Racism,social media,and the coronial jurisdiction: An analysis of user interactions on Facebook

Abstract

This article discusses the unanticipated, but not unexpected, prevalence of racism in response to a post made on Facebook seeking participants for a study about the coronial jurisdiction. A critical understanding of the coronial jurisdiction is presented here, with a focus on the racism encountered online when seeking participants for the study. Facebook was used as a primary data source and recruitment tool due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions. A microcosm emerged in response to the Facebook post, unintentionally providing a space for white Australia to interrogate and assert who belongs and who does not, and revealing tropes of criminalisation and white supremacy.

Keywords

coroner Aboriginal social media racism Facebook New South Wales

Introduction

This article will discuss the experiences of racism in social media spaces, particularly as it relates to a study about Aboriginal families’ experiences of the coronial jurisdiction. In 2021, the author began a project seeking to explore the experiences of Aboriginal families with the coronial system in New South Wales (NSW). The broader study that has informed this paper sought to centre the experiences of bereaved Aboriginal families who had experienced the coronial system, and used a dedicated Facebook page to share information about the study, and as a recruitment tool. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples ‘use social media at rates higher than non-Indigenous Australians’ (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 1), making it an ideal platform for a study undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article will first outline the function of the coroner in NSW. Put simply, each jurisdiction in Australia has its own coronial jurisdiction, wherein a coroner is tasked with determining the identity of the person who has died, and the cause and manner of their death – in other words, the ‘who, what, why, where, and how’. The article then moves to consider the use of Facebook as a platform to conduct coronial research, as well as the experiences of being an Aboriginal Person in online spaces. As is discussed in the final section of this article, the use of Facebook for this study unintentionally uncovered tropes of criminalisation and white supremacy.

Readers please be advised that the following contains the names of Aboriginal people who have died

While there are many reasons why a person’s death might be investigated in the coronial jurisdiction, deaths that occur in State custody are legislatively required to be subject to a coronial inquest. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are over-represented in criminal legal systems, and continue to be over-represented in the number of deaths that occur in these spaces (Australian Institute of Criminology [AIC], 2025). In 1991, The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was released, and included 339 recommendations, some pertaining specifically to the coronial jurisdiction (Johnston, 1991). Not only has very little been done to implement these recommendations (Anthony et al., 2021), but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples continue to die in prisons and police cells in disproportionate numbers. To date, more than 600 Aboriginal men, women, and children, have died in some form of State custody (AIC, 2025).

In all jurisdictions across Australia, there is a legislated requirement to hold a coronial inquest to determine the manner and cause of all deaths that occur in State custody, including deaths that occur following police contact or during the course of a police operation. Coronial inquests seek to uncover the ‘truth’ of what happened (Scraton, 2013), and are one of the few avenues Aboriginal families have to attempt to get some recognition of the harm caused by the State. While it can be argued that coronial investigations and inquests serve as yet another tool of colonisation (McCabe, forthcoming), they are also sites of resistance, wherein dominant colonial narratives can be challenged. For example, the recent findings following the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker found that there is indeed ‘normalised’ racism within the Northern Territory police force (Anthony and Cubillo, 2025), validating what the family already knew: in a statement to the media, Mr Walker’s cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown said, ‘we felt validated as a family, because to us, we felt like racism killed Kumanjayi’ (Knowles, 2025). However, it is now incumbent on the Northern Territory Police force to implement the coronial recommendations pertaining to them, and so while a site of truth telling and resistance, it is likely in this case to also be a site of keen disappointment, as it is for many families who have experienced coronial inquests.

Social media can serve as another site of resistance for bereaved Aboriginal families, as well as a site for support. Carlson and Frazer (2018: p. 1) highlight the prominence of social media in the lives of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, noting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples ‘use social media at rates higher than non-Indigenous Australians’. Social media has been integral in garnering support for the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia, a campaign that drew attention to the deaths of Aboriginal People in custody across Australian jurisdictions (Lo, 2021). The Facebook platform in particular has been instrumental in building support for the families of many of those who have died in custody. The Dungay family established the Facebook page ‘Justice for David Dungay Jnr’ following his senseless death in custody, which has over 5500 followers (https://www.facebook.com/justiceforjnr/), as did the family of Wayne Fella Morrison following his death (https://www.facebook.com/justiceforfella/). Hundreds of pages like this exist across the platform, providing families and communities a space in which to contest the narratives of the State, to mobilise support, and to share their experiences of the colonial coronial system.

Despite their importance and their reach, coronial jurisdictions and coronial processes are largely under-researched in Australia, although there is a growing group of scholars dedicated to this very work. The specific experiences of Aboriginal families in the New South Wales (NSW) jurisdiction, many of whom have repeated contacts with the coronial system, and who are over-represented in coronial investigations, are also under-researched. The broader study that has informed this paper sought to centre the experiences of bereaved Aboriginal families who had experienced the coronial system. As an Aboriginal woman, it was imperative that this research was grounded in Indigenist research praxis, doing so from within an Indigenist Research Paradigm (Rigney, 1999).

It is important to note that the broader study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. This forced me to consider how online spaces such as Facebook might be utilised in this study, particularly at a time when it was not clear how long the lockdowns would last. The decision was made to use an online qualitative survey, distributed via Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). The survey would operate in two ways – as a standalone qualitative survey about people’s experiences with the coronial jurisdiction in NSW, and as a recruitment strategy for yarns with participants. This article outlines how the survey was received on the Facebook platform, and what the responses from Facebook users contribute to our understandings of expressions of racism in online spaces.

