Ethnic Media at the Crossroads of Identity: Minority Education in the Discourses of Agos

Abstract

In the context of globalisation, media function not merely as channels of information transmission but as key social institutions actively involved in the formation and reproduction of social relations, public discourses and questions of identity. Within this frame- work, ethnic media play a particularly significant role in multicultural societies, serving as mediating platforms between minority and majority populations and providing opportunities for identity preservation, public visibility, political and cultural involvement. At the same time, their activities are shaped by the political and social structures of the host country, which may simultaneously enable and constrain the scope of ethnic media influence. The study aims to analyse public discourses in ethnic media concerning identity issues via education, language, and community institutions as it is represented in the pages of the bilingual Armenian weekly Agos, published in Istanbul, Turkey. According to that, the school is framed not merely as an educational institution but as a distinct arena for the preservation and reproduction of cultural and linguistic identity. The analysis demonstrates that ethnic press functions not only as a medium of in- tra-communal communication but also as a media-discursive mechanism in which the inter- relation between school, language and identity emerges as one of the fundamental issues of community life.