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Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2012. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-251) Much cultural anxiety and political and media heat has been generated in response to maritime asylum seekers seeking refuge in Australia. While claims are made to a national legacy of generosity in welcoming refugees, policies, official discourses and much media comment on maritime asylum seekers have been exclusionary. At times this reaction to maritime asylum seekers is so extreme that it could be argued that it is less about a material threat to national security than the response of a national psyche formed by a history of forcible occupation of indigenous territory and policies of exclusion driven by a fear of racialised invaders. Previous research has called into question the role of the mainstream media in this reaction to asylum seekers. It has been suggested that in the context of changes in demography which challenge the cultural domination of the white, British-background cultural ‘aristocracy’, the Australian nation has sought to ensure control, regulation and exclusion of asylum seekers as a symbolic response to a perceived threat to the sovereignty and cultural hegemony of white Australia. This thesis argues that representations of the alien Other both result from and contribute to an ongoing process in the media of constructing, citing, re-iterating and re-producing a hegemonic ‘good’ white national identity, which is imagined as rightfully sovereign. The thesis examines in detail narratives in certain hard news depictions of asylum seekers, specifically when detained asylum seekers physically embodied their conflict with the Australian state in 2000 and 2002 by sewing their lips. The thesis draws on critical race and whiteness scholarship to explore the role of the press in reporting and shaping the responses of audiences towards such acts. Employing critical discourse analysis and a literary critical method, it “reads against’ news texts focusing on the racialised Other to bring into view the white ‘Australian’ subject. It argues that such depictions are often informed by narratives of exclusion and control of the asylum seeker and represent the self-selected social role of the media in perpetuating and naturalising the hegemony of a white national Self. The thesis concludes by considering the implications of the study for journalistic practice and further research in the area of media representation of other marginalised groups such as Indigenous Australians and more recent non-European arrivals and religious minority groups. |