Most people are fortunate to have no contact with the coronial system over their lifetime. For those that do, understanding the role of the coroner and the processes and legal language used can be a ‘daunting task’ (Dartnall and Goodman-Delahunty, 2016: 610). This paper proceeds in four parts. First, an overview of the function of the coroner in Australia is provided, focussing specifically on NSW, which is where the research is based. Second, the paper will highlight some of the intricacies of ‘being Aboriginal online’. Following this, the ways in which Facebook users’ interactions with the survey post revealed tropes of criminalisation and white supremacy is discussed.

Throughout this article there are some words that are specific to the Australian context, and may be unfamiliar to international readers. These include the terms ‘Sorry Business’, which refers to a complexity of cultural responsibilities and protocols, encompassed as ‘cultural practices around death’ (Carlson and Frazer, 2015: 211); and ‘Mob’, a term used by many Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples. It can refer to family and community and is often associated with a particular place or Country. It can be used to connect and identify who an Aboriginal person is and where they are from (Australian Indigenous Health Infonet, n.d.).

The function of the coroner in Australia

Coronial jurisdictions can be at once both sites of ‘fact finding’ and truth telling (Scott Bray, 2020), and sites of administrative violence (Whittaker, 2021). While coroners across jurisdictions investigate matters such as fires and missing persons, they are more commonly known to investigate the cause and manner of individual deaths. Bereaved families and friends are drawn into this complex web of legal bureaucracy when the death of their loved one is deemed a reportable death: a death that is required to be reported to the coroner in the relevant jurisdiction. Reportable deaths broadly are those which are unexpected or suspicious, deaths where the identity of the person is unknown, and where the circumstances of their death requires further investigation. Coroners are tasked with determining the identity of the person who has died, the cause of their death, and the manner in which their death occurred. These determinations often inform what is perhaps the most important coronial function – the prevention of similar deaths, made possible via coronial recommendations (Freckelton, 2008).

The coroner’s role is an inquisitorial one, rather than adversarial, and is ‘situated at the intersection of trauma and grief on the one hand, and legal exploration and evidence gathering on the other’ (Carpenter et al., 2022: 1040). This inquisitorial role of the coroner is ‘exemplified not only in the search for the cause of death’, but in its death prevention capacity via the making of coronial recommendations (Martin, 2017: 44). It must be noted however that while coronial investigations are an opportunity to uncover the circumstances of a death and provide preventative recommendations, it can also ‘exacerbate grief and trauma’ for the bereaved loved ones left behind (Carpenter et al., 2022: 1040). Coronial inquests take place many years after the death has occurred, prolonging grieving practices and causing distress. In NSW these delays are often lengthy – three to four years between the time of the persons death and the culmination of the inquest is a common period to wait. Some families however wait 5 years or more (McCabe and George, 2021: 215). These delays take an enormous toll on these bereaved families, described as ‘retraumatising’ and ‘extremely distressing’ (McCabe and George, 2021: 215). Coronial processes across jurisdictions continue to be plagued with issues around poor communication, a lack of information, and the exclusion of many families from decision-making processes, all of which serve to exacerbate what is already a traumatic time (Biddle, 2003; Dartnall et al., 2019; McCabe and George, 2021; Spillane et al., 2019).

The coroner serves a critical role in examining systemic failures in State facilities. Deaths that occur in State custody, such as in prisons, police custody, or out-of-home-care (OOHC), are subject to mandatory coronial inquests across all Australian jurisdictions. While the coroner is not responsible for attributing blame or criminal liability (McGuinness, 2023: 19), the legislative requirement to investigate deaths that occur in any form of State custody serves two important functions. First, it is an opportunity to identify and address systemic failings that led to the death; second, it reaffirms ‘public confidence in the State’s compliance with the rule of law’ (Easton, 2020: 29). This in turn provides an opportunity for the State to ‘respond appropriately’ (Easton, 2020: 29).

Coronial systems, investigation, inquests, and coroners themselves are not neutral spaces. They are very much imbued with the underlying principles and goals of the settler-colonial State. Across Australian coronial jurisdictions, ‘whiteness undergirds State and society’, structuring the experiences of every individual and community; ‘the language of race permeates institutions’ and is ‘embedded in everyday life’ (Bargallie et al., 2024: 1532–1533). The coroner and their functions are by no means immune to this, and in many ways perpetuate continued colonial violence and narratives. For instance, the ‘discourse of pathology’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2009: 77) is evident in the attribution of the term ‘natural causes’ to explain too many deaths of Aboriginal Peoples (Porter and Cubillo, 2021), a term that obfuscates the role and responsibility of the State in the circumstances leading to the death – this is arguably most blatant, and most violent, where a person has died in State custody. So too can coronial inquests be understood as sites of desecration, a ‘place for the ritual that constitutes white settlers and the settler state as legitimate’ (Razack et al., 2023: 246).

