Australian News Research Articles

In the wake of the supermarket ‘milk wars’: Media, farmers and the power of pastoral sentimentality

On Australia Day in 2011, Australian supermarket giant, Coles, announced that it was slashing the price of its own-brand milk to a considerably discounted $1/litre, a move immediately matched by rival Woolworths. The retailers, who had anticipated that low prices would be viewed as unequivocally good for consumers, found themselves at the centre of an unexpected media backlash and the subjects of a sustained campaign by the dairy industry to expose the threat of major supermarkets to Australian dairy livelihoods. This paper analyses the news coverage that emerged as a result of the events now dubbed the ‘milk wars’. Through discourse analysis of Australian news stories, we show how the media coverage of milk pricing—and the dairy industry campaigns that underpinned it—sought to galvanise media and public support through specific images and discourses associated with the ‘Australian farmer’. We argue that the discourses and images used most frequently by the dairy industry and which had most cut-through with media were those most strongly invested in Australian pastoral sentimentality: images of traditional, ‘small-scale’, multi-generational family farmers being tragically forced off their land by the supermarket duopoly. We show how this coverage reveals the power of romanticised depictions of farming as a media strategy for galvanising public support for farmers’ livelihoods, but in their focus on (certain types of) farmers and farming practices as ‘worthy’ of public and media concern, these depictions were ultimately co-opted by supermarket marketing campaigns designed to silence critique. That proponents of alternative food politics continue to mobilise discourses of pastoral sentimentality as a means to encourage (urban) consumer support raises questions about the effectiveness of such discourses to meaningfully oppose corporate power in the food system.

Talking about a nanny nation: investigating the rhetoric framing public health debates in Australian news media.

A qualitative framing analysis. Articles featuring the term 'nanny state' that were published in Australian print newspapers during matched periods between March and September in 2017 and 2018 were sourced through Factiva, coded and analysed for content and 'nanny state' framing. Content analysis was used to identify any public health-related issues that the terminology nanny state was applied to, and who was portrayed as imposing the nanny state. Frame analysis was used to analyse what meanings are co-presented with the phrase nanny state. Out of 81 print newspaper articles that included the term 'nanny state', 19% linked the term to restricting personal choice or creating dissatisfaction with too many health-related rules and regulations broadly, across a range of issues, including: bike helmets, e-cigarettes, firearm restrictions, seatbelts, pool fences and smoking bans. The next most frequent links were to regulations on alcohol (17%), road safety (14%), obesity-related issues (7%) and tobacco control (6%). Of the 81 articles, 53% appeared in news publications owned by News Corporation Australia, 20% in Fairfax Media (Nine Entertainment) publications, 17% in Daily Mail and General Trust and 10% in publications owned by other organisations. Governments were the entity most frequently framed as imposing the nanny state. Most nanny state framings (73%) were negative towards public health controls and focused on policies and regulations. Nanny state was portrayed as an assault on freedom and choice (14%) and used to attack proponents of nanny state controls (11%), while few articles framed the nanny state (7%) in a favourable light. 'Nanny state' is a rhetorical device commonly used in Australian news media that may contribute to discrediting of the regulation of a range of health-related issues. News Corp publications are a major propagator of nanny state rhetoric in Australian newspaper media. Public health advocates are not commonly represented within nanny state debates within the news media.

An analysis of Australian news and current affair program coverage of sharks on Facebook

AbstractAs most people will never encounter sharks in the wild, the media's portrayal of these animals is a key contributing factor to public perception of these species. Facebook is a common way for people to engage with news in Australia. Therefore, content and thematic analysis was conducted on a novel dataset comprising of 2,643 Facebook posts made by Australian news and current affairs media outlets during 2016. To allow for an understanding of the general public's reaction to the media coverage, 40,373 public Facebook user's comments were also analyzed. Shark‐related posts were common, with 87% of all the news‐related Facebook pages analyzed having published at least one post related to sharks and only 49 days had no published shark‐related posts. Shark and human interactions were overwhelmingly the most common theme in the Facebook posts with 45.6% falling into this category and none of these posts labelled the interactions using the Australian Shark Attack File categorization. A common theme emerging from the user comments was that the ocean is dangerous (n = 2,493), suggesting that people may perceive the risk of shark attacks to be high. Because human behaviors negatively impact shark populations, social science research, including media analyses, is an important tool for understanding perceptions of sharks and may guide strategies that could support conservation efforts, including suggestions for how the media should report shark and human interactions.

