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Commissioned by SBS, and published in March 2006, Connecting Diversity: Paradoxes of Multicultural Australia is a follow-up study to SBS’s 2002 report, Living Diversity: Australia’s Multicultural Future. The attitudes of many younger Australians from culturally diverse backgrounds reveal paradoxes about Australian multiculturalism today. This report sheds light on their views, experiences and expectations and the role of media in their lives. Younger, culturally and linguistically diverse Australians are often the subject of mediafanned controversy about disaffection, ‘ethnic gangs’ and cultural isolation. While these controversies tend to be localised – Cronulla, Inala or Bankstown – Connecting Diversity tells a national and quite different story. This research builds upon the findings of the 2002 report, Living Diversity: Australia’s Multicultural Future, which challenged common assumptions about contemporary multicultural Australia. In an era of fragmenting media and assumed political apathy, Connecting Diversity further examines many of the findings of the earlier study, with a new focus on younger people, cultural identity and media use. Connecting Diversity reveals individual experiences and often contradictory ideas about media and diversity in Australia. Disjunctions appear to exist between an individual’s experience and their thoughts about Australia’s national identity. Multiculturalism is valued for broadening the appreciation of difference, yet this support can coexist with concerns about perceived segregation, usually ‘elsewhere’ in Australia. Younger people tend to be more comfortable with cultural difference than previous generations and cite their own diverse network of friends as one of the reasons for this. Even so, some describe experiences of racism that engender a feeling of exclusion from ‘mainstream’ society. In their everyday lives, social relationships are navigated through regular and familiar connections on the one hand, and experiences an

Exploration of how Australia and Asia are intertwined in everyday culture, and in the imagined worlds of Australians of all backgrounds. Investigates Asian cultural production of art, literature, media and performance that embody Asian social and cultural experiences. Includes endnotes, bibliography and index. Ang and Chalmers work in the School of Cultural Studies at University of Western Sydney. Law and Thomas are Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellows at Australian National University and the Research Centre in Inter-communal Studies respectively.

Exploration of how Australia and Asia are intertwined in everyday culture, and in the imagined worlds of Australians of all backgrounds. Investigates Asian cultural production of art, literature, media and performance that embody Asian social and cultural experiences. Includes endnotes, bibliography and index. Ang and Chalmers work in the School of Cultural Studies at University of Western Sydney. Law and Thomas are Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellows at Australian National University and the Research Centre in Inter-communal Studies respectively.

This account of relations between television, nation and culture presents the first detailed study of television in Indonesia. The thesis traces developments in the use and reception of television in Indonesia from its beginnings in 1962 to a time when it is poised on the edge of a global revolution in electronic communications. This has implications for the regulation of television, its use as a normative influence in the fashioning of national culture, and the continued relevance of the idea of the nation as a territorially limited, sovereign, imagined community. Accordingly the thesis has been divided into two parts which correspond to the period when television was a state monopoly, and the period of deregulation when five national commercial channels were added to the two government channels. Part I examines historical processes of using television to shape national culture in line with official national development and the cultural objectives of Indonesia’s New Order. These processes are examined in five chapters which analyse the history of state involvement in television, changing conceptions of the audience, and three generic case studies: a popular children's program, a soap opera, and the national news. Each of these chapters examines the inscribed construct of the idealised Indonesian subject. Part II of the thesis discusses the global dispersal of new television technologies and their impact on the mediation of the national culture project. It is argued that the incursion of foreign cultural products led to the introduction of commercial television as a way of domesticating the global. Deregulation of the television sector has opened up increased opportunities for citizens to contribute to media policy and regulation and has fragmented representations of Indonesian subjectivity. The thesis concludes that the scope and content of domestic programming is likely to become an important site of cultural and political struggle in the years ahead.

This account of relations between television, nation and culture presents the first detailed study of television in Indonesia. The thesis traces developments in the use and reception of television in Indonesia from its beginnings in 1962 to a time when it is poised on the edge of a global revolution in electronic communications. This has implications for the regulation of television, its use as a normative influence in the fashioning of national culture, and the continued relevance of the idea of the nation as a territorially limited, sovereign, imagined community. Accordingly the thesis has been divided into two parts which correspond to the period when television was a state monopoly, and the period of deregulation when five national commercial channels were added to the two government channels. Part I examines historical processes of using television to shape national culture in line with official national development and the cultural objectives of Indonesia’s New Order. These processes are examined in five chapters which analyse the history of state involvement in television, changing conceptions of the audience, and three generic case studies: a popular children's program, a soap opera, and the national news. Each of these chapters examines the inscribed construct of the idealised Indonesian subject. Part II of the thesis discusses the global dispersal of new television technologies and their impact on the mediation of the national culture project. It is argued that the incursion of foreign cultural products led to the introduction of commercial television as a way of domesticating the global. Deregulation of the television sector has opened up increased opportunities for citizens to contribute to media policy and regulation and has fragmented representations of Indonesian subjectivity. The thesis concludes that the scope and content of domestic programming is likely to become an important site of cultural and political struggle in the years ahead.