In this way, the function of the coroners court in Australia can be understood through the lens of living death (Mbembe and Mientjes, 2003) that has always defined the relationship between settler-colonial institutions and Aboriginal peoples. The coronial system operates within the settler-colony as yet another institution and tool of colonialisation. Imbued in this system, and almost all actors within it, are ‘normative’ ideas about whiteness and race, and these intersect with Indigeneity, and indeed the lives and deaths of Aboriginal Peoples, in specific and often violent ways. The coronial jurisdiction therefore is a site of power, wherein ‘truth remains contested’ (Hancock and Liebling, 2013: 111), and where particular truths that serve the interests of the State are constructed, refined, and disseminated across society.

The power imbued within coronial inquests draws from broader narratives – colonial ‘truths’ – about the nature of indigeneity, and of Aboriginal Peoples and cultures as exemplars of ‘bare life’ (Mbembe and Mientjes, 2003), defined by the pathologisation of Aboriginal Peoples as ‘primitive. . . illogical . . . violent and uncivilised’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2009: 65). If Aboriginal Peoples are ‘always on the brink of extinction, death is only an end point of a natural process’ (Razack et al., 2023: 249). Further, if ‘reason is the truth’, then the inquest acts as a site of reason, of truth making. The ‘truth’ then espoused by the inquest is that death is the reasonable outcome of the conditions in which Aboriginal Peoples are forced to exist, absolving the State without any real interrogation of the conditions it has itself created (Mbembe and Mientjes, 2003: 13). Razack et al. (2023: p. 249) describes this process as ‘sorry happy’– the State can show, via coronial processes, that it is ‘sorry’ the person has died. The State can then be ‘happy’ with itself in its ‘pledge to do better’, witnessed in the coronial recommendations and findings that follow. The coronial inquest then, to take a critical view, is a performance by the settler-colonial State in order to (re)position itself as legitimate.

These critical views of the inquest as a tool of the colonial State are what have underpinned the larger study, and my research in this area more broadly. Coronial investigations do not occur in a vacuum – both the families of those who have died, and the investigating police, bring particular ‘truths’ to the death investigation process, that are founded in the violence of the colony. Allison and Cunneen (2022: p. 251) characterise the coronial jurisdiction as structurally embedded in institutional racism, contending that its failure to meaningfully engage with First Nations perspectives results in the continued marginalisation of these communities and the reproduction of colonial and racial harms. Drawing upon their own research, Allison and Cunneen (2022: p. 251) highlight the failure of coronial inquiries to consider the deaths of Aboriginal Peoples in relation to ‘State violence and other weapons of colonisation’. This is exacerbated within a coronial system that fails to ensure cultural safety for Aboriginal Peoples, leading to many feeling ‘threatened and outnumbered’ by police, corrections officers, and others who were involved in the death being present throughout coronial processes (Allison and Cunneen, 2022: 252).

Coronial processes therefore have the potential to replicate and reproduce colonial violence, decimating any hope for a sense of justice or healing for the bereaved. Not only are we seeing the same kinds of preventable deaths occurring due, in part, to a lack of implemented recommendations, but the bereaved families of the deceased are being excluded from key decision-making processes regarding their loved ones, and are experiencing lengthy, often traumatic delays between the time of death and the beginning of an inquest. While this affects every family whose loved one’s death necessitates a coronial inquest in New South Wales, research suggests that Aboriginal Peoples are disproportionately affected. Specifically, Aboriginal People are more likely to die a reportable death, one which is reported to the coroner, such as suicide, homicide or accidental, than non-Aboriginal Australians (Carpenter and Tait, 2009: 34). Aboriginal People are also less likely than non-Aboriginal Australians to receive appropriate, or even adequate, medical care, particularly in custodial settings (Allam et al., 2019; Brennan, 2024). The coronial system and its processes must therefore be understood within the contexts in which they occur – not only within a settler-colony, but ‘a colonial legal system that is imposed on the lives and bodies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ (Newhouse et al., 2020: 77).

Despite the crucial work of Newhouse et al. (2020), Allison and Cunneen (2022) and others, there remains an astounding gap in the literature exploring and documenting the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with coronial processes across so-called Australia. It is within this context that my research is situated.

Facebook, the coroner, and being Aboriginal online

The impact of the proliferation of social media over the past few decades cannot be understated. Social media is used by billions of people the world over to connect with loved ones, to find love, to share their lives, to organise politically, to trade, buy and sell. Carlson and Frazer (2018: p. 1) have highlighted the prominence of social media in the lives of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, noting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples ‘use social media at rates higher than non-Indigenous Australians’. They warn however that ‘being Indigenous online is no simple matter’, and that interactions on social media can be both life-enhancing and sites of racism and aggression (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 1). Allison et al. (2025) found that 32% of all reports of racism occurred either online, or reflected media related instances of racism (Allison et al., 2025: p. 30). Online spaces were the most frequently nominated sites of ongoing racism for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (Allison et al., 2025: 29).

Identifying as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person on social media platforms can attract questions about a person’s Indigeneity, usually based on perceptions of skin colour, as well as comments degrading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples via tropes of criminality and inferiority (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 4). This can force many individuals to self-identify as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person on social media selectively to avoid the ‘potential for vulnerability’ (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 4). Issues such as these are further complicated by considerations of cultural protocols, particularly protocols around the sharing of cultural knowledges, issues regarding cultural appropriation, and Sorry Business. Conversely, social media can provide online spaces for identity to be expressed and celebrated, such as through the use of flags and other iconography and by explicitly identifying as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person in profile descriptions.