‘Manufactured hysteria’: audience perceptions of sensationalism and moral panic in Australian news representations of asylum seekers

Seeking asylum is a highly polarising topic, exacerbated by news discourses that construct asylum seekers as threats to the nation. National and international news coverage has been said to incite ‘moral panics’ via the use of sensationalised depictions of asylum seekers, however, few studies have examined audience responses. This article discusses the findings of research utilising Critical Discourse Analysis alongside an Audience Reception framework to examine how 24 Western Australians perceive news coverage of asylum seekers. All participants critiqued news constructions of the issue, with many emphasising sensationalism and the incitement of fear as central concerns affecting their trust and engagement with Australian coverage. Analysed with consideration of the ‘moral panic’ and ‘media panic’ literature, these findings demonstrate that sensationalist depictions of asylum seekers are being resisted by audiences. This inclination towards ‘media panics’ over ‘moral panics’ is discussed in terms of its implications for democracy and audience reception scholarship.

Australian news media constructions and categorisations of primary caregiving fathers

Increasing cultural and academic attention is being paid to fathers who assume the primary caregiving role, stemming from interest into whether contemporary masculinity is evolving away from traditional, hegemonic ideals. This study utilises a Discourse Analysis informed by Membership Categorisation Analysis to explore how this relatively new category – primary caregiving father – is discursively constructed in 193 Australian newsprint media articles. The analysis identified that the category of ‘primary caregiving father’ was defended and discursively managed so as to remain consistent with the activities and predicates typically associated with the category ‘normative man’. This was routinely achieved in two ways. First, descriptions of traditional uninvolved fathers were contrasted unfavourably against the ‘new’ primary caregiving father, working to position primary caregiving fathers as the new norm. Second, accounts of men’s decision to take on the primary caregiving role routinely relied on the category-tied predicates of rationality and stoicism, thereby working to position primary caregiving fathers as normatively masculine. Overall, this article concludes that, despite fathers taking on roles inconsistent with normative gendered categorisation, constructions of fatherhood in news media routinely work to align (or re-align) primary caregiving fathers within hegemonic ideals. Therefore, while masculinity is evolving and shifting, it remains within the bounds of what is considered hegemonic.

A Qualitative Analysis of the Portrayal of Young People and Psychosis in Australian News Reports

ABSTRACT News media plays an influential role in shaping society’s understanding of mental illness and can promote perspectives ranging from those that promote help-seeking behaviour to stigmatised associations with attributes such as danger and violence. Stigma has been found to have significant negative impacts on people with psychosis. No existing studies have explored how young people with psychosis are represented in newspapers. Targeting this gap, this study analysed news articles relating to youth psychosis to determine the types of discourses used. We searched the ProQuest Australia and New Zealand Newsstream database (2011-2016) for Australian newspaper articles related to young people and psychosis. Qualitative analysis was used to identify content and these were arranged into key themes. The recurring themes evident in the 27 articles linked youth psychosis to illicit drug use, violence and professional infighting about treatment options, and thus promoted significantly stigmatised perspectives of youth psychosis. Acknowledgement of these stigmatised discourses is important for encouraging responsible media reporting and for understanding the social messages impacting on treatment and help-seeking by young people. We discuss the conflicted role of journalists in presenting information about mental illness and recommend development of a more solutions-focused approach to reporting in this area.

An analysis of price competition and price wars in Australia's domestic airline market

Price cuts and price wars, a frequent phenomenon in Australia's domestic airline market that have been widely reported in the Australian news media, are documented in this research. This paper examines the determinants of price wars in Australia using monthly data from 72 airline routes for the period from January 2013 to August 2017. Our finding is consistent with the widely held view that an increase in the major airlines' capacity was a main cause of price cuts and price wars. Our research shows that price wars continued after Qantas announced that it would stop adding domestic capacity and give up defending its 65% market share policy in 2015. Indeed, Qantas' 65% market share commitment has led to fierce pricing competition and the occurrence of price wars. Multimarket contact promoted price wars in Australia's domestic airline market.

