Communication and Interculturality: An Experience on Intercultural Training for Journalists

Citizenship as status implies the acknowledgment of individual rights as well as social ones. This very acceptance requires the consideration of all citizens as equal despite any personal difference and it represents an aim that is mostly dependent on the mass-media social function. The formal acknowledgment of the citizenship would be scarcely important if identity stereotypes and prejudice-based discrimination occurred during citizen's vital happenings. Today, citizenship must include the communicative dimension as part of the social integration project. Societies are every day more intercultural, and media play an essential role in representing the other. As part of a Grundtvig project on intercultural education, the author conducted an experience with journalistic ethics students of the Communication School at the University of Seville. From this experience, the author reflects on multiculturalism as a necessary tool in the training of future journalists.