Media, Multiculturalism & the Politics of Listening Workshop
Wednesday, 16 April 2008, 1-5pm, UTS, Building 10, Level 6
Convenors: Tanja Dreher (UTS) and Gay Hawkins (UNSW)
This workshop focused on the ethics and politics of listening in order to develop innovative approaches to thinking about media and multiculturalism. To date both research and policy on media and cultural diversity have emphasised questions of speaking, whether in mainstream, community or diaspora media. There is also a vast literature examining questions of representation including stereotyping, racialisation, hybridisation and self-representations. This workshop extends these discussions to focus on questions of listening. Sociologist Charles Husband has long argued that the 'right to be understood' and an ethics of listening are as important as the 'right to communicate' in developing a multi-ethnic public sphere. Susan Bickford suggests that 'just as speakers must reflect on how to speak (and what to say), listeners must be self-conscious about how they listen (and what they hear). Taking responsibility for listening, as an active and creative process, might serve to undermine certain hierarchies of language and voice'.
Attention to listening provokes important questions about media and multiculturalism: How do media enable or constrain listening across difference? What is the role of mediation in the politics of listening? How can a diversity of voices be heard in the media? How are new modes of listening developed or learned (by media producers and by media audiences)? How can media researchers, producers and policymakers best address these questions?
By bringing together researchers, media workers and policy makers we aim to start a conversation on new ways of understanding the dynamics and importance of listening in multicultural societies.
Download the Notes from the Workshop [pdf]
Download the Workshop booklet [pdf]
Reflections following the Workshop
Download Reflections from Tanja Dreher [pdf]
Three key themes were explored:
Hearing Diversity
Linguistic diversity is a fundamental aspect of multicultural Australia. Language is one of the most intimate assets of cultural identity and social communication, and not coming from an English speaking background can cause serious disadvantage. Hence the wide range of programs to enhance English language skills and allow people with diverse language backgrounds to overcome communication barriers. But effective communication in a multicultural society does not simply involved skills in speaking it also demands skills in listening and an openness to the embodied voices of diversity. Resentment about other languages being spoken in public, irritation with accents, demands that everyone 'speak English' are evidence of an hostility to diversity that can come from hearing linguistic differences in everyday life. These reaction are a powerful reminder of the normative power of 'proper English' and the ways in which difficulties in understanding can generate frustration with the speaker rather than a willingness to change, or listen differently, in the listener.
In this session we want to explore these issues: in what ways do the media invite different listening practices? How do they apprehend accents? How do techniques like subtitling enable cross-cultural communication? How can resistance to hearing difference be challenged? In what ways are barriers to communication a product of lack of English language skills or lack of skills in listening to diversity?
Listening to Community Media Interventions
Communities subjected to racism in the media often develop media interventions projects aimed at speaking up and talking back to the news media. In Australia in recent years there has been increasing support for Arab and Muslim communities in particular to develop media skills, to produce media education programs and to be involved in media production - all aimed at giving voice and being heard. In this session we will explore the complex dynamics of listening to such community media interventions: how are racialised communities heard when they talk bacjk to the news media? How do media conventions shape the dynamics of listening and speaking? When and how is listening refused?
Speaking and Listening Relations: Not Liking What You Hear
Media are slowly beginning to include a diversity of perspectives on multiculturalism and other issues. This can reveal competing and conflicting ways of making sense of public issues. These discussions also generate a sense of democracy in action, the ways in which public debate is always dense and contested: a jostle of opinions that need to be listened to with respect. How does a commitment to inclusion and diversity of opinions demand a different ethics of listening? Rather than trading opinions and polemic how does the dissonance of democracy generate different ethical practices in listening and speaking? If diverse groups are given recognition and legitimacy in public culture how can we ensure that they are heard in ways that encourage intercultural dialogue?
Tanja Dreher (with Justine Lloyd and Penny O'Donnell) is coordinator of The Listening Project and convener (with Gay Hawkins) of the Media and the Politics of Listening in Multicultural Societies workshop. She is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at UTS. Tanja's project explores news media and community conflict resolution with a particular interest in debates around media and emotion, whiteness, and around media, gender and violence. Her previous research has focused on news and cultural diversity, community media interventions, experiences of racism and the development of community antiracism strategies after September 11, 2001. Contact details.
Gay Hawkins (with Tanja Deher) is convenor of the Media and the Politics of Listening in Multicultural Societies workshop. She is Associate Professor in the School of English, Media and the Performing Arts at the University of NSW. Gay's research is in the areas of media and cultural studies, poststructuralism and political theory, and biopolitics and nature culture relations. She is currently completing an ARC Linkage project on 'The Special Broadcasting Service and Australian Cultural Democracy'. In 2006 she published 'The Ethics of Waste: how we relate to rubbish'. Current research projects include an investigation into the relations between publics and communities.
