Chinese media in Australia
What is its role? Does it promote the policy and values of the Chinese Government? What effect does it have? Is it part of Chinese soft power? Who reads it anyway?
ACRI Director Professor Bob Carr moderated a discussion with panel members Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Communication Studies in the Public Communication Program in the School of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UTS; Professor John Fitzgerald, Director, CSI Swinburne Program for Asia-Pacific Social Investment and Philanthropy, Swinburne University of Technology; Kelsey Munro, Senior Journalist, The Sydney Morning Herald; and Martin Ma, Editor, Sydney Today, followed by a Q&A session.
ACRI recently commissioned a report by Professor Sun on Chinese-language media in Australia, which details a rapidly changing media landscape that outsiders on the one hand find inscrutable but also regularly place at the heart of the Chinese government’s attempts to exert soft power. Read Professor Sun's report here.
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Speakers
Wanning Sun
Wanning Sun is Professor of Media and Communication Studies in the Public Communication Program in the School of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS. She is a specialist in a number of areas, including Chinese media and cultural studies; rural-to-urban migration and social change in contemporary China; and soft power, public diplomacy and diasporic Chinese media. She is the author of three single-authored monographs: Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination (2002); Maid in China: Media, Morality, and the Cultural Politics of Boundaries (2009); and Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media, and Cultural Practices (2014). Two of her edited volumes—Media and the Chinese Diaspora: Community, Communication and Commerce (2006) and Media and Communication in the Chinese Diaspora: Rethinking Transnationalism (2016)—document the history and development of Chinese language media in Australia, North America, Europe, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
John Fitzgerald
Professor John Fitzgerald is Director, CSI Swinburne Program for Asia-Pacific Social Investment and Philanthropy; Deputy Director, Centre for Social Impact Swinburne; President, the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Before joining Swinburne in 2013 John served five years as Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing where he directed the Foundation's China operations. Before that, he was Head of the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University and before that again directed the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. In Canberra he served as Chair of the Education Committee of the Australia-China Council of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as chair of the Committee for National and International Cooperation of the Australian Research Council, and as International Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is currently the President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His research focuses on territorial government and civil society in China and on Australia's Asian diasporas. His publications have won international recognition, including the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies and the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association.
Kelsey Munro
Kelsey Munro is a senior journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald, writing on education politics and policy, and Australia-China relationship issues. She was previously the editor of the Saturday News Review section, and editor of the Walkley-nominated multimedia project Shirtfronted: The story of the Abbott Government. She has a Masters in Asia-Pacific politics from the University of Sydney.
Martin Ma
Martin Ma is currently Editor-in-Chief of Sydney Today. He was previously at People's Daily Online Australia. Martin has extensive experience working in Australian Chinese media companies.
