Jenny Rankine

Media, Racism and Public Health Psychology

International literature has established that racism contributes to ill-health of migrants, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples. Racism generally negates wellbeing, adversely affecting physical and psychological health. Numerous studies have shown that media contribute marginalizing particular ethnic and cultural groups depicting them primarily as problems for and threats to the dominant. This articles frames media representations of, and their effect on, the indigenous Maori of Aotearoa, New Zealand within the ongoing processes of colonization. We argue that reflects the media contribution to maintenance and naturalisation of colonial relationships and seek to include critical media scholarship in a critical public health psychology.

Colonial Coverage Media Reporting of a Bicultural Health Research Partnership

Discursive and content analyses of media coverage of a 1998 Aotearoa/New Zealand partnership research project on the genetics of inherited stomach cancer show a decided preference for stories that depict the discoveries as the achievement of only one research partner, a genetics research team at Otago University. The coverage downplayed the major contribution of the genealogical research carried out by indigenous Maori researchers for families affected by the cancer. This contribution was included in a news release from the research funding agency, the Health Research Council of New Zealand. Through an array of discursive constructions and omissions, the media stories obscure the role of the Maori researchers in initiating and contributing to the genetics research and applying the findings of the overall project. We argue that what has been lost here is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate a major Maori contribution to international scientific advance and the health of people. Instead the media delivered another example of marginalizing colonial coverage of Maori achievement, denigrating existing work and potentially discouraging other such cutting-edge collaborative health research.

Reading News about Māori: Responses from non-Māori media audiences

The media has the potential to undermine wellbeing and opportunities for Treaty-based social justice in its representation of Māori, relationships between Māori and non-Māori, and in its promotion of particular understandings of the Treaty of Waitangi. This paper presents research exploring the meaning-making of Pākehā and tauiwi (immigrant) focus group participants in relation to media representations of Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi. We also discuss the impact of recurrent media portrayals of Māori and the Treaty on health and well being as understood by the focus groups.

Nursing in media-saturated societies: implications for cultural safety in nursing practice in Aotearoa New Zealand:

This educational piece seeks to apprise nurses and other health professionals of mass media news practices that distort social and health policy development. It focuses on two media discourses evident in White settler societies, primarily Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, drawing out implications of these media practices for those committed to social justice and health equity. The first discourse masks the dominant culture, ensuring it is not readily recognised as a culture, naturalising the dominant values, practices and institutions, and rendering their cultural foundations invisible. The second discourse represents indigenous peoples and minority ethnic groups as ‘raced’ – portrayed in ways that marginalise their culture and disparage them as peoples. Grounded in media research from different societies, the paper focuses on the implications for New Zealand nurses and their ability to practise in a culturally safe manner as an exemplary case. It is imperative that these findings are elaborated for New Zealand and that nurses and other health professionals extend the work in relation to practice in their own society.