the organization lists 22 currently operating stations and 21 other aspirant stations in various stages of the regulatory approval process. Some of the aspirants have temporary or limited-hours broadcast licenses and others have no over-the-air presence yet.

Broadcast Audiences

Not surprisingly given its long history—including longtime monopoly status—audience ratings for RTÉ’s main television and radio channels far surpass all other outlets. RTÉ One television in 2016 had an average 25.2 percent share of evening viewership. That was approximately equal to the next four most popular channels combined: TV3 at 7.71 percent, UTV Ireland (now 3be) at 7.75 percent, RTÉ 2 at 7.22 percent, and BBC1 at 3.7 percent. (See Table 4.1. Statistics generated by Television Audience Measurement Ireland Ltd. and available at www.medialive.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6:channel-share-of-viewing&catid=8&Itemid=275).

Research shows that the Irish are avid radio listeners. RTÉ leads the way nationally, but local and regional stations typically are more popular

Table 4.1 National Media

Daily Newspapers | Circulation [1]

Irish Independent | 97,104
Irish Times | 66,251
Irish Sun | 58,498
Irish Daily Star | 50,732
Irish Daily Mail | 42,081
Herald | 40,847
Irish Daily Mirror | 35,787
Irish Examiner | 30,090
Sunday Newspapers |
Sunday Independent | 191,594
Sunday World | 149,652
Irish Mail on Sunday | 79,394
Sunday Times | 78,488
Irish Sun on Sunday | 56,241
Sunday Business Post | 30,244
Irish Sunday Mirror | 24,374
Irish People | 9,454
National Radio | Audience % [2]
RTÉ Radio 1 | 24
Today FM | 11
RTÉ 2FM | 10
Newstalk | 10
RTÉ lyric fm | 4
Local station in home area | 41
Television | Audience Share [3]
RTÉ One | 25.20
be3 | 7.75
TV3 | 7.71
RTÉ2 | 7.22
3e | 2.25

1 ABC July-December 2016 as reported by MediaLive.

2 Percentage of adults who listened yesterday as reported by MediaLive.

3 Audience share 6:00 to 11:59 p.m. as reported by MediaLive.

Table 4.2 Local Radio Stations

County | Type | Name and/or Call Letters

Carlow/Kilkenny | Commercial | KCLR 96FM
Cavan | Commercial | Northern Sound
Clare | Commercial | Clare FM
Clare | Nonprofit | Raidió Corca Baiscinn (Irish language)
Cork | Commercial | 96FM/C103
Cork | Commercial | Red FM 104-106
Cork | Nonprofit | Life FM (religious)
Cork | Nonprofit | UCC FM (college station)
Cork | Nonprofit | Community Radio Youghal
Cork | Nonprofit | Cork University Hospital
Donegal | Commercial | Highland Radio
Donegal/Sligo | Commercial | Ocean FM
Donegal | Nonprofit | SW Donegal Community Radio
Dublin | Commercial | 98FM
Dublin | Commercial | FM104
Dublin | Commercial | Q102
Dublin | Commercial | Radio Nova
Dublin | Commercial | SPIN 103.8
Dublin | Nonprofit | Liffey Sound FM
Dublin | Nonprofit | Near FM
Dublin | Nonprofit | Phoenix FM
Dublin | Nonprofit | Raidió na Life (Irish language)
Dublin | Nonprofit | Dublin South Community Radio
Dublin | Nonprofit | Dublin City FM Community Radio
Dublin | Nonprofit | Radio Maria (religious, Catholic)
Galway | Commercial | Galway Bay FM
Galway | Nonprofit | Flirt FM (college station)
Kerry | Commercial | Radio Kerry
Kildare | Commercial | KFM
Laois/Offaly/Westmeath | Commercial | Midlands 103
Leitrim/Longford | Commercial | Shannonside
Limerick | Commercial | 95FM
Limerick | Commercial | SPINSW
Limerick | Nonprofit | East Limerick Community Radio
Limerick | Nonprofit | West Limerick Community Radio
Limerick | Nonprofit | Wired FM (college station)
Louth | Commercial | LMFM
Louth | Nonprofit | Dundalk FM
Mayo | Nonprofit | Connemara Community Radio
Mayo | Commercial | Midwest Radio
Mayo | Nonprofit | Community Radio Castlebar
Mayo | Nonprofit | Claremorris Community Radio
Meath | Commercial | LMFM
Monaghan | Commercial | Northern Sound
Roscommon | Commercial | Shannonside
Roscommon | Nonprofit | ROS FM
Tipperary | Commercial | Tipp FM
Tipperary | Nonprofit | Tipperary Mid West Radio
Waterford | Commercial | WLRFM
Waterford | Commercial | BEAT FM (five-county regional)
Westmeath | Nonprofit | Athlone Community Radio
Wexford | Commercial | South East Radio
Wicklow | Commercial | Sunshine 106.8 (based in Bray)
Wicklow | Commercial | East Coast FM

Sources: MediaLive (www.medialive.ie); Broadcast Authority of Ireland (BAI) (www.bai.ie/en/broadcasters/)

than the national outlet in their localities. A 2016 audience analysis from Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) found that 83 percent of all adults listen to some radio on a typical day, including 45 percent of whom listen to some national radio and 34 percent who listen to at least one RTE offering. (Adult listeners are defined as those age 15 and older.) As with its television counterpart, RTÉ Radio 1 is the single most popular station with 25 percent listenership. National commercial stations Today FM and Newstalk have 12 percent and 10 percent of adults, respectively, listening on a typical day.

However, 58 percent of adults across the nation report listing to regional or local broadcasts on a typical day. Regional radio is especially popular in the West, with 65 percent listenership in County Cork, 67 percent in several southwest counties pooled for audience data (Limerick, Clare, Kerry, and parts of Tipperary and Laois) and 72 percent in the northwest region (Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Longford, Leitrim, Sligo, and Donegal). (JNLR data available from Broadcast Authority of Ireland at www.bai.ie/en/news-and-information/research/).

For news consumption, RTÉ again leads the way with 59 percent saying they get news from RTÉ at least once per week and 33 percent listing it as their main news source. The next-most popular news source is the largest newspaper, the Irish Independent, with 25 percent turning to it at least once a week and 5 percent listing it as their primary news source (Kirk et al., 2016).

Newspapers

Research into newspaper readership shows that the Irish consume that medium as voraciously as they do radio, with about 82 percent getting news either in print or online (or both) from a newspaper organization each day. This includes 52 percent who look at a daily paper in print, and 61 percent who read either in print or online. Also, 52 percent see a Sunday paper in print, and 55 percent read Sunday editions either in print or online. (Joint National Readership Survey [JNRS] data available from NewsBrands Ireland at http://newsbrandsireland.ie/data-centre/readership/).

Readership, however, is not the same as circulation (actual copies sold) because it includes pass-along readers (e.g., multiple people in a household) and online consumption. Although online readership has been rising, newspaper circulation in Ireland has been in decline in recent years; it dropped 5.7 percent year-over-year from mid-2015 to mid-2016 for daily titles, while the Sunday print market declined 6.3 percent in the same time frame (Slat-tery, 2016b). JNRS’s tally of 3 million people reading every day is between five and six times larger than daily circulation.

National Newspapers

In the bifurcated Irish system, nearly all daily papers are nationally distributed, while local papers tend to be weeklies. The national newspaper scene features eight daily titles and eight Sunday publications, a combination of quality broadsheets and sensationalist tabloids. All but one of the national dailies are published from Dublin, the exception being the Cork-based Irish Examiner.

Several titles have common ownership. The dominant organization is Independent News and Media Corp. (INM), descended from one of the original Irish nationalist papers, William Martin Murphy’s Irish Independent. The company is now under the control of another major Irish businessman, Denis O’Brien. In addition to owning several Irish radio properties, O’Brien’s Communicorp owns 30 percent of INM, making him principal shareholder of the company. INM still publishes the Independent, which is far and away the market leader in daily circulation at nearly 100,000 as of late 2016. The next largest paper is the Irish Times, with about 66,000 circulation. INM also publishes three other daily titles: the Herald, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Irish Daily Star (50 percent ownership). The combined circulation of the quartet accounts for more than half of the 432,000 newspapers sold each day in Ireland.

INM is also the dominant force in the Sunday market, with the Sunday Independent again the market leader and INM’s Sunday World the second largest. Together, they account for more than half of the more than 600,000 Sunday paper sales. (Circulation statistics from Audit Bureau of Circulation available through the newspaper trade association NewsBrands Ireland at http://newsbrandsireland.ie/data-centre/circulation/). Joint National Read-ership Survey (JNRS) readership numbers show INM properties as the best read papers in Ireland as well. Readership figures, which account for both pass along of printed papers and online readership, surpass circulation, and in mid-2016 were reported for the daily Independent at 688,000; the Sunday Independent at 921,000; the daily Herald at 255,000; and the Sunday World at 660,000 (www.inm.ie/blog/independent-news-media-jnrs-figures/). JNRS places readership of the Irish Times at 472,000 daily.

Local/Regional Papers

This robust national publication scene is augmented by more than 100 local/regional papers, about half of which require a paid subscription or single-copy purchase and the other half of which are free distribution supported by advertising sales. Only one of these, the Cork-based Evening Echo, is a daily, with 11,000 circulation in mid-2016. The vast majority of the others are published once a week. A few publish twice a week, and some others come out every other week. Many of them have deep roots, dating to the 19th century or earlier. Legg’s catalog (1999) of provincial papers from 1852 to 1892 includes 15 that are still operating today. About half of Irish adults read a weekly newspaper in 2016 (Galway Readership Study, 2017).

A community of any size will often have multiple titles. County Galway, for example, has two paid papers, the Connacht Tribune (21,000 circulation) based in Galway City and The Tuam Herald (8,200 circulation) in one of the outlying towns. Two free-distribution papers, the Galway Advertiser (29,000) and Galway Independent (22,000), are also published there. All are weeklies; the Tribune has a second edition called the Galway City Tribune with much of the same news and ads but some pages reworked to serve the city specifically. Significantly, the free sheets often have robust editorial content and staffing, making them real news sources rather than just advertising vehicles. The Galway Independent, for example, lists an editor, two reporters, and eight free-lance columnists and correspondents on its staff (www.galwayindependent.com/ourteam). Its sister publication, the Cork Independent, based in Cork but owned by the same company, has two editors, two reporters, a photographer, and several freelancers (www.corkindependent.com/ourteam).

According to data available from MediaLive, total combined circulation across all regional papers (paid and free) is about 1.8 million, including 580,000 paid. (See Tables 4.3 and 4.4.) In a country of 1.7 million occupied households (2016 census), this is substantial market penetration. Individual circulation of papers across the whole group has a mean of 15,600 and median of 10,500. Among the approximately 60 paid papers, the mean is 9,300 and median 8,500, with the smaller values reflecting the fact that they must be purchased rather than picked up for free. Only a handful of the papers have circulation certified by ABC; the figures reported are mostly publishers’ statements.

Many of these local papers are part of groups that own multiple titles, mirroring the concentration on the national landscape where Denis O’Brien’s INM and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp control half the titles and 60 percent of the circulation. About two thirds of the paid local papers accounting for

Table 4.3 Local Newspaper Circulation (Paid)

County | Title | Circulation

Carlow | Carlow Nationalist | 12,736
Carlow | Carlow People | 12,000
Cavan | Anglo Celt | 11,911
Clare | Clare Champion | 15,742
Clare | Clare People | 8,753
Cork | East Cork Journal | 9,500
Cork | Evening Echo | 10,976
Cork | Southern Star | 13,500
Cork | Avondhu | 9,000
Cork | Carrigdhoun | 6,000
Cork | Vale/Mallow Star | 7,500
Cork | Weekly Observer | 8,000
Donegal | Donegal Democrat | 8,258
Donegal | Donegal Democrat (Peoples Press) | 5,851
Donegal | Donegal News/Derry People | 9,448
Donegal | Donegal Post | 4,085
Donegal | Inishowen Independent | 4,000
Dublin | Fingal Independent | 3,319
Galway | Connacht Tribune & City Tribune | 20,702
Galway | The Tuam Herald | 8,201
Kerry | Kerry's Eye | 24,917
Kerry | Kerryman | 19,886
Kildare | Kildare Nationalist | 12,736
Kildare | Leinster Leader | 5,778
Kildare | Liffey Champion | 7,500
Kilkenny | Kilkenny People | 10,591
Laois | Laois Nationalist | 12,736
Laois | Leinster Express | 8,280
Leitrim | Leitrim Observer | 6,487
Limerick | Limerick Chronicle | 9,000
Limerick | Limerick Leader | 13,420
Longford | Longford Leader | 7,167
Louth | Drogheda Independent | 6,852
Louth | Dundalk Democrat | 5,539
Louth | Argus (Dundalk) | 9,307
Mayo | Connaught Telegraph | 11,210
Mayo | Mayo News | 10,225
Mayo | Western People | 14,100
Meath | Meath Chronicle | 10,373
Offaly | Midland/Tullamore Tribune | 9,914
Offaly | Offaly Independent | 13,040
Roscommon | Roscommon Herald | 8,324
Sligo | Sligo Champion | 9,572
Sligo | Sligo Weekender | 6,491
Tipperary | Nationalist & Munster Advertiser | 8,783
Tipperary | Nenagh Guardian | 6,502
Tipperary | Tipperary Star | 6,639
Waterford | Dungarvan Leader | 7,500
Waterford | Dungarvan Observer | 10,000
Waterford | Munster Express | 5,389
Waterford | Waterford News & Star | 6,128
Westmeath | Athlone Topic | 11,500
Westmeath | Westmeath Examiner | 5,799
Westmeath | Westmeath Independent | 7,726
Wexford | Echo (Enniscorthy, Wexford, New Ross, Gorey) | 18,400
Wexford | Wexford People | 10,868
Wexford | Enniscorthy/Gorey Guardian | 7,277
Wexford | New Ross Standard | 5,781
Wicklow | Bray People | 3,944
Wicklow | Wicklow People | 10,050

Note. Adapted from MediaLive (www.medialive.ie), NewsBrands Ireland (http://newsbrandsireland.ie/local-and-regional-newspapers/), and Local Ireland (www.localireland.info/).

