Making sense: data, publics and storytelling

It is with pleasure that we introduce these contributions from the 2019 Australian and New Zealand Communication Association conference. The theme of ‘Making Sense: Data, Publics and Storytelling’ was chosen to generate a discussion around the datafication of society, which has dramatically changed the dynamics of power relations in the distribution and communication of information. The conference provided an opportunity to incubate and develop theories, research, and frameworks and inform methods for the field. At the conference more than 150 papers were presented in 15 streams.

The 2019 President’s Welcoming Address commemorating the 25^th ANZCA conference is included in this issue. President Mary Simpson reflects on making sense of encounters with new-to-me ways of being as opportunities to be enriched and confronted, to change, and to grow what we know.

The papers in this collection reflect the diversity of ideas captured in the conference theme. The authors seek to make sense of key contemporary social concerns and problematics within media and communication research and practice. They explore and interrogate a range of ideas, including digital citizenship, populist communication, echo chambers and intersectionality, and showcase methods and modes of analysis such as critical discourse analysis, interviews, diary methods and case studies.

Lelia Green builds upon her keynote address that was delivered to the public by exploring the emerging competencies demonstrated by young people today and addressing the priorities set by policymakers. The paper attempts to shift the focus from the existing perception of online passivity of adolescents, to understanding their active and strategic engagement in the digital space. Drawing upon four case studies – three Australian and Greta Thurnberg – this paper examines how children exercise citizenship through digital resources that are available to them. Citizenship is a balance of rights, responsibilities and obligations, and has an inherent component of conflict. Children’s claim to greater rights is a discomfort to guardians and policymakers. The paper questions the binary concept of citizenship and provides an understanding of the growing impact of young people’s actions on policy debates and political decision-making.

Kurt Sengul closely examines populist communication through an analysis of Pauline Hanson’s senate speeches between 2016 and 2018, which he situates within the wider global proliferation of populism and the increasing normalisation of the populist radical right in Australia in particular. The paper explores ‘the politics of fear’ in relation to Hanson’s constructions of Muslims and refugees as ‘dangerous others’, which marks a shift away from her earlier focus on Asian immigration. Sengul draws attention to the way in which the populist radical right frame their arguments in terms of ‘crisis’ in order to justify and legitimate draconian policy measures and he interprets Hanson’s political communication with reference to concepts of liberal and illiberal Islamophobia. Sengul’s paper highlights the value of a critical discourse approach for identifying the discursive strategies and linguistic devices deployed by politicians such as Hanson and their role in the mainstreaming and normalising of Islamophobic views.

Ashleigh Haw is also concerned with the consequences of political communication about minority groups, such as immigrants and asylum seekers, and she approaches the issue through interviews with 24 Western Australians about their engagement with online news representations of asylum seekers, paying particular attention to how they construct their motivations for engaging with political news online. The paper engages literature on ‘echo chambers’ and, particularly, how they may or may not restrict audiences’ exposure to dissenting ideas and in turn present challenges for deliberation and democracy. The study found limited evidence that consuming political news within echo chambers shielded participants from alternative positions or negatively impacted their understanding of asylum seeker policies. Haw identifies a need to play closer attention to the motivations behind political news engagement habits and preferences among different demographics, including the motivations and consequences of self-selecting into echo chambers.

The next paper focuses on the stories and experiences of women in New Zealand. Roxanna Holdsworth reports on findings of her ongoing doctoral research into the lived experiences of New Zealand women, where she draws upon standpoint theory and intersectionality and uses diary methods and semi-structured interviews to explore women’s stories and perspectives on work, family, feminism and women’s equality. She situates the research in the context of literature on master narratives and personal narratives and reflexively positions herself within the research. The research is motivated by a desire to reclaim a discourse of difference and Holdsworth provides examples from her research to illustrate the different ways in which notions of privilege and oppression and intersectional differences show up in the accounts of her participants.

Together, this collection of articles highlights key issues and future directions in the Communication and Media Studies discipline, while emphasising the importance of reflecting from various angles. These efforts strengthen and deepen our understanding of the impact of disruptive technologies on society and how society is responding.