{"id":31596,"date":"2017-05-01T11:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=31596"},"modified":"2017-05-01T14:40:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T04:40:03","slug":"crowded-pacific-re-considering-sharp-edge-broadcastings-soft-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/crowded-pacific-re-considering-sharp-edge-broadcastings-soft-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The crowded Pacific: re-considering the sharp edge of broadcasting\u2019s soft power"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Long before the ABC abandoned shortwave broadcasting to PNG and the Pacific, its programming for indigenous audiences (as distinct from Australian expatriates) had become risible. For those concerned with Australia\u2019s status as the region\u2019s principal security partner, this should matter.<\/p>\n

Broadcasting and related services to the Pacific have suffered from the \u2018unclear, inconsistent and competing interests and intentions\u2019 which, Joanne Wallis found<\/a>, characterise this nation\u2019s strategic policy in the region. That\u2019s an issue both for government and the ABC. The cardinal rule when seeking to project the values and interests of our imagined community, the democratic nation-state, is to play the long game and do so with constancy.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Radio Australia\u2019s English schedule consisted principally of content re-broadcast from the domestic ABC networks, while the minimally-resourced Pacific Beat<\/em> was the \u00a0remaining gesture to regional engagement. The Tok Pisin language unit, serving PNG, shrank from eight broadcasters to two. News bulletins, to my ear as a traveller in the region, have lost much of their Pacific-centric character. In vision, the ABC provides domestic news and entertainment, packaged as Australia Plus<\/em>, which appears to have an insignificant profile.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a marked difference between the ABC giving audiences outside Australia access to content intended primarily for domestic consumption (good for the Australian diaspora) and in applying a relevant audience focus to PNG and the Pacific. We should not confuse extended access with the purposeful use of media to engage regional audiences in pursuit of Australia\u2019s national interests.<\/p>\n

I offer four observations about the continuing relevance of international broadcasting and related media services, which may be considered with reference to the Pacific:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. State-funded international media are potent instruments of power projection. As the British Council<\/span> reported in 2013<\/span><\/a>, a \u2018great game of the airwaves\u2019 is being played out across politically contested regions. Nations including the UK have boosted spending on international broadcasting. They differentiate the purposeful use of media from many other uncoordinated or non-government manifestations of soft power.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. In 2012, an<\/span> Australia India Institute taskforce<\/span><\/a> chaired by John McCarthy commented on \u2018how instant, global television can sweep away decades of benign perceptions\u2019 of this country, and described Canberra\u2019s public diplomacy as old-fashioned and chronically under-funded. It noted that Radio Australia\u2019s performance in the Pacific and Southeast Asia suffered from lack of investment (and that the since discontinued Australia Network English language TV service was the wrong model in the congested Indian market).<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Having earned audiences\u2019 trust, a well-conceived international service maintains an influential connection with them, even during periods of political tension or crisis<\/span> as a study<\/span><\/a> of the BBC\u2019s Hausa and English language services demonstrated. Nigerian respondents, overall, were unfavourably disposed to the West, largely because of US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their perception of an anti-Islamic bias. Yet they continued to engage with the BBC, citing the accuracy and impartiality of its news, <\/span>its use of personnel from the Nigerian diaspora with whom audiences shared a cultural affinity<\/span><\/i> [my emphasis], and the depth of coverage.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. International services help to frame issues and assemble the picture that citizens have of one another, and of matters affecting their lives. It would be a mistake for policy-makers to view the role of such media through the limiting prism of adversarial journalism as practised in the Canberra bubble. By engaging with large audiences internationally, these media overlap with<\/span> key functions of public diplomacy<\/span><\/a> such as listening to foreign publics, advocacy, cultural diplomacy and exchange. This need not be inconsistent with editorial independence.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Returning to the Pacific\u2019s crowded and complex geopolitical environment, the need for re-consideration goes beyond the ABC\u2019s decision to cease shortwave transmissions to under-served communities.<\/p>\n

    An evolved media model for PNG and the Pacific should be a key element of Australia\u2019s regional aspirations and not treated by the ABC as just another of its media properties. The four themes of Australia\u2019s aid program are intended to support: economic growth, more efficient regional institutions, the development of healthy and resilient communities (including disaster resilience), and the empowerment of women and girls. Cutting across all strands is the promotion of good governance.<\/p>\n

    These suggest a mutually reinforcing dual rationale for a rigorous and entertaining service: delivering a regional good through a purposeful and culturally relevant broadcasting and digital media model; and promoting Australia\u2019s influence \u2018from the outside in\u2019\u2014through the quality of audience engagement with content and discourse, and attraction to the values embedded in the service. It would be multi-lingual, including a substantial Tok Pisin component.<\/p>\n

    To succeed, \u00a0this Pacific media service would operate as a distributed model involving contributors and media partners in PNG and island countries (dialogue, not monologue). It would maintain a close relationship with capacity building functions of the sort currently funded by Australian Aid and delivered through the ABC International Development Unit. And critically, this service would require a discrete management authority. Too often the ABC has struggled to synchronise this manifestation of the wider national interest with its organisational self-interest as the “national” broadcaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Long before the ABC abandoned shortwave broadcasting to PNG and the Pacific, its programming for indigenous audiences (as distinct from Australian expatriates) had become risible. For those concerned with Australia\u2019s status as the region\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":638,"featured_media":31597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[880,730,526,99],"class_list":["post-31596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-abc","tag-media","tag-soft-power","tag-south-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe crowded Pacific: re-considering the sharp edge of broadcasting\u2019s soft power | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/crowded-pacific-re-considering-sharp-edge-broadcastings-soft-power\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The crowded Pacific: re-considering the sharp edge of broadcasting\u2019s soft power | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Long before the ABC abandoned shortwave broadcasting to PNG and the Pacific, its programming for indigenous audiences (as distinct from Australian expatriates) had become risible. 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