The Development And Outlook Of The Diasporic Chinese Media In Australia

The diasporic Chinese media has long been recognized as one of the three pillars supporting the communities of Chinese migrants. This is also true with the Chinese-language media in Australia. Chinese migrants have been an important part of Australian society since the gold rush period when they began to have their first Chinese-language newspaper. After Australia officially abolished the discriminative "White Australia" policy, the number of Chinese migrants approached critical mass especially when large groups of PRC students came to Australia in the late1980s and early1990s. This movement of Chinese migrants also brought about simultaneous flows of capital, media and cultural practices, which contributed to the formation and transformation of Australian Chinese-language media landscape. The patterns of production, circulation and consumption of diasporic Chinese media have been further changed with the emergence of new media technologies, such as the satellite and Internet.The aim of this thesis is to provide a broad overview of the issues, formations, changes and continuities in the development of the diasporic Chinese media in Australia, paying particular attention to elaborating the evoluation of Australian Chinese-language media in historical terms and offering feasible strategies for dealing with the challenges that are confronting the ethnic Chinese media in Australia.The thesis proceeds in six chapters. Chapter1gives a general introduction and examines the aims of the study, literature review and research methodology. Chapter2aims to depict Chinese-language media against a bigger backdrop of ethnic minority media. Chapter3offers a historical account of the evolution and role of the Chinese-language print media in the formation of the Chinese migrant communities in Australia and Chapter4traces the development of other Chinese-language media forms including main television and radio services available in Australia as well as Chinese-language websites. Chapter5focuses on the outlook of the diasporic Chinese media in Australia in three aspects:opportunities, challenges and strategies. Finally, the thesis points out that the diasporic Chinese media can learn from some effective measures taken by successful international media groups, such as clarifying their positioning, trying every means to improve the quality of editing and reporting, enhancing vision design and service quality, strengthening transnational cooperation, making use of cross-promotion via the formation of media consortiums, exploring collaboration among different media forms, so that the Chinese-language media in Australia will be able to create a favorable and orderly environment for sustainable development.