In their 2017 study, Carlson and Frazer found that many of the participants were concerned about cultural practices being shared online, and gave the example of participants’ concerns regarding the sharing of cultural hunting practices (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 11). The threat of non-Indigenous people appropriating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures was also a key concern for their participants, as were instances where practices had been mis-identified as being grounded in Culture when they are not (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 11). Cultural protocols surrounding Sorry Business were also a key consideration. These protocols vary across Nations/Language Groups, however the most common concern reported in Carlson and Frazer’s (2018: p. 11) study was the sharing on social media of images and names of persons who have died, without the appropriate permissions. Breaches of cultural protocols could be a point of immense tension for communities and families, however there were also instances described where social media had facilitated the fulfilment of cultural protocols following a death. For example, where family members live too far away to attend a funeral or other ceremony, they could still ‘fulfil their cultural responsibilities across distance’ by using Facebook to ‘post’ their condolences (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 9). Social media is also used by many as a kind of virtual cemetery, where the deceased person’s profile can be viewed on anniversaries, and stories and photographs be shared. In this way, ‘deceased kin were kept alive’ (Carlson and Frazer, 2018: 10).

Despite the potential of social media for facilitating connections across time and space, it is also a platform where racial aggression lurks; indeed, social media sites act as ‘catalysts for violent behaviours, reinforcing and legitimising forms of oppression and symbolic violence’ (Recuero, 2024). Matamoros-Fernández (2017: p. 930) has developed the concept of ‘platformed racism’ to allow a deeper theoretical understanding of the ways in which social media as a platform can be used to (re)produce and amplify racist discourses, as well as the ways in which these platforms are governed that allow the (re)production to occur. They argue that the specificity of national racism, such as that which occurs in colonised countries like Australia, combines with the specificity of the medium, in this instance Facebook (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017: 931). The colonial foundations of Australia have established whiteness as normative, and superior, wherein public discourse sanitises colonial violence, reinforcing dominant narratives. When combined with the echo chamber effect of platforms such as Facebook, where users are shown content that aligns with their own views, this reinforces these dominant narratives.

Nationalist narratives invisibilise First Peoples, and promote settler identities as normative. Social media algorithms are designed to maximise engagement, promoting posts that provoke strong reactions. Combined, this serves to further marginalise First Peoples perspectives and experiences, normalise white supremacist ideologies, and foster hatred and abuse, all under the guise of ‘free speech’. Following an investigation by the Australian Media and Communications Authority (Park, 2012) and numerous complaints to Facebook, the creators of a Facebook page titled ‘Aboriginal memes’ were encouraged to remove all content from their page. The page’s memes were designed to disparage and vilify Aboriginal Peoples and was described as racially vilifying by many, including the then Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy (Moses and Lowe, 2012). Despite this, Facebook refused to remove the page from its platform, allowing it to remain after classifying the page as ‘controversial humour’ (Moses and Lowe, 2012). This is a clear example of how the specificity of national racism (colonialism and systemic racism towards First Nations Peoples) combines with the specificity of the platform (Facebook) to (re)produce and amplify racist discourse with very little consequence.

The survey: Uncovering discourses of criminalisation and white supremacy

With these issues mind, we turn now to specific instances where the Facebook page created for this study became a site of racism. Some examples are overt, some less explicit, however all the below instances are representative of what it is like to engage with social media as an Aboriginal person. The decision was made not to report the posts to Facebook, instead taking screenshots before deleting or hiding the comments from the view of other Facebook users.

As noted above, the broader study exploring the experiences of Aboriginal Peoples with the coronial system in NSW was undertaken during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the restrictions placed on travel, including restrictions preventing leaving one’s home, a decision was made to conduct an online survey. The survey was conceptualised as a data-collection tool, as well as a recruitment point for potential participants to take part in a yarn with me as the researcher. The survey, created using Qualtrics, was distributed via both Facebook and X (then Twitter) on account pages made specifically for this study. The survey posts were able to be ‘boosted’ on Facebook, allowing for greater exposure. This greater exposure enabled thousands of Facebook users to see and interact with the posts, including being able to ‘share’ the post with their own friends; the ability to ‘react’ to the post; and the ability to comment on the post.

Most ‘reactions’ and ‘comments’ were negative: for example, Graphics Interchange Formats, or GIFs, showing people laughing were posted; comments such as ‘milk that big white tit’, and ‘why not get a job like everyone else and then join the rest of the country instead of complaining about everything’, as well as references to paedophilia – ‘fix this [paedophilia] at the start and at the end there will be no coroner’. Other than one instance where a reply was given to a comment with further information about the coronial system, the decision was made to ‘hide’ the comments after recording them. When comments were deleted, the original poster could see that their comment was deleted, thus inadvertently inviting further negative engagement – for example, one poster responded to their post being hidden by writing ‘OBVIOUSLY CAN’T HANDLE SOMEONE’S OPINION. PERHAPS YOU SHOULDN’T POST PUBLICLY. STOP DELETING PEOPLE’S COMMENTS’ (16 November 2021, original emphasis). When comments were hidden, only myself and the original poster could see the comment, but for all other Facebook users the comments became invisible. Removing offensive comments was important – as the survey was intended to reach as many Aboriginal People in NSW as possible, the offensive comments could discourage Mob from engaging with the post, and may have been experienced as unsafe. Indeed, a participant in Carlson and Frazer’s (2018: p. 12) study highlighted that to witness racism directed towards Aboriginal Peoples is to experience racism. The author certainly felt increasingly dismayed when the majority of posts were so misinformed and offensive, and did not want other Aboriginal People to be subjected to the same dialogue, for example ‘Why not get a job like everyone else and then join the rest of the country instead of complaining about everything’ (16 November 2021).

