Framing ideology in the niche media: The Koori Mail's construction of the Redfern riots

Abstract

The role of niche media in discursively constructing and deconstructing powerful ideas is often underestimated. Using the 2004 'Redfern riots' as a case study, this article investigates how ideological elements of the riots were framed by the Koori Mail, a fortnightly niche Indigenous publication, compared to the more mainstream Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph. The research is conducted through a frame analysis of 155 media texts from these three newspapers. In comparing the niche and mainstream media, the contribution of the niche media to the contested nature of debate within the mediated public sphere is evident. By keeping the riots within a socio-political frame, the Koori Mail actively reframed dominant ideological constructions of racial identity and were able to construct a more nuanced and politicized critique of the riots than that offered by the two mainstream papers. © 2008 The Australian Sociological Association.