An IAMCR pre-conference
Description
This 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.
Recent years have seen various and continuing 'media reckonings' on racism and diversity. The resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter protests across the globe 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 decolonize media and/or support media anti-racism (Saha, 2020; Titley, 2019).
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. Christine Dunbar-Hester argues, '"diversity" is a timid framing. What would change if the conversation was directed towards justice instead? Much is at stake here and "diversity" offers too little (2021).
'Beyond Media Diversity' aims to build a transnational approach to urgent questions of media, racism, and diversity, highlighting the limitations of conventional 'diversity' initiatives and developing in-depth understandings of alternatives 'beyond diversity'.
Date and time
27 June 2024 | 09h00 - 18h00
Location
University of New South Wales, Kensington Campus, Sydney, Australia
Registration and participation
Participants must register through this link, and there is no fee for registration.
Organisers
A/Prof Tanja Dreher, University of New South Wales
A/Prof Sukhmani Khorana, University of New South Wales
Convenors
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 differences, everyday uses of media technology, and new research methods. Our research is interventionist, innovative and fearless. Our aim is to analyse the world around us and help build more just futures.
Tanja Dreher is an Associate Professor in Media and a Co-Director of the Media Futures Hub at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Tanja is a former Vice Chair of the Community Communication and Alternative Media Section of IAMCR. Tanja’s research examines media and social justice through the lens of the politics of listening in the context of settler colonialism, Indigenous sovereignties, intersectionality and data justice. She is particularly interested in self-determined media interventions and grassroots infrastructures of accountability and care.
Sukhmani Khorana is a Scientia Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, School of the Arts and Media. She is interested in media, migration and affect and her research focuses on multi-platform refugee narratives, the politics of food, the role of emotions in social change, cultural diversity in media and culture, and self-representation by young people of colour. Through her research, Sukhmani aims to create broader awareness about the lives of asylum seekers and refugees and contribute to the capacity-building of disadvantaged migrant communities.
