John Budarick

Media and the limits of transnational solidarity: unanswered questions in the relationship between diaspora, communication and community

In this article, I critically analyse the relationship between media and conceptualisations of diaspora as a form of imagined transnational community. Despite the central place of transnational media in understandings of diasporic communities, there is yet to be a sustained dialogue between theoretical understandings of diaspora and diaspora media studies. I argue that the role of transnational media in conceptualisations of diaspora is too often reduced to the facilitation of cross-border communities. Not enough attention is paid to the alternative possibilities, including the potential of media to challenge cross-border solidarities in ways that fundamentally undermine prevalent understandings of the media and diaspora relationship. As a way to address this issue, it is important that studies of diaspora and media incorporate non-diasporic media into their analyses.

Media Narratives and Social Events: The Story of the Redfern Riot

This article uses a narrative framework to analyze the role of newspapers in discursively reestablishing social order during times of social crisis and upheaval. Using the coverage by three diverse newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph, and Koori Mail) of the 2004 Redfern Riot in Sydney, Australia, the article will explicate the way each paper narrates social actors, discourses, and events in order to make sense of the riot and promote a way to reestablish social equilibrium. It is argued that the narratives of the two mainstream papers (Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph) converge in a coverage that draws on powerful cultural tropes of race and crime in Redfern to explain the riot. The Indigenous owned and run Koori Mail, in challenging many of those same tropes, is left with fewer publicly available narrative resources through which to conclude its story of the riot.

Towards a multi-ethnic public sphere? African-Australian media and minority-majority relations

The potential connections between minority ethnic media producers and the majority ethnic group in multicultural societies have received little academic attention. As a result, important questions regarding the role of ethnic minority media beyond their specialised audiences have remained largely unanswered. In this article, we draw upon a series of interviews with African-Australian media producers in Melbourne and interrogate the relationship between ethnic minority media and the broader Australian public sphere. Drawing on Husband’s notion of the multi-ethnic public sphere as an ideal-type model, we analyse the explicit and implicit attempts by African-Australian broadcasters and media producers to communicate across communities and to positively impact the practices and understandings of White Australian journalists and audiences.

Localised audiences and transnational media: Media use by Iranian-Australians

This article investigates the ways in which Iranian-Australians engage with Iranian state and diasporic media. Through a series of in-depth interviews, the article analyses the social, geographical and political factors that influence the use of Iranian media. While media have an important role to play among Iranians in Australia, the diverse nature of the audience, as well as the continuing importance of the political, social and cultural space of media production and consumption, must be taken into account. Participants in this study have an ambivalent relationship with Iranian media, with media produced in Iran, Australia and by the diaspora approached in different ways.

Overcoming the new kids on the block syndrome: the media ‘endorsement’ on discrimination against African-Australians

Abstract Negative news reporting in Australia about African immigrants is of concern to them. It has real impacts on their everyday lives, ranging from discriminatory treatment by police to difficulties in gaining employment. This paper analyses interviews with eleven African immigrants and their views on negative news reporting about them. Participants argue that negative news reporting creates a barrier between African-Australians and other Australians. Negative news reporting also has the effect of endorsing the public’s already discriminatory and unfavourable attitudes towards African immigrants. African migrants have started working within the African community in order to educate its members about Australian cultures. They are also mobilized to unite under the Organisation of African Unity and distribute positive stories of African-Australians, utilizing African community media outlets. They have noticed some positive changes happening in the last few years, e.g. better treatment of Africans by police officers and an improving chance of employment. Regular African gatherings also attract a good number of the ‘Australian’ public.

From Marginalisation to a Voice of Our Own: African Media in Australia

Budarick analyses the work of African-Australian media producers working in the ethnic minority, community and public service media sectors in Australia through the mediums of print, broadcast and the Internet. Based on a thematic analysis of 14 in-depth interviews with black African journalists, writers and broadcasters in Australia, the chapter examines ways in which interviewees discuss and explain their media work, including their motivations, their aims and the role they see their media playing in Australian society. The findings of the study are placed within a historical context of ethnic media production in Australia and internationally in a way that teases out themes of integration, multiculturalism, self-representation and identity politics. The chapter will demonstrate the way in which participants’ media work is contextualised by experiences of structural inequality, marginalisation from the communicative environment and a desire to provide a ‘voice of our own’ to an African, and wider Australian, audience.

Ethnic minority media and the public sphere: The case of African-Australian media producers

This article analyses the work of ethnic minority media producers through a series of 13 in-depth interviews with African-Australian broadcasters, writers and producers. Focusing on the aims and motivations of participants, the article demonstrates a more expansive role for African-Australian media, one that brings niche media products into dialogue with mainstream Australian public life and challenges common understandings of ethnic media as appealing to a small, linguistically and culturally defined audience. Such a role also raises questions around wider conceptual understandings of the public sphere, particularly as it is employed to interrogate minority–majority relations. The article concludes by engaging with previous literature focused on the changing contours of the public sphere ideal in multi-ethnic and multicultural societies.

Altered states: An essay on communication and movement

The concept of mobility seems to be sweeping across the humanities and social sciences. We argue that the close relationship between communication and movement is to some extent independent of specific communication technologies. We demonstrate this through the particular ‘knottings’ of music and physical/imaginative movement. We also suggest that in order to do justice to the complex entanglements of communication and movement, it would pay to re-examine social theories from an age when communication and transportation were not yet fully differentiated. The latter promises to reveal that communication is connection and interchanges/exchanges that impact the senses.