Analysing the Digital News Network in Action: IndigenousX, The Guardian and the Wakul App

Research into Indigenous news representation has suggested it has supported relations of colonial subordination and exploitation rather than Indigenous empowerment. Recently, Indigenous news representation in Australia has been transformed and, to some extent, empowered by shifts in the media ecosystem. This chapter explores the significance of a partnership between the Indigenous owned and operated online media organisation IndigenousX and Guardian Australia. The second half of the chapter introduces a research intervention that aims to broaden and deepen the IndigenousX-Guardian collaboration through the deployment of an innovative piece of digital infrastructure, the Wakul app. This software application aggregates and makes available Indigenous media content and other relevant information from throughout Australia, with the aim of enabling increased Indigenous perspectives, agendas and worldviews in the generation and production of news. This project is underpinned by Actor Network Theory (ANT), which provides scope to consider how Indigenous news is produced through dynamic material relations. The chapter explores methodological affinities between decolonising approaches and ANT, and the degree to which a negotiated combination of these methodological approaches might facilitate a nuanced, ethically-grounded and up-to-date mapping of relations that constitute the Indigenous ‘news network’.