Carlson and Frazer (2018: p. 13) describe this feeling as a form of fatigue, constituting ‘its own form of political silencing through overburdening’. This is perhaps not surprising, given that racism via social media (and elsewhere) is simply a ‘manifestation’ of the historic and ongoing exclusion of Aboriginal Peoples (Cunneen et al., 2018: 277). The emotional pain the author experienced in witnessing these racist attacks was both physically and psychologically distressing. Racism is understood here as multi-faceted, manifesting in ‘structural, institutional, interpersonal, and internalised forms’ (Ben et al., 2022: 2). The following section highlights some of the interactions recorded on the Facebook social media platform, with an analysis of these interactions undertaken using the work of Carlson and Frazer (2015, 2018, 2021), Cunneen et al. (2018), Matamoros-Fernández (2017), and Moreton-Robinson (2015). The analysis showed that the comments left on the Facebook post fall into two broad categories – criminalisation and white supremacy.

Criminalisation

The association of criminality to Aboriginal Peoples was common among those who interacted with the post, with people incorrectly assuming that one must have committed an offence to have contact with the coronial jurisdiction, with comments such as ‘don’t break the law then’, and ‘end involvement in family violence substance abuse and crime’. Comments such as these are nothing new, with Chris Cunneen writing about the racialised criminalisation of Aboriginal Peoples in the media as early as 1987. Indeed, it can be argued that the criminalisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples is just another tool in the tool belt of the colonial State. The criminalisation of First Peoples across colonies is a mechanism of State control (Mbembe and Mientjes, 2003: 11). This criminalisation is thus part of the ‘colonial project’, a project involving a ‘web of subjugating strategies’ (Tauri and Porou, 2014: 22). The coronial inquest forms a small, yet significant, part of this web, demarcating Aboriginal Peoples as dying anyway (Razack, 2015), in police watchhouses and in prison cells. It is therefore a site wherein the racialised criminalisation of Aboriginal Peoples is reinforced, further contributing to and embedding the white supremacist ideology that perpetuates racism in colonies such as this, emboldening the racism so freely and confidently shared across social media platforms.

More recently, Cunneen et al. (2018) has continued to examine the nexus between lingering tropes of colonialism and the racialised criminalisation of Mob across media platforms, including both traditional media and social media. Social media allows individuals to express what can often be misinformed, uneducated, right-wing diatribe to hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button. In the context of the colony of Australia, it is a space where racist discourses can be shared and support garnered from like-minded people. This is strengthened and perpetuated by racism in more traditional media. Not-for-profit organisation All Together Now has studied mainstream media sources to ascertain the levels and types of racism present across Australian newspapers, news programmes, and infotainment programmes. The organisation found that 53% of the 315 opinion pieces analysed featured negative depictions of (non-white) race, with 79% of those pieces employing covert racism (All Together now, 2020). Forty-seven percent of the opinion pieces analysed targeted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in a negative way (All Together now, 2020). This is significant, as too often media depictions of ‘race’ perpetuate racialised discourses of criminalisation (Cunneen et al., 2018: 278), (re)producing and entrenching ideas about race and criminality. Indeed, these discourses ‘reflect a long running trope of colonial ideology within Australia’, one that perpetuates the harmful, offensive, and fallacious notion that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples ‘are a racially inferior, crime-prone group who require either incarceration or removal’ (Cunneen et al., 2018: 288). Thus, the too-common discourse that aligns Indigeneity with criminality is reproduced on social media, as evidenced by the comments made on the recruitment post, and is bolstered by the efforts of mainstream media.

White supremacy

This is of course allowed, and indeed encouraged, within the ideology of white supremacy. White supremacy is the other key theme identified in the comments posted by individuals on the survey’s Facebook link, although this is of course intertwined with the colonial project and the ongoing criminalisation of First Peoples. It is white supremacy that underpins the continued colonial ideology that constructs Indigeneity and criminality as inherently bound. We have witnessed the (re)emergence of white supremacy explicitly in the wearing of ‘Ku Klux Klan’ style uniforms in Alice Springs/Mparntwe among self-professed vigilantes in Alice Springs/Mparntwe, Northern Territory (Cunneen and Russell, 2017: 20), and with the tremendous growth in far-right terrorism investigations – a 750% increase in cases in between 2019 and 2021 (Zwartz, 2021: see also Campion, 2024).

The resurgence of overt white supremacist ideologies in Australia cannot, and should not, be separated from the context in which it occurs. The invasion and subsequent colonisation of so-called Australia continue to structure almost every facet of our lives, from what we learn in school to whether appropriate medical assistance is given in times of need (Torre, 2022). Indeed, one of the first packages of legislation passed following the Federation of Australia was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. The now infamous Act, perhaps better known as the White Australia Policy, demarcated the racial boundaries of the country by legislatively excluding non-white immigration (National Archives of Australia, n.d.). The foundations of the State of Australia, and the structures and institutions built thereupon, are thus firmly grounded in colonisation and white supremacy. Comments left on the Facebook survey link post asked ‘do WLM?’ (18 November 2021; White Lives Matter (WLM)), and used language referencing an ‘attack on Australia’, both of which can be understood as markers of white supremacist ideology. References to using ‘taxpayer money’ and ‘milk[ing] that big white tit’ (11 May 2022 and 20 May 2022 respectively) conjure notions of belonging – who belongs and thus is entitled to access welfare support and other benefits, neither of which have anything to do with the study or the Facebook post itself. These kinds of comments are also evidence of the persistent fallacy that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples receive benefits and privileges simply for being an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Person (Carlson, 2016), with one poster commenting ‘Apparently a small number of people have the pin number to the Australian taxpayers’ (11 May 2022).

