Search

This article examines news coverage of Australia's 2018 National Apology to Victims of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse to reveal how conventional news values and practices produce racialised hiera...

Gavan Titley’s book Racism and Media (2019) is a much needed and compelling intervention on this enduring topic. One of the many significant contributions of the book is to develop an account of ra...

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–17) was a highly significant legal exercise that devoted considerable expertise and resources to bearing witnes...

In this chapter, the authors suggest that the contributions of marginalised voices to public platforms do not merely provide evidence that free speech is alive and well, but may actually unsettle assumptions about what these platforms intend to achieve and the communities they purport to serve. Listening, writes Kwaymullina, 'means listening to the sound of settler-colonialism inside the people head and all around them so that they can hear past it and understand their voices on their own terms'. Across the Unsettled Voices volume and our closing discussion, the author have attempted to extend beyond the free speech debates, foregrounding turning attention to the politics of 'ethical responsiveness', including listening and witnessing. For an extensive survey of approaches to speech for legal purposes. A similar issue arose from Rugby Australia’s termination of a star player’s contract, Israel Folau, due to a homophobic Twitter post.

This critical commentary reflects on a rapidly mobilised international podcast project, in which 25 urban scholars from around the world provided audio recordings about their cities during COVID‐19. New digital tools are increasing the speeds, formats and breadth of the research and communication mediums available to researchers. Voice recorders on mobile phones and digital audio editing on laptops allows researchers to collaborate in new ways, and this podcast project pushed at the boundaries of what a research method and community might be. Many of those who provided short audio 'reports from the field' recorded on their mobile phones were struggling to make sense of their experience in their city during COVID‐19. The substantive sections of this commentary discuss the digital methodology opportunities that podcasting affords geographical scholarship. In this case the methodology includes the curated production of the podcast and critical reflection on the podcast process through collaborative writing. Then putting this methodology into action some limited reflections on cities under COVID‐19 lockdown and social distancing initiatives around the world are provided to demonstrate the utility and limitations of this method., This commentary discuss the digital methodology opportunities that podcasting affords geographical scholarship. In this case the methodology includes the curated production of the podcast and critical reflection on the podcast process through collaborative writing. Then putting this methodology into action some limited reflections on cities under COVID‐19 lockdown and social distancing initiatives around the world are provided to demonstrate the utility and limitations of this method.

When the alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopolous toured Australia in late 2017, he attacked familiar targets – Muslims, feminists and much of the mainstream media – as well as ridiculing Aboriginal...

