AANZCA2023 conference special issue: introduction

Abstract

The Māori whakataukī, ‘ka mura, ka muri’ loosely translates as ‘walk backward into the future’ (This whakataukī is derived from a longer version: ‘Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua’ which translates to ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’). It foregrounds a Māori perspective on time where the past is in front of us and can be observed and interpreted as we walk backwards into an unseen and uncertain future. This whakataukī was at the core of the 2023 AANZCA conference, ‘Ka mura, ka muri: Bridging communication pasts and futures’, held at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. In the wake of catastrophes such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the failed Voice referendum, conflict in Ukraine and Palestine, and worsening ecological conditions, we look backward in order to look ahead, despite the uncertainty that lies there.

The Māori whakataukī, ‘ka mura, ka muri’ loosely translates as ‘walk backward into the future’ (This whakataukī is derived from a longer version: ‘Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua’ which translates to ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’ (Rameka, 2016)). It foregrounds a Māori perspective on time where the past is in front of us and can be observed and interpreted as we walk backwards into an unseen and uncertain future. This whakataukī was at the core of the 2023 AANZCA conference, ‘Ka mura, ka muri: Bridging communication pasts and futures’, held at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. In the wake of catastrophes such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the failed Voice referendum, conflict in Ukraine and Palestine, and worsening ecological conditions, we look backward in order to look ahead, despite the uncertainty that lies there.

The conference featured two fantastic keynote speakers: Professor Maria Bargh of Te Herenga Waka and Professor Axel Bruns of the Queensland University of Technology. Maria reflected on how COVID-19 exposed and exacerbated conjunctural forces that hinder relationship-building with each other and our immediate environment, drawing on foundational concepts from Tikanga Māori (usually referred to as the right way of doing things – see Mead, 2016), such as whanaungatanga, a reciprocal fostering of relationships, and utu, symmetry and unity in relationships. Axel's keynote, ‘What's lost when Twitter is lost?’, reflected on the legacy and consequences of changes in Twitter's leadership and its impact on the platform's affordances, communities, and information reliability. In concordance with the conference theme's provocation to consider the recent past and future together, Axel reflected on what opportunities are created by the broader fragmentation of the platform ecology, and what we might want from platforms in the future.

This reflection on the past in order to shape the future also resulted in a major change for our association in 2023. New Zealand is known domestically as Aotearoa – ‘land of the long white cloud’ in the Māori language. Following an overwhelming vote at the Annual General Meeting held during the conference, we now formally recognise our name change to the Australian & Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA).

This issue of Media International Australia is comprised of papers from the 2023 AANZCA conference. We hope the ideas presented here will encourage readers to reflect on recent technological, ecological, informational, epistemological, and (bio)political challenges to consider how we might navigate the near and far future.

Jim Macnamara opens this special issue with a commentary on the potential responses to the COVID-19 moment. He situates the COVID-19 context as one of liminality before undertaking a macro analysis of its various emancipatory possibilities. Bringing into question attempts to return to a regime of pre-COVID normality, Macnamara proceeds from Van de Wiele and Papacharissi's (2021) deployment of communitas, a radical ethical reconsideration in the name of collectivism, to specifically think how such a thing might be enacted. Of particular note in this paper is the discussion of mass-distributed leadership. Reaching through and beyond large-scale revolutionary activities, Macnamara provokes us to consider a new, cooperative social imaginary: ‘What if vast numbers of leaders emerged across all sectors of society who are outspoken, eloquent, informed, and motivated?’ (Macnamara, 2024, p. x). Acknowledging the complexity of widespread social change called for throughout the article, he sensibly concludes by reflecting on the vital role education ought to play in mass-distributed leadership, making specific mention of inter- and transdisciplinary educational relationships alongside everyday public and private spaces.

Next, Michael Daubs provides us with a timely analysis of the articulation of wellness influencers and anti-vaccine misinformation. Tracing the trajectory of celebrity chef turned wellness influencer turned anti-vaxxer, Pete Evans, Daubs employs Manuel Castells’ network society to frame his analysis of the affective and emotional appeals of anti-vax content. A vital component of Daubs's discussion is his elaboration of the importance of affect and emotion to the spread of disinformation. In particular, uncertainty and its attendant feelings constitute an informational environment within which mis- and disinformation prosper. He concludes by demonstrating that Evans is representative of the overlapping spaces of right-wing conspiracies on the one hand and anti-vax and wellness discourse on the other hand.

In the third article, Anna Potter, Clare Archer-Lean, Phoebe Macrossan, and Harriot Beazley examine how Australian teenagers engage with long-form scripted stories in a time of change in the screen industries. They centre teenagers – an often-overlooked demographic in Australian screen research – at the core of their research by using participatory workshops that prioritised teens’ rights and agency. Despite teenagers’ stated nostalgia for Australian series from childhood, they ranked having series set in Australia that depict an Australian way of life low on their viewing priorities. Potter et al.'s rigorous analysis of teens’ engagement with screen stories challenges existing beliefs around preferences for local content, and raises questions about the future of local content as we transition to more streaming-based television.

Mona Chatskin's article on victim-survivors’ voices in news reporting earned her the AANZCA Grant Noble Award for best postgraduate paper in 2023. Chatskin uses a combination of media analysis and peer conversation focus groups in Melbourne's Jewish community to explore the reporting and reactions to child sexual abuse cases. Her findings demonstrate how centring victim-survivors’ voices can transform the public perception of mediatised crises. Though the media industry is undergoing dramatic shifts globally, Chatskin's paper reminds us of the importance of local and community media, as well as the power of journalists’ sourcing and framing practices on public opinion.

The fifth article of the issue, by Honor Sandall, offers us a cutting-edge investigation into hyper-feminine identities on TikTok. Sandall provides a critical commentary on the ways in which #BimboTok variously negotiates discourses of femininity and patriarchy. She uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine and unpack a selection of TikTok videos, navigating a range of the videos’ elements such as semiotics, discourses, ideology, and power relations. Sandall shows us how users appose the representational figure of the bimbo with queer iconography to develop a critique of entangled regimes of power: patriarchy, Eurocentrism, capitalism, and whiteness.

In our final article, Elizabeth Paton, Melinda Benson, Jennifer Peprah, and Emma Pryse Jones apply participatory action research to develop new language guidelines for communicating about mental health and well-being in Australia. They explore and promote more inclusive language by incorporating the perspectives of experts, priority populations, and people with lived and living experiences of mental health concerns. The resulting evidence-informed guidelines and specific glossary of terminology have been well-received and utilised by a wide range of individuals and organisations in health and media spaces, highlighting the power of words in promoting mental well-being.

The AANZCA annual conference provides an opportunity to gather as a community, one that embraces members from across academia, industry, the public sector, and the general public. The papers presented here represent only a sample of the diverse range of topics discussed at the 2023 conference, as well as the broader fields of expertise in the AANZCA community. As conference organisers and journal editors, we hope that the ideas contained in this issue promote more scholarly and collegial engagements in the future. Furthermore, we hope this whakataukī encourages reflection on where we have come from as an association, in order to shape the association we want to build in the future.