Guest Speakers:
Dr Usha Rodrigues, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University
Emeritus Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, University of Technology, Sydney
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As a settler colonial migrant nation on unceded Aboriginal land, Australia is home to people from a wide variety of culturally, linguistically and racially diverse backgrounds. Yet within the country’s dominant media, its diverse lived realities remain poorly represented. Research has long demonstrated the adverse effects of racialized media reporting on migrant belonging and social cohesion. In the present pandemic, the targeted blaming of particular communities for the spread of COVID-19 exemplifies how media can deepen divisions to our detriment.
At the same time, new media platforms showcase and represent the diverse lived realities of Australians, enabling people to take place and image their identities and to effectively challenge some of the country’s hierarchies especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement. This panel discussion will explore some ways in which media platforms can enable a shift away from racialized representation and reporting to include of a wider variety of perspectives throughout Australia’s media landscape.
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Speaker bios:
Dr Usha M. Rodrigues is a senior academic in journalism and media studies at Deakin University, Australia. She is a former journalist and has published three co-authored books including Indian Media in a Globalised World (2010) and Indian News Media: From Observer to Participant (2015) with Sage publications. She has published several journal articles examining contemporary journalism practices, cultural diversity and media, and social media and political communication. She also holds a position of an Adjunct Professor in Communication at Manipal University, India’s No 1 ranked private university.
Professor Andrew Jakubowicz is emeritus professor of sociology at UTS In the School of Communication. He currently practices as a cultural diversity planner in Sydney. He first engaged with issues of race and media in 1969 in a social action project exploring interaction between Indigenous, immigrant and old white Australian communities in inner Sydney. Since then he has been on the board of SBS, worked on ten tv documentaries and led research on ethnicity racism and the media, and cyber racism. In 2020 he published a joint authored book on how the Australian media fails Indigenous political aspirations. During COVID he has been arguing for recognising how the virus impacts on CALD. Communities and why we’re scared to find out.