Changing Indigenous Media and Participation in Australia and Norway

This paper discusses the impacts of changing media environments on Indigenous peoples’ opportunities and participation in public debate. The paper examines how media and political structures for representation have shaped indigenous inclusion in political process and policy discussion. It briefly reviews the historical development and contemporary diversity of Australian indigenous media and Sami media in Norway, with particular emphasis on NRK Sápmi. The paper then examines how rapid and dramatic changes in the global media landscape promise to disrupt the established structures of political communication. It asks whether the adoption of social media is shifting the locus of an Indigenous public sphere and changing the relationships between Indigenous peoples and the governments with whom they engage. Drawing on examples from studies of recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social media campaigns against government policy in Australia and the use of social media for political campaigning among Sami politicians and parties in Norway, the paper examines how social media is fostering a new form of indigenous public sphere activity in the two countries. The unique communicative conditions of both Sami people in Norway and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia impact on the outcomes of such social media campaigns. This exploratory research provides a platform for a comparative study challenging the universality of minority experience frequently attributed to social media in the political communication process.