Media identities and media-influenced indentifications Visibility and identity recognition in the media

The media establish, in large part, the patterns of visibility and public recognition of collective identities. We define media identities as those that are the object of production and diffusion by the media. From this discourse, the communities and individuals elaborate media-influenced identifications; that is, processes of recognition or banishment; (re)articulating the identity markers that the media offer with other cognitive and emotional sources. The generation and appropriation of the identities are subjected to a media hierarchisation that influences their normalisation or marginalisation. The identities presented by the media and assumed by the audience as part of the official, hegemonic discourse are normalised, whereas the identities and identifications formulated in popular and minority terms are marginalised. After presenting this conceptual and analytical framework, this study attempts to outline the logics that condition the presentation, on the one hand, andthe public recognition, on the other hand, of contemporary identities