Speaking up or being heard? Community media interventions and the politics of listening

Abstract

Media research has generally focused more attention on analysing the 'problems' of media racism than on exploring possibilities for 'solutions' or change. In this article I introduce community media interventions as an underdeveloped and highly productive field of research into both the possibilities and the limitations of working for media change in the context of the 'war on terror' and the 'globalisation of the Muslim Other' (Hage, 2007). The opening sections discuss the concept of 'community media interventions' and provide an overview of media intervention strategies among racialized communities in Sydney, Australia since 11 September 2001. The concluding sections sketch the many limitations of and dilemmas for media interventions as strategies for responding to racialized media. I argue that, in order to adequately understand and contribute to struggles for media change, media research needs to attend to the politics of 'listening' in addition to the dynamics of 'speaking up'. Crucially, attention to listening shifts the focus and responsibility for change from marginalized voices and on to the conventions, institutions and privileges which shape who and what can be heard in media.The community media interventions analysed in this article were developed in the context of racialized news reporting in the Australian media leading up to and during the 'war on terror'. While Arab and Muslim communities in 'Western' countries have been positioned in media discourses as threatening 'others' since 11 September 2001, in the Australian context the figure of the 'Muslim terrorist' has been linked to fears of 'ethnic crime' and national security which pre-date the beginnings of the 'war on terror'. A 'signification spiral' (Hall et al., 1978: 223-7) of sensationalized news reports of asylum seekers from Iraq and the Middle East, militarized border protection and a series

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