This study investigates how people living in remote and regional Western Australia (WA) responded to the start-up of the remote commercial television service. For three of the six communities investigated, this marked a first experience of in situ broadcast television. The research began with a policy-driven construction of the audience, and a core-periphery model. It was progressed through qualitative audience studies techniques. Both constructions of the audience were found valuable, but policy research would be much richer if it routinely included more qualitative constructions of the audience such as the one offered here. Drawing upon interviews with some 140 people, the thesis argues that respondents convert broadcast programs into materials which are used to construct and express understandings of themselves, their households and their communities. The study is an adaptation and application of the Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley (1992, pp. 20-6) schema of consuming domestic technologies through appropriation, objectification, incorporation, and conversion. Respondents were selected because of their remote or regional location and their isolation from ‘normal’ communications channels. Historically these communities have been little researched. Contributors were mainly interviewed at home or work — and ranged from adolescents through to retirees. In contrast, most benchmark Australian audience studies concentrate upon children and young people (Hodge and Tripp 1986, Noble 1975, Palmer 1986a and 1986b). A holistic study which celebrates breadth rather than depth, this thesis analyses what respondents say about a range of central issues, as expressed through discussion of television services and broadcast programming. As well as addressing community characteristics, the account considers the household, gender, technology adoption and conversion, the building of community, and the construction of consumer culture. In summary, the traditional core-periphery dynamic i

This study investigates how people living in remote and regional Western Australia (WA) responded to the start-up of the remote commercial television service. For three of the six communities investigated, this marked a first experience of in situ broadcast television. The research began with a policy-driven construction of the audience, and a core-periphery model. It was progressed through qualitative audience studies techniques. Both constructions of the audience were found valuable, but policy research would be much richer if it routinely included more qualitative constructions of the audience such as the one offered here. Drawing upon interviews with some 140 people, the thesis argues that respondents convert broadcast programs into materials which are used to construct and express understandings of themselves, their households and their communities. The study is an adaptation and application of the Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley (1992, pp. 20-6) schema of consuming domestic technologies through appropriation, objectification, incorporation, and conversion. Respondents were selected because of their remote or regional location and their isolation from ‘normal’ communications channels. Historically these communities have been little researched. Contributors were mainly interviewed at home or work — and ranged from adolescents through to retirees. In contrast, most benchmark Australian audience studies concentrate upon children and young people (Hodge and Tripp 1986, Noble 1975, Palmer 1986a and 1986b). A holistic study which celebrates breadth rather than depth, this thesis analyses what respondents say about a range of central issues, as expressed through discussion of television services and broadcast programming. As well as addressing community characteristics, the account considers the household, gender, technology adoption and conversion, the building of community, and the construction of consumer culture. In summary, the traditional core-periphery dynamic i

For over forty years since 1949, the People's Republic of China adapted to a unified and homogeneous "revolutionary cultural" identity that was deeply inscribed with communism and socialist ideals, which was located in a fixed relationship to the culture of the past and the culture of the West. The emergence of an elite culture in the 1980s and then a popular culture in the 1990s were significant historical breakthroughs. It not only highlighted the changes in the co-existence of different cultural domains but also, more significantly, provided sites for new discourses of elite culture and popular culture. This study argues that China's cultural identity has become an arena of multiple identities rather than a singular subjectivity. In terms of contemporary cultural value and authority, and their relation to social power, there are at least three distinct cultural spheres representing different cultural forces in the national community: elite culture, popular culture and official culture. This new division in the contemporary cultural field not only deconstructs the powerful single, unified "revolutionary Chinese culture", but also reflects and generates conflicts of value and belief as between the Chinese authorities, intellectuals and ordinary people; more than that, it urges a renegotiation of contemporary Chinese cultural (and national) identity and China's official cultural policy. Therefore, whether the blend of the three cultures - elite culture, popular culture and official culture - can co-exist harmoniously in future with an encroaching "Western" and "modern" culture is a question with no answer yet. It is possible that if the open policy and reforms of the past decade which have made possible such a variety of China's cultural life continue, China, facing the age of popular culture in the 21st century, will gradually move towards the global order of communication, towards cultural heterogeneity, if not fragmentation.

For over forty years since 1949, the People's Republic of China adapted to a unified and homogeneous "revolutionary cultural" identity that was deeply inscribed with communism and socialist ideals, which was located in a fixed relationship to the culture of the past and the culture of the West. The emergence of an elite culture in the 1980s and then a popular culture in the 1990s were significant historical breakthroughs. It not only highlighted the changes in the co-existence of different cultural domains but also, more significantly, provided sites for new discourses of elite culture and popular culture. This study argues that China's cultural identity has become an arena of multiple identities rather than a singular subjectivity. In terms of contemporary cultural value and authority, and their relation to social power, there are at least three distinct cultural spheres representing different cultural forces in the national community: elite culture, popular culture and official culture. This new division in the contemporary cultural field not only deconstructs the powerful single, unified "revolutionary Chinese culture", but also reflects and generates conflicts of value and belief as between the Chinese authorities, intellectuals and ordinary people; more than that, it urges a renegotiation of contemporary Chinese cultural (and national) identity and China's official cultural policy. Therefore, whether the blend of the three cultures - elite culture, popular culture and official culture - can co-exist harmoniously in future with an encroaching "Western" and "modern" culture is a question with no answer yet. It is possible that if the open policy and reforms of the past decade which have made possible such a variety of China's cultural life continue, China, facing the age of popular culture in the 21st century, will gradually move towards the global order of communication, towards cultural heterogeneity, if not fragmentation.

This study is in the tradition of audience reception research and has its focus on the relationship between television viewing and the everyday life of a group of children, who had recently migrated to Australia from non-English speaking countries. The research method applied in this study is ethnographic, using indepths interviews with the children as well as some observations about the television viewing activity in their homes. In chapter one, I present the theoretical context in which this case study can be located. Chapter 2 discusses the research method and provides profiles of the children. Chapter 3 is concerned with the description of television's place in the lives of individual children, in order to give insight into social and cultural aspects of their television experiences. Chapter 4 examines some common themes in the children's television use, highlighting how the collective experience of being a recent migrant has influence on television viewing. The thesis is rounded off by some concluding remarks.