Documentary is facing dramatic changes as the new media open up issues of complexity and diversity not available to traditional single media forms. Documentary has been one of the key avenues through which discourses of the social have been created and institutionalised - how then will these discourses be affected by developing ideas about documentary possibilities in new media? In the waves of debate over the future of new media technologies, it is important to grasp the ideological and political implications and opportunities that they contain (Cherny and Weise 1996; Jankowski and Hanssen 1996; Sardar and Ravetz 1996; Jones 1997; Murray 1997). This paper addresses a specific part of this debate - the role of new media in education, and the issues it can raise in relation to learning about multicultural societies. In particular how will discourses of social diversity be challenged by the multiplicity of readings generated in the new media environment?