“Like Being Shot in the Face” or “I’m Glad I’m Out”: Journalists’ Experiences of Job Loss in the Australian Media Industry 2012–2014

ABSTRACTThe Australian news media industry has recently experienced a dramatic contraction, resulting in the loss of an estimated 3000 journalism positions since 2011. But what does the process of being laid off (more commonly understood as “redundancy” in Australia) actually mean for those affected? Drawing on a survey of more than 200 journalists who left what were mostly long-term jobs in large newsrooms between 2012 and 2014, this paper examines how respondents conceptualised their redundancy experiences in response to an open-ended question that was part of a 2014 survey. As well as assessing the often complex and sometimes visceral responses in terms of whether they were positive, mixed or negative, the paper discusses a range of themes to emerge, and notes discrepancies that relate to whether the redundancies were voluntary or forced, and by age and gender, and to some extent, current work status. It also finds that while overall the responses to redundancy skew more negative than positive, an substantial majority of those surveyed believe their well-being has improved since leaving their jobs.

Cinderella at the (foot)ball: wives and girlfriends in Australian rules football

ABSTRACT The football WAG is fast becoming an iconic figure in Australian culture and a crucial part of Australian football branding. The commodification of the ‘WAG’ benefits the Australian Football League (AFL) as a business and bolsters the masculinity of players because the ‘WAG’ fits within the narrow narratives about gender that are reproduced within football culture. Despite the increasing visibility of ‘WAGs’, academic scholarship has been slow to address their presence and influence, representing a significant gap in research on Australian sporting culture. This paper investigates how the AFL ‘WAG’ is represented in Australian news media and utilises the popular Brownlow Medal Award ceremony as a case study for thematic analysis. The research concludes that the ‘WAG’ is represented as a ‘trophy wife’ and that this representation functions to reinforce the dominant masculinity of her male partner. These findings are nested within academic research on sport and sexual assault and are framed by feminist theory.

Ungrievable lives: Australian print media portrayals of Palestinian casualties during the Gaza War of 2014

In July–August 2014, Israel launched a military operation, Protective Edge, in which approximately 2200 Palestinians were killed and over 11,000 injured, the majority of them civilians. These casualties resulted in increased interest in the region by the Australian news media. Using framing theory, we analysed 75 news articles published by two Australian mainstream newspapers, The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald (The SMH), in order to determine how these Palestinian casualties were portrayed. Our findings show that the conflict frame was dominant in the newspapers’ representations of the Palestinian casualties and that their voices were infrequently incorporated alongside those of officials and medics. Israeli actions were justified in relation to Palestinian casualties through the reliance on Israeli voices and pro-Israel sources, while Palestinian casualties were occasionally individualised. In other words, the Palestinian casualties were portrayed by both newspapers as regrettable yet nonetheless necessary for Israel’s existence and right of defence.

Representation of news related to culturally diverse population in Australian media

The Australian media market has fragmented with audiences accessing news from various sources (mainstream media and/or social media) on a variety of platforms. In this fragmented market, we examine the media coverage of high-profile multicultural and transnational events and issues during a 6-month period, which potentially has adverse impact on social cohesion by contributing to negative attitudes towards minority communities. The article outlines outcomes of a classical content analysis of news and commentary available on Australian mainstream news sites, and a sentiment analysis of Twitter conversations around the same topics. We use Stuart Hall’s encoding decoding model to explain the outcomes of the two content analyses and consider the news coverage and social media news conversations of these prominent events/issues from the perspective of culturally diverse Australian audiences.

Mediated representations of violence against women in the mainstream news in Australia

BackgroundHow the mainstream news media report violence against women is significant if levels of violence are to be reduced and ultimately eliminated. Media reporting is an important indicator through which to measure progress towards shifting social and cultural norms that reinforce or challenge the place of violence against women in our society. The current study, therefore, aimed to establish a baseline picture of the extent and nature of reporting of violence against women by the mainstream Australian news media.MethodsDescriptive and content analysis of media reports on violence against women that were collected over four months in three states of Australia. Reports were from newspapers, broadcast (television and radio) and online news sites.ResultsCoverage of violence against women in the mainstream news media was extensive. Explicitly situating violent experiences for women within a broader social context was infrequent. Few news reports included information for women on where to seek help. Additionally, news reports rarely elevated the voices of survivors, advocates and other experts, with a disproportionate emphasis on law enforcement, political and criminal justice perspectives.ConclusionsDespite readiness among journalists and readers to engage in news about violence against women, reporting that promotes public understanding of the issue is not always the norm.