Within the colony of Australia, ‘who belongs, and the degree of that belonging, is inextricably tied to white possession’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2015: 18). Belonging is ‘tied to a racialised social status’, one that ‘confers certain privileges’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2015: 4), such as who is entitled to access taxpayer monies via social welfare programmes, and who is not. Who belongs, and who does not, is reinforced via the power relations premised upon ongoing colonisation, reinforced via institutions and social structures (Moreton-Robinson, 2015: 18). Attached to these power relations are privileges; privileges that denote who is the racialised Other, who is pathologised and who is not. Indeed, as Moreton-Robinson (2015: p. 172) argues, ‘the discourse of pathology is a powerful weapon’, deployed via patriarchal white sovereignty to demarcate who is a ‘good citizen’. This discourse lays the foundation for the criminalisation of Indigeneity, the idea that we are inherently criminal, thus deserving of the hyper-incarceration, over policing, violence and neglect by the State. The racialisation of belonging is supported by what Moreton-Robinson (2015: p. 172) terms white sovereignty, which in turn, as argued here, is supported by and indeed stems from white supremacist ideologies. After all, whiteness is the ‘norm and measure for identifying’ who belongs (Moreton-Robinson, 2015: 5), and by explicitly identifying myself and the study as by and for Aboriginal Peoples, the author demarcated themselves as someone who does not belong, and thus triggered the white possessive to rear its ugly head.

Discussion and conclusion

Perhaps these unanticipated findings should not have been surprising. Williams (1977) wrote of a collective mood or feeling, and the racism that was inflicted in this online space may be indicative of the broader collective mood of the settler-colony. Indeed, we must understand this phenomena in the particular cultural context in which it occurs, both in the physical world and within the ‘broader cultures of social media’ (Cisneros and Nakayama, 2015: 121), where ‘platformed racism’ has become firmly entrenched (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017: 930). Sardar (1995) once described these online spaces as the ‘new cybercivilisation’; a cyberspace frontier. This is a useful conceptualisation: social media then can be understood as the new frontier wherein settler-colonisers (re)assert their place over First Nations Peoples and communities, wherein cultural productions ‘remain complicit with ongoing settlement’ (Rowe and Tuck, 2017: 3) and ‘digitally mediated expressions of white nationalism’ are shared (Johns, 2017: 350).

However, if the culture of social media facilitates the exercise of power, than this power can be challenged, and subjection resisted (Hall, 1997; Veracini and Weaver-Hightower, 2023). Despite the capacity of social media platforms to act as reminders of ongoing colonialism, and the trauma this engenders, many First Nations Peoples around the globe are using social media to reclaim narratives, to shift national conversations, and to centre First Nations voices (Carlson et al., 2017; Fredericks et al., 2022). Despite, or perhaps in spite of, the racism that rears its ugly head, First Nations Peoples continue to use social media in ways that subvert settler-colonialism.

This study did not intend to capture tropes of racism, criminality nor white supremacy by utilising social media for participant engagement. Yet, these things exist, both in terms of the research journey and as part of identifying as an Aboriginal person in the academy and in an online context on social media. The interactions captured and shared here were side-effects of being visibly Indigenous online. The specificity of place, wherein lies a specific form of colonial racism, combined with the specificity of the medium, Facebook (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017: 931), to create a microcosm of the survey post which unintentionally provided a space for white Australia to interrogate and assert who belongs and who does not. The associated fallacy of inherent criminality was applied to measure myself, and potential participants, as not deserving of justice within the colony. It was in the comments section that the measure of whiteness was applied, premised on white supremacy, reinforcing and (re)asserting the power relations built upon colonisation, in a digital microcosm of settler-colonial society.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge Dr Shima Shabazi and Dr Tatiana Corrales for their feedback on early drafts of this paper.

ORCID iD

Lindsay McCabe

Ethical considerations

University of Sydney 2021/404.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Research Training Stipend from the Australian Government

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Allam

Wahlquist

Evershed

(2019) Indigenous deaths in custody worsen in year of tracking by deaths inside project. The Guardian, 23 August. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/23/indigenous-deaths-in-custody-worsen-over-year-of-tracking-by-deaths-inside-project (accessed 14 February 2023).

Allison

Cunneen

(2022) Coroners courts and death investigations. In: Camilleri

Harkness

(eds) Australian Courts. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.247–263. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19063-6_11

Allison

Cunneen

Coombes

, et al. (2025) “If you don’t think racism exists come take a walk with us”. The call it out racism register 2023–2024. Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney. Available at: https://callitout.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Jumbunna-Call-It-Out-Annual-Report-2023-2024-Final.pdf; https://callitout.com.au/resources/

All Together Now (2020) Racialised opinion pieces in Australian mainstream media 2019–2020. Available at: https://alltogethernow.org.au/racialised-opinion-pieces-in-australian-mainstream-media-2019-2020/ (accessed 7 January 2023).

