Paper short abstract:

Analyzing the German public service broadcasters' thematic week dedicated to tolerance in 2014, the paper seeks to identify ways in which this concept is constructed and how it functions as a tool of governmentality in the media and public policies concerning cultural diversity in Germany.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2006, the German association of public service broadcasters, the ARD, has been organizing so-called thematic weeks (ARD-Themenwoche), during which the ARD radio and television broadcasters dedicate various formats, shows and programs to the given theme. After those dedicated to topics such as happiness, demographic change or food, in November 2014 the thematic week was focused on tolerance. The proposed paper offers an ethnographic look at the genesis of the ARD-"tolerance week" from the point of view from within the coordinators' team. It analyzes the ways various media makers "translated" the concept of tolerance into radio or TV-forms, the discussions of the concept during the editors' meetings, the marketing campaign accompanying it, as well as casual conversations with editors and the audience about the thematic week. The paper looks at the ways of how the term tolerance circulates within the discourse of German national identity (as well as European identity) and how it is filled (and refilled) with various meanings (what counts as tolerance and what are the presumed values from which a community is marked as being tolerant). It draws on work by Sara Ahmed (politics of emotions), Ghassan Hage (ungovernable others) and Wendy Brown (processes of culturalization of politics and de-politicizing effects).