https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5370-4018
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ABSTRACT
Guardian Australia has made a strong commitment to covering Indigenous affairs, offering an alternative approach to other mainstream Australian news media since its establishment in 2013. In this article, the concepts of boundary work and boundary-drawing power provide a framework for analysing how Guardian Australia negotiates, extends, and concedes its professional journalistic ground in ways that support more diversity in news-making in the space of Indigenous affairs. In doing so, the article looks beyond Guardian Australia’s award-winning journalism to its “everyday” coverage of Indigenous affairs. Through a content analysis of 1048 items published between March 2018 and February 2020, it identifies and discusses who contributes or produces the content, the types of content and the range of stories that are covered, and how Guardian Australia itself categorises these stories. Our analysis finds that Guardian Australia’s Indigenous affairs coverage presents more sustained and diverse reporting than previous studies of legacy media have found, and its content expands journalistic boundaries by embracing the affordances of digital networked media and the contributions of diverse First Nations writers.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the anonymous reviewers who provided invaluable feedback on the manuscript. Thank you also to project team members Professor Peter Radoll and Professor Scott Wright and partner investigators at Guardian Australia, including Lorena Allam, who have embraced and supported this study. Your cooperation is deeply appreciated.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The “Deaths Inside” editorial team led by Allam included journalists Calla Wahlquist, Jack Banister and Miles Herbert, with design and development by Data and Interactives editor Nick Evershed and editorial developer Andy Ball. Artwork for the database was created by Indigenous artist Charlotte Allingham. “The Killing Times” reporting team led by Allam included University of Newcastle Professor Lyndall Ryan and journalists Nick Evershed, Paul Daley, Andy Ball and Carly Earl as well as interns Ciaran O'Mahony and Jeremy Nadel.
2 The research for this article is part of the Australian Research Council Linkage Project “Amplifying Indigenous news: A digital intervention” (LP180100201). In partnership with Guardian Australia and IndigenousX, this project will deploy and assess the impact of a new digital application designed to enable access to a diverse range of Indigenous voices, stories, and agendas. This paper establishes a baseline of Indigenous affairs coverage at Guardian Australia prior to the introduction of the digital application.
3 See note 2.
4 A small number of picture galleries had no clear first-named author and photographs were credited to both Guardian staff and external photographers. These items have been captured in a fourth category, ‘NA’.