Ethnic minority media and the public sphere: The case of African-Australian media producers

The why and the what of ethnic minority media

The term ‘ethnic minority media’ is used in this article specifically as it allows for the analysis of media produced by and for (although not exclusively) a particular ethnic group and the role of these media ‘in the negotiation of minority–majority or minority-dominant group relations’ (Matsaganis et al., 2011: 9). A focus on ethnic minority media, rather than a similar category such as migrant media or minority language media, also allows for an analysis of media produced by and for second- and third-generation migrants, media produced in English and media produced in ways that facilitate both ‘cultural maintenance and adaptation’ (Cunningham and Nguyen, 1999: 125) as well as ‘belonging and distancing’ (Deuze, 2006: 273).

A focus on ethnic minority media also provides an opportunity to differentiate between diverse ethnic media systems around the world. For example, ethnic and non-English-language media in the United States include relatively large-scale, commercially independent media organizations (Deuze, 2006). These media cater to large audiences and, although these media can still be considered as minority – not only numerically but also in terms of social and political power – their operational and economic structures differ significantly from the independent, small-scale community operations at the heart of this article. Within the context of the former, there is evidence of distinct divisions in media use between ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority in the US and several European countries (Deuze, 2006; Morley, 2000). According to Deuze (2006), mainstream newspapers struggle to reach ethnic audiences in both the US and Holland. Ethnic minorities also use media for different purposes, preferring ethnic media for information on their own countries and communities, and mainstream media for news on American politics.

Such differences raise questions about the role of ethnic media in social cohesion (Couldry and Dreher, 2007; Deuze, 2006; Husband, 2005; Sreberny, 2005). Notwithstanding the important role that ethnic media play in cultural adaptation, public concerns revolve around fears of cultural and ethnic segregation and ghettoization. Although in popular debates these concerns are often based on simplistic and unfounded fears of ethnic isolationism, there are more complex issues at play that relate to democratic representation and political participation for minority communities. Sreberny (2005) portrays the conundrum as one of balancing the need for marginalized communities to have spaces for self-controlled representation, while attempting to avoid ethnic reification in which communities are frozen in isolated positions vis-a-vis each other and the majority ethnic group. The tension between ethnic and professional identity discussed by Husband (2005) echoes this position, suggesting that ethnic minority media producers are often forced to choose between an ethnic and a professional identity.

Providing a precursor for several of the themes in this article, Husband (1998, 2005) and Couldry and Dreher (2007) question the dominant discourses surrounding ethnic media as, in and of itself, an effective resource for minority empowerment. Rather, more attention should be paid to the potential of communication across and between communities in ways that allow for recognition of the fluidity of ethnic identities and the diversity of their voices. This would mean a transcendence of the either/or identity politics highlighted by Sreberny (2005) and Husband (2005). What is at stake is not so much a re-idealization of a singular public sphere, but recognition of the need for marginalized and minority communities not only to speak, but to be allowed to speak across publics, rather than only as representatives of a particular community, and to be understood and acknowledged by the mainstream and by each other.

Sample and methods

This article is based on in-depth, qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a total of 13 African-Australian media producers, presenters, broadcasters and journalists in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. The interview questions were prepared according to criteria established in previous literature on qualitative methodologies (Berg, 2007; Silverman, 2003). Although the sample is not intended to be generalizable, it nonetheless provides a significant range of respondents from a variety of media. Although there are no official measures of the exact numbers of African media producers in Australia, and such a number would in any case be fluid considering the impermanence of independent ethnic media, 13 interviews is deemed sufficient to provide a strong analysis of African media production practices in Australia.

Participants represent a variety of countries from the African continent, including the Congo, Ethiopia, Botswana, South Sudan, and Nigeria. However, participants’ country of birth played no part in the selection for interviews. They only needed to match the criteria of being of African background and being directly involved in the production of African media in Australia. Respondents produce media through different technologies, including a website, community radio, community television and magazines. All but three of the interviewees produce at least some of their content in English. The three exceptions are all Ethiopian community radio broadcasters, with two broadcasting in Amharic and one in Harari. The participants are all first-generation migrants.

