Kerry McCallum

On-Screen Portrayals of Mental Illness: Extent, Nature, and Impacts

This article reviews the published literature on the extent, nature, and impacts of portrayal of mental illness in fictional films and television programs. The literature suggests that on-screen portrayals are frequent and generally negative, and have a cumulative effect on the publics perception of people with mental illness and on the likelihood of people with mental illness seeking appropriate help. The article concludes that there is a need for the mental health sector and the film and television industries to collaborate to counter negative portrayals of mental illness, and to explore the potential for positive portrayals to educate and inform, as well as to entertain.

Community Business: The Internet in Remote Australian Indigenous Communities

This article reports on the findings of a research project that mapped the patterns of internet access and use in remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Remote Indigenous communities comprise some of Australia’s most disadvantaged users of internet services. Taking a case-study approach, the article raises challenging theoretical questions for those seeking to understand the extent and nature of the digital divide in relation to indigeneity and remoteness. It suggests approaches for more sustainable introduction of internet facilities to remote Indigenous communities in Australia and improved practices for better delivery of training to users. It reinforces the need for research and collaboration at the community level so that the introduction of facilities is conducted in a culturally and technically appropriate manner.

Representations of Public Risk: Illegal Drugs in the Australian Press

The paper draws upon recent research investigating news frames, and risk theory to analyse Australian national news coverage of illegal drugs. Recent research has elaborated how risks are socially defined and acted upon, especially given changing media representations of risks. Public understandings of the risks associated with illegal drug use, policing and policies develop through the continuing and often changing representations of these risks in the media, as well as through other social practices. This paper questions the role of some prominent newspapers in setting alarmist and sensational frames to define risk in this context, and demonstrates how journalism can heighten community fear.

Raising the Volume: Indigenous Voices in News Media and Policy

This article explores Indigenous contributions to shaping public and policy agendas through their use of the news media. It reports on research conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policy-making 1988–2008 project that is investigating relationships between the representation of Indigenous peoples in public media and the development of Indigenous affairs policies. Interviews with Indigenous policy advocates, journalists and public servants identified the strategies that have been used by individuals and Indigenous organisations to penetrate policy debates and influence public policy. The article concludes that in the face of a neo-liberal policy agenda amplified through mainstream media, particular Indigenous voices nevertheless have had a significant impact, keeping alive debate about issues such as the importance of bilingual education programs and community involvement in the delivery of primary health care.

Indigenous voices and mediatized policy-making in the digital age

ABSTRACT This article explores the potential of emerging digital cultures for Indigenous participation in policy debates in the rapidly changing Australian media landscape. From the Zapatistas ‘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: first, the diverse reaction in social media to the government-sponsored campaign for constitutional reform to acknowledge Australias First Peoples, branded as Recognise and second, the social media-driven movement #sosblakaustralia, protesting against the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities. This article brings together theories of political participation, media change and listening to ask whether key democratic institutions, including the mainstream news media and political decision-makers, can engage with the proliferation of Indigenous voices enabled by participatory media. We argue that while the digital media environment allows diverse Indigenous voices to be represented, recent scholarship on participation and listening extends the analysis to ask which voices are heard as politics is increasingly mediatized.

The listening key: Unlocking the democratic potential of indigenous participatory media

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.

#IHMayDay: tweeting for empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing.

Objective: This paper examines the themes of #IHMayDay, a day-long Twitter discussion about Indigenous health led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on 1 May 2014. Method: The Symplur analytics tool was used to identify the Twitter activity associated with #IHMayDay. This paper reviews the content of 423 tweets that were tweeted and retweeted by 346 individuals and 108 organisations. Results: Issues related to social and emotional wellbeing were dominant, and the analysis highlights the empowering nature of the strengths-based discourse. Conclusions: Twitter-based events such as #IHMayDay and initiatives such as the rotated, curated account @IndigenousX are powerful platforms for learning, exchange, advocacy and dialogue about the social and emotional wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Distant and intimate conversations: media and indigenous health policy in Australia

Abstract The narrow media framing of indigenous health as an intractable policy problem and a bureaucracy increasingly orientated towards media agendas have contributed to significant changes in the nature and direction of Australian indigenous health policy. The article takes as its case study the decade of conservative leadership of Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007), that saw indigenous health policy shift from a self-determinist philosophy of community control of primary healthcare, towards neoliberal policies emphasising individual responsibility and the ‘mainstreaming’ of indigenous primary healthcare services. It reports on an intertextual examination of news media reporting and professional talk about the medias role in the development of indigenous health policy between 2002 and 2007. A content and frame analysis found that imagery and stories of remote indigenous communities and a disproportionate emphasis on the frame of indigenous health crisis created the discursive context for the enactment of radical policy solutions to address indigenous health. Interviews with indigenous health policy actors identified that policy practices were entwined with and responsive to news media discourse. This article calls for a greater recognition of the intimacy between media reporting and the development of policy in highly politicised and mediatised fields such as indigenous health. It contends that through an examination of both news media representation and the media practices of policy professionals one can begin to understand the complex relationships between news media and policymaking processes.

‘I’m not clear on what the risk is’: women’s reflexive negotiations of uncertainty about alcohol during pregnancy

Health guidelines in many countries advise women that not drinking alcohol during pregnancy is the safest option for their babies. This advice is based on a lack of evidence about what is a safe amount of alcohol and increasing concern about Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. While there is some knowledge of factors informing women’s views and practices in relation to alcohol consumption during pregnancy, there is little knowledge or understanding of the ways women interpret and respond to the abstinence public health advice in Australia and its bearing, if any, on their own practices. In this article, we examine women’s experiences of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and their views of the abstinence advice. We locate our analysis within the body of thinking that views pronouncements about risks during pregnancy as bound up with social and cultural values and ideas about what it means to be a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ mother, as much as they are about science. We draw on a study that we undertook in 2014 of 20 women, who were either pregnant, had recently had a child or who had young children, or who were planning for pregnancy, who took part in one-to-one qualitative interviews or participated in focus group discussions in Canberra, Australia. We found that the women in our study variously described receiving reassurance after drinking in early pregnancy; opting to abstain as the safest option in the face of uncertainty; and having an occasional drink if they felt like it. In response to the abstinence advice, we found that some women understood it as a responsible message, even if they had not necessarily adhered to it, while others criticised it as an example of policing pregnant women. Overall, the women in our study accepted that it was possible to drink responsibly during pregnancy and defended this view through strategies of normalising the occasional drink, emphasising a woman’s right to make her own decisions, and associating low-level consumption with low risk.

Reuters, Propaganda-inspired News, and the Australian Press During the First World War

This paper examines the role of the London-based international news agency, Reuters, in transmitting propaganda-inspired news to Australia during the First World War as well as the take-up of such news by the Australian press. It explores how the propaganda function was understood within Reuters and how this function changed during the course of the war. It focuses on Reuters’ establishment, in March 1917, of a special British Empire ‘supplementary’ news service designed to unite the Empire behind the war effort. The paper explains Reuters’ success in Australia which arose, in large part, from its partnership with the United Cable Service, an Australian agency managed by Keith Murdoch.