Table 4.4 Local Newspaper Circulation (Free)

County | Title | Circulation

Carlow | Carlow Courier | 12,000
Clare | Clare Courier | 20,000
Cork | Cork & County Advertiser | 20,000
Cork | Cork Advertiser | 10,000
Cork | Cork Independent | 25,000
Cork | Midleton & District News | 3,500
Cork | Corkman | 6,911
Cork | Grapevine | 6,000
Cork | West Cork People | 9,000
Cork | West Cork Times | 10,000
Donegal | Inish Times | 3,565
Donegal | Letterkenny Post | 15,000
Donegal | Letterkenny People | 5,000
Dublin | Clondalkin News | 10,000
Dublin | Dublin Gazette (7 titles) | 52,958
Dublin | Dublin People (3 titles) | 120,000
Dublin | Dublin Voice (2 titles) | 100,000
Dublin | Lucan News | 15,000
Dublin | North County Leader | 30,000
Dublin | Echo | 7,486
Dublin | Local News | 119,000
Dublin | Rathcoole & Saggart News | 5,000
Dublin | TallaghtNews | 30,000
Galway | Galway Advertiser | 29,026
Galway | Galway Independent | 21,765
Kerry | Killarney Advertiser | 8,000
Kerry | Killarney Outlook | 10,000
Kerry | Lee Valley Outlook | 6,500
Kerry | Sliabh Luachra Outlook | 3,000
Kerry | Tralee Outlook | 8,000
Kildare | Kildare Echo | 10,000
Kildare | Kildare Post | 15,000
Kildare | Kildare Times | 37,000
Kilkenny | Kilkenny Reporter | 14,000
Leitrim | North WestXpress | 30,000
Limerick | Limerick Post | 15,891
Louth | Drogheda Leader | 29,000
Louth | Dundalk Leader | 18,000
Mayo | Mayo Advertiser | 21,000
Mayo | North WestXpress | 30,000
Meath | Meath Coaster | 7,000
Meath | Meath Topic | 11,500
Monaghan | Northern Standard | 13,500
Offaly | Offaly Topic | 11,500
Roscommon | North WestXpress | 30,000
Roscommon | Roscommon People | 18,000
Sligo | North WestXpress | 30,000
Tipperary | South Tipp Today | 20,500
Tipperary | Tipp Tatler | 8,000
Waterford | Waterford Mail | 20,000
Waterford | Waterford Today | 20,000
Westmeath | Athlone Advertiser | 19,100
Westmeath | Westmeath Topic | 11,500
Wexford | Enniscorthy/Gorey Guardian | 7,277
Wexford | New Ross Standard | 5,781
Wexford | Chronicle (Wexford) | 22,500
Wicklow | Wicklow Times | 44,200
Wicklow | Wicklow Voice | 20,000

Note. Adapted from MediaLive (www.medialive.ie) and NewsBrands Ireland (http://newsbrandsireland.ie/local-and-regional-newspapers/).

60 percent of the total circulation in the class are owned by just four groups. One of them is INM, which in addition to owning the dominant daily and Sunday titles controls a dozen local titles with a combined circulation of nearly 99,000, or about 17 percent of total paid circulation nationwide. Other groups are Cork-based Landmark with 11 titles; Celtic Media from County Meath with seven; and Iconic Newspapers, owned by a UK media holding company with its Irish headquarters in Limerick, with 13.

Online Media

Ireland has 83 percent Internet penetration (Kirk, 2016) and nearly all of the legacy media outlets discussed have active online presences consisting of websites and often social media outlets as well (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, mobile apps). All of the national broadcast media and even many of the regional radio stations offer streamed content. RTÉ counts its online presence as one of its five “core” offerings, along with RTÉ One and RTÉ 2 television, and RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ 2FM radio. Its current 5-year plan sets a goal for rte.ie “to deliver RTÉ content to both Irish and international audiences through a first-class user experience and multi-platform, multi-device availability” (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, n.d., entry f, p. 5).

Ireland is starting to develop some digitally native online media, although it can be difficult to locate because no comprehensive index appears to exist. But a number of titles are gaining currency and followers, such as general news sites breakingnews.ie and thejournal.ie. Thejournal.ie bills itself as “a news website that invites its users to shape the news agenda. Read, share and shape the day’s stories as they happen, from Ireland, the world and the web” (www.thejournal.ie/about-us/). The Reuters Institute for Digital Journalism in 2017 ranked journal.ie as Ireland’s top online brand, just ahead of RTÉ’s online presence (Suiter, 2017, p. 77). Thejournal.ie has several affiliated sites including ones devoted to online classifieds (adverts.ie), real estate (daft.ie), business news (BusinessETC. ie and fora.ie), sports news (The42.ie), and entertainment (DailyEdge.ie). A similar outlet is Breakingnews.ie owned by Landmark Media, which also owns the Cork-based Irish Examiner (national daily), Evening Echo (regional daily), 11 regional weekly papers, and 3 radio stations. Dublin-based Maximum Media operates lifestyle sites joe.ie, which bills itself as “the Voice of Irish Men at home and abroad” (www.joe.ie/about) and its counterpart for women, her.ie. That site is described as a “gathering ground for Irish women to discuss and share personal stories, experiences and opinions” (www.her.ie/about).

Conclusion

The Irish are heavy consumers of all types of media, and Ireland’s contemporary media ecosystem is still dominated by its national public-service broadcaster RTÉ, alongside a fairly robust (if somewhat concentrated) commercial system for other national broadcasting and print media. Irish media has evolved to this point from a time when it was far less diverse and under far stronger control from governmental regulation and cultural forces that constrained media content. Social and economic modernization and diversification, accompanied by and abetted by evolution and growth of the media system, have been the story of the past half-decade of Irish history.

However, even though Ireland is a small country with a fairly finite media universe, this overview by necessity offers a limited review. For example, description here makes only passing reference to imported media, even though dozens of foreign TV channels are available on satellite and cable and UK newspapers are readily. Nor does it address Irish-language media, which will be covered in a chapter of its own. To be fair, the media left out comprise small sectors. In a listing of Ireland’s top 53 broadcast and cable channels, 41 of them register a nightly audience share of less than 1 percent. A dozen imported channels from Sky TV, one of the United Kingdom’s biggest cable/satellite networks, have a combined audience penetration of about 5 percent; another group of American imports tallies about 2 percent when added together (www.medialive.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6:channel-share-of-viewing&catid=8&Itemid=275). Readership of UK newspapers totals about 12,000 circulation for five daily titles and 9,500 for three Sunday papers, which is still only about 2 percent of the newspapers sold each day and 1 percent of Sunday circulation (www.medialive.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=415).

It is interesting, in fact, to view these findings in the historical context of Irish fears over media imperialism, such as the 1920s Committee on Evil Literature and the de Valera regime’s newspaper tariffs, both directed at controlling distribution of British titles. The fact that imported media now has such minimal market share actually serves as evidence of the robust development of indigenous Irish media, both public (RTÉ) and commercial, to serve the country’s information needs. Leaving out discussion of UK and US imports therefore does not adversely affect the purpose of this chapter to lay the groundwork for analyzing how Irish identity is reflected in Irish media. This analysis will focus on the local newspapers and their broadcast counterparts in local radio that are the heirs to the vigorous provincial press that played such a large role in formulating the Irish-Ireland nationalist identity of the early 20th century. The following chapters examine how local media continue to shape and reflect Irish identity today.

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5
Community Media Theory and Project Methodology

The general literature on how community media relate to the communities they cover is based primarily in the work of scholars who studied local newspapers—especially weeklies—in the United States. A central element of this research is that news organizations are integral parts of the community structure where they operate and that their coverage decisions relate to being a community stakeholder (Rosenberry, 2012). Community newspapers create a sense of place for readers (Buchanan, 2009) and foster social cohesion (Emke, 2001; Yamamoto, 2011). The theory building that comes from this research is central to assessing the impact of Irish community media on community identity.

Community Ties Hypothesis

Seminal research into community media and identity came out of the University of Chicago, which throughout the first half of the 20th century was known for its approach to using the city of Chicago as a living laboratory for its sociological investigations. Among the first of these was Robert Park’s examination of the immigrant press, which paid special attention to newspapers printed in the immigrants’ native languages. Immigrants who were still learning English turned to native-language presses in their American enclaves as a means of identification even as they were trying to assimilate to life in their new country and relate to the larger social structure. In a finding that echoes Tonnies and Durkheim about the tension of personal ties versus more impersonal ones in an age of modernization and fragmentation, these newspapers were a source of personalized connections that aided in this assimilation to the broader society (Park, 1922).

Another Chicago school researcher working a few decades after Park focused on the city’s neighborhood newspapers for a groundbreaking investigation of how local media both reflect and shape the community around them. Similar to Park’s findings relative to the immigrant press, Morris Janowitz said neighborhood newspapers supported a sense of local identity that aided in assimilation, which he called “specialization within generalization” that helped readers of the newspapers balance the need to identify with both local (neighborhood) and nonlocal (the larger city) geographies (1951, 1967).[1] As he put it, “The community press acts as a mechanism that seeks to maintain local consensus through emphasis on common values” (Janowitz, 1967, p. 11). A scholar who used Janowitz’s work as a springboard later observed that in doing this, local newspapers maintained the social significance of the neighborhood by acting “to create, reinforce and to extend feelings of interdependence and identification held by members of a community” (Stamm, 1985).

Conflict and controversy are staples of news coverage. However, Janowitz found that the neighborhood papers sought to build community consensus by de-emphasizing coverage of conflict within the neighborhood and instead addressing conflict between the neighborhood community and the larger social structure (the city or beyond). Overall, he found editors selected stories that would build and maintain local traditions and local identification, providing a sense of orientation for individuals within their neighborhoods. This can be seen as a concrete example of how boundaries are constructed symbolically to help define and protect community identity, a process described by Cohen (1985), as discussed in Chapter 2.

Building on Janowitz’s ideas, Edelstein and Larsen (1960) used a content analysis of neighborhood newspapers (in Cleveland, though, not Chicago) with a focus on how different types of content served to integrate individuals and groups into the community structure. They found, for example, that reports about local community associations developed a greater community consciousness by informing the public about the associations’ activities and promoting them. Accident and crime stories helped disclose threats to the community. News about the activities and achievements of individuals helped to enhance their standing. (This same sort of “democratization of prestige” had been one of Janowitz’s findings as well.) Edelstein and Larsen’s overall conclusion was that the community newspaper “facilitates the integration of the individual and the groups into the community structure” (1960, p. 497). These findings indicate how community media provide support for developing individual and social identity as associated with place, through the attributes of distinctiveness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy identified by Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996). The local press in this way helps to provide the “symbolic geography” (Graham, 1997) so crucial to the development of community identity.

Over time, the process by which community media and individuals’ identification with or attachment to their communities reinforce one another became an active area for media research. The focus here was on the significance local news had for helping individuals operate effectively in their communities. This was yet another expression of the Durkheim/Parsons differentiation as described by Hallin and Mancini (2004), or the generalization/specialization distinction explicated by Janowitz (and by Tonnies and Durkheim before him). Local communities exist alongside larger social structures (metro areas, states, nations) and the attachment that people develop for their local communities is reflected largely in their interaction with local media, especially newspapers.

In a series of studies through the 1980s, Keith Stamm added new dimensions to the investigation of these ties with recognition that geography was just one characteristic of the relationship. In this work, Stamm, like other scholars who study communities, noted the construct of “community” has many dimensions and no single definition. Working from components of community as listed by Hillery (1955), Stamm identified three key dimensions to account for in the interaction of media with the communities they cover. These key constructs were place, structure, and process (Stamm, 1985, p. 17). Place, of course, is geographically defined, whether by a natural feature (such as a coastline or other topography that establishes a boundary) or more commonly an administrative definition such as a town line or county border. Structure refers to the system of community institutions, which in many cases may correspond with administrative boundaries based in geography (e.g., agencies that serve particular municipalities). But the third and, according to Stamm, most significant component of community is process, defined as social interactions among members of the community. “Community as process gives emphasis to the social effort to create community through common endeavor and shared interest” (Stamm, 1985). This is almost identical to Cohen’s (1985) definition that members of a community have something in common that distinguishes them in a significant way from those outside the community. Davidson and Cotter (1997) found a correlation between community newspaper readership and psychological sense of community as defined by McMillan and Chavis (1986).

Stamm further proposed that the dynamic nature of community ties—how they would evolve over time—also was a critical feature to consider.

Communities have changed in ways that have resulted in community ties of all kinds becoming much more variable…. Perhaps more than anything else, the shape of communities to come will be influenced by how effectively people can share their perceptions of what communities could become.

(Stamm, 1985, pp. 154 & p. 191)

This proposes quite directly that community media and the ties that develop between those media and community members play a direct role in construction of a symbolically defined and bounded community as described by Cohen (1985) and Graham (1997). As one researcher put it, “The newspaper quite literally ‘places’ readers, and their locality, in the context of the world” (Buchanan, 2009, p. 64). Determining how this process plays itself out in a specifically Irish context is the central feature explored here.

Research Questions and Methodology

Qualitative research starts with a general question, or what Creswell (1998) calls a purpose statement, for the project overall. Once the general purpose statement is developed, it can be used to craft more specific research questions that will lay at the heart of the data collection and analysis. In these terms, the purpose statement for this project is: How do contemporary Irish community media shape and reflect their community identities? An answer to this question was sought with a multimethod qualitative analysis that sought to address the following research questions:

- What sorts of connections exist between local media and their communities?

- What types of content contribute to building this connection?

- Recognizing that Irish identity has evolved over time, to what degree, if any, is traditional (historical) Gaelic, Catholic, rural Irish identity still reflected in local media?

A qualitative approach “places an emphasis on understanding through looking closely at people’s words, actions and records” (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). With this in mind, the nature of the overall research question about shaping and reflecting identity, as well as the more specific questions elaborating on it, is better suited to qualitative than quantitative research. Answers to the questions were explored through examining the content of community media and conducting semistructured interviews with community journalists and others with perspective on the field. Semistructured interviews start with a detailed agenda or list of questions, but use an informal approach in order to explore avenues apart from the agenda that seem interesting or worthwhile. This interview data was augmented with qualitative content analysis of Irish community media. Such analysis starts with a protocol, or list of questions, ideas, or categories about which the investigator seeks to learn more from the documents, followed by reading, sorting, and classifying material related to those questions.

This two-pronged approach using content and interviews employs a technique of maximum variation sampling, or gathering data from a set of sources that represent a range of possibilities. Information collected across a range of data types providing diverse perspectives will supply the deepest possible understanding of the phenomenon under study (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). For example, when Paterson (2011) wanted to study the news-room cultures of two international television networks based in London, he relied on document analysis, video content analysis, participant observation of the newsrooms, and interviews. In addition, collecting different types of qualitative data from a variety of sources can result in individual observations that reinforce or corroborate one another, adding to the validity of the collection and analysis (Holliday, 2002).

Data Collection

Primary research for this project involved traveling around Ireland to conduct interviews about community media with practitioners, observers (mostly university instructors), and others about the project themes/research questions. A total of 25 in-person interviews were done, ranging from 30 to 60 minutes in length with an average of about 45 minutes. Addressing the concept of maximum variation sampling, the interviewees included 15 women and 10 men ranging in age from 80 to 24, with most in their 40s and 50s. They represented six different print/online news organizations, seven different broadcast organizations, and three other organizations (a broadcast trade organization and two different academic institutions). Their roles within the organizations ranged from entry level to middle and top management.

Four interviewees worked for broadcasters that present material in the Irish language, including three different national organizations and one local outlet (a community radio station). Irish-language speakers exist as geographic communities, in the five Gaeltacht regions where Irish is the primary spoken language. But they also constitute a community of interest as individuals outside the Gaeltachts who speak Irish fluently and seek opportunities to use the language, primarily in social settings but also in their media consumption. In this sense, even Irish-language media with national reach serve the purpose of building community identity among those who use the language with regularity and purpose, inside and outside the Gaeltachts.

Augmenting the interviews, printed versions of 14 different newspapers from six counties across the Republic were examined. These included 4 free-distribution papers and 10 paid newspapers.

Data Analysis

The central activity in analyzing qualitative data is identification of recurrent patterns or themes that give meaning to it by connecting with ideas or themes identified in the study’s purpose and research questions. Marshall and Rossman (2011) offer a six-step process for doing this, consisting of:

- organizing the data;

- reading and rereading the data in an immersive way;

- generating categories and themes;

- coding individual units (e.g., observations of particular events, specific interview comments) according to those categories or themes;

- interpreting meanings as this categorization takes place; and

- searching for alternate interpretations as a validity check.