All interviews were conducted in English, audio recorded and transcribed by the author. The interviews lasted approximately 1–2 hours. The use of in-depth interviews is the best way to examine ‘the how and why’ of participants’ work, including their aims, motivations and the social role they see their media playing (Hickerson and Gustafson, 2014: 6). The interview questions were wide ranging and included questions on participants’ backgrounds, their aims and motivations, the role they see their media playing among African communities, and their relationship with wider Australian social institutions, including mainstream media. Participants were also asked about the audience they target in their work and whether African media are intended to impact on the practices and understandings of white journalists and media workers.

Aspects of a grounded theory approach were used when analysing the interview data (Ryan and Bernard, 2003). As a methodology that encourages bringing data into contact with theory, grounded theory is an ideal framework through which to contribute to developing public sphere theory through original data (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Interview transcripts were first analysed at a meta-analytical level, with broad theory notes being written up based on first impressions of a reading of the transcript as a whole (Ryan and Bernard, 2003). The next stage of the analysis consisted of a microscopic examination of the data (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). However, the key themes discussed in this article were not found until a more general open coding approach was applied. In looking for general patterns, I focused intently on interview data related to participants’ motivations and aims. At times this came from answers to direct questions about the why and how of participants’ work, at other times these themes were present in answers to other questions in the interviews (Ryan and Bernard, 2003; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The data was then categorized under the broad umbrellas of motivations (marginalization from mainstream media, socio-cultural marginalization and the maintenance of an ethnic identity) and aims (countering negative representations, self-representation and impacting the mainstream public sphere).

In discussing the data, I begin with a consideration of participants’ feelings of marginalization stemming from their paucity of sufficient modes of public representation, and the way this has motivated their work and led to aims of self-representation. I then move on to a discussion of participants’ attempts to reach out to, and impact on, the dominant public sphere by targeting a white audience and monitoring mainstream media. The findings are then applied to theoretical work on the public sphere and, in particular, conceptualizations of multiple public spheres.

A voice of our own: exclusion from the communicative environment

There are three key themes evident regarding participants’ motivations. One is that the interviewees struggle with the tensions between an ethnic identity and one that conforms to the dominant criteria of professionalism in Australian (news) media. An approach is predominantly taken that prioritizes adherence to ethnic identity and community; however there are several instances in which standards of professionalism are strategically accepted or rejected (Husband, 2005). Another theme is that motivations stem from experiences of inequality, marginalization and, at times, exclusion from what could be considered the mainstream public sphere. Most often this experience relates to the communicative environment, through a feeling that African-Australians lack access to important information, are without sufficient representation within, and access to, the mainstream media, and are in need of self-controlled narratives through which they can speak to each other and the wider Australian society. Underlying this is a more general sense of socioeconomic disadvantage, and a feeling that sectors of the African community are economically and socially vulnerable, and certain forms of African language, culture and tradition are in danger of being lost to a new generation of African migrants.

The emergent aims that are focused on in this section include self-representation, countering negative mainstream media representations of Africans and, in some cases, transcending the either/or dichotomy of ethnic and professional media identity (Husband, 2005; Sreberny, 2005).

Thus participants combine a lack of access to majority media with the need for media they can control. A young female community radio host lamented her lack of opportunity in the mainstream media sector, saying that:

I studied at NIDA [National Institute of Dramatic Arts] and my teacher told me that the only job I’ll ever get is either SBS [Special Broadcasting Service] or community media … if you’re trying to get in channel 7, channel 9, channel 10, the criteria within there is that if they don’t look like us [white] don’t bring them in the door … it’s good that we focus on kind of creating our own outlets.

This participant eventually gave up on trying to work in the mainstream media, preferring instead to focus on her own community radio program. Such ‘cultural fixity’, in which the participant is restricted to a specific position within the white-dominated media, reflects the way in which deeply ingrained practices and assumptions work to keep ethnic minorities at arm’s length from mainstream representational organizations and encourage self-controlled forms of expression as an alternative. Such processes are reflected in the feedback of one male community radio host, who in discussing the importance of his program explained:

There isn’t a platform at the moment for the African-Australian community to speak. Every time there’s an issue there’s ‘Bob Smith’, who’s a Professor at so and so talking about, you know why this issue is important…. No matter how well meaning that person is they won’t necessarily be going with the agenda or the interests of the African-Australian community at heart.

