We are AUSTRALIAN

Australia’s population was formally founded of its original inhabitants, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who are the custodians of this great land and are the ‘world’s oldest continuing cultural tradition’ (The Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2012).  Australia has embraced the social and cultural influences of the millions of migrants who have settled here to make a better life for themselves. So how are we able to clearly state who and who isn't an Australian? Identifying a ‘true’ Australian within today's  society is a pretty controversial matter as Australia is made up of all different nationalities.  Australian’s within the 21^st century are multicultural due to diaspora and its continuation of evolvement to create within this mixed nation. The majority of people within our country find it hard to live up to these characteristics that the world labels us as, but in true Aussie realism our culture can’t just be characterised into on stereotype.  

“We are one but we are many and from all the lands on earth we come,”

 ‘We are Australian’ – Bruce Woodley

According to Srivastava (2008) ‘national identity is perhaps one of the most ‘naturalised’ of all types of identities. It is assumed to be obvious, apparent and historically authentic’. Australia is made up of immigrants and people from overseas due to a diaspora effect, so what makes us, real AUSTRALIANS have authenticity? Maybe it’s our way of speech and distinctive accent, our “G’day mate” or maybe it’s our references to our “Bogan” way of life, so how can we call ourselves an ‘Aussie Battler’ if we have trouble trying to identify who we are as a nation. Our identity isn’t kept hidden rather it is exposed in every single aspects of our lives. Through our cloths, our hair styles, our physical appearances all contribute to what our identity is.  The Australian Identity Convict Creations (1995) has stated that there are two plausible reasons as to why an identity for Australian’s proves to be so hard; ‘is that an influx of migrants has caused citizens to question the appropriateness of asserting a national character.’ Meaning that due to the diaspora effect of immigrants an identity can’t be categorised into one stereotype due to a significant amount of different cultures in which Australia is made up of. Sun (2002) further amplifies the course of a hidden identity due ‘an ironic increasingly fragmented reality that creates the discourse of our nation, in other words falling into the crevices between commonly evoked markers of identity as exile, diaspora and migrant’. A single Aussie identity, to categories or distinguish Australians can’t be done due to the repeatedly evolvement of diaspora.

The meaning and purpose of diaspora has revolutionised as the world as one has come to a more contemporary concept. Formally, diaspora had a negative approach signifying “a collective trauma, and banishment, where one dreamed of home, but lived in exile” (Cohan, 1997). This can be clearly identified within a modern society where anyone is different is considered non Australian. Further explained and acknowledged is through the ongoing racism that our country continuously faces. When Italians and Greeks began to migrate from Europe, Australians were quick to come up with an Australian word to demoralise these people known as “wogs”. When these “wogs” came into Australia was the first indication of a diaspora effect, then it was people of Asian countries and now its Muslims and Sudanese’s, but who are we to criticize or be judgmental of anyone who enters our country when we are immigrants ourselves from our ancestors or parents, regardless how long ago.  Cohan (1997) continues that “people aboard (Australia) who have also maintained strong collective identities have, in recent years, defined themselves as Diasporas, though they were neither active agents of colonization nor passive victims of persecution”. Again this can be clear through the way in which people within todays society embrace their ethnic heritage as before it wasn’t encouraged to be proud of who you were and where you came from unless you were a “True Australian”. Diaspora has created an effect that is forever evolving due to a spectrum of rapidly increasing the number of people within our beloved land. It has been disclosed by Cohen’s (1997) that typology classifies diasporas as ‘victim’, ‘labour’, ‘trade’, ‘imperial’ and ‘cultural’ diasporas.  (link)

Aussie culture is seen to be expressed as a carefree lifestyle, drinking beers, watching our footy and living out in the outback wearing blue t-shirts, this is how we are seen by the majority of people in overseas countries but is our Aussie way of life that blithe? The Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trades (2012) claim that “Australia’s diverse culture and lifestyle reflect its liberal democratic traditions and values”, (link) but what are these values that we Australians are meant to hold? Our youth seem to get the blame for the majority of insensitivity within our nation; they blame us for the wrong doing and disgracing of our Aussie heritage. A clear example of how our Aussie youth perceived in a negative light can be clearly depicted within the Full Moon Parties held in Thailand. Our youth is to be expressed all around the world as uncontrollable, irresponsible and plain right ‘acting as Aussies do”.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaYT1c0Qsi8

The Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2012) claim that “the defining feature of today’s Australia is not only the cultural diversity of its people, but the extent to which they are united by an overriding and unifying commitment to Australia. Within the framework of Australia’s laws, all Australians have the right to express their culture and beliefs and to participate freely in Australia’s national life.” So if this is a shared value in which us as a nation are meant to keep why are we so quick to reject the unfamiliar? Our true Aussie culture isn’t that of sports and BBQ’s on a Sunday arvo but of all different nationalities and religions. After the second World War people where encouraged to migrate to Australia to embrace a new life style, due to the sudden eruption of  multiculturalism arriving to ‘start a new life  our big cities have a Chinatown, a Little Italy, communities of Greeks and Vietnamese. In Spanish Australian restaurants you’re served by Spaniards, in Indian restaurants by Indians and in South African restaurants by South Africans. Top it off with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and you get a colourful mix where everyone feels at home’ (link).  Australian culture can’t be identified into one unique tradition as we are all customising ourselves with all the different cultures around us.

As Australians we find is hard to not only identity who we are as an Aussie and how we represent that image, but also how do we fit in within all other nationalities throughout the world. Australia is a continent made up of all different cultures due to a dramatic evolution of diaspora. These various races make up what we call home, the food, the languages; our entire appearance towards the rest of the word comes from our multicultural land.  Our identity, our cultural is made up from different countries and religions and us Australians have fed off those characteristics and made adjustments to make our country unique and specify who we are as Aussies. 

“I am, you are, we are Australians.”

We Are Australian- Bruce Woodley.

References:

-     -      The Australian Government Department of Affairs and Trades, ‘About Australia’, last updated 2012, retrieved 03/10/2012,  http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/people_culture.html

-        -  Convict Creations, 1995, ‘ Australian Identity’, last updated 2011, retrieved 03/10/2012, http://www.convictcreations.com/research/identity.htm

-       -   Australian Culture, retrireved 03/10/2012, last updated 2012, http://www.gondwananet.com/australia-facts-australian-culture.html

-       -   Cohen, R 1997, ‘Global Diaspora – An Introduction’, Taylor & Francis e-Library 2011, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

-        -  Sun, W 2002, ‘Fantasizing the homeland: the internet, memory, and exilic longings’, Leaving China: media, migration, and transnational imagination 2002, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, pp. 113-136

-          -Srivastava, S 2001, ‘ Asia: Cultural Politics in the Global Age’, Allen & Unwin, Sydney

-         - Lyrics: We are Australian, by Bruce Woodley 1987, http://alldownunder.com/australian-music-songs/i-am-australian.htm

Celeb Status.

What defines a celebrity these days?  It used to be how talented and artistic one individual was and how they used those attributes to entertain or expose towards a range of people, but now “celebrities” are popping up everywhere as a means of selling themselves to the media. Maybe intentionally or un-intentionally, but a “celebrity” is able to be any house-hold name famous or infamous.

Celebrities hide behind a front, a front in which they compose as they are conscious of the public version of themselves. New media and the paparazzi create celebrities as a public personality that are exploited to the world.

New media can be identified as the current online culture which  allows different flows of messages, media and images to circulate. Through the use of Twittersphere, Facebook and all social networking sites, celebrity status is more exposed than ever before.  ‘Celebrity culture is explicitly the extra-textual version of public individuals’ (Marshell, 2012), meaning that celebrities live in a fabricated world as ‘we’ the audience make their popularity. And as easily as we give them fame we can take it back at any time. The power of the media gives celebrities their recognition which is why celebrities ‘pose and present a mask of the self for public consumption’ (Marshell, 2012).

Within the new media, paparazzi tend to exploit celebrities in their most individual way. Paparazzi use intercommunication to capture the individual then exchange through social networks to conduct a movement between the personal and the highly mediated.

Examples of celebrities expressing ‘normal’ lives can be seen through resent events such as the nude photos of our dear Prince Harry or paparazzi capturing the iconic sweet heart Kirsten Stewart cheating on Rob Patterson.

Events like this are more dramatic because they are public figures. So why do we put these people on high pedestals? Is it so when they fail it makes us feel better about our flaws?