Key Themes

Using Marshall and Rossman’s approach as a framework, the following key themes emerged as the means by which contemporary Irish community identity is articulated, and how community media reflect and shape that identity:

- Irish people have a fierce loyalty to and pride in where they came from. This is perhaps the defining characteristic in assessing community identity and seeing it reflected in local media.

- Community media organizations work to create personalized connections with the communities they serve, reflecting many of the purposes and characteristics explained by the theories of Janowitz and Stamm.

- Although the sense of what it means to be Irish has evolved, it retains elements of traditional Irish-Ireland identity. This applies to a general sense of “Irishness” but filters down to the community level as well.

- Closely related to this is the role that sports, especially traditional sports of GAA football and hurling, play in helping people identify with their community and take pride in it.

- Preservation of the Irish language remains a key marker of Irish identity, although the purpose of the preservation has evolved from association with politicized cultural nationalism to a community project based on cultural heritage.

- Community media are not immune from concerns about business models, organizational structures, and audience-building efforts.

Elaboration of the first four themes in this list as they relate to the project research questions outlined at the beginning of this chapter, and evidence gathered about those themes, is presented in Chapter 6 about community media in general. Discussion of Irish-language media as both a national and community project is covered in Chapter 7, and discussion of business models appears in Chapter 8 along with general conclusions.

Note

1 Janowitz’s work was first published in a 1951 article in Public Opinion Quarterly and a year later (1952) as a book. A second edition of the book was published in 1967, which was the source of the material cited here.

References

Buchanan, C. (2009). Sense of place in the daily newspaper. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, Spring 2009, 62–82.

Cohen, A. (1985). The symbolic construction of community. Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood Ltd.

Creswell, J.W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Davidson, W. & Cotter, P. (1997). Psychological sense of community and newspaper readership. Psychological Reports, 80, 659–665.

Edelstein, A. & Larsen, O. (1960). The weekly press’ contribution to a sense of urban community. Journalism Quarterly, 37, 489–498.

Emke, I. (2001). Community Newspapers and Community Identity. Paper presented at Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association annual meeting, Québec City, QC, May 2001. Retrieved from: http://nre.concordia.ca/ftprootFull/reports/Emke_Editors_%20paper.pdf.

Graham, B. (1997). In search of Ireland: A cultural geography. New York: Routledge.

Hallin, D. & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hillery, G.A. (1955). Definitions of community: Areas of agreement. Rural Sociology, (20), 111–123.

Holliday, A. (2002). Doing and writing qualitative research. London: Sage Publications.

Janowitz, M. (1951). The imagery of the urban community press. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(3), 519–531.

Janowitz, M. (1967). The community press in an urban setting: The social elements of urbanism (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marshall, C. & Rossman, G.B. (2011). Designing qualitative research (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Maykut, P. & Morehouse, R. (1994). Beginning qualitative research: A philosophical and practical guide. London: Routledge/Falmer.

McMillan, D. & Chavis, D. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6–23.

Park, R. (1922). The immigrant press and its control. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Paterson, C. (2011). The international television news agencies: The world from London. New York: Peter Lang.

Rosenberry, J. (2012). Key works: Some connections between journalism and community. In Reader, B. & Hatcher, J. (eds.) The foundations of community journalism: A primer for research, 25–43. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Stamm, K. (1985). Newspaper use and community ties. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Twigger-Ross, C. & Uzzell, D. (1996). Place and identity processes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16(3), 205–220.

Yamamoto, M. (2011). Community newspaper use promotes social cohesion. Newspaper Research Journal, 32(1), 19–33.

6
Local Media Reflections of Identity

On her wedding day, County Mayo native Liz received a purple Galway Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) jersey as a gift from her father-in-law. It was his way of saying, “Welcome to the family,” since her new husband was from Carraroe, in the Connemara region of County Galway. But marrying into a family of Galway fans wasn’t about to change her loyalties; her team is still the green-and-red clad lads from Mayo. Similarly, a journalist who has lived and worked around County Galway for more than 20 years still roots for his native Mayo.

These small anecdotes illustrate one of the most significant features of Irish community identity: intense loyalty to one’s home or place of origin. This is articulated in sports affiliations and more generally as well. This sense of rootedness to local geography emerged as a key theme in fieldwork that involved interviewing people across Ireland and reviewing assorted local media. A related theme that emerged was how community media organizations work to create personalized connections with the communities they serve.

In doing this, Irish community media reflect many of the purposes and characteristics explained by the community ties hypothesis, such as selecting content that builds and maintains local traditions and local identifications as a means of developing community consciousness (Janowitz, 1967; Edelstein & Larsen, 1960). News about the activities and achievements of individuals helps to enhance prestige within their communities for those members, developing individual and social identity associated with place through distinctiveness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy (Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). The word repeatedly used by interviewees that reflects all of these characteristics was pride in local communities. Additionally, this journalistic approach contributes to constructing what Graham (1997) called a “symbolic geography” by emphasizing “the social effort to create community through common endeavor and shared interest” (Stamm, 1985).

Data collected relative to these themes helps to answer two of the key research questions for this project: “What sorts of connections exist between local media and their communities?” and “What types of content contribute to building this connection?” in the process of shaping and reflecting their community identities. The interviews and content analysis also provided evidence of how identity, as reflected in local media, retains certain elements of traditional Irish-Ireland identity even though general Irish identity has evolved away from that historical ideology.

In summary, analysis of qualitative data from fieldwork yielded three key themes:

- Irish people have a fierce loyalty to their “home ground” and pride in where they came from. Community media take this local loyalty into account in developing material that is interesting, important, and relevant for their readers and listeners.

- Community media organizations work to create personalized connections with the communities they serve. In doing this, they reflect many of the purposes and characteristics of community media explained by the theories of Janowitz and Stamm and of community identity construction explored by Cohen (1985), McMillan (1996), Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996), and others.

- Traditional GAA sports—GAA football and hurling—play a major role in helping people identify with their community and take pride in it. Local media reflect community interests and values with extensive coverage of these teams and the institutions that surround them. But, reflecting the more pluralistic evolution of Irish identity, other sports such as soccer and rugby also receive extensive coverage.

No Place Like Home

Ireland has been called “a country where localism runs like veins of gold through basalt” (Horgan, 2014, p. 176). Like the young Irish wife and the veteran Galway journalist who both have Mayo roots, other Irish individuals made a point of describing where they’re from, both in project interviews and in everyday conversation. Often, this information was volunteered without being asked. A retired couple who run an Airbnb in Galway pointed out they are originally from Limerick and southern County Clare. Despite being in Galway for more than 20 years, they still sometimes feel like “blow-ins” (recent arrivals) one of them said. A young journalist who went to school in Limerick and then found a job in Galway still says she’s from Dungarvan, a town in Waterford County on the opposite side of the island where she grew up and where her family still lives. A Galway radio presenter (who’s also the station CEO) now lives in the countryside outside Galway City but still says he’s “from Mervue,” a particular working-class neighborhood within the city. These conversations and others illustrate how Irish people have a fierce loyalty to and pride in hometown roots, a key theme that emerged from analysis of the interview data for the project.

This finds itself expressed in the Irish psyche, and reflected in community media activities, on a couple of different levels:

- expressions of community spirit and pride; and

- involvement in community activities and rituals, especially funerals.

Pride of Place

The first question that every Irish person asks every other Irish person is “Where are you from?” observed a veteran newspaper editor. Many people who are not from Ireland, including immigrants from other parts of Europe, find this jarring and sometimes a little offensive, he said, because they interpret it as the Irish native trying to be exclusionary. But that’s exactly the opposite of why the question is asked, he explained. This is a completely natural Irish characteristic. Irish people ask other people where they’re from because their instinct is to make a connection. A radio presenter in her 40s echoed him, saying that because Ireland is a small country, no matter who you sit down beside you’re always going to find that you know somebody [in common]. Often, the connection is someone related to one of the parties, or at least from the same place. Extended families clustered in small areas, especially in local parishes, reinforce this, added a journalism professor.

There is a strong sense of locality, of local identity, the veteran editor continued.

People tend to glorify their own place and find something that’s unique. If you were to ask me I would enumerate things that are unique about Tuam, in spite of myself if you like, in spite of my seeing myself as a fairly cosmopolitan person.

The importance of an area’s uniqueness came across in discussing the topic with others as well. A veteran RTÉ producer in Galway and a second radio presenter from Waterford both said people have pride in their small communities; the reporter from Dungarvan said exactly the same. I think a lot of Irish people are very proud of where they come from, and their community is different, she stated. When I said I’m from Waterford but actually Dungarvan, that’s because to me Dungarvan is completely different. Distinctiveness plays a role in this sense of pride in place. People have to have a sense of identity in their back pocket, said the Mayo native now editing a Galway newspaper. It’s what makes you different and everyone likes to think of themselves as different; the worst thing you can tell someone is that you’re extra-average, you’re bland…. That’s what local media does, around the world: it creates identity.

Historical aspects of Irish life are related to this phenomenon, in the view of two radio presenters (who were interviewed together). We’ve always had an affiliation with the land, going back to famine times, which has never left us, one of them said. There was a time when we weren’t allowed to own land in this country, his colleague added . Now, it’s a long, long time ago but it’s still ingrained, she continued . It’s in the DNA that it’s very important to own your own land.

This sense of powerful attachment to place at a very granular level is reflected in Irish local media. I think in local radio we are definitely aware of that and we always will tap into that, said the presenter who made the DNA comment. Her colleague added, It’s part of who we are, really. They both work for a local commercial station in Waterford. But County Mayo has become a hotbed for nonprofit community radio stations, with three operating there and two in the planning stages. The project coordinator for a nationwide association of community radio stations attributes this to the same phenomenon of local attachment: when one community gets a station, other towns want one of their own, she said. As for print, one editor said that a local bookshop once routinely sent out parcels wrapped in old copies of the newspaper to people from the community who lived around the country and around the world, and the paper would get thank-you letters from them for the news from home. It’s common for people who live and work away from where they were raised to pick up a paper from their hometown at a newsstand, several interviewees said.

Review of weekly newspaper content drives this point home even more powerfully. Large chunks of their news space are devoted to “local notes,” which consist of items ranging from a sentence or two up to several hundred words about community events, activities, and personal news, organized geographically. An 80-page edition of The Tuam Herald, for example, had 10 pages of such notes, with approximately 250 items divided among 25 subheads for the individual communities. A Roscommon Herald edition devoted 13 out of 112 pages to such material, with 22 subheads and about 270 items. The Mayo News had 24 pages (also out of 112), with 34 town-label subheads and more than 320 items.

Coming Together: Funerals and Fund-Raisers

The ways in which community pride and attachment are put into action was another theme that came out of the interviews. When tough times hit, people rally together, said the reporter from Dungarvan now working in Galway . I think that’s very evident when you pick up a local paper, when you listen to the radio. One of the most persistent elements of this social bonding is fund-raising for community causes; one of the veteran newspaper editors called such events evidence of strong community spirit. You’ll find spontaneous acts of fund-raising going on all over the place, he said, which are covered in the local notes.

But the same editor—and several other interviewees—said community spirit expresses itself most powerfully when the time comes to comfort and assist bereaved families. The funeral persists as one of the single biggest distinguishing phenomena in Irish society, he observed, adding that funeral rituals are a phenomenon that has outlasted great sociological changes in the country. Attitudes toward marriage, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock children all are far more liberal now than a couple of generations ago. (Illustrating this, cohabitation increased fourfold between 1996 and 2006 [Fahey, 2007].) But the importance of the funeral has remained the same, he said. His thoughts were corroborated by a radio news presenter who said, The way death is dealt with in Ireland, I think, is different from many other countries. The support that people give to the bereaved is very strong. She and a journalism professor both observed that attending funerals is a form of civic duty, with community called into existence for the ritual. Funerals also provide a social opportunity to meet people you might not have seen in a while, which makes them an important part of the fabric of Irish society, the radio journalist said.

The reporter from Dungarvan, a woman in her 20s, had an anecdote to illustrate the point. When my grandad passed away what that parish did was unbelievable, she recalled . They lined the roads, they draped a flag over his coffin…. There was a massive piece in the paper talking about his football career written by someone who was friends with him the whole way through his life. You can’t get that anywhere else; only from your own parish, and your own community.

A primary connection of local media to this social ritual is providing death notices, in print, broadcast, and online. Station WLR in Waterford reads names of the deceased and details about funeral arrangements thrice daily, at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. They are the most listened to segments of the broadcast day and the most visited page on the station website, a news presenter from the station said. Galway Bay FM also does the broadcasts and web postings, and even mails copies to families as a community service. That’s their one moment of glory for the family after the person is dead, said the station’s CEO. That’s the first time maybe they’ve ever been mentioned on the radio. So for them, the honor of being on the radio is huge. It’s also a revenue stream for both stations, as the web notices are advertising paid for by funeral directors.

Similarly, extensive coverage can be found in print, where a single weekly issue often will have several pages of both current death notices and memorials honoring the anniversary of a death as paid advertising. Four pages of such items with 56 entries were found in one edition of The Tuam Herald. An edition of the Clare Champion had three and a half broadsheet pages of death and memorial notices, the equivalent of more than six pages of the tabloid size used by The Tuam Herald (and all of the other papers that were reviewed). A total of 150 items were included in the Clare paper, although the number of people memorialized was fewer because of multiple items devoted to some individuals. A woman named Olivia, for example, had seven different anniversary memorials placed by different people. Three other people—Tony, Lucile, and Michael—each had four items devoted to them.

Summary

A psychic connection to where you came from—the type of geographic component to identity emphasized by Speller and Twigger-Ross (2009) and by Proshansky et al. (1983) as place identity—is a significant aspect of Irish society that is strongly reflected in Irish community media. Two of the four characteristics of identity named by Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996)—distinctiveness and self-esteem—were displayed especially strongly in interviewee comments and content review. More detail on how content selections reflect and support communities and their identity is discussed in the next section.

“All News Is Local”

Irish-American politician Thomas “Tip” O’Neill was known for the expression “All politics is local,” despite his longtime service at the national level (34 years in Congress, including 10 as Speaker of the House). Slightly mis-quoting him, one Irish weekly newspaper editor credited O’Neill with saying that “all news is local,” adding that he shared the Boston Congressman’s view. That theme emerged in both interviews and content reviews, documenting that Irish community media organizations work to create intensely personalized connections with the communities they serve. This is articulated in numerous ways, including:

- focusing on the information people need to live their everyday lives.

- supporting the positive aspects of the community, including what Janowitz so elegantly called “democratization of prestige” (1951, p. 527), with extensive coverage of content addressing the everyday accomplishments of ordinary life; and

- becoming integrated with the communities they cover.

Everyday Lives, Everyday Information

Coverage of everyday routine dominates Irish community media coverage. We inform people of the things that are needed for their everyday lives in order to operate as a successful society, one newspaper editor said. It works both ways in that local communities shape the media that serve them, and then the local media serve the communities themselves. Another editor described a new initiative in which, he put it, Ordinariness is the key:

We launched a notion this week called Local Heroes, where once a month we’re going to pick somebody—hopefully on the back of a nomination from one or a number of their peers—and turn them into a local hero. Make a presentation to them but more importantly profile what they do in the paper. Ordinariness is the key to this. This is not some superhero within the community that is in charge of everything that’s going on. Our idea is that if you look at somebody who has spent years cutting the grass margins that the local authorities don’t cut, somebody who washes the jerseys for the local football team, somebody who gets up on a Saturday morning and trains fellas to run around a field. Whatever it is like that, just somebody that works at the heart of their community, is by nature modest and unassuming because the best of people are—and that we will just put them in the spotlight by doing a page or two-page profile on them, nice big photograph of them, and make a small presentation to them, and do that once a month.