The motivation of exclusion, combined with the aim of self-representation, reflects conceptualizations of a fragmented public sphere with a series of subaltern or counter-publics facilitated by, among other things, community and ethnic media. Participants respond to the denial of a form of access to mainstream media that would allow them to transcend their ascribed ethnic identity while still maintaining a sense of representation for their chosen community by focusing on the importance of their own media, wherein such conundrums are less sharp, yet the potential impact on the mainstream is significantly reduced.

As well as marginalization from dominant modes of public communication, experiences of marginalization are further reflected in discussions of the content of Australian media, which either fail to provide information relevant to disadvantaged African communities or present such communities in negative ways (Due, 2008; Marjoribanks et al., 2010; Windle, 2008). As such, participants aim to address this situation in two primary ways. One is to tell a different story to that available in the Australian media and to provide a more realistic representation.

When discussing the need to promote a positive image of African communities, participants emphasize that they do not want positivity at all costs, rather a more balanced portrayal that includes coverage of problems facing African-Australian communities, as well as the contributions these communities have made to Australian society. One young female participant, who contributes to an English-language website, was careful to emphasize the journalistic ideal of objectivity in her work, drawing on it as a way to achieve a sense of balance missing from mainstream media. When discussing the benefit of being able to provide a voice for African-Australians, she described her motivation as being ‘able to send out the right messages out there, even if it’s negative even if it’s positive, but we just need to be heard, that’s it’.

Indeed, at times it is simply a more realistic portrayal that is aimed for. A female host of a Sudanese community radio program spoke of the importance of her program as showing ‘we don’t only exist when there’s a mistake; we also exist when everything is just normal’. A young male participant who produced and hosted a community television program in 2012 spoke about the lack of normalcy when it comes to media portrayals of Africans and Africa. In particular, he lamented the construction of Africa as an exotic safari holiday destination, and Africans as successful entertainers or sports people:

There is nothing normal, you know, it’s either we’re super holiday, or super dancing, or sports, you know, yeah we’re the best in sports, super body built African, and so people tend to think we’re just not normal, so I wanted to show Africans as being normal.

This attempt at normalcy, both in terms of balancing the extremes of positive and negative representation and in terms of challenging highly stereotypical portrayals of Africans, can be seen as an attempt to find middle ground in media content and both avoid the reification of an externally constructed and essentialized African identity and prevent the loss of the ability to argue on behalf of a particular African community (Sreberny, 2005).

The second form of countering mainstream representations involves articulating the cultural and social achievements of African communities and encouraging cross-cultural understanding. For example, the three Ethiopian participants who broadcast in Amharic or Harari focus extensively on community and youth issues, including involving young people in Ethiopian and Australian social life. Also, the female host of a Sydney-based community radio program who broadcasts in English encapsulates the themes of community maintenance and cultural understanding when she explains one of her aims in trying to counter negative discourses around African-Australians. As she says:

Hopefully we can help to change the mentality and teach ourselves properly how we, you know, who we are and things that we’re capable of doing you know, on our own without always … relying on other people to help us do stuff.

A sense of general community disadvantage is combined with experiences of information poverty, as participants focus on the need for media that can be used to instil a sense of pride in the cultures of different African communities. This focus on community achievements and ability, however, does not preclude a more outward gaze towards mainstream society (Sreberny, 2005). Indeed, the showcasing of community achievements is often part of a wider process of engaging with the dominant public sphere, something discussed below in more detail.

Reaching out to the mainstream: impacting on media practices and public debates

The relationships of participants to media discussed above all indicate a fractured public sphere in which interviewees feel the necessity for their own, self-controlled communicative outlets. What is less often discussed in the literature is the extent to which such self-representation is able to expand beyond a particular community and impact on wider public opinion and discourse. The early stages of just such a process can be seen in the media work of participants in this study through their attempts to directly and indirectly reach out to a non-African audience and attempt to impact the Australian media.

