Watch dog or guard dog? Australian media and the China threat

 2021 China in the World Annual Lecture
'Watch dog or guard dog? Australian media and the China threat'

What is the role of Australian media, especially news media, in shaping a sense of who we are as a nation, amidst talk of a Cold War with China? How do these media produce public knowledge about a country that is increasingly imagined as its strategic enemy? This talk addresses these questions through the politics of voice, framing, and truth-claiming in journalism, and considers how the answers to these questions may impact on democracy and multicultural citizenship in Australia.

About the speaker

Wanning Sun is a Professor of Media and Communication in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS. A fellow of Australian Academy of the Humanities since 2016, she is currently a member of the Australian Research Council's College of Experts (2020-2022). She is a specialist in Chinese media and cultural studies; rural-to-urban migration and social change in contemporary China; and soft power, public diplomacy and diasporic Chinese media. Her research monographs include Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination (2002), and Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media, and Cultural Practices (2014).

This CIW Annual Lecture is also a part of the Chinese Studies Association of Australia 17th Biennial Conference