Modern racism in the media: constructions of `the possibility of change' in accounts of two Australian `riots'

Abstract

Recent discursive research suggests that contemporary racism is typically accomplished in terms of subtle, flexibly managed and locally contingent discussion of the `problems' associated with minority groups. This study contributes to this work by focusing on the ways in which a particular formulation: `the possibility of change' was repeatedly implicated in descriptions of two `riots' that received widespread media attention in Australia: one involving Indigenous, and the other involving non-Indigenous, community members. Data were drawn from a corpus of newspaper articles, television and radio interviews, and parliamentary debates. Analysis demonstrated how, in respect to the event involving Indigenous Australians, `change' was repeatedly represented as an outcome that was not achievable. By contrast, descriptions of problems within the non-Indigenous community regularly represented `change' as an achievable outcome. We discuss how discourses around `the possibility of change' can thus be seen as another identifiable practice in terms of which `modern' forms of racism are regularly accomplished in media discourse.