For some this is a direct aim. The producer of a pan-African website actively monitors and tries to change the mainstream media reporting of African issues. As he says:

[E]very time there is media publication that I see as negative for the African, I want to organize an interview with the journalist that published that, as a way to kind of say hey you know, it’s okay, you can publish your media, but we would like you to be able to give us a little bit of the understanding why you’re reporting in this way rather than the other way…. I mean it’s some sort of soft monitoring.

In discussing the philosophy of his media work, this participant describes his approach as ‘advocacy journalism’. Rejecting the ideals of objectivity that underlie much journalistic practice in the western world, he highlights the different approach to news work necessitated by a subordinate position within the wider social structure and the marginalization from mainstream media discussed above. His reaction to such marginalization is to articulate a position as monitor of mainstream media practices, and thus as a representative of his ‘community’ who can nonetheless bridge cultural boundaries (Couldry and Dreher, 2007).

Other participants take a more indirect approach, or aim to challenge mainstream media more in the future. The young male host of an English-language community radio program explained:

We try to do it indirectly … by … showcasing different successful Africans, their contributions to the community … but we don’t actually directly contact those media agents and say … listen to us, which is what we should be doing, I think that’s the next step.

Additionally, some participants featured senior members of Victoria Police on their radio programs in order to question policing practices and policies in areas highly populated with African migrants.

This engagement with non-Africans is further demonstrated in the targeting of a white, or non-African audience. Participants implicitly and explicitly target a white audience through their media, and all are open to non-African readers, listeners and viewers. A content producer for the English-language website described her audience in the following way, ‘I think the main aim would be Australians, we’re trying to sell our stories to them and to show them what we can do …’ Another participant, who hosts an Amharic language Ethiopian community radio program, pointed to the reality of language restrictions while also acknowledging a desire to engage a white audience in the future: ‘I have to say Ethiopians, because our program … is in Amharic. But … I want to put it in English … for Ethiopian born in Australia and … for Australians.’

Despite the limitations that participants face in their media work, there is anecdotal evidence of this approach to audiences having some sort of impact, with one participant suggesting that:

for Australians, even though they were not Africans, they appreciated it [his program], a lot of people did respond and just say ‘Thank you, you’ve really shown us like another side of Africa that we never imagined and certainly you’ve shown us African-Australians in a way that we’ve never really seen them.’

The data discussed above raises several important issues. One is the challenge it represents to definitions of ethnic media as simply alternatives to the mainstream, with defined ethnic audiences and areas of focus. The desire to impact on the mainstream media is evidence of a more active role for African-Australian media, one in which mainstream debates and discourses are engaged with in an attempt to change them. Implicit in this process is recognition that the common aims and motivations – countering negativity, positive representations – will do little to directly change the discourse and attitudes of the dominant ethnic group.

What the above data also represents, however, is the continuing inequality of the communicative environment in Australia, wherein community and ethnic media enjoy few of the economic, cultural and political advantages of the public and commercial media sectors. The act of reaching out to a white audience and attempting to change mainstream news practices is restricted not only by a lack of necessary financial and human resources, but also by more stubborn structural and cultural factors. These include a lack of access and connections to the machinations of mainstream media industries, and with it marginalization from some of the dominant forms of public cultural expression and dialogue.

Those who do attempt to dialogue with mainstream public sphere representative institutions are often impeded by a desire to maintain their ethnic identification and thus the need to sacrifice an officially sanctioned professional position. This can be seen in the ‘advocacy journalism’ approach of the English-language website producer, an approach out of step with the prevailing ideals of objectivity in mainstream journalism in the western world. Where journalistic ideals are drawn upon, they are often part of an attempt to provide African media that represents a more rounded picture of African communities in Australia. Such an approach leaves participants’ media at risk of being defined as ‘specialist’ product, serving only their defined community and unable to contribute to broader social debates due to the seemingly overtly partisan nature of these media (Husband, 2005; Sreberny, 2005). Understanding these issues through the language of public spheres means both a recognition of the structural inequality facing the systems of public expression of subaltern groups, as well as the desire of African media producers to contribute discursively to the broader formation of public opinion.