“Girl power gone wrong”: #MeToo, Aziz Ansari, and media reporting of (grey area) sexual violence

ABSTRACT Sexual violence has predominantly been discursively constructed as bounded and binary, leaving little room for ambiguous or uncertain experiences. The #MeToo movement, however, saw some highly contested cases enter into mainstream news coverage that challenged these dominant understandings, including the divisive case of Aziz Ansari. This research uses a post-structural feminist framework to examine Australian news media reporting of this case in order to understand how discourses around sexual violence and sexual consent are (re)produced by news media following the #MeToo movement. The study found that whilst some discourse was more nuanced, the majority of reporting still perpetuated limited and binary understandings of sexual violence. Much reporting constructed pressure and coercion as the normal and acceptable “reality” of (hetero)sex, failing to acknowledge coercion as potentially harmful and problematic, as well as failing to consider the possibilities for doing consent differently. Reporting also (re)produced narrow and stereotypical understandings of gender roles, with women primarily seen as bearing the onus of gatekeeping sexual experiences, and men seen as “naturally” aggressive pursuers of sex. Ultimately, we argue that news media works as a site of erasure for particular forms and experiences of sexual violence.

Ice towns: Television representations of crystal methamphetamine use in rural Australia

The Australian news media regularly presents crystal methamphetamine use as a non-metropolitan ‘epidemic’ sweeping through country towns with devastating consequences for affected communities. Considerations of place and the notion of rurality are therefore crucial to understanding how these media representations are constructed and their power to influence national understandings of rural people, places and policy debates. In order to explore these complexities, we apply Simon Cottle’s ‘communicative architecture of television’ methodology to an analysis of three long-form reportage television programmes on the theme of ice use in small Australian towns. Theories of ‘social imaginaries’ inform the argument that a distinctive Australian ‘agrarian imaginary’ can be discerned through the reporting’s strong associations with the connections and contradictions attached to ideas and emotions about ‘the bush’. The television programmes draw on what Cottle terms ‘mythic’ and ‘collective’ frames that reach into the cultural reservoirs of communities to reinforce national perceptions, values and narratives about how rural communities ought to be, and by extension, how they ought to deal with complex social problems, such as illicit drug distribution and use.

De-legitimising complementary medicine: framings of the Friends of Science in Medicine-CAM debate in Australian media reports.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has developed into a complex and formidable commercial, sociocultural and political force in Australia, and given its influence, it is a relevant subject for scholars, health practitioners, health communicators, journalists, policy-makers, and consumers of healthcare products and services. This research will consider a relative newcomer to the claims-making space about CAM in the Australian health media-scape; the Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM), an activist group of medical practitioners, researchers, and scientists, founded in late 2011. Using content analysis supported by NVivo, I searched for articles specifically referring to FSM and measured the patterns and frequencies of media frames, intonation and sources that are featured in Australian mainstream news reports between December 2011 and April 2017. The negative headlining and intonation of reports predominated, along with framing CAM as part of a lucrative, undisciplined and unethical industry as well as an illegitimate healthcare approach, more broadly. The findings offer insight into how journalists respond, replicate or reconstruct the framings that are provided by an influential and elite group of medical practitioners and scientists, and readdresses issues surrounding the need for more critical health reporting in Australia.

