Issue 15.2: New Zealand Mediascapes

MEDIANZ: Media Studies Journal of Aotearoa New Zealand, 2016

His research interests include phenomenology, intermediality, indigenous representations, and documentary. John Farnsworth is associated with the Media, Film and Communications Department at the University of Otago. He is also a registered psychotherapist in private practice. Recent papers include work on new technologies, mobile devices, psychoanalysis and ethnography.

The media has the potential to undermine wellbeing and opportunities for Treaty-based social justice in its representation of Mäori, relationships between Mäori and non-Mäori, and in its promotion of particular understandings of the Treaty of Waitangi. This paper presents research exploring the meaning-making of Päkehä and tauiwi (immigrant) focus group participants in relation to media representations of Mäori and the Treaty of Waitangi. We also discuss the impact of recurrent media portrayals of Mäori and the Treaty on health and well being as understood by the focus groups.

This special issue of Media International Australia seeks to 'rethink' ethnography and ethnographic practice. Through the six contributions, the authors consider the variety of ways in which changes in our media environment broaden what we think of as 'media', the contexts through which media are produced, used and circulated, and the emergent practices afforded by digital media. Ethnographic studies of media emerged in the late 1980s alongside ethnographic research on consumption in Britain (Gray, 1992; Gillespie, 1995; Morley, 1992; Moores, 1993; Silverstone, 1990; Silverstone and Hirsch, 1992). The ethnographic turn in media and cultural studies emerged in response to an uncritical approach that constructed passive audiences (Ang, 1991), as well as deep criticism of the quantitative methods that were used, especially in US communication studies, to categorise and analyse communication activities that eluded such methodologies (Lull, 1990). In media sociology, Silverstone (1990) called for a move towards an anthropology of the television audience, with a methodological approach that views the individual in the context of the everyday and takes account of the home, technologies and neighbourhoods, as well as public and private mythologies and rituals (1990: 174). This focus upon the contexts of use signalled a shift away from a previous focus upon typologies of individual users that often ignored the situated complexities of everyday life (Morley, 1986). Nightingale's article in this issue also links the development of media ethnography with the cultural or 'reexive turn' in anthropology, which she suggests led to improved ethnographic practice in media and cultural studies, and the expansion of media anthropology. This is also the moment when anthropology began to focus upon carrying out research 'at home' in Western and middle class contexts where media of various forms had become pervasive. Indeed, and as Debra Spitulnik's (1993) review of media anthropology suggests, it has become impossible to ignore the seminal role of media in shaping and structuring our everyday lives (Askew and Wilk, 2001; Ginsburg et al., 2002; Mankekar, 1999, Abu-Lughod, 2005). Media ethnography also began to move in new directions with the availability and access to digital media and technology. The introduction of new platforms and devices has led to a broadening of what we understand as the sites and sources of production; ofce parks in Silicon Valley and young people's bedrooms are as likely to be sites for the production of media as are the more traditional sites such as newsrooms and radio stations. Moreover, and as Gabriella Coleman's (2010) review of ethnographic approaches to digital media highlights, the contexts of production and use are as important to understanding practice as the affordances and constraints implicated in digital media technologies, however heterogeneously, in a range of cultural, social and political contexts (Horst and Miller, 2012; Tacchi, 2012). Whereas media ethnography focused upon 'audiences', the pervasiveness of digital media and technology has spurred renewed attention to the particular capacities, or affordances - a concept that has its roots in the phenomenology

MEDIANZ: Media Studies Journal of Aotearoa New Zealand, 2017

This paper interrogates what we believe is an increasingly urgent task: to think about ways of revitalising public life in New Zealand beyond traditional defenses of public broadcasting. The concept of the public in public broadcasting is what is at stake: we argue that the public is an empty signifier, one that can be mobilised in the service of neoliberal power brokers to legitimise media monopolies and the closure of media spaces meant for civic discussions, and by activists, academics, politicians and media pundits, who call for a return to notions of the modern public sphere as a way to fight against the increasing commercialisation of media. We find that this debate falls short for it fails to recognise that we live in liquid times (Bauman 2007), and argue that we need to shift the discussion from the public sphere to that of citizen publics. This, we believe, entails a new commitment to rights and to democratic processes that creates a scene, breaks habitus, and engages in writing scripts. It is through this new commitment that we conclude by providing notes for a future media scene in New Zealand. Assoc. Prof. Vijay Devadas is Associate Professor in Communication Studies at the Auckland University of Technology. His research is located at the intersection of media-culture-society and his publications address key social, cultural and political debates and issues across cultures and media platforms. Some recent works includes the co-edited book The Fourth Eye: Maori Media in Aotearoa, and articles on media and neoliberal politics, and media, terror and sovereignty. Dr. Brett Nicholls teaches in the Department of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago. His research focuses upon critical theory, broadly understood, and the relationship between media and politics. Recent work includes engagements with the documentary films of Adam Curtis, along with the political relationship between wearable technology and everyday life.

The 1998 documentary series The New Zealand Wars, based on James Belich's revisionist monograph on New Zealand's colonial wars, recalled these conflicts to Pakehaas well as Maori collective memory, and thereby confronted contemporary Pakehaidentities. Alon Confino asks: 'Why is it that some pasts triumph while others fail?' This article seeks to explain the unexpected success of the past which the series set forth by analysing its televisual strategies of engagement with Pakehaviewers. It discusses three elements of the series' mode of address: Belich's persona as historian-presenter; the series' appellation of Pakehaviewers in relation to their historical 'Others'; and its imaging of landscape. The New Zealand Wars was a televisual commemoration deeply enmeshed in contemporary cultural change, and in its claims on the emotions and affiliations of viewers it helped to resituate the New Zealand Wars in the domain of New Zealand nationhood.

2014

This paper presents a case study about the development, publication, and dissemination of The Brown Book: Māori in screen production. The book is a multi-platform, transmedia project borne out of collaboration between Te Ara Poutama, the Faculty of Māori Development, Auckland University of Technology (AUT), and Ngā Aho Whakaari, the association of Māori in screen production. It is a transmedia book because multiple media techniques are brought together in an innovative fashion to tell stories. Scolari defines “transmedia storytelling” as “the convergence of media, languages and formats in contemporary media systems” (2009, p. 586). Thus, the iBook outcome of the project is the “contemporary media system.” The convergence of written text, video footage, audio files and photographs occurred in both English and Māori languages. This was a consequence of mutually beneficial relationships between the authors, the University, the community of Māori screen practitioners, and the non-...

The 1998 documentary series The New Zealand Wars, based on James Belich’s revisionist monograph on New Zealand’s colonial wars, recalled these conflicts to Pa-keha- as well as Ma-ori collective memory, and thereby confronted contemporary Pa-keha- identities. Alon Confino asks: ‘Why is it that some pasts triumph while others fail?’ This article seeks to explain the unexpected success of the past which the series set forth by analysing its televisual strategies of engagement with Pa-keha- viewers. It discusses three elements of the series’ mode of address: Belich’s persona as historian-presenter; the series’ appellation of Pa-keha- viewers in relation to their historical ‘Others’; and its imaging of landscape. The New Zealand Wars was a televisual commemoration deeply enmeshed in contemporary cultural change, and in its claims on the emotions and affiliations of viewers it helped to resituate the New Zealand Wars in the domain of New Zealand nationhood.

The Journal of New Zealand Studies, 2013

Final Version in: Peters, G. (2011). Māori media and social movements in Aotearoa. In J. Downing (Ed.), Encyclopedia of social movement media (pp. 310-311). London: Sage Publications.