Discussion: which public sphere?

Within a model of competing publics, Fraser (1990) calls for a model of multiple subaltern public spheres that employ a strategy of engaged withdrawal (Kurasawa, 2014) through which they construct counter-discourses and communicative structures that directly challenge dominant public understandings of social issues. Clearly ethnic minority media hold the potential to be important parts of this process, and have been shown to be in this study.

The question that needs to be asked, however, is to what extent can such practices become sustained parts of a genuine process in which African, and other ethnic media producers, are able to influence the political, social and cultural discourses that are formed and disseminated by powerful mainstream groups (mainstream media, police and legal institutions, government). In other words, what is the transformative potential of ethnic media outside of their fluid community of listeners and readers? The prevailing question in regards to multiple, independent public spheres is not so much their existence, nor the utility of such a model to understand contemporary social relations (particularly in the field of media), but rather their correlation – or lack thereof – with a representative political body, and their (in)ability to resonate with a wider public, or publics. In other words, to what extent are separate public spheres able to articulate their desires into real political action through political means, and have their narratives inform public opinion beyond their fluid boundaries? Within this model of multiple, contesting and interrelating publics, how can those in marginal positions be guaranteed access to the still largely unequal mechanisms of public policy, cultural formation and political decision-making? How might a group of visible migrants, such as Black Africans, have their concerns heard and valued consistently within public discourses – concerns over housing, employment, institutionalized racism? ²

There is ample evidence to suggest that, at the discursive and symbolic level, ethnic media reach beyond their assumed sphere of activity and facilitate inter-public dialogue, either between minority and majority publics – or at least certain sectors of those publics – or between minority publics only (Couldry and Dreher, 2007; Deuze, 2006; Forde et al., 2009; Husband 1998, 2005; Lay and Thomas, 2012; Sreberny, 2005). In findings that correspond to this study, research suggests that minority ethnic media bring minorities into contact with mainstream organizations and structures by: providing information about the wider society; exposing migrants to social debates and issues that affect them and others; encouraging ethnic minorities to become involved in mainstream political process such as voting; and by bringing ethnic minorities and migrants into direct contact with people from both minority and majority ethnic groups through work in radio stations and organized community events (Forde et al., 2009).

For Fraser (1990: 69), the necessary existence of multiple publics in multicultural societies need not ‘preclude the possibility of an additional, more comprehensive arena in which members of different, more limited publics talk across lines of cultural diversity’. The public nature of even a marginalized public ensures the exchange of views, dialogue, discourse and the potential expansion of debates to ‘more than one public’ (Fraser, 1990: 70). Importantly, such an approach prioritizes autonomy as a guard against subsumption into a wider, less representative public space tainted by structural power inequalities. For ethnic media, such autonomy is important for the way it increases the likelihood of narrative and expressive self-control. Take, for example, the way participants in this study spoke about the need to counter negative media portrayals: not through a simplistic celebration but through a nuanced acknowledgement of both their positive contribution to Australian society as well as the issues facing their communities, a position large portions of the mainstream media seem unable to take.

However, at what point does such autonomy leave itself open to marginalization, particularly in the case of poorly resourced and under-funded ethnic minority media and in terms of the powerful cultures that often deny ethnic minorities multiple identifications yet make whiteness invisible? Husband (1998, 2005) is less enthusiastic about the potential of counter-discourses and publicity alone to foster a more democratic and inclusive social system. He provides an evaluation of the underlying structural conditions necessary in order to achieve balance between self-representative publics and minority groups that are politically efficacious, and argues for a multi-ethnic public sphere with a strong ethnic media sector at its heart. He suggests that the ‘adequacy of a multi-ethnic public sphere will be measured by both the diversity of interests given a voice and the extent to which there are open channels of exchange between these voices’ (Husband, 1998: 143). Such exchange is not guaranteed by the public nature of dialogue or by ‘ethnically segmented media’ (Husband, 1998: 143). Rather, it rests upon a media environment that reflects two key political and rights-based values.