This panel engages critically with the development, application and emerging effects of ‘smart’ technologies of governance. Attending specifically to the ramifications of new forms of (‘big’) data capture and integration implemented by or for state agencies, the panel describes how the rollout of these technologies impacts on and is shaped by contexts prefigured by social and economic inequalities. Two specific arenas are addressed and juxtaposed, with two papers on each of these. The first arena is the introduction of ‘smart city’ technologies and their implications for low income and marginalised communities. Often presented as novel augmentations of urban space, enhancing and customising the urban experience at the same time that they increase the city’s efficiency and ‘awareness’, smart city technologies also reconfigure urban spaces and how they are understood and governed by rendering the city a site of data generation and capture. This presents new opportunities and risks for residents and powerful commercial and state actors alike. The emergence of public wi-fi kiosks as a means of providing internet access to underserved communities, as one panellist describes, can be shown to expose low-income residents to new forms of surveillance and to new kinds of inequity in terms of the asymmetry of information made available to the parties in the exchange at the kiosk. Surveillance and data capture is organised to particular ends and powerful interests shape and leverage the design and affordances of such initiatives in particular ways. Insofar as concerns are raised about these developments, they are commonly framed in terms of individual rights to privacy, missing the scale of the issues involved. It is not merely that ‘opting out’ becomes untenable. As other panellists show, the issues involved are fundamentally social rather than individual in that they foreground questions around the appropriate relations between state and commercial actors, the use and nature of public space, and the uneven distribution of rights of access to space, information, and other resources within the city. Economically disenfranchised groups are not only denied meaningful access and participation, but colonised by data processes designed to extract various forms of value from their use of ‘public’ infrastructure which may not best serve their own interests. The second arena addressed by the panel is the role of algorithmic governance and artificial intelligence in the provision of social welfare. This context is described in terms of both the effects for the frontline service encounter, and the design, justification, and implementation of the technologies reformatting this encounter from key locations within state agencies. Emerging technological infrastructures for social welfare do not simply reconfigure how existing services are offered and accessed. They facilitate the identification of new target populations for intervention, at the same time that they introduce additional burdens, hurdles and forms of intervention and surveillance for these populations. As such, it is evident in the design and application of these technologies that they accord with and expedite punitive logics in welfare provision, providing new opportunities for the application of dominant neoliberal governance strategies. In both arenas, one can conceptualize ‘pipelines’ for the implementation of these developments. These pipelines are interstitial and heterogeneous, and combine different timelines, technologies and actors. They are often technically or administratively opaque or otherwise obscured from view. This gives rise to a methodological and intellectual problem, around the extent to which researchers can say they know enough to point to determining instances, political agendas, commercial agreements, incidental alignments and so on in such a way as to advocate effectively for democratic input and oversight. In this sense the papers assembled highlight how these developments call for new politics of method, new modalities of analysis and critique, and more effective activist and academic engagements with the question of how ideals of justice and equity can best be instantiated in these contexts.

In this paper, I argue that the concepts of the ‘social’, ‘participation’, and political ‘listening’ should be central to projects to capture the value and impact of community media. Each of these ...

In this article, the author explores the challenges for sexual citizenship campaigns as same-sex marriage emerges as a touchstone for progressive politics in Australia and beyond. Analysing popular media and public debate, she argues that there is much to be learned from recent critiques of liberal and colonial feminisms. Jasbir Puar argues that the ‘woman question’ is currently being supplemented or supplanted by the ‘gay question’ as a marker of a nation’s modernity, democracy and ‘civilization’. In the context of widespread support for marriage equality, an urgent challenge is how to respond to an emerging ‘homonationalism’ in public culture which positions the West on ‘the right side of history’ in contrast to homophobic Islam, and a liberal version of gay rights which obscures ongoing discrimination and injustice.

This chapter explores how digitisation is affecting Indigenous peoples’ participation in debates around education in Australia. It contributes to international scholarship on Indigenous use of digital media as tools of resilience, resistance, and education. Media and education are two fundamental democratic institutions. Education has long been a touchstone issue for thinking around First Nations participation in, and exclusion from, the political and public life of the nation. The Deficit Discourse in Indigenous Education project is exploring the pervasiveness of discourse that frames and represents Indigenous education in a narrative of negativity, deficiency, and disempowerment. The chapter examines how, or whether, Indigenous community voices made possible through the affordances of digital media can break the stranglehold on ways of seeing, and solutions steeped in deficit, in debates around Indigenous education. The challenge for government and other powerful forces is to fully engage with the media that are produced by First Nations themselves.

This article explores the potential of emerging digital cultures for Indigenous participation in policy debates in the rapidly changing Australian media landscape. From the Zapatista's ‘netwar’ to the ‘hashtag activism’ of IdleNoMore, Indigenous people have pioneered innovative uses of digital media for global connectivity and contestation. Digital and social media open up unprecedented opportunities for voice, and, in theory, participation in decision-making. But there is limited understanding about how Indigenous voices are heard at times of major policy reform, and whether increased participation in digital media necessarily leads to increased democratic participation. Leading Indigenous commentators in Australia suggest an inability of governments and other influential players to listen sits at the heart of the failure of Indigenous policy. This article presents two contemporary Australian case studies that showcase Indigenous participatory media response to government policy initiatives: firs...

