‘Swamped by Muslims’ and facing an ‘African gang’ problem: racialized and religious media representations in Australia

ABSTRACT

Despite the implementation of multicultural policies since the 1970s, anxiety over cultural and religious ‘others’ continue to challenge Australia’s diversifying national identity. Problematic media representations of racial and religious minorities persist in Australia and continue to shape public perceptions and political discourses on issues of migration and intercultural relations. This paper examines how Muslims and Africans are contemporary scapegoats of Australian anxieties. These fears continue to be present in racialized rhetoric and attacks on Chinese Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying discourse analysis on two recent case studies as illustrative examples – the 2018 Bourke Street attack and the so-called ‘African gangs’ – this paper argues that despite substantial research and critique, mainstream media continue to rely on familiar and problematic tropes for framing racial and religious minorities that dehumanize them based on essentialized characteristics of crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. These characteristics tend to be exploited for political gain, with Muslims and Africans portrayed as a disruption to social cohesion and national security. A critique of the role of media and political discourses is presented, as they remain critical instruments in the pursuit of a new ethics of openness, respect and mutual understanding, which are fundamental to living well with difference.

KEYWORDS:

• Media representations
• multiculturalism
• social cohesion
• muslim migrants
• african youth
• race and religion

Acknowledgement

Some of the literature review included in this article was conducted by co–author Weng for two research projects: Buddhism in the Far North of Australia led by Anna Halafoff and funded by the Alfred Deakin Institute; and the Migration stream (led by Anna Halafoff and Greg Barton) of the Religious Diversity in Australia project funded by the Australian Research Council (DP180101664 led by Douglas Ezzy). Publications arising from these projects are currently under review. Some of the insights reported on Chinese and African communities, on whiteness and on religious literacy in this article, have also been informed by discussions with Halafoff. See Marriott, E. (2019), ’Media Representations of Terrorism: The 2017 and 2018 Bourke Street Attacks and the Changing Taxonomy of Terror’, Honours thesis, Melbourne: Deakin University, for a more detailed analysis of media reporting of the 2018 Bourke St attack.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The cultural background of journalists was determined by the All Together Now team in collaboration with the Cultural and Indigenous Research Centre Australia (CIRCA) (All Together Now, 2019: 34).

2. As the study was based on voluntary participation, the sample of schools played a part in shaping its findings. Respondents overwhelming came from Catholic (53%) and Christian schools (26%), where schools from NSW and ACT (42%) and VIC (34%) were dominant in representation (Ata 2016: 338).