“Devil’s Lure Took All I Had”: Moral Panic and the Discursive Construction of Crystal Methamphetamine in Australian News Media

Crystal methamphetamine (“ice”) has been a fixture in Australian newspapers since the early 2000s. This study explores discourses at work in constructing the ice “problem” in recent Australian media, possible implications for how people who use ice are discursively positioned, and the resulting significance for drug policy. Twenty-seven articles were selected for discourse analysis, sampled from a larger study of Australian ice-related news items. By critically engaging with sociological concepts of “moral panic” and the “risk society,” we demonstrate how three media discourses produce the subject of the “young person” as both victimized by ice and a catastrophic threat in and of themselves: (1) “ice traps and transforms youth,” (2) “ice does not discriminate,” and (3) “ice perverts sanctuary.” These discourses illustrate the tensions between the meanings of ice use and understandings of safety and risk, speaking to current anxieties in Western, neoliberal societies. Ice use is further constructed as a form of abjection, threatening traditional social boundaries and institutions. However, the agency and determinism simultaneously granted to ice the substance troubles the notion we are witnessing yet another “drug scare” that polices social behavior. Instead, we observe how these discourses mirror those in the biomedical literature, which construct ice as a uniform, agentic, and uniquely dangerous drug. With use attributed to entrapment and/or naturalized as addiction, the drug is constituted as engineering its own, always harmful, consumption. This limits conceptions of any “safer,” “rational,” or “pleasurable” forms of ice use and further justifies state intervention on its users. Overall, these discourses rationalize prohibitionist interventions around ice and singularize drug consumption as a behavior requiring institutional management.

Plus ça change: Three decades of Clarke and Dawe’s political satire 1987–2017

Even the best broadcast satire tends to have a relatively short lifespan in Australia: After a couple of years or so, the creators run out of ideas, characters grow stale or the zeitgeist shifts and audiences and sponsors look elsewhere. Remarkably, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe’s eponymous weekly political satire segment of Australian news media endured for thirty years before ending abruptly, a consequence of Clarke’s sudden death in 2017. Originally framed in newsprint in 1987, Clarke’s deadpan mock interviews underwent their first evolutionary leap in media format the same year when he collaborated with Dawe to perform them as episodic radio scripts. Two years later, a transition to television established the show’s definitive audio-visual format–one which later facilitated Clarke & Dawe’s online success with the advent of Web 2.0 media. Despite these radical changes in media form, Clarke & Dawe’s satirical mechanics remained largely unchanged. In around two-and-a-half minutes, an interview would deliver a revelatory and forensic dismantling of a complex topical event or concept by gently but mischievously eviscerating its advocate. This article outlines the durable structural format of Clarke’s satiric creations and his deliberate cultivation of a recognisable and idiosyncratic approach to interview, including tone, rhythm and delivery of speech. It then examines the impact on these formal aspects of respective media potentialities (newsprint, radio, television and the Internet) in order to investigate the lengthy popular success of the series.

Uncertainty, risk, and opportunity frames in Australian online media reports of the 2016 Great Barrier Reef mass coral-bleaching event

Through a content analysis, this research aimed to discover how frequently the linguistic frames of scientific uncertainty, skepticism, risk, and opportunity were used in 224 Australian online news...

News Consumption Habits of Culturally Diverse Australians in the Digital Era: Implications for Intercultural Relations

It is well-documented that news media (both traditional and social) have a significant impact on intercultural relations in contemporary societies. This paper compares results of two surveys where we asked Australians about their news sources. The study shows that Australian news consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds are alienated from Australian mainstream news media, increasingly relying on online and social media sources for their information. The paper situates this empirical research in the contemporary articulation of uses and gratification theory to understand audiences’ preferred media sources for news and information and the potential implications for intercultural relations in Australia.

Representations of refugees and asylum seekers during the 2013 federal election

Immigration policy, arrival modes, human rights, and international obligations have all been part of the debate that has ensued over the Australian Government’s policy response towards refugees and asylum seekers. This debate was a central campaign focus in the lead up to the 2013 Australian federal election and was accompanied by extensive media coverage. This media coverage is a significant contributor to the representation of refugees and asylum seekers to the Australian public. This study explores how refugees and asylum seekers were represented in Australian print news media in the period immediately before and after the 2013 federal election. Using news framing and critical discourse analysis, this study examined 162 articles, published between 7 August and 8 October 2013, in Australian newspapers. The analysis revealed two opposing themes in the representation of asylum seekers: refugees and asylum seekers were represented as either a threat requiring a military intervention or as victims requiring management. The findings of this study demonstrate the ways in which the print media contribute to a polarised representation of refugees and asylum seekers and the potential deleterious effect of this dichotomous construction to an informed public opinion.