The first includes a fundamental re-evaluation of communicative rights to include the right to be understood, and the obligation to seek comprehension of others. The right to be understood is important for its implications of dialogue. In recent debates about free speech and freedom of expression in Australia, the political tone, and that within the mainstream media, has been one in support of individual rights to expression, but less embracing of concerns around racial vilification. ³ What such a focus on individual rights of expression ignores, however, is the inevitable relative silence of minorities in a system in which some people’s avenues of expression include powerful media, legal and political systems, while others’ involve marginalized processes largely ignored by all but a minority of people. Effective cross-cultural and inter-public dialogue is thus dependent on an acceptance of both rights and obligations in the communicative process (Husband, 1998).

This change in communicative expectations is to be matched with ‘an institutional pluralism consistent with polyethnic rights rather than a cultural pluralism consistent with multicultural tolerance’ (Husband, 1998: 143). Such a process would involve a level of institutionalized recognition and support for ethnic minorities that is more than simply token acknowledgement of difference, or of the kind of multiculturalism that Bauman (2011) critiques for masking inequality as cultural diversity. Rather it involves institutionalized changes in the structures of publicity, including media, and a greater investment in non-market funding and support. Within media organizations, such change may begin with what Sreberny (2005) refers to as mixedness; the ability for minorities to exist outside of their designated ‘communities’ or archetypal ‘roles’ and to have a constitutive role in the production and dissemination of all sorts of media content.

The question here becomes one of autonomy, and the possibility of genuinely alternative discourses emerging in a system of transformed, yet pre-existing, avenues of political representation. For participants it may mean engaging with questions over how much control of their media they are willing to sacrifice for a more sustainable and resonant voice in public debates.

Certainly, the data in this study suggests that the above processes are at best limited in Australia. However, the discussion is perhaps too reliant on a dichotomy between counter-publics and a mainstream public sphere. Couldry and Dreher (2007: 80) for example, challenge ‘the assumption that the public sphere model requires either a unified public sphere or a set of independent “counter-public” spherecules’. Their analysis of the Forum for Australia’s Islamic Relations (FAIR) is of note here. They describe FAIR not as a counter-public sphere, but rather ‘a space of information, deliberation and activism that seeks to reform the mainstream public sphere, but from a position at present outside it’ (Couldry and Dreher, 2007: 82).

Emphasizing the importance of dialogue and affect between publics, Couldry and Dreher (2007) raise the possibility of a space between mainstream and counter-publics. Aspects of this certainly resonate with the attempts by African media producers to directly and indirectly communicate with and change mainstream media, public and political discourses in Australia. Such an approach recognizes that both a single public sphere, or multiple publics, while conceptually helpful, are necessarily based on an implicit fixing of what are in reality porous and fluid ‘boundaries’ in between overlapping publics containing social actors who engage with a variety of communities in their everyday lives (Fraser, 1990; Sreberny, 2005). Nonetheless, in trying to understand the role of ethnic minority media in Australia and other countries, a useful starting point is debates over the nature of public deliberation and political representation, and the questions they raise regarding the balancing of social and political affect with minority representational autonomy.

Conclusion

Fraser (1990) sees potential for cross-cultural dialogue between publics. Its efficacy, she suggests, is a question for empirical research. This article has contributed to such an empirical project, and has provided evidence to suggest that, as well as aiming to provide self-controlled and empowering narratives for African-Australian communities, participants attempt to change public opinion about Africans in Australia. These findings have been discussed within the context of changing understandings of the public sphere as a space for competing publics. What is evident is that the underlying structural conditions of the dominant media system, ideals of professionalism, and the racialization of particular minority communities present significant roadblocks to minority–majority dialogue. It has been suggested that, as useful as a model of multiple public spheres is, it may still be unable to reflect adequately the realities of social actors who occupy different discursive spaces and identities simultaneously. What such an approach does do, however, is provide a theoretically informed understanding of the complex role of ethnic media in modern, ethnically diverse societies, and encourage a critical engagement with inequalities that shape the nature of ethnic media and help determine the extent to which these media are able to contribute to public opinion.