Coverage of Closing the Gap policy implementation in online news in Australia, 2008-2017

  • Hang Tran

    Student thesis: Master's Thesis

    Abstract

    “Closing the Gap” (CTG) has been the Australian Government’s overarching policy to improve the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians since 2008. The government has identified the key areas of life expectancy, child mortality, employment, literacy, school attendance, early education, and Year 12 attainment. The intention of the policy is to achieve parity between
    Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes in relation to those key areas. The coverage of policy implementation by news media is crucial for the public to understand progress in reducing disparity and may help put pressure on the state governments to further their efforts to realise the set targets. The content and frame analysis of 92 articles published on the news sites of ABC, Nine and Guardian Australia from 2008 to 2017 found an unchanged popular negative
    representation despite more Indigenous voices being included. The coverage was shaped by three dominant frames: Policy Failure, Australia’s Shame and Further Partnership. The research contributes to the growing literature of journalism studies about Indigenous media representation and brings lessons from Australia’s experience to Vietnamese journalists in reporting stories related to ethnic minorities.
    Date of Award2022
    Original languageEnglish
    SupervisorKerry MCCALLUM (Supervisor), Sora PARK (Supervisor) & Wendy SOMERVILLE (Supervisor)

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