Dreher and Mondal provide an original theorisation of responsiveness and an overview of key themes in the book. Scholarship and practice around multiculturalism, antiracism, marginalisation, and difference have long mobilised a politics of speaking or representation, yet attention to listening, reading, and witnessing is underdeveloped. By paying close attention to practices and politics of responsiveness, vital new possibilities for ethics and justice are identified in the contexts of settler colonialism, global Islamophobia, securitised border regimes, and polarising free speech debates. The book analyses the conditions of possibility; listening as ethical praxis; unsettling colonial relationships; and ways of listening that highlight non-Western traditions and move beyond the liberal frame. Turning attention to the politics of reception redistributes responsibility for negotiating difference by decentring privilege.

This edited collection focuses on the ethics, politics and practices of responsiveness in the context of racism, inequality, difference and controversy. The politics of difference has long been concerned with speech, voice and representation. By focusing on the practices and politics of responsiveness—listening, reading and witnessing—the volume identifies vital new possibilities for ethics and social justice. Chapters focus on the conditions of possibility, or listening as ethical praxis; unsettling or disrupting colonial relationships; and ways of listening that highlight non-Western traditions and move beyond the liberal frame. Ethical responsiveness shifts some of the responsibility for negotiating difference and more just futures from subordinated speakers, and on to the relatively more privileged and powerful.

This article explores how a listening approach might address the complex challenges of researching the relationship between Indigenous participation in media and mainstream policy-making processes. An overview of contemporary Indigenous media demonstrates how digital and social media have built on the vibrant and innovative Indigenous media tradition, and enabled a proliferation of new Indigenous voices. But do the powerful listen to Indigenous-produced media, and does this constitute meaningful participation in the political process? The article distinguishes between participation as involvement in the production and dissemination of media, and participation as political influence. It argues that both meanings are crucial for fully realising the potential of Indigenous participatory media, and contends that a listening approach might offer ways to research and unlock the democratic potential of Indigenous media participation.

From the Zapatista’s “netwar” to the “hashtag activism” of Idle No More, Indigenous peoples have pioneered digital media for global connectivity and contestation. This chapter explores the promise and the pitfalls of social media for First Nations protest in Australia. Overall, we find new opportunities for disruption and ongoing challenges with regard to significant social and political transformation. The argument is illustrated with two exemplars. Firstly, the “Recognise” campaign is a state-sponsored public information and awareness campaign with a well-developed social media and branding strategy. Dissenting Indigenous voices have been highly successful in disrupting this campaign and asserting an alternative agenda including Treaty and Land Rights. Secondly, the #IASLottery campaign responded to the new Indigenous Advancement Strategy, with less success in impacting policy debates.

Climate justice is rarely encountered in Australian media coverage of issues around climate change. The rare coverage of climate justice issues often focuses on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as Kiribati and commonly makes use of four main media frames: SIDS as “proof” of climate change, SIDS as “victims” of climate change, SIDS communities as climate “refugees,” and SIDS as travel destinations. Yet these frames undermine the desire of SIDS communities to be seen as proactive, self-determining, and active agents of change. This paper explores the way in which Pacific Islanders view the existing media coverage of their concerns over climate change and how they would prefer the media to tell their stories. Through an action research collaboration with a climate change non-governmental organization working in Kiribati and Australia, participants proposed alternative frames for climate justice media, including frames of human rights, active change agents, and migration with dignity.

