Lost in translation? Language policy, media and community in the EU and Australia : some lessons from the SBS

Cultural diversity is a central issue of our times, although with different emphases in the European and Australian context. Media and communication studies have begun to draw on work in translation studies to understand how diversity is experienced across hybrid cultures. Translation is required both for multilingual (multicultural) societies such as Australia and for trans-national entities such as the European Union. Translation is also of increasing importance politically and even emotionally as individual nations and regions face the challenge of globalisation, migration, and the Americanisation of media content. The thesis draws on cultural and media policy analysis. Programming strategies are reviewed and 'conversational' interviews conducted with broadcasting managers and staff at SBS Australia and across multilingual public broadcasters in the EU (BBC WS, Deutsche Welle, ARTE, Radio Multikulti Berlin, Barcelona Televisió). These are used to investigate the issues, challenges, and uses of the multilingual broadcasting logic for Australia's and Europe's cultural realities. This thesis uses the concept of 'translation' as a key metaphor for bridging differences and establishing connections among multicultural citizens in the context of the European Union and Australia. It is proposed that of the two versions of translation - institutional in the EU and mediated in Australia respectively - the mediated version has achieved higher success in engaging ordinary citizens in more affective, informal and everyday forms of cross-cultural communication. Specifically, the experience of the Special Broadcasting Service (Australia's multilingual and multicultural public broadcaster) serves as a model to illuminate the cultural consequences of the failure of the EU to develop translation practices beyond the level of official, institutional and political communication. The main finding is the identification of a need for more mediated interlingual exchange; that is a translation of language policy in Europe into media experience for ordinary citizen-consumers, at both institutional and textual levels

Bios James Meese is a lecturer in Communications at the University of Technology

Abstract Media sport has a long history as a significant site of media innovation and existing work in media and cultural studies has explored how media sport, technological innovation and regulatory frameworks interact. However, this work tends to often focus on how major actors such as broadcasting organisations, sporting bodies and telecommunications companies mediate sport. As a complementary strategy to this 'top-down' analysis, we approach media sport through the lens of practice, which allows us to understand everyday forms of engagement with and consumption of media sport in a clearer fashion. The paper analyses existing policy discourses and social commentaries centred on the targeted 'high-quality' or 'high-tech technological innovation', and argues that users of sports media are also motivated by series of cultural rewards and varied trade-offs that do not map neatly onto industrial categories of quality or media consumption trends.

Youthworx media: youth media and social enterprise as intervention and innovation

This research explores the impact of Youthworx, a community-based cross-sector response to the problem of youth marginalisation and social exclusion. Preface Youthworx is a successful model of a practical, community-based, cross-sector response to the problem of youth marginalisation and social exclusion. It combines professional expertise, networks and material resources across social service delivery agencies (Salvation Army and Youth Development Australia (YDA)), youth-run community media (SYN Media), an educational provider (North Melbourne Institute of Technology TAFE (NMIT)) and research organisations (the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research (SISR)). Media training and production is used to build capacity to re-engage with learning, education and employment. After some years in development between 2008, when Youthworx effectively began operations, and 2013, the program has provided open access multimedia workshops, accredited training and, more recently, paid traineeships for more than 400 youth disconnected from formal learning, with experience of homelessness, juvenile justice or alcohol and drug abuse. Participants broadcast and distribute their works through SYN Media, local festivals and screenings, as well as online. They also make commissioned creative products for external clients and not-for-profit organisations. Research undertaken by Swinburne University’s SISR between 2005 and 2013 explored impact of Youthworx on these young people and the broader lessons for debates on social innovation, community media and creative economies, informal learning, opportunity and enterprise. The integrated R&D is a unique element of Youthworx, allowing documentation, analysis and capacity-building. It combined longitudinal on-site research, a comparative study of best practices across parallel international youth media initiatives, and mobilisation of established academic and industry networks. Although our findings to date have appeared in a range of publications, this document offers the first comprehensive report on the project. It discusses the development of Youthworx and the results of the 2008-13 period. The presented findings draw on a qualitative fieldwork at Youthworx and semistructured follow-up interviews with a group of Youthworx graduates who participated in the program between 2009-2011. In combination, this material is used to document and explore the specific institutional structure and cultural context in which Youthworx’s media training and production took place, the ways in which young people experienced, engaged with and valued the project, as well as the project’s social outcomes. The longitudinal account of Youthworx presented here integrates and summarises multiple voices, including industry partners, service organisations, practitioners, researchers and, importantly, young people themselves. It reflects arguments developed across the team, including material previously published

