Guest Speaker
Professor Gay Hawkins
Professor of Media and Social Theory
School of English Media and Performing Arts
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
UNSW
Tuesday 7th July 2009
12pm-2pm The Hall (Z2-226) CI Precinct
QUT Kelvin Grove
Most accounts of the history of SBS frame the organization as a leading example of the development of multiculturalism in Australia – which it most definitely is. The issue is, however, in what ways do SBS’s programming and audience development strategies reveal the political complexities of diversity and the challenges they present for making media multicultural? Using examples of the development of news and subtitling in SBS, this paper investigates how the fact of cultural diversity has been politically and socially generative in the ongoing formation of SBS, producing a media service that has re-imagined the nation and its relation to the rest of the world. The evolution of news and subtitling also provide important examples of how SBS has developed several forms of multiculturalism, each revealing the diverse strategies media can deploy in both representing and negotiating difference.
Bio
Gay Hawkins is a Professor of Media and Social Theory in the School of English Media and Performing Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW. In 2008 she published with Ien Ang and Lamia Dabboussy ‘The SBS Story – the challenge of cultural diversity’. This book represents the first detailed critical assessment of the development of SBS and its social and political impacts. She is currently engaged in a major international study of the rise of bottled water that will be published by MIT in 2011.
Please RSVP to kate.simmonds@qut.edu.au to register your attendance.
