Children and the media

This entry provides an historical overview of children's media in Australia, including print, magazines, radio, television and new media. Topics canvassed included the regulation of media for children and advocacy groups in the Australian context.

Children's body image and social comparisons with peers and the media

Social comparisons are related to the development of body dissatisfaction among adolescents and adults, yet this relationship remains relatively unexamined among children. This study examines children's peer and media-related social comparisons, and how this impacts on their body image. Children aged 8-10 years completed interviews (17 girls and 19 boys in individual interviews, and 16 girls and 16 boys in focus groups). Analyses revealed that appearance-related comparisons were more common among girls, whereas sports/ability-related comparisons were more common for boys. In addition, boys viewed media comparisons as inspiring, whereas girls reported negative emotions. Implications for future research and prevention programmes are discussed.

Football’s first free kick : demography and the media — how and why Australia got a game of its own

There have been numerous attempts to explain why the precocious code of football that started as a game played under Melbourne Club rules devised in 1859 became the dominant form in Victoria and the most influential in Australia, while Association football (soccer) had little impact until the second half of the twentieth century. In this article, attention is directed at some demographic features that have not been addressed in the literature and on the journalists who helped shape public perceptions of this form of the game. For the first 20 years after the codification of this unique football there was virtually no inward migration into Victoria, so the domestic game had its first free kick with few foreigners with different ideas of how the game should be played to disturb its establishment. Furthermore, the journalists who shaped the ideas of the readership of the Victorian newspapers had little or no knowledge of the forms of football played in Victoria prior to 1855, and their unconscious or conscious imperialism helped secure the pre-eminence of the new code.

Cultural reductionism and the media: polarising discourses around schools, violence and masculinity in an age of terror

This paper provides a media analysis of three interrelated sets of newspaper articles dealing with youth, schooling and violence. Understanding the media as a dominant and powerful cultural text that creates the realities it describes, the paper takes a critical view of the ‘standpoint’ of recent media representations of the Cronulla (Sydney, Australia) riots, gang violence in schools, and issues of education amid broader concerns with security in an ‘age of terror’. The paper draws attention to the polarising media discourses that demonise young Muslim men as the ‘other’—violent and dangerous—and advocate for ‘ethnic’ integration of this ‘other’ over ‘progressive education’ or ‘multiculturalism’. Such reductionist sociology is presented as highly problematic in its homogenising and inferiorising of minority cultures and in its silencing of particular issues imperative in understanding and addressing contemporary expressions of violence. The paper calls for a more nuanced interpretation of issues of culture and violence that, in particular, acknowledges how masculinity politics are implicated in current manifestations of violence.

A comparison of the sources and nature of body image messages perceived by indigenous Fijian and European Australian adolescent girls

Australian and Fijian adolescent girls reported on the influence that sociocultural factors, including parents, peers, and the media, had on their body image attitudes. It was expected that messages that promote a thin body would be less prevalent among Fijians, as their cultural traditions place more importance on robust body sizes. An inductive thematic analysis of the girls’ semi-structured interviews indicated that both Fijian (n = 16) and Australian (n = 16) girls (aged 13–17) reported messages from similar sources, which included parents, siblings, and friends/peers. Australian girls consistently reported messages that reinforced thinness. On the other hand, Fijian girls reported messages that emphasized both thinness and robustness. The discussion focuses on the conflict between Western ideals and cultural Fijian traditions and the implications for culturally sensitive interventions.

If the land is healthy...it makes the people healthy : the relationship between caring for country and health for the Yorta Yorta nation, Boonwurrung and Bangerang Tribes

This article reports on research undertaken with members of three Indigenous groups in Victoria, Australia, to explore the health and wellbeing implications of caring for Country (defined as having knowledge, sense of responsibility and inherent right to be involved in the management of traditional lands). The research findings provide a better understanding of this key determinant of the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people in the context of public health where there are few existing published studies assessing this relationship. Thirteen traditional custodians1 and local Indigenous environmental workers were interviewed. This qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews identified that caring for Country offers great benefits, including building self-esteem, fostering self-identity, maintaining cultural connection and enabling relaxation and enjoyment through contact with the natural environment. Results generated indicate that caring for Country may offer a means of improving the current poor health status of Indigenous Australian peoples.