Mass media is a key tool by which environmental interventions, such as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are communicated to the public. The way in which local news outlets present and explain MPAs to local communities is likely to be influential in determining how they respond to the proposal. In particular the tendency of news media to focus on areas of conflict and dispute ensures ideology and politics play a central role in reporting of MPA proposals, often simplifying debate into an 'us versus them' or 'fishers versus conservationists' ideological conflict. This can lead to the outright rejection of an MPA or undermine acceptance of the park within local communities. The media coverage of two marine parks in NSW, Australia was compared to determine the way in which news presented the parks to each community and how this may have influenced public acceptance of the parks. In particular the study examined the role ideology and politics played in the news coverage of each park by investigating the way in which the news was framed and the positions of key media spokespeople. Media coverage of the Batemans Marine Park appears to have been highly politicised and heavily influenced by the strong convictions of a small handful of prominent spokespeople. By way of contrast media coverage of the Port Stephens Great Lakes Marine Park was more nuanced and drew from a wide range of sources. This research provides insight into how areas of conflict could be reframed as opportunities that enhance MPA planning exercises and highlights how ideology can help shape community sentiment. Acknowledging the role of ideology in contested areas such as these allows for the development of strategies that can accommodate as well as moderate its influence. These strategies may include the incorporation of 'bottom up' approaches into MPA planning, the promotion and support of a range of voices within the community, and seeking out and building upon common ground and shared values. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

The continual rise of participatory media offers increasing opportunities for nonprofessionals and marginalised communities to tell their stories. In the policy arena, Australia's Social Inclusion Agenda and international debates on indicators of well-being name ‘voice’ as a key capability for social inclusion and individual flourishing. In this article, I engage recent scholarship on ‘listening’ and ‘voice that matters’ to highlight the limits of the participatory media genre of digital storytelling and of the social inclusion category of ‘voice’. The discussion is illustrated via examples from public launch events for ‘mini-films’ produced in digital storytelling projects facilitated by Information Cultural Exchange (ICE), a new media arts organisation working in Sydney's cosmopolitan western suburbs. While these public events ensure a process of ‘voice’, I argue for a greater commitment to political listening in media research, practice and policy, lest the promise of ‘voice’ remain only partially fulfilled.

Tiffany Lee-Shoy is the Senior Policy Advisor on Cultural Development at Fairfield City Council in western Sydney. In this exchange with Tanja Dreher, Tiffany reflects on recent community development work using digital storytelling to create new ‘listening spaces’ for young Khmer-Australians and their parents and grandparents. The project, known as ‘Fairfield Stories’, involved training young people to use digital technologies to produce short documentaries about their lives to be screened, in the first instance, to family and friends. The project forms one part of Tiffany's wider commitment to developing citizens' media initiatives and civic engagement in Fairfield, one of the most culturally diverse Local Government Areas in Australia.

Pilot research on community conflict resolution, conducted in a local government area in southern Sydney in late 2006, revealed paradoxical findings: the simultaneous presence of both high levels of cross-cultural mixing and appreciation of the area's culturally diverse population; and the prevalence of prejudice against Arab and Muslim residents and visitors to the area. Many respondents, who supported cultural diversity, saw Arab and Muslim Australians as an exception and even a threat to harmonious community relations. Particularly striking was the anxiety and anger caused by their apparent large numbers, seen to be taking over certain public recreational spaces. This paper explores the contradictions in these findings in light of other contemporary Australian research and identifies complex and difficult issues to be addressed by research and by local government. In particular, the paper discusses the need to address the interconnections between both everyday multiculturalisms and everyday racisms, to...

This article considers how changing media practices of minority groups and political and media elites impact on democratic participation in national debates. Taking as its case study the state-sponsored campaign to formally recognise Indigenous people in the Australian constitution, the article examines the interrelationships between political media and Indigenous participatory media—both of which we argue are undergoing seismic transformation. Discussion of constitutional reform has tended to focus on debates occurring in forums of influence such as party politics and news media that privilege the voices of only a few high-profile Indigenous media ‘stars’. Debate has progressed on the assumption that constitutional change needs to be settled by political elites and then explained and ‘sold’ to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Our research on the mediatisation of policymaking has found that in an increasingly media-saturated environment, political leaders and their policy bureaucrats attend to a narrow range of highly publicised voices. But the rapidly changing media environment has disrupted the media-driven Recognise campaign. Vigorous public discussion is increasingly taking place outside the mainstream institutions of media and politics, while social media campaigns emerge in rapid response to government decisions. Drawing on a long tradition in citizens’ media scholarship we argue that the vibrant, diverse and growing Indigenous media sphere in Australia has increased the accessibility of Indigenous voices challenging the scope and substance of the recognition debate. The article concludes on a cautionary note by considering some tensions in the promise of the changing media for Indigenous participation in the national policy conversation.