References

-          Marshell, D 2012, ‘ALC Globalisation and the Media Week 8’ , Celebrity and the Public Persona

YOU!tube

The internet is such an overwhelming sensation these days that any average Jo is able to become a super star overnight. Through the use of uploading videos or images, people are able to project their talents or lack of, to express themselves in such a public manner. YouTube has become the main force to venture peoples public opinion, abilities and to an extent stupidity to the whole world. Broadcasting these days isn’t just limited to media watchdogs and current affairs, but as globalisation has developed so has the need to broadcast.

‘Broadcasting is to transmit programs to make something widely known or to disseminate something’ ( Naficy, 2003, pp.51-62), and that is exactly what the phenomenon of YouTube is allowing publics to do. On YouTube people are able to find virtually any type of entertainment, whether it is music videos from famous celebrities to notorious civilians that upload their opinion on matters that really aren’t necessary.  A classic example of YouTube popularity can be seen when in 2004 the ‘Numa Numa Guy’ was the most watched clip having over 1million views that year.

Through broadcasting in such a commercial way the ‘Numa Numa Guy’ (Gary Brolsma) was instantly a YouTube sensation and almost 10 years later his video and face is still recognised worldwide.

Also YouTube allows the purpose of narrow casting to direct all its audience to one specific demographic which can be categorised as ‘YOU’. ‘Narrow casting aims a program or programming at a specific, limited audience’ (Naficy, 2003, pp.51-62), meaning that the majority of watches and audience of YouTube is ‘you’, ‘us’ as a nation and globe we are the aimed audience.

References

-          Naficy, H 2003, ‘Narrowcasting in diaspora: Middle Eastern television in Los Angeles’, The media of diaspora 2003, Routledge, London, pp 51-62

Aussie Pride!

How can anyone criticise or be racial to any other culture or religion for living in Australia and not adapting to ‘being Australian’?  What is Australian?

What sets our Aussie identity apart from any other culture?

According to Srivastava (2008) ‘national identity is perhaps one of the most ‘naturalised’ of all types of identities. It is assumed to be obvious, apparent, and historically authentic’. Australia is initially made up of immigrants and people from overseas, so what makes us, AUSTRALIANS, have authenticity?

Through the use of globalisation we have been portrayed and identified through characteristics in which other countries have labelled us with.

Can it be the way our accent is so distinctive, our “G’day mate” or maybe it’s our references to our “bogan” way of life. How can we call ourselves an ‘Aussie Battler’ if we have trouble trying to identify who we are as a nation? 

We have this reputation of a wild, carefree Australian lifestyle and this is able to be evident through the way we are portrayed within other cultures.

Let’s take for example, Australians within Bali at the Full Moon party; our youth is to be expressed all around the world as uncontrollable, irresponsible and plain right ‘acting as Aussie do’.

Even with in films, how we are able to identify an Australian character is usually through them having a heavy, outback accent and surfy appearance. But in Australia we do not all look like that as we are made up of a lot of different cultures due to nationalism.  ‘Nationalism is becoming less an ideology of the nation-state and more a personal project motivated and sustained by the desire of post national diasporic individuals’ (Sun,2002: 132).

As Aussie we are proud of our country, but what are we really proud of?

References

-          Sun, 2002 , 132 ( from handed out sheet)

-          Birch, D, Schirato, T & Srivastava, S 2001, Asia: cultural politics in the global age, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

public sFAIR?

As a nation, we are not only multi-cultural but we acknowledge all religions and accommodate to those religious needs. Australia is made up of different ethnic groups as a result of diaspora. Diaspora is when people move and take their culture with them; again this can be more simplified into a word commonly known as immigration.  To create a visual, I am going to revolve this specific blog around people from the Middle East moving into Australia.

Australia has had to adapt to welcome comfortably all nationalities, so much so that by having to adjust to make them feel comfortable the country has had to make sacrifices. ‘Globalisation is not simply a trend or a fad but is, rather, an international system; Globalisation has its own rules and logic that today directly or indirectly influence the politics, environment, geopolitics and economics of virtually every country in the world’ ( Hatchen & Scotton, 2002) .

For an example of how drastic Australia has had to accommodate our visitors and future residences, can be seen within our fun park in Queensland, Movie World, which has built a mosque so that Muslims are able to pray. By Catholics being the most dominant religion within Australia, why isn’t there a church within an Australian theme park?

