Media International Australia

Saskia Sassen argues that globalisation is taking place deep inside countries and ‘institutional domains that have largely been constructed in national terms’. This type of globalisation is localised to ‘national’ and ‘subnational’ settings, but is reorienting them towards global agendas and systems. The result is an unremarked de-nationalising of national policy domains, processes, activities and instruments. In this article, we argue that these globalising and de-nationalising processes are radically reshaping contemporary Australian film and TV production, and the terms and policy settings under which it is developed and monetised.

Access to social network sites (SNS) in the workplace has been much debated. While some consider SNS a distraction, others consider them a tool for professional socialisation and that recreational access positively impacts satisfaction. This exploratory study reports results from an online survey of employees from one faculty of an Australian university, exploring how they used Facebook at work and how they would react to a hypothetical Facebook ban. Three-quarters of respondents used Facebook at work, primarily for personal socialisation during breaks. Many self-imposed a strict personal/professional separation, but opposed a hypothetical SNS ban, perceiving it as an infringement on their workplace autonomy. It is argued that university employees – academic and professional – can be trusted to self-regulate access.

This article explores social media use during Japan's 2011 earthquake. In the era of social media, this earthquake provides an opportunity for analysing the role of communication during a crisis. To explain how social media use transforms the locus of crisis communication, we collected sufficient data on tweets in Japan from the Twitter public timeline during the earthquake and examined the Japanese government's Twitter account and its URLs. The results indicate that crisis communication on Twitter was led by peer-to-peer communication and relied on peer-generated information. In addition, the government's traditional leadership role in exercising tight control over crises and facilitating disaster communication was not clearly apparent on Twitter. By examining the shift in the locus of crisis communication through social media, this study provides new insights into the current use of social media.

Through a retrospective account of the evolution of China's online game industry, this article examines the political, economic and cultural factors that have shaped the industry, with an emphasis on formal policy-making. Drawing on the theory of fragmented authoritarianism, this study finds that Chinese online games are deeply shaped by the political environment of the autocratic Chinese system, which features inter-ministerial competition, and intertwined state control and commercial interests. The current Chinese online market is combined with a strong private sector presence and a considerable government role. The Chinese government seems to have achieved its policy goal of helping Chinese companies to dominate the domestic market. However, to some extent the extensive and ambiguous government policy and regulations have restrained innovation. To that end, whether China can accomplish its three-stepped importation–substitution– creation strategy in this highly creative industry remains to be seen and warrants future investigation.

This article deals with the imagery of ‘Australia’ in contemporary Slovenia. In an analysis of both Slovene media texts and interviews with 32 Slovenes who want to immigrate to Australia, we explore a constructed image of Australia. We closely consider the symbolic imagery that shapes our informants' discourses about Australia in order to focus on sociocultural elements of migration, where the imagination plays a key role. We suggest that a closer examination of Slovene informants' narratives about Australia will reveal more important contemporary global migration factors and the power of media in affecting potential migrants' migration decisions. The article assesses the image of Australia in Slovenia, with the overall objective of demonstrating the urgency of critically rethinking the sense of belonging to both motherland and host country. We suggest that images and stereotypes of Australia are not just invented, but are also actively encouraged and negotiated within Slovene society.

This article introduces the Indigenous Media Practice special issue through a discussion of the aims and scope of the edition. It identifies three major currents in contemporary international research on media and indigeneity, which are reflected in the suite of scholarship presented here. The first is the importance of continuing to critically analyse media systems, institutions and policies that enable and constrain the production and dissemination of information for, by and about Indigenous populations. The second emphasises media-related practices in specific media production and social policy contexts, and the third underlines the importance of interrogating underlying and pervasive societal discourses in understanding Indigenous media practice. The contributions to this themed issue highlight that there is a vibrant body of research among a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, typically working in teams in the pursuit of better understanding the relationships between media and indigeneity in both global and local contexts.

