Cultural diversity is one of those terms that manage to accommodate different meanings and varying concepts. In addition, the term cultural diversity is often deployed together with other concepts as important as social tolerance, freedom of expression and democracy. At the same time, it is held out in defence against perceived threats from a global market and serves as justification for concrete state action in support of the creative industry.

This edition of the European Audiovisual Observatory's publication IRIS plus presupposes that it is important to clarify potential meanings of cultural diversity and arising concepts if we wish to experience cultural diversity in the form of concrete results. The need for clarification becomes more pressing with a view to technological advances which already by themselves, and all the more in tandem with vague concepts, challenge existing legal frameworks. This IRIS plus is a first and very useful step on a long way to go.

http://www.obs.coe.int/oea_publ/iris/iris_plus/iplus6_2008.pdf.en