A reporter for another paper had a pithy summary of this approach. In local journalism, she said, you write about everything because the community is small.

In Print

Instinctively we tend to be hyper-local, said another newspaper editor, the same one who used Tip O’Neill to illustrate his philosophy of news . We were hyper-local before the term was invented. We are telling people about their day-to-day lives; I think that’s the best way to describe it, he continued. We help people understand and relate to their everyday lives. This means a news mix that includes general interest local news (such as county government and other local authorities); intensely local news in local notes; and, of course, sports, a major coverage element that is addressed separately in this chapter. But his newspaper, and others that were reviewed, also have “lifestyle” material also on topics such as gardening, beauty, books, and the arts.

A heavy component of the news mix involves community-engagement activities such as fund-raisers. A significant part of our news would have to do with community fund-raising for this, that or the other, the editor said, pointing out that the current edition of his paper included a photo of a check presentation to a local charity that helps the visually impaired. Aside from coverage of news-making institutions such as local authorities and courts, he said, a lot of the rest of [the news] is one form or another of community initiative. An appetite exists for news of fund-raisers, especially within local communities, a reporter from another paper noted. Communities want to support those things, she said, citing an example of an event that collected funds to buy jerseys for a GAA club. The papers have to be in tune with that. It’s not groundbreaking news but it is important to the community.

The editor of another paper described this effort as providing “one-stop shopping” for what’s happening in the local area. If you want to get a reflection in a given week of what has happened and will happen within Galway I would argue that we are the best proposition for you getting that, he said. So that’s what we do. We try and reflect what is happening, what has happened and what will happen and give you all of that in one package. In the current environment, some of this information is available from other sources, such as GAA match results on websites run by the GAA clubs. But [community members] will not find it aggregated into two pages of the paper and that’s what we do…. It’s the one-stop shop.

Reflecting the community’s positive side, without becoming Pollyannaish, is a purpose of community coverage mentioned by all the journalists who were interviewed. Not all stories, especially on topics such as courts and government, will be the proverbial good news. But even while covering “bad news” stories, other coverage that reflects a positive light on the community motivates their journalism, all of the reporters and editors said. There’s a role for the paper to provide a soothing ointment for all of the ills that go on in society is how one editor described it. As an example of that, another editor noted a story in the current edition of his paper about a woman who created a youth orchestra. He said that anyone reading the story would likely come away thinking there is an inspiring woman; fair play to her that she’s done all of that. It’s just a story of human endeavor and therefore somebody who’s making things better in their local community.

On the Airwaves

The print journalists’ colleagues in local radio share a similar goal of helping people learn what they need to know for the day ahead in their community. Our ethos is serving the community and it’s the local content that makes us different from everything else that’s on the dial—and that’s what wins us listeners, said a radio news presenter from Waterford. Scanning down a list of topics for that day’s bulletins, she mentioned a local hospital in the news (a national story with a local angle, actually), an environmental issue in a seaside town in the county, coverage of a new program of study at the local college, and of the funeral of an elderly man who had been murdered in his home a couple of days earlier. Leading sports stories included local GAA football and hurling. In this regard, local stations play an important role that national broadcasters just cannot, because of accessibility and attention to small matters in the community, one of her WLR colleagues added. A national station cannot carry lost-and-found announcements, for example. But in Waterford, if a dog gets lost, we can talk about it, and by and large, we find them, the on-air presenter noted. On the other side of the country, the director of a Galway station similarly noted that a local focus makes the station authentic to Galway because we’re aware of all aspects of Galway life. [National media] can’t do what we do, because if they focus like we focus on local issues the people in Derry, Donegal won’t care. What we do by dealing with local issues here in Galway … we can give it time, we can give it everything we need to give it because it’s about Galway.

In the nonprofit community radio sector, the focus can be tighter still, such as Near FM’s sole emphasis on the North Dublin neighborhood of Coolock where it is located. The station’s morning current affairs show, Northside Today, covers community activities in the neighborhood, said one of the station’s founders (who is still involved with it 30 years later). The schedule is very much a mix of music, local current affairs, community arts…. We do a lot with the schools, he said . Kids come in and they read, and they write stuff, and we put them out on air. He emphasizes that this is a different approach than even the local commercial stations like Galway Bay FM, because community radio is not necessarily trying to build a large audience attractive to advertisers. Rather, we try to cater for a diversity of niches, he said . As long as there’s a couple of people listening, and enjoying, and benefiting, that’s community radio.

Names Make the News

When a new community playground opened in Ballyhaunis, the Mayo News marked the occasion with a full page of pictures, including six photos containing a total of 50 people. In the same issue, a fund-raiser for a community center in the tiny seaside town of Fahy had a full page with five photos depicting 26 people attending. And a page of school-award presentations had five photos with 34 subjects, mostly school children. Such depictions of community activities—and the people engaging in them—are ubiquitous and voluminous in Irish community newspapers. In a single issue of Western People, also from County Mayo, the 32-page community notes section included 34 photos depicting more than 300 people. An edition of The Tuam Herald had 45 photos with about 310 people depicted. (Similar treatment was provided for local athletes in the sports section: The Tuam Herald had 18 photos with approximately 100 people in them plus another 18 sports action photos.)

Irish journalists say this is a key way they depict community life. We reflect it in terms of coverage of local events; this is standard stuff, said one editor.

We would do photographs from local events, we will promote events in advance and we will cover them afterwards. To my mind the formula for a local newspaper despite all of the technology—and we have as much of it as anyone else—the formula hasn’t really changed in that it’s names and faces.

A reporter who compiled local notes for the Munster Express during a college internship noted that people buy papers if they think “my child is in that for winning a race” or being photographed at that event. Her grandmother’s refrigerator still has a news clip of her graduation, alongside clips of her brother’s athletic accomplishments. This is the same reporter who told the anecdote about her grandfather’s funeral; she still has the news clips from that. You may not be interested in who won the under-13 race on Sunday, she said. But you can guarantee some family is interested, and they’re going to put it on their fridge …’cause people are proud.

The extensive local notes sections of newspapers are where this coverage is presented, both with items that name individuals and also items offering details about literally hundreds of local activities and events recently past or upcoming:

- fund-raisers, both institutional (e.g., for cancer and epilepsy foundations and a county mental health association) and ad hoc (e.g., events or lotteries to raise money for a family’s medical needs); coverage includes news of upcoming events, results of past ones (e.g., a photo of the check-presentation ceremony) and thank-you messages from organizers to those who participated and donated;

- social events, especially GAA dinners and award nights, but also card parties, business anniversaries, business association annual galas, and even a coffee outing organized by a retirement group—which was covered with two full pages of photos;

- other activities such as exercise classes, music concerts or sessions, public talks or lectures, gardening club meetings, Irish-language meet-ups, art exhibits, and business openings;

- school news, including enrollment nights, drama and music programs, awards events, school trips, and special classroom activities;

- personal notes, including births, deaths, weddings, anniversaries, baptisms, and confirmations; and

- sports notes, including:

- GAA news (e.g., match results, registrations, club business meetings, and awards nights);

- school news (e.g., soccer and basketball team results); and

- events and results from other team and individual sports (e.g., rugby and soccer club teams, golf, swimming, running, and cycling). (Some papers have separate local sports note pages as part of their sports coverage, but the information still seeps into their local notes.)

Local notes coverage also is an area where some of the traditional Catholic sense of Irish identity is still on display in community media because the notes commonly include news of confirmations, first communions, first penance services, sacramental adoration, rosary devotions, Lenten programs, retreats, pilgrimages, and Mass schedules. One edition of Western People had four photos of confirmation classes ranging from 16 to 56 children in each, pictured with one or more bishops and priests who had officiated at the ceremony. One edition of the Clare Champion’s local notes section devoted to the town of Ennis had 6 church-related items out of 10 total. In addition to news copy, advertising was found in both papers promoting first communion clothing and places to hold postcommunion brunches or lunches. In Ireland, such events are important gatherings and their significance is reflected in the local media.

Newspapers also devote large amounts of news space each week to community event photos, with a given edition often having several full pages of photos. A single issue of the Waterford News & Star had 10 pages devoted entirely to photos of six events (some events had multiple pages). The events ranged from a GAA social—which merited three pages of coverage—to a coffee klatch for retired people, to school activities, to a party celebrating a married couple’s 60th anniversary. Collectively the 10 pages contained 89 photos depicting nearly 400 people. One editor described these news items as the very minute, micro news that people talk about. He continued:

We run that [type of news] over about 24 pages every week. I know that any reader will read just two of those 24 pages because that’s all that’s relevant to them. But it’s so relevant to them that it’s a reason to buy the newspaper. And they don’t mind that there are 22–24 other pages that largely pass them by because hopefully they will still find information there [such as] that their neighbor won the lotto, and therefore he’s good for a pint at the weekend.

Building Community Ties

The outcome of this approach is that local media create accessibility, familiarity, and trust among the communities that they cover, which translates into a bond with community members. In radio, especially, on-air presenters often seem like old friends. One presenter repeatedly used the word trust in describing what he thought was the key to his and the station’s bond with the community. Anything we say, they trust, he observed. One time, a woman left a suicide note at station, he recalled; the action made it possible to intervene and save her . She was in a dark spot, she didn’t know where to turn, he said. That’s the type of trust thing that happens. But trust is a key component for newspapers as well. And accessibility and trust are assets when it comes to local media working alongside other community institutions in ways that help their communities operate more effectively.

Local notes that convey the hyperlocal, personalized news are one way in which the local newspapers foster community engagement. Much of the published material is generated by residents of the areas the notes cover. They are vested in their community…. They’re involved in a number of local committees and therefore it’s very easy to report on this, one editor said. But the journalists themselves also become known in their communities . I will never walk down [the town’s main streets] without running into someone I know, always, one editor said.

[Readers] need to know that you are a part of a community as well, like you’re one of them, a reporter observed. Especially on sensitive issues, it’s important to speak to people as a friend, she said. As previously noted, stories about fund-raisers are a staple of community news coverage. But these events often relate to something sad or tragic, such as helping a family overcome financial difficulties related to sickness or death of a family member. This means the reporting and coverage on them must be done with sensitivity—especially since individuals involved with them may be sources on future stories. When coverage is handled that way people are very good, people are very appreciative, she said, which adds credibility in the community.

When it comes to developing familiarity with the community, though, interviewees from both the print and broadcast worlds agreed that no one develops the bonds that local radio presenters do. I think we’re just a nation who likes to talk and listen to other people talk. It must be part of our storytelling, said the coordinator for a collective of community radio stations . And you can relate to that person [on the radio]. They’re somebody you’d meet in the pub and have a chat and know. If they’re not relatable you don’t want to listen to them. A longtime presenter added that listeners feel like the radio personality is a friend; some listeners will go so far as to provide material to be read on air as if they were giving it to a close associate or family member.

For more than two decades in Waterford, the on-air presenter who made this connection most powerfully was Billy McCarthy of WLR. One current WLR presenter said his presence in the community was such that the phrase “I’m ringing Billy McCarthy” entered the local lexicon as a way of describing public situations that needed attention. (Many people actually did telephone the station about matters that needed the attention of local authorities so that McCarthy could highlight the problem on the radio. But the phrase was used even when people had no intention of calling, but merely wanted to point out that something was amiss, she explained.) When McCarthy died in 2016, people reacted as if they had lost a friend; many called the station saying that although they had never met, they felt as if they knew him.

Most community stations will have a “go-to” local show in the morning or midday featuring a presenter such as McCarthy, several people in and out of radio said. It’s a great privilege to be the backdrop of everybody’s lives, a current WLR presenter said about McCarthy’s work (and his own). Another WLR presenter described an incident from the station’s earliest days, before it was even licensed and was operating as a pirate station. Waterford was hit by a snowstorm, and the station encouraged local schools to call in with news of closings—which they did. The phones went into meltdown, and we provided a fantastic service that morning, he recalled. That extended to collaboration with the Lion’s Club to have a radio-thon appeal Christmas-basket project in which businesses would donate items that then were sold over the air as a fund-raiser.

Nonprofit community radio takes this accessibility concept even further. Paid station staff make a point of being accessible to listeners, who often are not shy about calling, said the community radio association coordinator. But the presenters are largely volunteers, often active and known in the communities their stations serve. Having somebody local, in the area that you are, they’re a direct contact, you know them; more than likely hopefully you will believe them, she said. It makes everything much more compact and more accessible because you can just walk in the door and get involved. Her colleague, who cofounded Near FM and now chairs the board of a national association serving the stations (CRAOL), pushes stations from the association to see themselves as community-development organizations that happen to use radio for a tool. Now the whole language of community radio is community development, he said. Community looms large and radio is a small subtext underneath it…. The model is right for allowing real accessibility and continuous accessibility by encouraging, supporting, and even recruiting people to use the radio to present their concerns, he added. People do get empowered when they hear themselves speaking, and someone is listening.

Not all media outlets take it quite that far, but still recognize the power and ability they have as institutions within their communities. In the past, journalists serving as politicians (or vice versa) was not unusual in Ireland; Éamon de Valera’s dual involvement with Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press is a high-profile example of that. And two of the local newspaper editors who were interviewed noted that their fathers (and for one, his grandfather as well) served as county officials while editing the paper, thereby reporting on meetings in which they participated. Today’s journalists prefer to remain more at arm’s length from government, especially, but will have their organizations collaborate with other groups in community projects from time to time.

But more common, and significant, is the promotion and support local media provide to the organizations that are working to improve the community. We are the glue that sticks together a lot of these groups; that’s the role we’re playing now, a local editor said . I think there’s always a need for something to create a sense of community togetherness, he added, with the observation that community media can do that.

Game On!

To a large degree, all of this comes together in community support for—and media coverage of—local sport activities, especially those of local GAA groups. GAA football and hurling play a major role in helping people identify with their community and take pride in it. The clubs are among the most active and prominent social organizers of the local community, and their matches are among the highest profile community events. As Bairner puts it, “Sport matters to the Irish people” (2005, p. 191). The local pride, prestige, and self-esteem that Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996) identify as such key components of local identity come together in community sports and local media coverage of them.

The sport is an extension of the community…. The GAA club is inextricably linked into the life of any parish, one local newspaper editor added . We all feel better when our team wins and we all feel a little bit worse when our team loses, another editor said . Even if you’re not hugely interested, [you take note of it] when you see the bunting going up because the local lads are in the final. The young reporter from Dungarvan recalled how when she was 16 years old, Waterford County’s GAA football team, usually an also-ran in the All Ireland stakes, made it to the tournament finals in Dublin’s Croke Park for the first time in many years. The atmosphere that brought to the community is hard to describe, she said, with news coverage, posters, rallies, and the like. Croke Park’s 80,000 seat stadium was filled for the match, she added—for an amateur sport. I don’t know that you get that anywhere else. When the team lost to traditional powerhouse Kilkenny, it was like somebody died, she said. But a huge segment of the community still turned out to welcome the team home. I honestly think that if Waterford won an All-Ireland, the place would shut down for a week, she said . And no one would bat an eyelid.

