Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

In Australia, the issue of people seeking asylum has received widespread media attention, attracting considerable debate at both the political and community level. For people who support refugee resettlement in Australia, discourses of humanity and compassion are commonly voiced (Peterie, 2017; Fozdar and Pedersen, 2013). Conversely, those who oppose asylum seekers coming to Australia have routinely constructed them as illegal immigrants (Every and Augoustinos, 2008; Pedersen, et al, 2006; Clyne, 2005; Klocker 2004; Pickering, 2001), queue-jumpers (Markus and Dharmalingam, 2014; Augoustinos and Every, 2007; Pedersen, et al, 2005), and economic migrants (Saxton, 2003; Pickering, 2001). There is some empirical evidence to suggest that similar negative discourses are pervasive in Australian news content about asylum seekers, often mirroring political discourses that serve to justify punitive policies for managing asylum seekers (e.g. McKay, et al, 2011; Saxton, 2003). While some Australian research has explored media representations of people seeking asylum, no prior studies have focused on community perspectives regarding these news discourses. In the present study, Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) was combined with Audience Reception Theory (Hall, 1993) to examine the perspectives of a sample Western Australians concerning news representations of people seeking asylum. Discussions of negativity, reliability, sensationalism, and transparency in Australian news constructions of asylum seekers were observed. These discourses are discussed with emphasis on the wider implications from both a research and policy perspective.