The performance of youth voice on the airwaves

This paper uses the case study of a youth-led community radio station, KCC Live, to argue that community radio is not a cure-all solution for disenfranchised and silenced young people. Drawing on 18 months of participant observation at KCC Live and data from in-depth interviews with volunteers, I argue that, owing to institutional constraints by station management; college management; and the regulatory body Ofcom, young people consider the airwaves to be a supervised, as opposed to emancipatory, arena. However, in attempting to combat the restricting nature of the airwaves, young people find new, performative ways to communicate. This paper provides empirical evidence which goes beyond previous simplistic conceptualisations of voice in youth media production and argues that romanticised notions of youth voice preclude performance and creativity. This paper offers an important contribution to children’s geographies in finding that pretend play, characterised by performance, can be considered a ‘life-span activity’

Factory, dialogue, or network? Competing translation practices in BBC transcultural journalism

Drawing on interdisciplinary theories of translation and empirical research into the BBC World Service, I propose a set of three conceptual metaphors to model media-based translation work. 'Factory', 'dialogue' and 'network' can each serve as a metaphor for the processes of interlingual and transcultural journalism by international broadcasters. Rather than periodizing these historically, I propose that all three metaphors, from the Fordist centralized factory via the user-friendly dialogue rhetoric to the seemingly power-free digital network, can best be seen as concurrent and competing journalistic processes in daily dynamic interaction, whether they concern centralized practices or user-generated contents

To Brunswick and beyond: a geography of creative and social participation for marginalised youth

This article uses a case study of a Melbourne-based youth media project called Youthworx to explore the processes at stake in cultural engagement for marginalised young people. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2010, I identify some ways in which the city is implicated in promoting or preventing access to socially valued spaces of creativity and intended social mobility. The ethnographic material presented here has both empirical and theoretical value. It reveals the important relationships between the experience of place, creativity, and social life, demonstrating potentialities and limits of creativity-focused development interventions for marginalised youth. The articulation of these relationships and processes taking place within a particular city setting has theoretical implications. It opens up an opportunity to consider 'suburbs' as enacted by specific forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than treating 'suburbs' as abstract, analytical constructs. Finally, my empirically grounded discussion draws attention to cultural and social consequences that inhabiting certain social worlds and acts of travelling 'to and beyond' them have for young people

Young listening: an ethnography of YouthWorx Media's radio project

Listening as the act of aural consumption has commonly been the moment in cultural practice around which analysis has cohered. This has certainly been the case with the cultural objects of popular music and radio broadcasting. Where young people have been brought into the frame of such analyses, the impact of listening on the formation of the self has been highly pronounced - leading at times to public panic around particular musical genres and their associated socio-cultural practices, for instance around hip-hop, heavy metal and emo music. This paper investigates the combination of radio broadcasting and young people from the perspective of cultural production as a redemptive process. The taxonomy of a reflexive 'listening to oneself '; collaborative 'listening to others'; and the empowering and responsibilizing process of 'being listened to' grounded in an ethnography of radio production is employed to explore the social processes of 'learning to listen' undertaken by the YouthWorx Media program that engages disadvantaged young people in media creation, while setting a scene for the project's evaluation

Multicultural program 'alchemy' as a radio laboratory: ideas about cross-cultural dialogue

Our times are characterised by intensified interconnectedness and interaction between different socio-political systems, complex flows of migration, and fluid identities. Radio stations have to re-invent themselves to accommodate these dynamics; they face the challenge of fragmentation and new possibilities for creative combination. Considering a youth multicultural program 'Alchemy' as a model of radio laboratory, I demonstrate the ways in which its hybrid content provides a forum for staging cultural pluralism and new forms of cross-cultural engagement with and amongst audiences. Some recommendations are proposed to assist SBS Radio in responding to the changing Australian social fabric in line with its multicultural public mandate

Thrift, gift and recycling: cultural lives and social economies in the digital era

Abstract not available