Although one people, the Sámi live in four different countries with different laws and regulations. The Sámi media landscape is thus shaped by four different political and economic frameworks, creating unique nationally defined environments. Simultaneously, the Sámi people are internally diverse, both in terms of language and identity. The media professionals within Sámi media need to navigate in an environment where there are several indigenous and majority languages, which raises questions about the fragmentation of potential audiences, and also about the role of the Sámi media in sustaining or undermining particular Sámi languages. Drawing upon recent interviews (2012) with Sámi media professionals, this article seeks to provide insight into the development of an expanding indigenous media infrastructure within the Nordic states and the homelands of Sápmi. It points particularly to the centrality of the national public service broadcast system in providing the political and infrastructural context for this development. The different political settlements between national governments and their Sámi populations significantly shape the wider political will that has framed this process. At the same time, while seeking to shed some light on the diverse Sámi media environment, this article also provides some insight into the professional and personal identities of the individuals working within the Sámi media world. The synergy between the wider media environment and the personal and professional endeavours of Sámi media professionals is central to the future development of the Sámi media environment of Sápmi.

Indigenous media around the globe have expanded considerably over recent years, a process that has also led to an increase in the number of Indigenous news organisations. Yet research into Indigenous news and journalism is still rare, with mostly individual case studies having been undertaken in different parts of the globe. Drawing on existing research gathered from a variety of global contexts, this article theorises five main dimensions that can help us to think about and empirically examine indigenous journalism culture. They include the empowerment role of Indigenous journalism; the ability to offer a counter-narrative to mainstream media reporting; journalism's role in language revitalisation; reporting through a culturally appropriate framework; and the watchdog function of indigenous journalism. These dimensions are discussed in some detail, in an attempt to guide future studies into the structures, roles, practices and products of indigenous journalism across the globe.

This article examines two instances of media policy involving satellite transmission and Indigenous television: the introduction of the Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) platform in 2010 and the introduction of AUSSAT in the mid-1980s. The government's failure to provide community and Indigenous broadcasters with an access regime at the time of AUSSAT resulted in Australia's first and only Indigenous commercial television licensee, Imparja. Over a quarter of a century later, Imparja now forms part of the joint-venture company that runs VAST, a key component of Australia's digital switchover planning. During the passage of the legislative amendments required to establish VAST, the issue of access resurfaced – this time in relation to Australia's national and community Indigenous television channels. The article recounts the events leading up to the 2010 Bill, and examines the intended and unintended consequences of satellite policy in relation to Indigenous media, including equalisation and transparency of government funding programs.

The ever-increasing uses for social media and mobile technologies are bringing new opportunities for innovation and participation across societies, while challenging and disrupting the status quo. Characteristics of the digital age include the proliferation of user-driven innovation and the blurring of boundaries and roles, whether between the producers and users of news and other products or services, or between sectors. The @IndigenousX Twitter account, which has a different Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person tweeting each week, is an example of user-driven innovation and of how Indigenous voices are emerging strongly in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Its founder, Luke Pearson, a teacher and Aboriginal education consultant, wanted to share the platform he had established on Twitter for storytelling to an engaged audience. The account can thus be seen as a form of citizen, participatory, community or alternative journalism. This article provides a preliminary analysis of @IndigenousX, and suggests that this account and the diversity of Indigenous voices in the digital environment offer opportunities for wide-ranging research endeavours. Initiatives like @IndigenousX are also a reminder that journalism has much to learn from innovation outside the conventional realm of journalistic practice.

This article examines the connections between prisoners' radio and community, drawing on a case study of an annual Indigenous prisoners' radio project from Melbourne, Australia called Beyond the Bars, coordinated by community radio station 3CR. It demonstrates that an important aspect of prisoners' radio is its ability, as a media form, to sustain relationships between those inside and outside of incarceration, and as a result maintain community connections. The success of Beyond the Bars as a whole can be attributed in part to the special relationship forged between the local Indigenous community and the radio station itself, which has featured over 30 years of Indigenous broadcasting.