Since August 2001, Arab and Muslim communities in Sydney's western suburbs have been caught up in a spiral of signification that linked ‘gang’ activity in the area to the standoff over asylum seekers aboard the MV Tampa, a federal election campaign fought on the theme of ‘border protection’ and global news reporting of September 11 and the ‘war on terror’. Many people who live and work in the Bankstown area responded to this intense news media scrutiny by developing community-based media interventions that aimed to shift the mainstream news agenda. Through media skills training, forums, events and cultural production, Arab and Muslim Australians in the Bankstown area positioned themselves as the subjects rather than the objects of news. This paper analyses news intervention strategies in terms of media power and the politics of representation. I argue that the activities of those working with racialised communities suggest valuable models for the wider process of improving the reporting of cultural differences in multicultural Australia.

Television occupies a central place in most Australian homes, and ‘TV talk’ is an important process in negotiations of individual and group identities (Gillespie. 1995). TV is the focus of many private, family interactions. As a ‘window on the world’, television is also a primary source of information about public life. Thus TV is deeply implicated both in interactions within the home, and in our understandings of the wider ‘home’ of the nation. This paper draws on discussions with diverse community groups in and around Cabramatta to explore the crucial role of TV in negotiations of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ in Australia's most culturally diverse local government area.

This monograph is the first comprehensive and independent analysis of Human Libraries (formerly Living Libraries) in Australia. ‘Human Libraries’ refers to an innovative social inclusion community initiative developed in Europe that is increasingly being adopted by public libraries across Australia, and some community groups and government agencies. The monograph provides an overview of Human Library practices and identifies key challenges for policymakers and practitioners. It also contributes to scholarly debates on anti-racism work and on the benefits and limits of cross-cultural contact or dialogue within that work. The monograph documents the aims, history and key practices of Human Libraries in Australia, and provides discussion points for people involved. The emergence and development of Human Libraries is analysed with reference to ‘contact theory’ and the aim of addressing prejudice. The monograph also discusses the politics and ethics of comfort and safety negotiated in cross-cultural storytelling. While the research finds a strong ‘buzz’ and widespread enthusiasm for the Human Libraries project, the authors also suggest a need for critical reflection on key questions about the strategy and its implementation.

This book provides an overview of the innovative social inclusion initiatives known as human or living libraries. It is the first comprehensive and independent analysis of Human Libraries in Australia. The book provides an overview of Human Library practices and identifies key challenges for policymakers and practitioners while contributing to scholarly debates on anti-racism work and on the benefits and limits of cross-cultural contact or dialogue within that work. This book is a part of the Shopfront Monograph series. Tanja Dreher is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at University of Wollongong, specialising in International Communications and media and multiculturalism. Her research focuses on the politics of listening in the context of media and multiculturalism, Indigenous sovereignties and feminisms and anti-racism. Dr Dreher was previously the Research Manager at the UTS Shopfront community engagement program. Jemima Mowbray is a project officer for the Social and Political Change Group at UTS. Jemima's doctoral research at the University of Sydney was a history of women, development, and the colonial state in Papua New Guinea in the period 1945 to 1975. She is interested in feminist theory; memory and narrative; and gender and the colonial encounter in the Pacific.

(2002). Teaching Students to Challenge the War-as-Justice Rhetoric. Feminist Media Studies: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 147-149.

