Problematic Media Representations of Sudanese Australians

Canberra.
The first paper session at ANZCA 2010 starts with a presentation by Tim Marjoribanks, whose interest is in media representations of Sudanese people in Australia. He begins by pointing to the societal context of debates over discrimination against African Australians; the Australian Human Rights Commission reported on this recently and found evidence of discrimination and resultant social exclusion across many aspects of their lives. Negative representations in the mainstream media were partly blamed for this, too. The experiences of Sudanese people living in Australia have been especially highlighted in this context, especially also as they are the largest groups of humanitarian arrivals from Africa into Australia.

The media can reproduce such discrimination, but can also be an instrument of empowerment, so it is important to examine how race is socially constructed, and how observations of human activities are racialised (explained through stereotypes of racial difference), under the influence of media representations. Such questions have also been examined in various other national contexts elsewhere in the world, as well as for other 'other', non-white communities in Australia.

The research project examines this through studying media content and conducting interviews and focus groups, but also addresses it through media intervention by running media training programmes for Sudanese groups. In examining media content, the project conducted a study of representations of Sudanese people in The Australian, The Age, and the Herald Sun (i.e. focussing on the Victorian context) between September 2007 and April 2008 (around the time of the last federal election), collecting 207 articles in total and undertaking a thematic content analysis. The Age had 89 articles, the Herald Sun 74, and The Australian 44.

Sudanese people were discussed in four main contexts: nationhood, violence, difficulties in Sudan, and human interest and new beginnings. These areas of focus were differently distributed across the three newspapers; The Age focussed more on nationhood, for example (discussing Australian migration policy, and the new arrivals' loyalty to Australia), while the Herald Sun focussed more strongly on violence (both by and against Sudanese people). Indeed, very often, where Sudanese people were discussed in the media, it was in the context of violence. Human interest and new beginnings stories - about how the Sudanese struggled to adapt or overcame adversity in settling in Australia - were less common than the other categories.

Sudanese people were mainly represented in a few key frames, and usually in problematic contexts, then; they were depicted as different and outside an undefined 'white' norm, and this brought to the forefront questions of belonging to a national space - this clearly points to the racialisation of debates surrounding Sudanese people.

Technorati : ANZCA 2010, African Australians, Sudanese people, media, politics, race, racialisation, representations
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