From the 1870s through the 1990s, more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were enrolled in government-funded, church-run Indian Residential Schools (IRS) in Canada. The schools reflected policies aimed at assimilating Aboriginal peoples into majority culture. Many Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes and suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuses. As part of its Mandate, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) collects testimonials from residential school survivors in various mediated forms to create a historical record. This article explores the TRC's public statement-gathering process and the ways in which media practices shape and guide testimonials. It argues that the TRC encourages particular survivor narratives as it signals to speakers that they should anticipate the norms and uses of media and narrative guidelines. However, there is a layer of meta-narrative common in TRC statements, suggesting resistance to and subversion of the process. This article considers the nuances of First Nations testimonials against the backdrop of storytelling traditions.

This article explores how media power impacts on policy-making in Indigenous affairs in Australia through an examination of the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER). The article draws on interviews with a range of actors in the policy constellation to discuss three intersecting factors contributing to this media-driven announcement: the Howard government's political and policy aims for Indigenous affairs; policy bureaucrats' increasingly mediatised practices; and the rise of conservative Indigenous spokespeople as key players in debates about Indigenous affairs policy. The article concludes that these factors have made a significant contribution to the manifestation of media power in the Indigenous policy-making process.

For the most part, the story of the Australian Indigenous land rights struggle has been told by the Australian media – media that have attracted consistent criticism for their portrayal of Indigenous Australians. On the other hand, Australia boasts a vibrant and accomplished Indigenous media sector that has also told the land rights story from a different perspective, albeit to a much smaller audience. The authors are currently a part of a research team seeking to provide a critical analysis of historical and contemporary representations of the land rights movement and the broader struggle for indigenous rights and equality in Queensland. The project seeks to challenge the prevailing dialogue by focusing on the perspectives of people who have been (and still are) involved in the land rights movement. Prioritising and exploring such alternative perspectives will not only present the opportunity to reconsider the role of media representations, but will also enable an Indigenous ‘take’ on them to emerge. This article presents our approach and rationale, discussing the methodological possibilities and challenges of research with Indigenous communities, which ultimately seeks to redress media imbalance and injustice by a retelling that elevates Indigenous voices, stories and pictures.

Deficit discourse is expressed in a mode of language that consistently frames Aboriginal identity in a narrative of deficiency. It is interwoven with notions of ‘authenticity’, which in turn adhere to models of identity still embedded within the race paradigm, suffering from all of its constraints but perniciously benefiting from all of its tenacity. Recent work shows that deficit discourse surrounding Aboriginality is intricately entwined within and across different sites of representation, policy and expression, and is active both within and outside Indigenous Australia. It thus appears to exhibit all the characteristics of what Foucault has termed a discursive formation, and its analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Developing research overseas on the prevalence and social impact of deficit discourse indicates a significant link between discourse surrounding indigeneity and outcomes for indigenous peoples. However, while there is emerging work in this field in Aboriginal education, as well as a growing understanding of the social impact of related behaviours such as lateral violence, the influence of deficit discourse is significantly under-theorised and little understood in the Indigenous Australian context. This article will problematise the issues and explore theory and methods for change.

Time is a particularly powerful construct in postcolonial societies. Intermeshed with discourses of race, place and belonging, European ideas of time as linear, Cartesian and chronological function as enduring discursive categories that frame public debate within conceptual legacies from colonialism. There is substantial evidence internationally that modernist and mechanical temporal discourses of progress and efficiency have impeded Indigenous aspirations, including attempts to achieve sovereignty. In this article, we use a critical whiteness studies framework, and a critical discourse analysis methodology, to make visible the temporal assumptions in mainstream news articles from Aotearoa New Zealand. These articles, from influential, agenda-setting media, discuss crucial issues of indigenous rights, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi negotiations. Our analysis shows that they do so within a culturally specific, Western temporal framework, which limits their ability to provide balanced, informative coverage of the issues at stake.