Organization of the GAA sports—men’s and women’s football, men’s hurling, and women’s hurling (called camogie)—is a factor in developing this spirit because it is highly localized. A newspaper editor described the system, and its impacts:

The GAA in both football and hurling is unique in that the players come up through under-8s, under-9s to a senior level but they invariably never play for anyone else. You don’t move to the next parish because they’re a better team. You stay within your parish and your community. And at a national level you will find, frequently, that the best of our footballers—inter-county, all-Ireland winning footballers—will say that their happiest day was when they won a club medal with the fellas they grew up with, who are not good enough to be on a county team … so that gives the strongest sense of identity. And that works at all levels, in fact it works more as you go down through the ranks…. And one of the great things about the GAA as opposed to a professional game like soccer is that these guys live within their community. On Sunday they’re playing in Croke Park and by Monday or by Tuesday they’re back wiring your house or sitting beside you in a coffee shop. You’ll meet them. And also, they’re likely to be training the next generation on a Saturday morning before they go off and do whatever it is they do with the county team. So they are local heroes, they are touchable local heroes, you can mix with these guys. So they lift the spirit and we reflect that in terms of what we do in the paper.

“What we do in the paper” includes extensive, and detailed, coverage especially of senior-level matches among local clubs and intercounty matches (with county teams composed of the best club players) . Nobody does it as well as the local newspapers and local radio, said one newspaper editor. It’s almost exclusive material. A radio station director interviewed on a Monday said his station’s sports department had staffed 35 different events the day before from the most insignificant match to the most senior game. Correspondent were paid €100 each, which was a significant investment but one that he saw as worthwhile because of the audience interest in local sports. Likewise, a North Dublin community station is big on sports from its local area, said the station cofounder. He encourages presenters not to discuss international sports such as Premiere League soccer despite its popularity because so much coverage of that is available elsewhere. We say “our sports is the local sports, ” he noted, ticking off youth soccer, Gaelic football, and basketball as three of the most popular ones. The station likes to focus on young players and their teams, and parents love to hear the youngsters’ names being read over the air, he added.

Newspapers also devote extensive resources to covering local sports, often up to a quarter of their news space. This can mean as many as 20 to 24 pages in papers that produce around 100 tabloid-size pages each week. In some papers, these are stand-alone pullout sections. But whether in a separate section or included in the general page numbering, sports news includes match coverage with action photos, previews of important upcoming matches, team portraits and faces-in-the-crowd photo coverage, and scoreboards and statistics. Some papers have separate sports notes in parallel to their general local notes for reporting of youth and club results and stats, as well as events such as club meetings, galas, and fund-raisers. Sports coverage is something to look back on, one newspaper editor reflected . You’re representing your community. [Game reports mean] publishing the names of 30 to 35 guys or girls representing their parish, doing their bit. It’s a rare opportunity for people in life to get in the news by doing something for their village. Some newspapers also put coverage of nongame activities of local GAA clubs into the sports section, such as the Waterford News & Star devoting a full page of photos to a camogie club’s dinner dance. Additional coverage of the same event appeared in the local notes portion of the paper as well.

The most prominent coverage tends to go to senior-level and county GAA sports, especially important matches, such as the extensive coverage provided by County Mayo’s Connaught Telegraph of a team from Westport (a town in Mayo) winning an intermediate-level club national championship over a team from County Meath. But in line with the idea of evolving Irish identity, other sports receive their due as well, especially soccer. Historically, soccer and rugby were dismissed because of their English origin; as Butler and Ruane (2009) point out, at one time, GAA players were literally forbidden to play those sports. Now, many communities will have men’s, women’s, and youth soccer clubs alongside their GAA teams, with comparable age brackets through which the players advance. Several of the newspapers reviewed had multiple pages devoted to soccer with coverage comparable to the GAA sports (e.g., large stories and action photos of significant matches). The Munster Express and the Sligo Champion, for example, each devoted a separate page to youth soccer with game-action photos and several stories, while the Roscommon Herald used a soccer photo as the cover of its 24-page sports pullouts. Individual sports such as golf, cycling, swimming, and running also received substantial coverage, from entry notices and results of smaller races in the notes to full-story-and-photo coverage of larger races. Coverage of elementary school, high school, and college teams appeared along with the local club sports.

Sports are a game (and) a way of life in Ireland, a radio news presenter said, and local media coverage of community teams reflects both aspects of that.

Conclusion

The orientation that Irish people have to their place of origin and the lengths that local media go to reflect and enhance that connection epitomize how local geography and identity intersect as described by Cohen (1985), Gustafson (2001), and Proshansky et al. (1983). This is not a new development; even in the 19th century, local newspapers put heavy emphasis on local events and sports and “reported meetings at inordinate length” (Cullen, 1984). Pride of place and the sense that it can offer a distinctiveness to individual identity stood out in discussions with Irish residents, media workers, and those not in the field.

Coverage of individuals and their accomplishments—what local journalists would call “names make the news” and what Janowitz would call “democratization of prestige”—was more than evident in both the interviews and the content reviews. As Janowitz wrote in his seminal work on community press and identity,

The community newspaper is perceived generally as an extension of the reader’s personal and social contacts because of its emphasis on news about local voluntary associations and local social and personal news; as such it constitutes a device for democratizing prestige.

(1951, p. 527)

This is precisely what the Irish community newspapers do in devoting so much news space to local notes. Photos of events can run to dozens of images depicting several hundred people across a single issue of a newspaper that might have a circulation of only 10,000 or so copies in a town with a population of about the same number. Such coverage literally provides a snapshot, each week, of community identity, by showing the people who compose that community conducting their everyday lives: going to school, attending social events, playing club sports. “By reading content that highlights harmonious aspects of community life, readers increasingly become integrated into a local community and acquire community pride and identity” (Yamamoto, 2011, p. 20).

Such coverage contributes to building social capital within the community, or what Hess identifies as bonding and bridging capital. “Bonding may be understood as the news-media’s ability to foster, both consciously and unconsciously, the idea of ‘community,’ ‘close ties’ or ‘psychological bonds’ that audiences have with the ‘places’ and networks that news outlets serve” (Hess, 2015, p. 486). An emphasis on personal news further provides “bridging capital,” by which connections among individuals and groups within the community develop. “The births, deaths and marriages section, for example, is arguably the most potent form of bridging social capital, as information published here is often aimed at bringing people together in times of grief or to celebrate important milestones” (Hess, 2015, p. 488). Reporting on funerals and memorials is a particularly powerful form of this (Buchanan, 2009).

Also fully on display was emphasis on what Stamm (1985) called coverage of community “structure” through local institutions and community “process,” or the many ways community members interact with one another. With regard to the former, interviews and content review both demonstrated how papers devote staff time and news space to coverage of local government and courts. As for “process,” fund-raisers, social events, church activities, and GAA activities on and off the pitch are just a few of the many categories of coverage that fit this description. Such coverage “facilitates participation in local affairs, community organizations and volunteer efforts, which in turn can foster interaction among local residents and the connectedness of a community” (Yamamoto, 2011, p. 21).

Two central themes in the literature on community journalism say that (a) its defining characteristic is the intimacy that develops between news organizations and the people and institutions they cover, and (b) that news organizations are integral parts of the local community structure whose coverage decisions proceed from being a community stakeholder (Reader, 2012; Rosenberry, 2012). These themes were readily apparent in reviewing Irish community media and discussing it with those who create it. The type and depth of coverage helps keep Irish individuals connected with their localities, reflecting and supporting the deep connections and fierce pride people have about where they come from. This coverage builds and reflects community identity by continually emphasizing the connections individuals within a community have with one another: through the GAA, through the schools, and through the churches and other voluntary associations. The common experiences that bind community members are central elements of each week’s edition of the newspaper or each day’s radio broadcast coming into people’s kitchens and parlors. Through their work, local media present an ongoing symbolic construction of community identity.

References

Bairner, A. (2005). Irish sport. In Cleary, J. & Connolly, C. (eds.) The Cambridge companion to modern Irish culture, 190–205. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Buchanan, C. (2009). Sense of place in the daily newspaper. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, Spring 2009, 62–82.

Butler, D. & Ruane, J. (2009). Identity, difference and community in southern Irish protestantism: The protestants of West Cork. National Identities, 11(1), 73–86.

Cohen, A. (1985). The symbolic construction of community. Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood Ltd.

Cullen, L.M. (1984). Establishing a communications system: News, post and transport. In Farrell, B. (ed.) Communications and community in Ireland, 18–29. Dublin: Mercier Press Ltd.

Edelstein, A. & Larsen, O. (1960). The weekly press’ contribution to a sense of urban community. Journalism Quarterly, 37, 489–498.

Fahey, T. (2007). Population. In Sullivan, S. (ed.) Contemporary Ireland: A sociological map, 13–29. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.

Graham, B. (1997). In search of Ireland: A cultural geography. New York: Routledge.

Gustafson, P. (2001). Meanings of place: Everyday experience and theoretical conceptualizations. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21(1), 5–16.

Hess, K. (2015). Making connections: ‘Mediated’ social capital and the small-town press. Journalism Studies, 16(4), 482–496.

Horgan, J. (2014). The Furrow: Navigating the rapids, 1950–1977. In O’Brien, M. & Larkin, F. (eds.) Periodicals and journalism in 20th century Ireland, 173–186. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Janowitz, M. (1951). The imagery of the urban community press. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(3), 519–531.

Janowitz, M. (1967). The community press in an urban setting: The social elements of urbanism (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McMillan, D. (1996). Sense of community. Journal of Community Psychology, 24(4), 315–325.

Proshansky, H., Fabian, A. & Kaminoff, R. (1983). Place identity: Physical world socialisation of the self. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 3, 57–83.

Reader, B. (2012). Community journalism: A concept of connectedness. In Reader, B. & Hatcher, J. (eds.) The foundations of community journalism: A primer for research, 3–19. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rosenberry, J. (2012). Key works: Some connections between journalism and community. In Reader, B. & Hatcher, J. (eds.) The foundations of community journalism: A primer for research, 25–43. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Speller, G. & Twigger-Ross, C. (2009). Cultural and social disconnection in the context of a changed physical environment. Human Geography, 91(4), 355–369.

Stamm, K. (1985). Newspaper use and community ties. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Twigger-Ross, C. & Uzzell, D. (1996). Place and identity processes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16(3), 205–220.

Yamamoto, M. (2011). Community newspaper use promotes social cohesion. Newspaper Research Journal, 32(1), 19–33.

7
Irish-Language Media and Identity

Figure 7.1 Irish? Or Gaelige (Gaelic)?

Listeners in some parts of Ireland were able to hear radio broadcasts from the BBC starting in the early 1920s. But regular broadcasts from an Irish indigenous station didn’t take place until January 1, 1926. Notably, the first broadcast on that station was in Irish; the speaker was Douglas Hyde, cofounder of the Gaelic League, and his topic was the importance of preserving the Irish language. When the first Irish television program was broadcast 36 years later, part of that broadcast also was in Irish. The respect paid to the Irish language on these two important days in Irish media history illustrates another key theme that developed from background reading and fieldwork research, which is reverence for the ancient tongue.

Ireland has two official languages, Irish and English. But Irish is considered the primary one and English the secondary one, even though virtually everyone speaks English while only a fraction of the population speaks Irish. Nonetheless, the Irish language remains a key marker of Irish identity and its preservation is important even if Ireland at this point will never become an Irish-speaking nation the way, say, France speaks French. The purpose of preserving the language has evolved from association with cultural nationalism and turning it into the common tongue to a community project based on cultural heritage. “The state has long been withdrawing its policy of producing an Irish-speaking nation and in recent years has focused more on Irish speakers as individuals” (Watson, 2007a, p. 164). The role of Irish-language media in the society has changed accordingly. Thus, Irish-language media with a national range, and even national media when they occasionally present material in Irish, serve a community-identification and community-building process.

This process is reflected in Irish-language media presentations in a few ways:

- Use of Irish in the media has become a community project serving needs of the Gaeltacht and also a community-of-interest population outside the Gaeltacht.

- Media support the Irish language as a cultural tradition worth preserving, in the same way that traditional sports, music, and dance are worth preserving.

- Media, especially RTÉ, seek to normalize use of Irish across society.

From Cultural Nationalism to Community Expression

Social construction of a national identity was one of the primary activities of the Free State upon its founding in 1922 (as Chapter 2 discusses). The Irish language was a central feature of that process, and the new medium of radio was one of the “construction tools” for the project. As one scholar who has written extensively on the subject of Irish-language media and identity put it, “Broadcasting in Irish was a symbolic act, marking the difference between the Irish, who own the language, and others” (Watson, 2003, p. 3). But he also emphasizes that while Irish language, broadcasting, and national identity “are interrelated … the relationship among them has changed continually” since the founding of the state (Watson, 2003, p. 1). In a different article on the same topic, the same author observes that “in the decades after independence the emphasis was on restoring the Irish language to the position it had had as lingua franca several centuries before. Restoration was part of the state’s nation-building project” (Watson, 2007b, p. 52).

Over time, as Chapter 2 examines, the features of Irish national identity evolved. The place and purpose of Irish-language within the society evolved also, and so did Irish language usage in Irish media. Watson separates this into three eras: a “traditionalist” period from the 1920s through roughly the 1950s; a modernization period in the 1960s and 1970s; and then a neoliberal, globalized Irish identity since the 1980s. Attitudes toward Irish language and its use in media—especially broadcasting—differed in each era.

After the war of independence and the civil war, national cohesion was important for stability and the legitimation of the new state. Fundamental to that national cohesion was a version of Irish national identity that placed the Irish language at the center. The state promoted this identity by including its various elements, such as the Irish language, in broadcasting.

(Watson, 2003, p. 9)

In the post–World War II era, concepts of nationalism began to change around Europe and the world, and this infiltrated attitudes in Ireland as well. In this era, identity-based nationalism gave way to a more pluralistic view. Across Europe, the “binding force” of nationhood no longer hinged on personal characteristics such as language, ethnicity, or religion, but instead was based on a common national polity that respected individual rights irrespective of personal differences. For Ireland, this meant deconstructing the homogeneity of national identity built around distinctiveness of religion, language, and other characteristics supported by media narratives (Watson, 2003, pp. 39–40). He further elaborates,

The [Irish] identity that emerged in the 1950s was rational and attempted to break away from the earlier version of national identity. This new ideology attempted to place market forces ahead of identity and emphasize the rational modern individual rather than the importance of national identity in building and holding together the young nation.

(Watson, 2003, p. 38)

This shift gained momentum over time, not coincidentally overlapping the introduction of television to the Republic in the early 1960s (see Chapter 3). “The national identity that emerged during the 1960s tended to disregard the nationalistic nation-building symbols of the traditional national identity and to emphasize instead the modernization project” (Watson, 2003, p. 5). This created a culture in which individual rights were privileged over an identity that was “inflexible and imposed on the nation as a whole” (p. 6). Correspondingly, Irish-language usage in media shifted from being seen as part of the effort to shape a homogeneous national identity by promoting it as a universal language to a view that media presentations in Irish instead were valuable supports for preserving the language where it was a living, functioning one: in the Gaeltacht.

A native Irish speaker who was born just as this cultural shift was taking hold in the 1970s recalls the era was also marked by a sense that those traditional identity markers, especially around the Irish language, were perceived as backward and uncouth. I think the perceptions around the language now are hugely different to the perceptions around the language when I was growing up, said a 42-year-old RTÉ staffer in charge of the national broadcaster’s strategy for using Irish across its assorted platforms. He grew up in the Connemara Gaeltacht with Irish as his first language, but also with an awareness of a negative perception toward the language within national media. The cliché was, wooly-jumper wearing, drunken, traditional music-playing, hard-core Republicans [spoke Irish]…. If you look at it today, it could not be more different. There’s an aspirational thing about it, a positive and neutral vibe about it.