The Carey 'king hit' : journalists and the coverage of domestic violence

In recent years Australia’s football codes have been rocked by allegations that star players, both past and present, have acted inappropriately off-field. In some instances these allegations have involved violence towards partners. This paper explores one such case, involving former AFL great Wayne Carey. In so doing, it explores the so-called ‘cult of celebrity’ and the impact this has both on the players and the media who cover such stories. People caught up in traumatic situations labelled as domestic violence have been vulnerable to media misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Coverage of these events and issues surrounding such violence has undergone change in line with social change. Work by community groups has produced calls for further shifts in thinking and suggestions for a name change to family violence. The so‑called ‘Wayne Carey Affair’ has demonstrated that journalists have their own vulnerabilities to the cult of celebrity, with extended interviews and coverage often centred on possible explanations/ “excuses” for the behaviour patterns of this one individual avoiding the wider social policy implications. By examining coverage surrounding Wayne Carey, this paper will explore the issues surrounding this major social problem and will question the role of journalists vis a vis the particularly vulnerable individuals caught up in family violence.

Learning between schools and hospitals – young people and a curriculum of (dis)connection

As noted in other papers in this volume, a group of health and education researchers and practitioners came together to further develop their understanding of the situation of young people, who were clients of The Royal Children's Hospital Education Institute in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. The resultant research project, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, aimed to understand young people's perspectives on who they are and what matters to them in relation to education connectedness, identity, social relationships, and experiences with professionals. The project team was aware of the persisting patterns of relationships between the hospital, schools, young people, and their families. They were also cognizant of the heavy emphasis in the research and professional literature on evidence from relevant family adults and from health and education professionals. The intention of this project was to put the young people at the centre a study with the stories they told through word and image. Identity issues and school connections framed the analytical work. Thirty-one adolescents dealing with chronic illness participated in this longitudinal qualitative study for a 3-year period of their lives. Given the apparently active role of teachers and health professionals in the lives of these young people, the researchers wanted to include the various relevant adults to see what coherence or lack of coherence existed in the categories, emphases, and values they expressed compared with those of the young people. The researchers have had to determinedly keep their focus on the data from the young people and not be seduced by the familiar and readily accessible data from these professionals. Nonetheless, this data set does provide a ‘curriculum conversation’, which is profitably read behind the stories of the young people and in the foreground of new pathways of curriculum construction. It is this data which informs the work reported in this paper and which has led the researchers to resist the rhetoric of currently held story lines in this field, to see beyond the present hierarchies of power over relevant ‘knowledges’, to maintain a dual focus with the young people at centre stage and the professionals as ‘walk ons /extras’ and to argue for a ‘curriculum of connection’ between young people and the relevant education and health professionals. These issues are readily engaged in arguments for change through the interweaving of larger discourses of inclusivity, curriculum, and policy. This paper works those intersections in the everyday positionings of professionals and young people.

Patterns and correlates of self-reported racial discrimination among Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults, 2008–09: analysis of national survey data

Background
There is now considerable evidence that racism is a pernicious and enduring social problem with a wide range of detrimental outcomes for individuals, communities and societies. Although indigenous people worldwide are subjected to high levels of racism, there is a paucity of population-based, quantitative data about the factors associated with their reporting of racial discrimination, about the settings in which such discrimination takes place, and about the frequency with which it is experienced. Such information is essential in efforts to reduce both exposure to racism among indigenous people and the harms associated with such exposure.

Methods
Weighted data on self-reported racial discrimination from over 7,000 Indigenous Australian adults participating in the 2008–09 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, were analysed by socioeconomic, demographic and cultural factors.

Results
More than one in four respondents (27%) reported experiencing racial discrimination in the past year. Racial discrimination was most commonly reported in public (41% of those reporting any racial discrimination), legal (40%) and work (30%) settings. Among those reporting any racial discrimination, about 40% experienced this discrimination most or all of the time (as opposed to a little or some of the time) in at least one setting. Reporting of racial discrimination peaked in the 35–44 year age group and then declined. Higher reporting of racial discrimination was associated with removal from family, low trust, unemployment, having a university degree, and indicators of cultural identity and participation. Lower reporting of racial discrimination was associated with home ownership, remote residence and having relatively few Indigenous friends.

Conclusions
These data indicate that racial discrimination is commonly experienced across a wide variety of settings, with public, legal and work settings identified as particularly salient. The observed relationships, while not necessarily causal, help to build a detailed picture of self-reported racial discrimination experienced by Indigenous people in contemporary Australia, providing important evidence to inform anti-racism policy.