The fashion of diaspora revolves around the evolution of public sphere, and the public sphere changes because of diaspora. Hatchen & Scotton (2002) claim ‘the rapid integration of the world’s economy has been facilitated by an information revolution driven by communication’. This communication has to do with the evolving change because of how the way the world evolves due to public sphere.

                

References

-     -     Hatchen, WA & Scotton, JF 2002, ‘ The world news prism: global media in an era of terrorism’, 6th edn, Iowa State Press, Ames, pp. 3–14.

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Power Of the Media

Within the 21st century we are more influenced by the media than ever before. Not only with the expansion and development of the internet are we more in tuned with the mass media but the dominance expressed regarding hegemony is overbearing.

Steven (2003) states that ‘hegemony is achieved when the power of the dominant groups in a society appear natural’ indicating that hegemony forms a power or rule not limited to direct political control but those who have power maintain their position through the creation of a world view.

Let’s take the effect of the current globalised event of the Olympic Games, this has influenced the whole world and has become a fight for gold rather than countries coming together, to experience and be a part of something great. The media have made the Olympics something to cater for all athletes egos.

Hegemony is apparent in having a medal tally. Why do we have a medal telly? Because those in powerful positions are ‘communicating the viewpoint of the ruling elites’ (Steven, pp.52-3). These dominant elites are America, Australia and China so they feel empowered above all.

At the moment the media are portraying our athletes to be somewhat of a failure if they do not get gold medals. Who says that silver or bronze is not a triumph, and who says that even just being a competitor within an event is not an achievement in its self?

Mass media empowers our view points as the term itself implies ‘a homogenous audience that will receive, consume or be affected by’ (Steven, p.37).

This can be seen through how our dominant media outlets (Channel nine and FOXTEL) that are currently broadcasting the Olympics choose to avoid showing our athletes failing and choose what their audience receive in order to consume and be affected in a certain way.

So why are our depended media outlets not highlighting in a great extent on the achievements of our athletes but focusing deeply on how disappointing it is not to get a gold.

Hegemony and the mass media influence their audience to feel dissatisfied with our athlete’s attempts when in reality we should embrace our countries successes.

References

-         -  Steven, P 2003, ‘Political economy: the howling, brawling, global market place’, The no-nonsense guide to the global media, New Internationalist, Oxford, pp. 37–59

-       -    ( http://equella.deakin.edu.au/deakin/file/ca1d6f6f-1974-4f3c-4ce0-380ddfd88f14/1/scan-politicaleconomy-steven-2003.pdf )

News Media

As rapidly as new hair styles, latest fashion and most popular craze are being introduced into society, the forever evolvement of new communication tools are continuously being exposed within modern culture.  Media flows are able to look at the development of communication through media outlets, regarding to all new forms of media.

The new forms of news media in which I am discussing are the influence of the internet with in-porting, ex-porting and providing information to those all around the world.

Weir (2008) indicates that the world is still in the early stages of globalizing an informational economy, one where the trade in digital bits of data can be every bit as valuable as the trade in physical goods and services.

Implying that digital media is slowly becoming every bit as vital as physical services as the need for news is so demanding.

As a globe we are captivated by social networking which tends to reach more of a demographic to exploit news.  Adds popping up on most website pages, newspapers converting their hard copies into technological forms, all contribute to the globalisation of new forms of media.

Weir (2008) continues to elaborate on the possibility that in the next two years Internet use will surpass the reach of traditional media.

To a degree his visualization is increasingly correct as even seen into today’s society, most people cannot live without checking or updating their Facebook status or up loading “interesting” pictures on Twitter.  

Warren and Moore (2011-2012) have indicated that the internet has proved to be an ‘alternative’ to the major channels of media news and information.  

Again this is clearly seen within the informational website, Google, which with only on word can produce multiple answers in which a person may desire.

The internet is forever evolving increasing the information exploited to society, news media is not the same from 10 years ago and with the rapid evolvement of technology it won’t be the same 10 years from now.

                                           

Reference

-          http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-28041725/google-myspace-facebook-lead-new-media-globalization/

-          Warren, B & Moore, C . 2011-2012, ‘Global Media Landscape’, page 8