Census statistics from 2016 report that 37 percent of the Republic of Ireland’s population, 1.8 million out of 4.8 million, say they can speak Irish. However, only about 74,000 people, or 1.5 percent of the population, speak it daily outside of the education system’s mandatory instruction in the language. In other words, only 1.5 percent use it regularly at home or work. Another 111,000—2.3 percent of the general population—speak it weekly (Central Statistics Office, 2017). Contemporary Irish speakers among that 1.5 percent who speak it regularly, including people who work in Irish-speaking work-places producing Irish-language media, realize that the culturally nationalist goal of making the Irish Republic an Irish-speaking nation will never be met. That’s never going to happen was the exact phrase used by two such people, one of whom works for TG4 and the other for Raidió na Gaeltachta.

Yet government policy in general and broadcast regulations in particular mandate efforts to support and preserve the language. The centerpiece for the government is a plan to promote Irish that was enacted in 2010 and extends to 2030 called the 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language. According to a summary of the plan available from the ministry of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs,

The objective of Government policy in relation to Irish is to increase on an incremental basis the use and knowledge of Irish as a community language. Specifically, the Government’s aim is to ensure that as many citizens as possible are bilingual in both Irish and English.

(Government of Ireland, 2010, p. 3; emphasis added)

Several of the action areas within the plan describe use of media in pursuit of these goals, especially RTÉ, TG4, and Raidió na Gaeltachta. The document points out that “the Broadcasting Act 2009 imposes an obligation on the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland … to ‘promote and stimulate the development of Irish language programming and broadcasting services’” (p. 27). To that end, the 20-Year Strategy suggests that “high quality broadcast services through the medium of Irish will be ensured, especially through the continuous development of RTÉ, Raidió na Gaeltachta and TG4” (p. 3).

RTÉ, of course, traces its roots to the establishment of Raidió Éireann in the early days of the Free State. The Irish-language media that are part of this strategy, however, emerged in the era during which the modernization of Irish identity was underway: Raidió na Gaeltachta in 1972 and TG4 in 1996. (It debuted then as Teilifís na Gaeilge; it was given its current name in 1999.) Debate over the creation of the stations included concerns that creating an Irish-speaking media enclave rather than a more robust and widespread use of the language on RTÉ would push the language into a corner. On the other side was the view that Irish speakers constituted a distinct and culturally significant minority group within the country that had a right to receive a continuous and dedicated stream of media produced in Irish.

The founding of Raidió na Gaeltachta was closely related to a civil rights movement that pressed the government for more economic and cultural support of the Gaeltacht regions, lest they disappear and take the Irish language with them (Watson, 1997; Johnson, 1997). Teilifís na Gaeilge was founded a few years later largely in response to perceived lack of support for Irish-language programming on RTÉ, with the accompanying argument that the new station would complement, not replace, Irish programming on RTÉ (Quill, 1994; Watson, 2003). RTÉ’s need to have widespread audiences for its programming in order to generate advertising revenue was a factor in its lack of Irish programs. The smaller pool of potential viewers who spoke Irish fluently enough to understand programs in the language by necessity translated into lower ratings, leaving advertisers less interested in supporting them (Watson, 2003).

But general attitudes toward Irish were also a factor in the lack of programming in the language on RTÉ.

The [RTÉ] station’s performance also needs to be viewed in the context of a gradual shift in public and state perceptions of the language throughout the 1970s from the traditional insular “Gaelicness” of Irish identity in which language policy had been rooted, to a more open view of “lrishness” within which the language policy had yet to find its feet.

(Quill, 1994, p. 9)

This was in line with the general reshaping of Irish identity construction.

Until the 1960s one of the main statutory duties of RÉ (Raidió Éireann) was to defend the new “Irish identity.” However, by the late 1950s the aims of re-unification, the creation of a rural-based society and revival of the language had not been achieved and were gradually replaced by a new ideology with priority given to economics rather than national identity.

(Watson, 1996, p. 271)

Watson, who has written extensively on the topic of Irish-language media and its place in society, repeatedly argues that it makes the most sense to see Raidió na Gaeltachta and TG4 from a “minority rights” viewpoint, serving the minority community of fluent Irish speakers. “With the emergence of Raidió na Gaeltachta there was a clear shift towards using broadcasting to serve Irish speakers rather than solely attempting to convert listeners to the Irish language” (Watson, 2007b).

Those working in the field today see their role and purpose similarly. In describing her work, a journalist for Raidió na Gaeltachta sounded very much like the community news editors and radio presenters quoted in Chapter 6 on the subject of personalized news and community connection. Raidió na Gaeltachta, on one hand, serves a geographic community in the Gaeltacht regions but at the same time serves a community of interest among Irish speakers outside the Gaeltacht. Via its Internet presence, it even reaches Irish speakers around the world. It addresses both audiences with a combination of local-interest and general material, including national and international news stories, building what Hess (2013, 2015) calls “mediated social capital.” But it is also a full-service station offering music, talk, news, and sports. We try and do what they do nationally, but do it as Gaeilge, said the presenter, who has worked at the station for 20 years. Most of her work has been in news, where, she said, we try to cover what’s important to our listeners, citing topics such as local politics, economic development in the Gaeltacht, community festivals that happen in Irish, and—like other community radio stations—even daily death notices. Those are extremely popular, she added; people telephone the station asking about when particular notices will be aired. As with its counterparts in English-speaking community media, Raidió na Gaeltachta has large interest among listeners in sports coverage. But the challenge sometimes is finding Irish-speaking commentators to broadcast a match and Irish-speaking players on the teams to provide quotes for the coverage. The news presenter said she believes the Irish-language community wouldn’t be as strong or as vital as it is at present if the station didn’t exist. Raidió na Gaeltachta provided a platform for this language, she said, and helped establish common dialect among Irish speakers from the different Gaeltacht regions. We got to know one another better and understand one another better.

Preserving “Who We Are”

Preservation of the Irish language is at the heart of this work, from the government’s 20-Year Strategy through the daily efforts of people at the Irish-language media outlets. It’s who we are, the Raidió na Gaeltachta journalist said of the language. She emphasized that she speaks Irish nearly 100 percent of the time at home and work. The only time she uses English at the station is with visitors who don’t speak Irish. She uses English in her personal life only when with friends who don’t speak Irish. A 24-year-old who is involved with starting a new Irish-language community radio station in Galway[1] added similar thoughts. I can’t say that you have to have the language to be Irish, she said . But I do think that Irishness is in the language…. There is the same kind of beauty and worth in the language as there is in any other part of our cultural identity. She continued:

I don’t think that anyone is more Irish than another because they have the language. But I do think that if people were to delve into the language properly actually they would see a lot of themselves and a lot of their current society in it still…. It is part of our culture the same as any language in that you kind of get an insight into Irishness through the language, even through sentence structures and through words and through the vocab that exists or doesn’t exist. You kind of get a feel for what our identity originally was and can develop to be now. I do think that it gives you, as any language does, a slightly different way of looking at the world.

Media that serve the Gaeltacht and Irish speakers outside of it have a part to play in this. The presenter from Raidió na Gaeltachta added that people say they learn and improve their Irish by listening. TG4 works to support maintenance of language—and associated Irish identity—by helping young people learn in accessible ways, such as children’s programming and online apps that appeal to a young audience, a marketing executive for the station explained. The station further builds its brand among these audiences by sponsoring activities such as ladies GAA for young girls and traditional music honors for young players, he added. The station also supports indigenous production companies, many of them Gaeltacht based, that work in Irish. This both provides jobs and nurtures talent to produce Irish-language media.

Keeping the language alive in the Gaeltacht is important because that is where it is a living and working language. Unless that is preserved, speaking Irish will become little more than a linguistic hobby, said the RTÉ Irish language strategist. Nevertheless, the language is growing outside of the Gaeltacht, several interviewees said, and Irish-language media have a part to play in serving those speakers. Census figures from 2016 reported 111,000 people saying they spoke Irish weekly, but not daily. Lack of daily usage would indicate they do not live in the Gaeltacht, where it would be everyday speech. But the weekly frequency indicates an interest in keeping up their fluency. I think that kind of shows that people are coming around to appreciate it and enjoy it again, which is important, the young community radio manager said. She is not from the Gaeltacht but learned Irish from attending a gaelscoil, or Irish-language-immersion school. She moved to Galway from Dublin, where she had been part of an active Irish-speaking community centered on social activities such as meeting for drinks or for brunch where all conversation is in Irish. I think that kind of shows that people are coming around to appreciate it and enjoy it again, which is important, she said.

Additionally, Irish people who are nonspeakers still identify with the language as part of Irish culture and want to see it continue even if it is not central to their lives. They have a sense of pride that the language is part of them and would regret its loss, several people who work in and out of Irish media said. Public opinion supports restoration efforts by the state but “to most Irish people the mere existence of Irish language is a sufficient marker of distinctiveness” (Watson, 1996, p. 257). Elsewhere Watson argues that this represents a symbolic importance for the language in Irish society that “over-shadows more practical considerations such as Irish-speaking usage or ability” (2007a, p. 368).

Language Integration

Another way in which media, particularly at the national level, support and preserve Irish language as a symbolic marker for Irish identity is through its routinization in everyday use. Irish people encounter this every day, in the form of dual signage throughout the country, dual-language announcements on buses and trains, and the like. The government’s 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language explicitly calls for RTÉ to “normalize the use of Irish and English in their broadcasts,” and RTÉ’s language strategist said the organization is committed to doing exactly that. He notes,

The most important thing from my perspective in what we do is the notion of interweaving the language into everything we do, so that it’s not a surprise to hear Irish in any context and then that it becomes a more normal thing not an abnormal thing.

RTÉ seeks to accomplish this through approaches such as:

- making occasional social media posts in Irish;

- presenting some radio news bulletins in both languages, alternating between them for individual stories;

- posting Irish-language blogs about topics such as entertainment and fashion on the main pages devoted to those subjects, rather than in a separate enclave;

- having some “continuity” announcements (“Coming up next on RTÉ …”) in Irish; and

- presenting some interviews in Irish (with English subtitles) on the main TV news bulletins when it’s logical, such as an interview with an Irish speaker in the Gaeltacht.

Doing this is not designed to serve the fully fluent populations, which have Raidió na Gaeltachta and TG4 providing programs for them, he explained. Rather, this is around bringing more people in and bringing them with us, he said. This normalization is important because it is an element of validation and acceptance of the language. Growing up in the Gaeltacht, he remembers a time when people who spoke Irish didn’t feel equal in Irish society because their language was the lesser used. But now,
when the national broadcaster is throwing out bits of Irish here and there in a positive manner in a way that suits the broadcaster as well as our official policies, then I think that helps their identity. It helps Irish people within the Gaeltacht as well as Irish speakers throughout the country, along with making it more normal.

Coming at it from the other direction, TG4 seeks to draw audiences that range from the fully fluent to those with little to no Irish with a dual-track strategy. On the one hand, the station seeks to offer high-quality programs where audience fluency in Irish is necessary to fully appreciate them, such as dramas and documentaries. Sometimes these are subtitled, such as the popular and long-running evening soap opera Ros na Rún. But still, the main audience is fluent speakers, because understanding dialogue is necessary to fully appreciate the program, said the station’s marketing manager. But other TG4 programming categories, such as sports and music, do not require a viewer to be fully fluent to enjoy them. Even if it’s not possible to follow all of the commentary in Irish, a nonspeaker can still watch a broadcast rugby or hurling match and know what is going on (provided he or she understands the sport). Likewise, music aficionados can appreciate the musical portions of shows such as Bosca Ceoil (focused on Irish traditional) or Glór Tíre (American country and western music) and follow the interview and commentary segments with subtitles. In this way, TG4 both serves the Irish-speaking community and contributes to the process of routinizing the language by bringing it to a wider audience.

Conclusion

Irish broadcasting literally began with a plea, in Irish, to return the language to its status as the new nation’s common tongue. The new medium of radio, on one hand, seemed to be an especially appropriate tool for this. But even then, the matter was controversial. In the earliest days of Irish broadcasting, calls for Raidió Éireann to have more Irish-language programming were countered by the argument that doing such would drive more people to listen to English-language broadcasts from the BBC (Watson, 2003, p. 21).

Through the 35 years (1926–1961) that Raidió Éireann had a monopoly on Irish broadcasting (aside from areas where the BBC could be tuned in), it never devoted more than a fraction of its total airtime to Irish programs. When Teilifís Éireann came on the scene, the pattern was repeated. Eventually, recognition that fluent Irish speakers deserved and needed broadcast media serving them in their choice of language led to the establishment of Raidió na Gaeltachta in 1972 and Teilifís Gaeilge (now TG4) in 1996. In a sense, this offered the attention to and prestige for the language that earlier scattershot attempts to present it in the general media did not fulfill. “The fact that the language now possessed its own broadcast medium contributed positively to the social capital of the language” (Mac Giolla Chríost, 2012, p. 406). In an assortment of books and articles, Watson (1996, 1997, 2003) shows support for the argument that these stations were established to address the rights of Irish speakers as a cultural and linguistic minority. “With the emergence of Raidió na Gaeltachta there was a clear shift towards using broadcasting to serve Irish speakers rather than solely attempting to convert listeners to the Irish language” (Watson, 2007b). From this perspective, it’s interesting to note that a review of Irish-language material in the early 20th-century Irish Independent consisted largely of “community news” such as notices of births, deaths, and marriages (Uí Fhaoláin, 2014).

Similarly, the perspectives of those who work in Irish media today lean toward serving a community of Irish speakers inside and outside the Gaeltacht and contributing to the construction of that community’s identity. This preserves Irish language both as a living, working language and as one of symbolic importance even to nonspeakers, and also integrates and normalizes it into everyday life. Normalization is a matter of both public policy (a key plank of the 20-Year Strategy) and media policy for RTÉ and TG4. The Raidió na Gaeltachta news presenter probably summed it up best when she said her station tries to do what any other full-service station would do with news, sports, music, talk, community events and the like, but simply does it all as Gaeilge. From RTÉ’s cúpla focal of continuity announcements and occasional tweets in Irish, to TG4’s English subtitling, to Raidió na Gaeltachta’s purely Irish offerings, the language has been and remains an integral part of the Irish media scene serving the Irish-speaking community.

Note

1 At the time of the interview, the project existed as an online-only station with about three hours per day of programming. She and the other organizers were in the process of applying for a broadcast license that would cover Galway City and reach out to a portion of the nearby Connemara Gaeltacht.

References

Central Statistics Office Ireland. (2017, Apr.). Census 2016 summary results: Part 1. Retrieved from: www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/census2016summaryresultspart1/Census2016SummaryPart1.pdf.

Government of Ireland. (2010). 20-year strategy for the Irish language 2010–2030. Retrieved from: www.ahrrga.gov.ie/app/uploads/2015/07/20-Year-Strategy-English-version.pdf.

Hess, K. (2013). Breaking boundaries: Recasting the ‘local’ newspaper as ‘geo-social’ news in a digital landscape. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 48–63.

Hess, K. (2015). Making connections: ‘Mediated’ social capital and the small-town press. Journalism Studies, 16(4), 482–496.

Johnson, N. (1997). Making space: Gaeltacht policy and the politics of identity. In Graham, B. (ed.) In search of Ireland: A cultural geography, 174–191. New York: Routledge.

Mac Giolla Chríost, D. (2012). A question of national identity or minority rights? The changing status of the Irish language in Ireland since 1922. Nations and Nationalism, 18(3), 398–416.

