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The Reading Writing Hotline was originally conceived as phone support for viewers of an educational TV series. Celebrating it's 30th anniversary next year, it has evolved to become a national referral service for learners, as well as an information and advisory service for industry and community. It recorded a significant increase in call numbers and complexity during the pandemic. Because of its unique connections with learners and program providers, the Hotline's case studies and statistics are a valuable resource for governments and policymakers. The Hotline is trialing several pilot projects to address gaps in adult literacy provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of sustained interest in the mobilization of Muslimness beyond generic and hence immobile identity tropes, I consider how Australian mainstream television and film productions work to challenge and disrupt essentialist representations of Muslimness. Case studies feature two television series and a feature film, examined through the lens of transnational mobility theory and in the context of mediated anti-racism. The productions I discuss, 'The Spice Journey', 'The Mosque Next Door', and 'Down Under', all turn on intra- and inter-communal mobility of Muslim identities. They are part of a larger trend in popular media productions in current Australian film and on television, which reacts to Islamophobic sentiments in the country by drawing attention to embodied multiple subjectivities. Findings suggest that Australian entertainment media can add meaningful input to the diverse and complex negotiations of culture and identity among Muslims in Australia but may sidestep other forms of racism like anti-Indigeneity in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates, through interviews, the script development processes of four female-identifying web series creators, contributing to scholarship around web series' ability to serve diverse communities [Christian 2020. "Beyond Branding: The Value of Intersectionality on Streaming TV Channels." Television & New Media 21 (5): 457–474; 2011. "Fandom as Industrial Response: Producing Identity in an Independent Web Series." TWC – Transformative Works and Cultures, 8, 'Race and Ethnicity in Fandom' special issue; Monaghan 2017. "Starting From ... Now and the Web Series to Television Crossover: An Online Revolution?" Media International Australia 164 (1): 82–91; Williams 2012. Web TV Series: How to Make and Market Them. Harpenden: Kamera Books], but from the perspective of the writing process. The three web series making up this small sample – Last Breath (2018), Love Songs (2019) and Phi and Me (2019-) – have all experienced notable levels of 'success' (defined here variously in terms of views, festival selections, and awards). This article offers a preliminary investigation into how women's web series writing practices may – or may not – depart from conventions that are practiced in mainstream settings of episodic script development, and/or are circulated by the screenwriting 'how-to' market. Using the insights into these writing processes, this article builds upon web series scholarship (where, it has been argued, innovations around diversity are leading the way in terms of screen content and distribution) by exploring the extent to which gender and cultural diversity, platform and standardised story structures inform the script development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) in three recent Indigenous-authored television series: Redfern Now, Cleverman, and Mystery Road. Television series and movies have traditionally introduced and reinforced negative attitudes about speakers of minority/minoritised English and nonstandard language varieties. Representations of these varieties of English tend to be selective and inaccurate. However, most linguistic research to date has examined representations in older Hollywood movies. In Australia, there has been a recent growth of Indigenous-authored television drama as well as in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander characters on television. For viewers, such characters can be an important source of information, especially if they do not regularly interact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is the case for many Australian audience members, and even more so for international viewers of Australian television series that are exported overseas--as is the case for all three analysed series. This study employs lexical profiling analysis (with AntWordProfiler) to compare the use of AAE lexis across the three programs. Results show Mystery Road contains the most variety of AAE types as well as the highest proportion of AAE tokens. Cleverman includes the least variety of AAE types and the lowest proportion of AAE tokens, but the most "less-familiar" AAE lexis (engaging with the Dreaming). Redfern Now's use of AAE tokens is only slightly lower than Mystery Road, and it features a higher variety of AAE types than Cleverman. The study demonstrates that the use of such lexis is no barrier to "mainstream" popularity, critical acclaim, and international success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centenary of the First World War (2014–2019) expanded and reinvigorated the historiography of this conflict. In particular, the war's cultural legacy generated an outpouring of publications between 2013 and 2020 that re-evaluated its traditional cultural representations and explored fresh avenues of inquiry through analysing contemporary interpretations of the conflict in films, books and television series. In this way, the centenary afforded historians the chance to engage in a broad conversation about the significance of the cultural history and, notably, memory of the war in an unprecedented way. This article explores the development of recent scholarship on representations of the First World War in Australia and New Zealand, exploring how this body of work not only refreshed the field but also shaped and extended understandings of the war's commemorative and cultural legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Our Selection is a series of stories by Steele Rudd, the pen name of Arthur Hoey Davis. The stories portray elements of small 'selector' farming in federation-era Australia and represent a significant body of literature originating in or 'about' the 'bush', the 'outback', the 'never-never' -- unspecific appellations attached to regions of non-urban Australia. The stories detail the Rudd family's experiences after taking up a 'selection' in the Australian bush -- the arduous processes of early clearing through to their relative prosperity. 'Dad Rudd' has been described as 'Australia's Everyman', and his pugnacious attitude of opposition to the 'squattocracy' and the cities resonated with audiences. The sketches, periodicals, radio plays, theatre productions and, eventually, films that continued the Rudd legacy made these stories a significant voice in the creation of Australian national identity -- or at least the 'bush' identity. However, an attempt to update the representation to the 1970s in a television series was unsuccessful. This article considers the interaction between the legislative creation of 'selection' of land and the depictions of life on a selection in the creation of the Australian national identity. It then considers the media and social changes that contextualise the failure of the television series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, more specifically, its enormous popularity in the United States, Western Europe and Australia, and the absence of any reaction to the series in Serbia. By compari ng themes regarded as important in western societies to the current situation in Serbia, the analysis shows that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series that could not have gained popularity in Serbia because it uses the language of fantasy to speak about reality and pose unpleasant questions, which the Serbian public does not wish to hear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]