Was the ghost of Henry Mayer hovering at the ANZCA 2017 conference, in the steel and glass vaulted Law School halls of his old haunt, the University of Sydney? If so, I’d like to think he might have grudgingly approved of the directions taken by media and communications scholarship in the twenty-first century. Some of the most animated ANZCA sessions involved political communications, media regulation and new ways of understanding media diversity, through anti-racist strategies, or as listening rather than voice. Panels debated the nature of digital inequality and inclusion strategies, and emerging scholars explored the strategies and ethics of digital influencers. The conference theme ‘Communications Worlds’ invited critical reflections on the many, varied symbolic and communicative environments we imagine, create, occupy and reconfigure. This edition of Communication Research and Practice presents a sample of those presentations, including the opening plenary session, keynote talks and the work awarded the Grant Noble prize, for best postgraduate paper. The depth and range of work owes much to the programming foresight of ANZCA 2017 conference lead and Association President Gerard Goggin, and our rich relationships with the International Communication Association and International Association for Media and Communication Research. We are also indebted to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Dean Annamarie Jagose, for their generous support of the event.
This issue begins with a landmark discussion, on the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home Report, between Indigenous media workers from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Chaired by Macquarie University Professor Bronwyn Carlson, the Deterritorialising Media panel brought together journalists, social media activists and communication scholars in conversation about the significant changes they have seen in Indigenous media practice and publishing over their careers. In its emphasis on personal and collective experience over policy analysis, this conversation provides powerful testimony of how new communicative approaches can – and might – transform our media.
Taking up vital issues in global political communications, the next two articles in this issue address the rise of populism and attitudes to refugees. Professor Silvio Waisbord explores the way in which the conditions for populist politics and post-truth communication have been laid by fragmenting mass media power and disaggregation of public sphere debates. Current president of the ICA, Paula Gardner, then encourages us to explore our ethical responsibilities for, and affective responses to, the global refugee crisis. Later in the issue, Professors Daya Thussu and Wanning Sun invite us to reimagine the global communications order and our own pedagogical practices from Asian perspectives, particularly via the ascendancy of China and its diasporic influences. Finally, Grant Noble winner Elizabeth Goode from Newcastle University reveals the unexpected rewards of biographical-narrative interviewing, arguing that researchers need to move beyond the notion of just giving voice to participants, and towards a fuller understanding of the construction, consequences and multiple uses of these accounts.
As a whole, these papers signal our field’s growing interest in interpreting the complexities of populism, pluralism and difference in our communication worlds, as well as its capacity to deliver the sort of sceptical, iconoclastic analysis that Mayer’s work exemplified.