Quill, T. (1994). Television and the Irish language. Irish Communication Review, 4(1), 6–17. Retrieved from: http://arrow.dit.ie/icr/vol4/iss1/2.

Uí Fhaoláin, A. (2014). Language revival and conflicting identities in the Irish Independent. Irish Studies Review, 22(1), 63–79.

Watson, I. (1996). The Irish language and television: National identity, preservation, restoration and minority Rights. British Journal of Sociology, 47(2), 255–274.

Watson, I. (1997). A history of Irish language broadcasting: National ideology, commercial interest and minority rights. In Kelly, M.J. & O’Connor, B. (eds.) Media audiences in Ireland: Power and cultural identity, 212–230. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.

Watson, I. (2003). Broadcasting in Irish: Minority language, radio, television and identity. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Watson, I. (2007a). Identity, language and nationality. In Sullivan, S. (ed.) Contemporary Ireland: A sociological map, 351–369. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.

Watson, I. (2007b). Recent and current trends in Irish language broadcasting. In Horgan, J., O’Connor, H. & Sheehan, H. (eds.) Mapping Irish media: Critical explorations. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.

8
Local Focus in a Global Society

Ireland may be the “ould sod.” But it is also a modern nation fully integrated into the European community and world economy, embodying a modern self-identity with echoes of a traditional past. Its community media reflect and reinforce this identity at the local level, grounding Irish individuals as they sort their places in the wider world.

Ireland is a place where “symbolic geography” has been a crucial component of social identity, especially since the prerevolutionary period of the early 20th century when a constructed national identity embodied the cultural values of a particular region, the rural West. The interconnection of symbolic geography and social identity remains true today, with local media symbolically defining their communities in a fashion that echoes the function local media had in helping establish identity a century ago (e.g., Ward, 2014; Legg, 1999). The ways that local media reflect these features today epitomize the intersection of geography and identity. Specifically, they provide social construction of community boundaries through a process of highlighting social interaction, contributing to local areas’ social capital (Hess, 2013, 2015) and social cohesion (as per Emke, 2001; Yamamoto, 2011).

Symbolic Construction of Identities

“We see, we think, we hear, we share, we act symbolically…. It is through symbolic interaction with one another that we give the world meaning and develop the reality toward which we act” (Charon, 2001, p. 89). Through this process local media intersecting with other aspects of social structure play a major role in constructing their communities’ identities. As Ruddy and Walshe put it—in an observation about nonprofit community radio but one that applies to other local media as well—“The ultimate aim for a community station is not to be the authentic voice for a community, but of the community” (2007, p. 184).

Significance of Geography for Identity

Places anchor memories and meanings (Devine-Wright & Lyons, 1997; Speller & Twigger-Ross, 2009) and provide a sense of distinctiveness and other characteristics that are touchstones for identity. Considering this, geography’s relevance to identity could not be clearer. Social interactions reinforce local geography’s impact on identity because most such interactions—whether with family, close friends, or casual acquaintances—happen in a well-defined geographic sphere (Gustafson, 2001). These relationships in turn help create social boundaries that further define community, as the world is divided between those with whom individuals interact and those with whom they don’t (Cohen, 1985). These constructed boundaries create what Graham (1997) calls “imagined” places: the importance of where people live means the most when seen through the perspective of their interactions with others who also live there. An especially useful taxonomy for describing the processes by which geography impacts identity is offered by Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996). Local communities, they write, provide individuals with distinctiveness (a unique location that distinguishes them from those who live elsewhere), self-esteem (pride of origin), sense of continuity (familiarity with where they live), and self-efficacy (familiarity that assists in managing everyday life).

Media Portrayals and Local Identity

Community media contribute to this by serving as the main symbolic constructors of identity at the local level. They accomplish this through constructing a local consensus by emphasizing common values and especially through reporting of personal, individualized news items (Janowitz, 1951, 1967). In this manner, local media offer a sense of distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem, and self-efficacy for individuals whose lives are reflected by those media. Coverage of what Stamm (1985) calls “process”—social interactions among members of the community—illustrates community bonds by reporting on how members of a community have things in common that distinguish them from those outside the community. In the process, this coverage strengthens social capital within the communities (Hess, 2015).

Irish community newspapers collectively spend hundreds of pages each week—thousands or tens of thousands of pages each year—documenting these interactions town by town and county by county across the country in words and images. Commercial and nonprofit local radio stations spend countless hours of airtime doing the same. This effort to create personalized connections and report personal news reflects many of the purposes and characteristics explained by the theories of community media (e.g., Janowitz and Stamm) and general social construction of community (e.g., Cohen, Graham, and Twigger-Ross & Uzzell). Aspects of Irish community media coverage that help to build and reflect community identity as documented through both content analysis of local media and interview research with journalists and others were:

- loyalty to home ground, epitomized by an emphasis on personalized connections to community with content and media people;

- depiction of a modern identity but one that maintains a certain level of connection with the traditional Irish cultural nationalist identity built upon Irish language, traditional sports, and Catholic religion; and

- local identity as a vital aspect of how Irish individuals view their place in the world, but not the only aspect that matters to them.

Hometown Proud

The single most prominent element of identity that is reflected and reinforced by community media is the importance of local rootedness. This came up repeatedly in interviews with media workers, observers such as academics, and even in everyday conversations with individuals unconnected to the formal work of the project (such as the author’s Airbnb hosts). The word that informants repeatedly used about this was pride in one’s locality. People are [very] proud of where they come from, said both the young newspaper reporter from Dungarvan and the veteran radio presenter from Waterford. (Aside from one of them using the qualifier “very,” the quotes were identical.) Similar comments came out of many other conversations.

In newspaper content, this attention to locality is reflected in the intense focus and amount of resources lavished on news items covering communities at the most granular level. Evidence for this can be found in the dozens of pages and hundreds of items devoted to this coverage by a typical newspaper in a typical week. For example, 10 pages of such material, with approximately 250 items from 25 individual communities, was found in an edition of The Tuam Herald, while 13 pages covering 22 communities with about 270 items appeared one week in the Roscommon Herald. (Both papers have circulation of just slightly more than 8,000 copies serving largely rural areas.) Page upon page of photos of local events such as GAA galas, collectively picturing hundreds of people from the community, are also commonly found in these papers and others that were reviewed. Multiply this level of coverage in any given newspaper by the dozens of community newspapers around the country that supply such coverage, and the scope to which they collectively reflect local pride and involvement becomes apparent.

Another aspect of community building mentioned repeatedly in interviews and reflected in the content review is the importance of revering the dead. Death notices read over the radio are among the most listened to segments for many local stations. In similar fashion, newspapers typically present multiple pages with dozens or hundreds of items announcing the week’s funerals and memorializing people with notices on or around the anniversary of their deaths. As a journalism professor, a newspaper editor, and a radio personality all put it, the community is called into existence for a funeral. Attending them is a matter of civic duty, and covering them connects the journalists and their institutions to the community and its members. The coverage itself reflects the self-esteem and individual prestige aspects of community identity by reverently recognizing the departed, as well as the self-efficacy aspect (managing everyday life) by providing support for the bereaved. Such coverage also is a potent way of building bonding and bridging social capital in a community (Hess, 2015; Buchanan, 2009).

Another form of local pride is represented by the connections that develop between popular local personalities (such as the late Billy McCarthy of Waterford) and their communities. Representatives of local commercial radio and nonprofit community radio saw their roles as somewhat different, but still expressed the common view that accessibility and attention to the wants and needs of the local audiences were critical elements of their operations. The personal connection between local media and their audience at a hyperlocal level plays a major role in construction of Irish community identity and building social capital within the communities.

No Escaping the Past

Despite its ancient history and construction of national identity in a highly conservative fashion in the early 20th century, Ireland in the past generation or so has become a thoroughly modern country ranked in some respects as among the most globalized in the world (Nicol, 2015). And so Irish community media strive to reflect and support the identities of their communities with material that reflects their pride, distinctiveness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy on a modern basis. But even as identity has evolved, that doesn’t mean all aspects of the past have been discarded or disregarded. Two key areas of coverage where cultural heritage stands out are Irish-language media and sports.

As Chapter 6 documents, interviews with community media representatives and review of content in print and on radio shows the level of connection Irish people have to local sports organizations, especially the traditional sports of GAA football and hurling. If pride, distinctiveness, and self-esteem are key components of local identity, then rooting on sports teams at the club and county level are important ways it is articulated. Local media—print and broadcast—reflect the intensity of that support. And while the most attention is lavished on the traditional GAA sports, one reflection of the modernization of Irish identity is the popularity and prominence of sports that once were rejected because of their association with English overseers, namely soccer and rugby. Those involved in GAA sports were once forbidden from even playing those games (Butler & Ruane, 2009); now those sports are played—and covered in local media—alongside the GAA offerings. Hurling and GAA football remain most prominent in people’s attention, but in local media coverage GAA offerings are given a “first among equals” treatment rather than one that makes them superior and other sports subordinate.

Similarly, as Chapter 7 documents, pride in and support for preservation of the Irish language is still a relevant element of Irish identity, even if the culturally nationalist goal of restoring Irish as the common tongue will never be met. Because of the nature of the medium—it can’t be subtitled—Irish language radio outlets such as Raidió na Gaeltachta (which has national reach) and community stations such as Raidió na Life (in Dublin) and Raidió na dTreabh (an aspiring station in Galway) serve those fluent in the language. But television station TG4 serves a fluent audience with certain programs (such as dramas) and reaches those with little or no Irish fluency with subtitled programs and offerings such as sports matches that can be watched and largely understood without command of the language. National broadcaster RTÉ seeks to normalize the language in Irish society with cúpla focal (“a few words”) presentations such as continuity announcements and the occasional subtitled interview on the main news bulletins. Together, these media outlets present a coherent approach to preserving the ancient language in a modern setting for the geographic Irish-speaking communities of the Gaeltachts and also for communities of interest among Irish speakers elsewhere. The symbolic importance of keeping the language alive—with “symbolic” there having a dual meaning but no pun intended—is clearly reflected in modern Irish media.

The traditional conception of Irish-Ireland identity has a triad of major elements: language, Gaelic tradition (such as sports), and the Catholic religion. While as just noted, two of these remain highly relevant in Irish identity and media coverage, the last of these no longer has the prominence it once did. Ireland remains a largely Catholic country according to its most recent census (2016), although the population that identifies itself as Catholic has been in a steady decline over the past few censuses. The Church does retain some important influences in Irish society, notably in the educational and social service sectors. Also, certain Catholic values in public policy—notably abortion restrictions—remain controversial and subject to national-level news coverage (e.g., Holland, 2016). By all accounts the cultural and political power of the institutionalized Church has precipitously declined in recent decades (see Chapter 4). However, Catholicism remains a part of Irish community media coverage in the highly localized space of news items reflecting personal and community religious practice: photos of confirmation classes and local notes about matters such as first communion celebrations, sacramental adoration, rosary devotions, Lenten programs, retreats, pilgrimages, and Mass schedules. (On a national scale, RTÉ television does something similar with a daily 1-minute segment featuring the tolling of the Angelus bells at 6 p.m. [Corless, 2015]. That is why RTÉ’s main news bulletin is known as the Six One: the show’s broadcast time is 6:01 p.m. after the Angelus segment.) Even with weekly Mass attendance at only around 50 percent participation, the parish is still a focal point of community life, and this is reflected in coverage of the local interactions within parish communities.

Local, Global, and Points Between

This modern articulation of identity recognizes that the typical Irish person embodies not just one geographic identity, but several. Hometown connection, Irish nationality, and European affiliation all co-exist in the modern Irish identity. The “sense of place” (Hess, 2013; Buchanan, 2009) that helps individuals relate physically, socially, and psychologically to a given geography operates at multiple levels, in a sort of concentric circle arrangement. Local identification provides the foundation for this, however. As Howley (2011, p. 129) points out, “the cultural expression produced by media provides a distinctive lens to explore how local populations understand and make sense of place in a globalized world” (as quoted in Hess, 2013, p. 56).

Summary

By its nature, community identity is symbolically constructed, with community media as the primary constructor. Irish community media articulate this with a thick stew of coverage built upon the most personal elements and revered institutions of Irish community. Every general theory of community identity and of how community media relates to constructing that identity feature social interaction at the heart of the process. Whether it’s the interaction that defines community boundaries (Cohen, 1985) or the “process” elements at the center of local news coverage (Stamm, 1985), interaction among community members is the most relevant aspect of community building and the most significant factor in building social cohesion (Yamamoto, 2011; Emke, 2001). Rich and deep coverage of this interaction is the dominant feature of Irish community media and a vital aspect of symbolically constructing local Irish identity.

Problems of the Business Model

The ability of the Irish community media system to accomplish this is not as certain going into the future as it may have seemed a few years earlier. That is because Irish local media are not immune from concerns about business models, organizational structures, and audience-building efforts. This was a final theme that came out of the interview component of the project. Concerns expressed by interviewees centered on two related areas of (a) sustainability of newspaper print editions in the face of declining circulation and advertising revenue, and (b) consolidation of ownership that could lead to less robust local content as owners’ attachment to the local community becomes attenuated.

In early 2017, the chief executive of Ireland’s largest media organization, Independent News and Media, told a hearing of the Oireachtas (Irish legislature) that Irish newspaper advertising revenues had declined 62 percent and circulation had slid by 39 percent in the previous 10 years (Slattery, 2017a). He did not specify whether that included local weeklies or just national daily values, but clearly this provides evidence of how Irish print media are suffering in the face of digital media’s expansion. A report on Audit Bureau of Circulation 6-month averages for Irish newspaper daily circulation in the last 6 months of 2016 showed a 7.9 percent decline from the same period a year earlier. Ireland’s two largest newspapers, the Irish Independent and Irish Times, each posted losses greater than 10 percent (iLevel.ie, 2017).

Current, verifiable statistics on circulation changes for weekly newspapers could not be ascertained. (Circulation figures for 2016 as compiled from several trade sources are shown in Tables 4.3 and 4.4, but prior-year values to make comparisons could not be found.) Anecdotally, based on interviews with several editors, weekly newspapers are struggling to maintain circulation and advertising sales the same as their national counterparts. One study showed that nationwide 53 percent of Irish adults read weekly newspapers in the January–December 2016 measuring period, down from 57 percent in 2014 (Galway Readership, 2017). None of the editors interviewed was willing to quote specific numbers for his own paper. But nearly all interviewees used phrases such as “times are tough” and described staff cutbacks that have made coverage more challenging even as responsibilities, such as digital additions to news coverage, have expanded.

Still, one editor said that in spite of this he was confident in the ability of local media to survive simply because they offer unique service that their communities cannot get elsewhere. There’s nobody else covers local courts; there’s nobody else covers local sport; there’s nobody else that covers local authority and council meetings, all the rest of that, he said. The key thing, he added, was getting community members to realize that and decide it’s a lot more than I thought it was…. I now see that there’s a relevance to this [coverage] and if I’m a part of this community I should read this paper. In-depth of coverage of local social interactions as described in the previous section is an important part of that relevance. As this editor and others said, not everyone will be interested in local notes from a particular community or reporting on a given sports event—but some people will. That justifies the coverage and may, for the reader, justify getting the paper to find out about it.

Ownership consolidation that has become a feature of Ireland’s media landscape in recent years was another concern. Nearly half of Ireland’s daily newspaper circulation is owned by INM, which at the time of this writing also owned 14 weekly papers. It announced, then later withdrew, an offer to acquire seven more owned by Celtic Media (O’Donovan, 2017). If INM had taken control of those seven papers, it would have owned one third of Ireland’s weekly newspapers, accounting for about 30 percent of overall circulation to go with its dominance in daily circulation (author’s calculations based on Table 4.3).

