[csaa-forum] Beyond Media Diversity - UNSW 27 June - Media Futures Hub and IAMCR preconference

[Tanja Dreher]

Dear colleagues


Registrations are now open for the symposium ‘Beyond Media Diversity: Media Practice and Media Studies in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter’ hosted by the Media Futures Hub at UNSW on Thursday 27 June

Registration link: Beyond Media Diversity - Registration (google.com)<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxaSme8D5xVqqUKMq00aoadCnSYnOeBeuipMiYfedhtAxjMw/viewform>

Full details below

All the best

Tanja Dreher and Sukhmani Khorana

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Beyond Media Diversity: Media Practice and Media Studies in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter

Date and time - 27 June 2024 | 09h00 - 18h00

Location - University of New South Wales, Kensington Campus, Sydney, Australia

An IAMCR pre-conference and ‘bridge’ event between ICA 2024 and IAMCR 2024

https://iamcr.org/christchurch2024/beyond-media-diversity-conf

Organisers - A/Prof Tanja Dreher, University of New South Wales and A/Prof Sukhmani Khorana, University of New South Wales

REGISTRATION: Beyond Media Diversity - Registration (google.com)<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxaSme8D5xVqqUKMq00aoadCnSYnOeBeuipMiYfedhtAxjMw/viewform>

Recent years have seen various and continuing ‘media reckonings’ on racism and diversity. The resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter protests across the globe in in 2020 brought renewed attention to media racism in Australia and across the Global North. Resurgent Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic and entrenched and violent Islamophobia highlighted again by the 2019 massacre in Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand, have heightened ‘media diversity debates’ and calls to decolonise media and/or support media anti-racism (Saha, 2020; Titley, 2019). Meanwhile international interventions in media scholarship such as #communicationsowhite have demonstrated that concerns around media, racism and diversity are highly relevant within media and communication studies as well as in media institutions (Chakravarty et al 2018, Ng et al 2020).

Despite the upsurge in media diversity debates and initiatives in response to these cultural reckonings, the aim of greater diversity has been premised on limiting assumptions. One of the most oft-used ones is that media and those who work in it must ‘reflect’ the demographics of the changing nation state. The media reckoning prompted by Indigenous media presenter Stan Grant’s resignation from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2023 followed decades of diversity initiatives at the public broadcasters. Christine Dunbar-Hester argues, ‘“diversity” is a timid framing. What would change if the conversation was directed towards justice instead?’ (2021).

The pre-conference event builds on the successful ‘Beyond Benign Diversity in media scholarship and industry’ workshop held at UNSW in October 2023. Sponsored by the Media Futures Hub, this preliminary workshop outlined the key agenda items for moving beyond diversity in media practice and media research in settler colonial Australia. In building on this workshop, the proposed symposium takes a transnational approach to framing diversity debates in the media, how these are limiting (and limited), and what decolonial and anti-colonial alternatives could look like. The event thus speaks directly to the IAMCR2024 General theme: ‘Whiria te tāngata / Weaving people together: Communicative projects of decolonising, engaging, and listening’

Agenda: Full-day symposium with 20 min presentations by invited speakers in the first half of the day; second half for responses and reflections from all participants (in the spirit of listening)

Outcomes: participants will be invited to submit proposals for a possible journal special issue on transnational perspectives on framing diversity in the media and moving toward decolonial approaches

Location: The preconference will be held at the Kensington campus of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. The Kensington campus is well connected to Sydney Central station (15 mins by Light Rail) and to Sydney airport (a gateway airport for IAMCR 2024 and ICA 2024). There are many affordable accommodation options nearby. The venue will be fully accessible.

Media Futures Hub (https://mediafutureshub.org/) is a collection of scholars at UNSW researching justice, media and emerging technologies. We explore topics such as community and First Nations media, drones and autonomous systems, data justice, listening across difference, everyday uses of media technology, and new research methods. Our research is interventionist, innovative and fearless. Our aim is not only to analyse the world around us, but to help build more just futures.

Tanja Dreher is Associate Professor in Media and a Co-Director of the Media Futures Hub at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Sukhmani Khorana is a Scientia Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, School of the Arts and Media.


Dr Tanja Dreher (she/her)

Associate Professor | School of Arts and Media

Co-Director Media Futures Hub<https://mediafutureshub.org/>

University of New South Wales

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