Anthony

Cubillo

(2025) Kumanjayi Walker inquest: Racism and violence, but findings too little and too late. The Conversation, 7 July. Available at: https://theconversation.com/kumanjayi-walker-inquest-racism-and-violence-but-findings-too-little-and-too-late-257636 (accessed 10 July 2025).

Anthony

Jordan

Walsh

, et al. (2021) 30 years on: Royal commission into aboriginal deaths in custody recommendations remain unimplemented. Centre for Indigenous Policy Research, No. 140. Available at: https://cipr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/30-years-royal-commission-aboriginal-deaths-custody-recommendations-remain.

Australian Indigenous Health Infonet (n.d) The Australian indigenous HealthInfoNet guidelines for aboriginal and Torres Strait islander terminology. Available at: https://healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/healthinfonet/getContent.php?linkid=675466&title=The+Australian+Indigenous+HealthInfoNet+guidelines+for+Aboriginal+and+Torres+Strait+Islander+terminology&contentid=44676_1.

Australian Institute of Criminology (2025) Deaths in custody in Australia. Australian Government. Available at: https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/deaths-custody-australia.

Bargallie

Fernando

Lentin

(2024) Breaking the racial silence: putting racial literacy to work in Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies 47(8): 1532–1551.

10.

Ben

Elias

Issaka

, et al. (2022) Racism in Australia: A protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis. Systematic Reviews 11(1): 47. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-022-01919-2

11.

Biddle

(2003) Public hazards or private tragedies? An exploratory study of the effect of coroners’ procedures on those bereaved by suicide. Social Science & Medicine 56(5): 1033–1045.

12.

Brennan

(2024) Doctor who misdiagnosed Aboriginal man leading to his “preventable” death referred to medical complaints board. National Indigenous Times. Available at: https://nit.com.au/20-08-2024/13200/ricky-dougie-hampson-inquest-failure-healthcare (accessed 14 April 2025).

13.

Campion

(2024) Right-wing extremism in Australia: Current threats and trends in a diverse and diffuse threatscape. Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 16(3): 1–6. Available at: https://www-jstor-org-443.web.bisu.edu.cn/stable/48778660

14.

Carlson

(2016) Here’s the truth about the ‘free ride’ that some Australians think indigenous peoples get. SBS News. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2016/12/07/heres-truth-about-free-ride-some-australians-think-indigenous-peoples-get

15.

Carlson

Frazer

(2015) It’s like going to a cemetery and lighting a candle: Aboriginal Australians, sorry business and social media. Alternative An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 11(3): 211–224.

16.

Carlson

Frazer

(2018) Social Media Mob: Being Indigenous Online. Macquarie University.

17.

Carlson

Frazer

(2021) Indigenous digital life: The practice and politics of being indigenous on social media. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8

18.

Carlson

Jones

Harris

, et al. (2017) Trauma, shared recognition and indigenous resistance on social media. Australasian Journal of Information Systems 21: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v21i0.1570

19.

Carpenter

Tait

(2009) Health, death and indigenous Australians in the coronial system. Australian Aboriginal Studies 1: 29–41.

20.

Carpenter

Tait

Jowett

(2022) Managing families’ expectations in the coronial jurisdiction: Barriers to enacting an ethic of care. Journal of Law and Medicine 29(4): 1040–1051.

21.

Cisneros

Nakayama

(2015) New media, old racisms: Twitter, miss America, and cultural logics of race. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 8(2): 108–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2015.1025328

22.

Cunneen

(1987) Newspaper reporting of crime, law and order in North West NSW. Journal for Social Justice Studies 2: 14–32.

23.

Cunneen

(2018) Indigenous people, resistance and racialised criminality. In: Bhatia

Poynting

Tufail

(eds.) Media, Crime and Racism. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture, pp.277–299.

24.

Cunneen

Russell

(2017) Social media, vigilantism and indigenous people in Australia. In: Biber

Brown

(eds) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Crime, Media, and Popular Culture. Oxford University Press, pp.1–31.

25.

Dartnall

Goodman-Delahunty

(2016) The coronial investigation of suspected deaths: Prevalence and outcomes in New South Wales. Journal of Law and Medicine 23(3): 609–627.

26.

Dartnall

Goodman-Delahunty

Gullifer

(2019) An opportunity to be heard: Family experiences of coronial investigations into missing people and views on best practice. Frontiers in Psychology 10: 2322.

27.

Easton

(2020) Death in Custody: Inquests, Family Participation and State Accountability. Emerald Publishing.

28.

Freckelton

(2008) Death investigation and the evolving role of the coroner. Otago Law Review 11(14): 565–584.

29.

Fredericks

Bradfield

Nguyen

, et al. (2022) Disrupting the colonial algorithm: Indigenous Australia and social media. Media Information Australia 183(1): 158–178. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878x211038286

30.

Hall

(1997) Culture and power. Radical Philosophy 86(27): 24–41.

31.

Hancock

Liebling

(2013) Truth, independence, and effectiveness in prison inquiries. In: Illigan

Pratt

G J

(eds) Crime, Truth and Justice. Routledge, pp.89–114.

32.

Johns

(2017) Flagging white nationalism “after Cronulla”: From the beach to the net. Journal of Intercultural Studies 38(3): 349–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2017.1314259

33.