Headscarves in schools. Sexual violence in Indigenous communities. Muslim women at public swimming pools. Polygamy. Sharia law. Outspoken Imams on sexual assault. Integration and respect for women. It seems that around the world in the media and public debate, women s issues are at the top of the agenda. Yet all too often, support for women s rights is proclaimed loudest by conservative politicians intent on policing communities and demonising Muslims during the war on terror . This edition of the Transforming Cultures eJournal offers critical reflections on the contemporary politics of gender, race and religion, and provides a platform for those perspectives which are too often sidelined in the debate, perspectives that seek to go beyond simplistic debates such as hijab: to ban or not to ban? or Muslim women: oppressed or liberated?

Headscarves in schools. Sexual violence in Indigenous communities. Muslim women at public swimming pools. Polygamy. Sharia law. Outspoken Imams on sexual assault. Integration and respect for women. It seems that around the world in the media and public debate, women’s issues are at the top of the agenda. Yet all too often, support for women’s rights is proclaimed loudest by conservative politicians intent on policing communities and demonising Muslims during the ‘war on terror’. This edition of the Transforming Cultures eJournal offers critical reflections on the contemporary politics of gender, race and religion, and provides a platform for those perspectives which are too often sidelined in the debate, perspectives that seek to go beyond simplistic debates such as ‘hijab: to ban or not to ban?’ or ‘Muslim women: oppressed or liberated?’

This research monograph documents and analyses the many ways in which communities experiencing racism after September 11, 2001 have responded to increased prejudice, harassment and discrimination. While much research analyses the 'problem' of racism, this book highlights the responses developed by targeted communities, including strategies of Interfaith, cross-cultural education, media responses and community cultural development work. A follow-up to the 2006 work Targeted, the research underlying this book is based on extensive community consultations and interviews with Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities in Sydney. It maps the field and identifies common challenges with the aim of contributing to wider processes of innovation in community anti-racism work. This book is a part of the Shopfront Monograph series.

Recent accounts of Habermas's conception of the public sphere concern the interlocking of multiple networks and spaces. In a global context new interfaces between existing (counter-) public spheres can lead to multiple counter-publics. This article explores this phenomenon through the examination of the communicative spaces that offer alternatives to Australia's mainstream public sphere from three different strands of Sydney's community media: diasporic media (Assyrian Radio SBS), Indigenous media (Koori Radio) and discursive sites that operate in between ethnic and mainstream media (Forum for Australia's Islamic Relations).

This is a follow up to UTS Shopfront Monograph Series No 2, 'Targeted': Experiences of Racism in NSW after September 11, 2001. This research monograph documents and analyses the many ways in which communities experiencing racism after September 11, 2001 have responded to increased prejudice, harassment and discrimination. While much research analyses the 'problem' of racism, this report highlights the responses developed by targeted communities, including strategies of Interfaith, cross-cultural education, media responses and community cultural development work. The research is based on extensive community consultations and interviews with Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities in Sydney. The report maps the field and identifies common challenges with the aim of contributing to wider processes of innovation in community anti-racism work.

‘Targeted’, is a report on experiences of racism in NSW after September 11, 2001. The monograph analyses data collected by the anti-racism hotline established by the Community Relations Commission For a multicultural NSW (CRC). The research was conducted by UTS Shopfront and funded by the CRC. The monograph details a significant increase in racially motivated violence and verbal abuse in NSW in the months following the US 2001 September 11 attacks. The CRC hotline recorded 248 acts of violence, abuse, harassment, discrimination and vilification targeting Muslim, Arab and Sikh communities in NSW. The report relates that these incidents produced a climate of fear and insecurity, which continues to impact these communities, and denies them the chance to enjoy a true sense of Australian citizenship.

Targeted researches experiences of racism in New South Wales after September 11, 2001. The monograph analyses data collected by the anti-racism hotline established by the Community Relations Commission For a Multicultural NSW (CRC). It details a significant increase in racially motivated violence and verbal abuse in NSW in the months following the US 2001 September 11 attacks and finds these incidents produced a climate of fear and insecurity, which continues to impact these communities, and denies them the chance to enjoy a true sense of Australian citizenship. This book is a part of the Shopfront Monograph series.