In recent years, there has been an increasing attention on Multiculturalism. The principles of multiculturalism have been gradually integrated to various laws and communication policies in Taiwan. This paper takes the Ritual “paSta’ay” of the Saisiyat Tribe as an example to explore the issue of “ethnic (indigenous) tourism” and to analyze its news coverage in press based on Kincheloe and Steinberg discussion of the critical multiculturalist perspectives.
Different from previous research which only focuses on the news representation of indigenous peoples based on the “textual analysis”, this research employs both the textual analysis and interviews to find out the interactive relationship between the new media, journalists, and indigenous peoples.
The thesis finds that the news media, journalists, and news coverage mostly take a pluralist perspective oriented toward “ethnic tourism”, “entertainment” and “market-driven journalism”, and they lack a critical multiculturalist perspective to explore the power of dominant relationship in society. It is suggested that we should not ignore the “autonomy” and the “agency” of indigenous peoples when we talk about “Multiculturalism”and should pursue the justice and recognize the “difference” among different cultures. And we also need to establish a “principle of indigenous news coverage” by “Multicultural Journalism” (MJ) to empower indigenous peoples to change their disadvantaged situation and to express their opinions actively on media.