Johnston

(1991) Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. National Report. Australian Government Publishing Service.

34.

Knowles

(2025) ‘This was never about race’: Zachary Rolfe rejects inquest findings as Warlpiri call for peace. NITV, 10 July. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/this-was-never-about-race-zachary-rolfe-rejects-inquest-findings-as-warlpiri-call-for-peace/m7oqow0cm (accessed 10 July 2025).

35.

(2021) Black lives matter movement in Australia: First nations perspectives. UNSW Newsroom, 19 January. Available at: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2021/01/black-lives-matter-movement-australia-first-nations-perspectives (accessed 10 July 2025).

36.

Martin

(2017) The coronial jurisdiction: Lessons for living. Briefs 44(2): 42–48.

37.

Matamoros-Fernández

(2017) Platformed racism: The mediation and circulation of an Australian race-based controversy on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Information Communication & Society 20(6): 930–946.

38.

Mbembe

Mientjes

(2003) Necropolitics. Public Culture 15(1): 11–40.

39.

McCabe

(Forthcoming) Coronership in the colony: Aboriginal families, cultural recognition, and the coronial system in New South Wales. Doctoral Thesis, University of Sydney.

40.

McCabe

George

(2021) Improving indigenous family engagement with the coronial system in New South Wales. Alternative Law Journal 46(3): 212–218.

41.

McGuinness

(2023) Still the “forgotten service”? An empirical study of coroners’ backgrounds, attitudes and experiences in England and Wales. PhD Thesis, University College London.

42.

McGuire

(2023) Exposing the complexities of the colonial project. In: Cunneen

Deckert

Porter

Tauri

Webb

(eds) The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice. Routledge, pp.11–21.

43.

Moreton-Robinson

(2009) Imagining the good indigenous citizen: Race war and the pathology of patriarchal white sovereignty. Cultural Studies Review 15(2): 61–79.

44.

Moreton-Robinson

(2015) The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press.

45.

Moses

Lowe

(2012) Contents removed from racist Facebook page. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/technology/contents-removed-from-racist-facebook–page-20120808-23tr1.html (accessed 5 January 2023).

46.

National Archives of Australia (n.d) The immigration restriction act 1901. National Archives of Australia. Available at: https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/immigration-and-citizenship/immigration-restriction-act-1901 (accessed 9 January 2023).

47.

Newhouse

Ghezelbash

Whittaker

(2020) The experience of aboriginal and Torres Strait islander participants in Australia’s coronial inquest system: Reflections from the front line. International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy 9(4): 76–89.

48.

Park

(2012) ACMA investigates more Indigenous hate pages. SBS News. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/acma-investigates-more-indigenous-hate-pages/lo70w77u6 (accessed 15 April 2025).

49.

Porter

Cubillo

(2021) Not criminals or passive victims: media need to reframe their representation of Aboriginal deaths in custody. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/not-criminals-or-passive-victims-media-need-to-reframe-their-representation-of-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-158561 (accessed 23 June 2024).

50.

Razack

(2015) Dying From Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries Into Indigenous Deaths in Custody. University of Toronto Press.

51.

Razack

(2023) Both sorry and happy. In: Unneen

(ed.) The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice. Routledge, pp.247–255.

52.

Recuero

(2024) The platformization of violence: Toward a concept of discursive toxicity on social media. Social Media + Society 10(1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231224264

53.

Rigney

(1999) Internationalization of an indigenous anticolonial cultural critique of research methodologies: A guide to Indigenist research methodology and its principles. The Wíčazo Ša Review 14(2): 109–122.

54.

Rowe

Tuck

(2017) Settler colonialism and cultural studies. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 17(1): 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616653693

55.

Sardar

(1995) Alt.Civilizations.FAQ cyberspace as the darker side of the west. Futures 27(7): 777–794.

56.

Scott Bray

(2020) Contested deaths and coronial justice in the digital age. International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy 9(4): 90–103.

57.

Scraton

(2013) The legacy of Hillsborough: Liberating truth, challenging power. Race & Class 55(2): 1–27.

58.

Spillane

Matvienko-Sikar

Larkin

, et al. (2019) How suicide-bereaved family members experience the inquest process: A qualitative study using thematic analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Wellbeing 14(1): 1563430.

59.

Tauri

Porou

(2014) Criminal justice as a colonial project in contemporary settler colonialism. African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 8(1): 20–37.

60.

Torre

(2022) Claim ‘hundreds’ of indigenous people denied proper medical care amid Queensland hospital deaths probe. National Indigenous Times, 25 July. Available at: https://nit.com.au/25-07-2022/3503/claim-hundreds-of-indigenous-people-denied-proper-medical-care-amid-queensland-hospital-deaths-probe.

61.

Veracini

Weaver-Hightower

(2023) ‘New’ media: Decolonial opportunities or digital colonialism? Humanities 13(1): 2.

62.

Whittaker

(2021) Indigenous deaths in custody: Inquests can be sites of justice or administrative violence. Australasian Policing 13(2): 58–59.

63.

Williams

(1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press.

64.

Zwartz

(2021) Australian far-right terrorism investigations have increased by 750 per cent in 18 months. SBS News. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australian-far-right-terrorism-investigations-have-increased-by-750-per-cent-in-18-months/rsowz6fnt (accessed 9 January 2023).