One journalism professor said the pattern of consolidation started during the Celtic Tiger era when lucrative real estate advertising made local newspapers highly profitable, making them sought-after investments. The post-Tiger crash, including the collapse of the real estate bubble and its associated advertisements, ended that rationale for ownership groups buying up individual papers and smaller groups. Consolidations have continued for different reasons, however. Depleted revenue since the crash has led to cutbacks in staffing and coverage, leading papers and groups to merge in order to save costs on printing, administration, and staff (Slattery, 2017b). Both that educator and another professor interviewed for their observations about Irish community media expressed concerns about this trend and said they feared further consolidation could be detrimental to the highly localized attention newspapers have for their communities.

Conclusion

The world is a complicated place, and propelled by a Weberian structuralist momentum it becomes more complicated and more specialized all of the time. It can seem in some respects that community has “lost its conceptual meaning in modern society because of such factors as individualistic tendencies in social life, high social mobility, bureaucratization and globalization” (Yamamoto, 2011, p. 20). Ireland is a prime example of this. In the span of approximately two generations, from the mid-20th century to the early years of the 21st, Ireland went from being an impoverished, isolated, postcolonial society with a homogeneous social structure to a fully modernized society tightly integrated into the European unity project and the global economy.

Certainly in Dublin but even in smaller cities such as Waterford and Galway, shops that sell locally knit jumpers (sweaters) share the high streets with boutiques named for international brands. Local pubs and coffee shops look across the way at chic restaurants that serve up the latest international cuisine. These trends are even reaching small, rural communities, such as the County Mayo village where a native wrote of his surprise that “you could now order szechuan chicken and tikka masala” (Varley, 2017). Patrons of these places include tourists alongside Irish natives and immigrants who increasingly work for multinational companies trading in pharmaceuticals, optical devices, and medical apparatus. Dublin’s “Silicon Docks”—a redeveloped wharf area just east of downtown that is now home to major operations for Facebook, Google, and other high-tech companies—is just one of many such multinational corporate enclaves around the country. That much development, that fast, would be whiplash inducing for any social system, and Ireland is no exception.

That is why gaining deeper insight into how community media reflect and shape the contemporary world in which so many Irish people live, work, play, and generally interact with one another is so important. Around the time the Irish Free State was founded in 1922, Robert Park was conducting his groundbreaking research on how the native language press helped immigrants assimilate into urban American (specifically, Chicago). Around the time Ireland was beginning its march toward modernization in the 1950s, Morris Janowitz (following in Park’s footsteps at the University of Chicago), documented how newspapers covered city neighborhoods with a focus on personalized news and stories that reflected local values. In doing this, the local papers helped to construct community identities that, in turn, helped members of those communities maintain their orientation to the larger social structure around them. In both cases, the community press provided what Tonnies referred to as gemeinschaft in the face of growing gesselschaft, a society dominated by impersonal transactional interactions. According to Entrikin (1991), this shift complicates individuals’ abilities to construct meaning for themselves in the broader world. But local media construction of community identity can offer a counterweight to this tendency toward impersonal transactions over personal interaction.

That lesson is the primary one to take away from how Irish community media construct and reflect the identity of the areas they cover. They are doing now exactly what Park and Janowitz said Chicago local papers did for their neighborhood residents: maintain a grounded identity at the local level as a means of coping with the larger society. The rapid pace of change to Irish identity raises the stakes for the value of local identity, especially as individuals negotiate multiple levels of identity (local, Irish national, European, and even global) and increasing diversity within Irish society. A “grounded” local identity in the face of so much change helps individuals and local communities keep their place sorted in the larger, rapidly evolving social structure (Howley, 2011). Local coverage, from the voluminous local notes and event photos to news about fund-raisers and other community initiatives, provides what social scientists call bonding and bridging social capital (Hess, 2015). In the vernacular, as one editor out it, this is the glue that sticks community institutions together. A focus on intimate, personal interactions in the local community ranges down to, as one editor put it, telling readers that their neighbor won the lotto, and therefore he’s good for a pint at the weekend.

Because even in a world where global concerns intrude on everyday life and identity must be negotiated through different levels of affiliation, people like to know that if they join their neighbor for a pint at the weekend, he may pick up the tab.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Quoted Interviewees

David Burke, editor, The Tuam Herald.

Jack Byrne, cofounder, Near FM and board member, Community Radio Forum of Ireland (CRAOL).

Oliver Carroll, presenter, WLR radio.

Aoibhin Fallon, presenter, WLR radio.

Keith Finnegan, presenter and general manager, Galway Bay FM.

Michael Foley, emeritus professor, Dublin Institute of Technology.

Geoff Harris, presenter, WLR radio.

Joe Humphreys, assistant news editor, Irish Times.

Rónán Mac Con Iomaire, Irish-language group head, RTÉ.

Rebecca Maher, reporter, Galway Independent.

Emma Ní Chearúil, manager, Raidió na dTreabh.

Marion Ní Shúilleabháin, news presenter, Raidió na Gaeltacht.

Orla Nix, regional news producer, RTÉ.

Andrew Ó Baoill, director of masters and bachelors journalism programs, NUI Galway.

Martina O’Brien, project coordinator, Community Radio Forum of Ireland (CRAOL).

Dave O’Connell, editor, Connacht Tribune.

Padraic Ó Raighne, marketing manager, TG4.

Liz Reddy, news presenter, WLR radio.

Declan Varley, editor, Galway Advertiser.

Kieran Walsh, editor, Munster Express.

Appendix B

Content Reviews

Connacht Tribune weekly edition, February 24, 2017 (print)

Galway Advertiser weekly edition, March 2, 2017 (print)

Galway Independent weekly edition, March 1, 2017 (print)

Roscommon Herald weekly edition, February 21, 2017 (print)

Clare Champion weekly edition, February 24, 2017 (print)

Connaught Telegraph weekly edition, February 21, 2017 (print)

Mayo News weekly edition, April 28, 2015 (print)

Munster Express weekly edition, February 28, 2017 (print)

Sligo Champion weekly edition, April 28, 2015 (print)

The Tuam Herald weekly edition, February 22, 2017 (print)

Waterford Mail weekly edition, March 2, 2017 (print)

Waterford News & Star weekly edition, February 28, 2017 (print)

Waterford Today weekly edition, March 1, 2017 (print)

Western People weekly edition, February 27, 2017 (print)

Index

Locators in bold refer to tables.
2RN radio station 4, 45, 46, 53
6CK radio station 45

20 Year Strategy for Preservation of the Irish language 109–10, 112–13, 116

Adams, Gerry 62

BAI see Broadcast Authority of Ireland

BBC 5, 41, 44–8, 51, 56–8, 61, 63, 66, 106, 115

Belfast, city of 42, 45, 46

Belfast Agreement (or Good Friday Agreement) 18, 31, 36

Bosca Ceoil (television show) 115
Breakingnews.ie (website) 76
British Broadcasting Corp. see BBC

Broadcast Authority of Ireland (BAI) 47, 50, 62, 65, 69

Broadcasting Act of 1960 41, 47, 50, 65

Byrne, Gay 48

camogie 101–2

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) 41, 57

Catholic Church: media and 40–4, 48–9, 97, 123; social influence of 18, 27–9; state interactions with 33

Catholicism: cultural identity and 17–21, 24–5, 36, 59, 122; in Northern Ireland 29–31

Celtic Media (newspaper group) 75, 125

Celtic Tiger economic expansion 33, 34, 125

Censorship: 1937 Constitution and 50, 59, 61; Broadcast Act of 1960 (Article 31) and 50, 51, 57, 61, 62; government policies and 49, 50, 52, 59, 61
census 27, 29, 34, 109, 113
Clare, county of 69, 88
Clare Champion 72, 92, 97
Committee on Evil Literature 49, 59, 77
Communicorp 65, 70
community: and boundaries 10–11, 14, 36, 80, 118–19, 123; defined 6, 8–9, 81; and geography (place) 6, 9–11; and identity 6–8, 12, 36; impacts of modernization on 12–14; symbolic construction of (imagined community) 8, 11–12, 14, 33, 104, 118–19, 123
community media: defined 6; theories of 79–82, 88, 104, 119; see also community ties hypothesis

Community Radio Forum of Ireland (CRAOL) 66, 99
community ties hypothesis 2, 79, 81, 87
Connacht Tribune 71, 73
Connaught Telegraph 73, 102
Connemara 51, 52, 87, 109, 116n1

Cork, city and county of 42, 45, 69, 70, 71, 75

Cork Examiner 40
Cork Independent 71, 74
CRAOL see Community Radio Forum of Ireland
Croke Park 100, 101
cultural nationalism 22–4, 27, 36, 41–2, 52, 59–60, 84, 107

Dail 25, 45, 47, 50, 52, 62
de-Anglicization 19, 22, 24–5, 40, 45
Derry, city of 42–3, 59

De Valera, Eamonn 5, 25–6, 35, 40, 44, 49–50, 60, 77, 100

Dublin, city of 5, 22–3, 32, 42–3, 45, 52, 59–60, 65, 76, 113, 122, 126

Dungarvan, town of 88–9

Durkheim, Emile 12, 58, 79, 81

Easter Rising (1916) 4, 24, 43, 59
England see United Kingdom
Ennis, town of 97
EU see European Union
European Economic Community (EEC) 32–3, 49
European Union (EU) 18, 26, 32–6, 52

Evening Echo 71, 72, 76

Federal Communication Commission (US) 45, 47, 56

Fianna Fail 25, 30, 35, 44, 49, 59–60, 100
Fine Gael 35
First Amendment (of US Constitution) 56–7, 62
Freeman’s Journal 43

Free Radio Connemara (Saor Raidió Chomamara) 51

Free State see Irish Free State

GAA see Gaelic Athletic Association

Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) 20, 23–4, 44, 46, 84, 87–8, 94–7, 100–4, 113, 120–2

Gaelic League 4, 22–3, 25, 40, 45, 59, 106

Gaeltacht 25, 83, 107, 109–14, 116

Galway, city and county of 2, 5, 42, 59, 69, 71, 87–9, 91, 94–5, 112–13, 122, 126

Galway Advertiser 71, 74
Galway Bay FM radio station 2, 68, 91, 95
Galway Independent 71, 74
gemeinschaft and gesselschaft 12–13, 58, 126
globalization 12, 125
Glor Tire (television show) 115
Good Friday Agreement see Belfast Agreement

Great Britain see United Kingdom

Herald, The 67, 70–1
her.ie (website) 76
home rule 24, 43, 59
hurling 18, 23–4, 44, 84, 88, 95, 100–1, 115, 121–2

Hyde, Douglas 4, 19, 22, 25, 40–1, 45, 106

Iconic Newspapers 75

Identity: and geography 7–8, 12; Irish national 17

Independent News and Media Corp. (INM) 70–2, 75, 124–5

IRA see Irish Republican Army
Irish civil war 4, 24, 30, 43–4, 49, 108
Irish Daily Mail 67, 70
Irish Daily Star 67, 70

Irish Free State 3–4, 19, 21, 24–7, 29–30, 36, 41, 43–5, 49, 59–60, 107, 110, 126

Irish Independent 43, 59–60, 67, 70, 115, 124

Irish language: community expression and 107, 111–12; cultural nationalism and 22–3, 107–9; government policy and 23, 107, 109–10, 114; media normalization of 113–15; speaking population of (Census statistics) 109; see also 20 Year Strategy for Preservation of the Irish language

Irish Press 5, 40, 42, 44, 59–60, 100
Irish Republican Army (IRA) 31, 50–1, 57, 62
Irish Times 53, 59–60, 67, 70–1, 124

ITV television network 51, 61, 64

Janowitz, Morris 2, 13, 79–81, 88, 92, 103, 126
joe.ie (website) 76
Joint National Listenership Research 69
Joint National Readership Survey 70–1
journal.ie (website) 76

Landmark Media 76
Late, Late Show 48, 62
Leinster Independent 42
Lemass, Sean 35, 47, 50
license fee, broadcast 45, 52, 64

Limerick, city and county of 42, 65, 69, 75, 88
literary revival 23, 42, 59

Maximum Media 76

Mayo, County of 52, 65, 69, 87–8, 90, 95, 102, 126

Mayo News 73, 90, 95
McCarthy, Billy 99, 121
Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs 45, 50
modernization 8, 12–14, 19, 28, 48, 51, 55, 58–60, 76, 79, 108–10, 122, 126

Munster Express 73, 96, 102

Murdoch, Rupert 72

Murphy, William Martin 43, 70

Near FM radio station 68, 95, 99
neoliberalism 19, 33, 55, 108
News Corp 65, 72
Newstalk 106–8 radio station 65, 67, 69
Northern Ireland 5, 30–3, 36, 46, 50–1, 64

Northern Ireland violence (The Troubles) 30–2, 51, 57

O’Brien, Denis 65, 70, 72

Online media 75–6

Park, Robert 13, 79, 126
pirate radio 51–2, 61, 65, 99

Press Council of Ireland 62

radio, commercial 65
radio, non-profit (community) 51, 62, 65–6, 90, 95, 99–100

Raidio Eireann 5, 40, 47, 60, 110, 115
Raidio na dTreabh 122
Raidio na Gaeltachta 51–3, 63, 109–12, 114–16
Raidio na Life 122

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières) 62

Reuters Institute for Digital News 62, 76

Roscommon Herald 73, 90, 102, 120

RTÉ: audience 66, 69; mission 61, 63; outlets 63–4, 67

Sinn Fein 50, 62
Sligo Champion 73, 102
social responsibility theory 56–7
sport: community identity and 84, 87–8, 122; cultural identification with 18, 20, 22–4; media coverage of 41, 44, 46, 76, 95–6, 100–3

Stamm, Keith 2–3, 9, 81, 104, 119

Sunday World 67, 71

Symbolic constructionism 6–8, 10–14, 21, 23, 36–7, 39

Teilifís Éireann 5, 40–1, 47–8, 60–1, 115

Teilifís na Gaeilge see TG4

TG4 (and predecessor Teilifís na Gaeilge) 52, 61, 64, 109–12, 114–16

Today FM radio station 65, 67, 69
Tonnies, Ferdinand 12, 79, 81, 126
Troubles, The see Northern Ireland violence
Tuam Herald, The 71, 72, 90, 92, 96, 120

TV3 52, 61, 64, 66, 67

Ulster 29–31

Ulster Television see UTV

United Kingdom (including England, Great Britain) 4–5, 21, 29–30, 33, 36, 45, 47, 51, 55–8, 61–2, 64, 77

University of Chicago13, 79, 126

UTV television network 51, 64, 66

Walsh, J.J. Postmaster General 45–6

Waterford, city and county of 42, 88–91, 95, 99, 100–1, 120–1, 126

Waterford News and Star 73, 97, 102
Western People 73, 95, 97
WLR radio station (Waterford) 69, 91, 95, 99

World Economic Forum 6, 26

Yeats, William Butler 22, 40–1

Table of Contents

- Page 1
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Community Media and Identity in Ireland

- 2 Construction and Evolution of Irish Identity

- 3 Irish Media and Irish Identity

- 4 Contemporary Irish Media

- 5 Community Media Theory and Project Methodology

- 6 Local Media Reflections of Identity
- 7 Irish-Language Media and Identity
- 8 Local Focus in a Global Society
- Appendices
- Appendix A Quoted Interviewees
- Appendix B Content Reviews
- Index