Research Proposal: Australian Political Journalism and Media Influence

This research proposal examines the state of Australian political journalism, focusing on the influence of media and its evolution over the past few decades. The study employs quantitative content analysis to assess the moral decay within Australian media houses, citing evidence from prominent newspapers. It addresses key questions about the 'how, where, when, and why' of this state, with a critical analysis. The proposal uses case studies, including media representation of Aboriginal people, asylum seekers, and media's role in Australian General Elections, especially regarding online platforms. Key topics include media coverage, content discourse and thematic analysis. The methodology includes newspaper analysis, interviews with media figures, structured observation, and web scraping for sentiment analysis, with an aim to understand the audience, impact of media styles, changing themes, and the persistence of racism in Australian media.

Political Journalism 1
THE STATE OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL JOURNALISM.
Student Name: Euden Tshomo
Student Id: 3180840
Institution:
Professor:
Date:
Word count: 2800

Political Journalism 2
The state of Australian Political Journalism
ABSTRACT
In this proposal, the focus is on the media in relation to the political influence and how it has
changed during the last decennia. The study encompasses the root of moral decay of the media
houses in Australia, through a quantitative content analysis, citing evidences from the most
common papers that are a must read by their lovers. The proposal will be dealing with key
question that will outline the how, where, when and why is this state so, and in depth try to look
for a means to analyze critically the situation. Three case studies will be the foci of the
hypothesis that will be created: the media representation of Aboriginal People in ABC News
Online in Australia’s Post-Apology Era (2008-2018). The second group being the asylum
seekers of the regional Australia. (Cooper et al, 2016). Finally, will be media’s participation in
the Australian General Elections with respect to the new online fora.
Key words.
Media coverage, Proposal, Content analysis, Political influence, Political Journalism, Content
Discourse Analysis, Thematic Analysis,

Political Journalism 3
Introduction.
Being compelled by a high reporting incidence of political influence by the Australian
media house, it is necessary if not sufficient to look deep into this matter. Political journalism is
one of the key factors that hold up major media houses in the Australian government. Political
journalism by definition therefore is the process of disseminating information among actors from
the political system, the media, and the public (Esser & Pfetsch, 2017 pg. 1). Its so astonishing
that currently, political journalism has been mixed up with many issues up to and including
globalization without forgetting a gross issue that has been witnessed, that is Racism. In this
research paper, we will come up with a research problem geared in this direction and see a
method that will induce the problem for research.
First and foremost, let us look up for some racism structures that have arisen in Australia
in the past two decades. To be explicit enough, lets narrow down to the media houses and
specifically the newsroom and newspaper publishers. Many of the newspaper’s publishers and
mass media have taken advantage of the 16th April 2009 incidence and Australia’s Post-Apology
Era. Racial hegemony being the state of mind of most news reporters and opinion makers
(Alemán, 2013), depriving the morality standards while encouraging privilege politics. To
evidently see this fact, our stake companies will be the Fairfax Media and News Corporation
where the latter has had a monopoly as compared to the former respectively.

Political Journalism 4
Even as the advances in technology kick off, there is still a greater influence of
newspapers that has been created by the capacities of many journalists, especially in reporting of
public opinions. Many even extract information from the online platforms only to be published
in the newspaper. Considering the age of over 40s, their tendency to attractiveness to the current
online social media platform is not as disturbing as compared to their counterparts, the under
40s. Therefore, this fragment become the lover of papers, just a ready market for the media
houses.
On further look into this topic, according to Sally (2008), many things happened during
the 2007 federal election of 2007. In this perspective, media houses cannot be left behind. Sally
(2008) writes that many of them had multiple hours of election-related content every day during
the election. The outcome of this is usually a divided nation due to erratic news and information
that distorts peace. Therefore, there is dire need to assed how the media’s future will be so that a
leeway is found as pertaining to this issue. The political journalism of a social society indeed
needs guidelines that have to concur with the societal morality.
Literature Review.
Key emphasis on racism as moth that has completely swallowed the media houses in
Australia will reveals the whole state of the nation. Australia from the past has been faced by this
big man-eater malice. Kowal and Fredric (2012) conducted an exploratory investigation to
identify the role of media houses in producing problematic generalizations against the aboriginal
people, where the outcome was so much worrying. Another incidence cited in McCreanor et al

Political Journalism 5
(2014) assessed how the media created structural racism by framing the Māori, an indigenous
race in New Zealand as criminals.
Considering the April 2009 accident termed the ‘SIEV 36’ and a deep analysis done by
McKay et al, reveals three key questions that drive this research proposal. Questions on whether
the reports by the medial really are affiliated to the amendments the were made by the previous
vice president Howard? The second concern, media houses and indigenous as the refugees
posing a risk factor to them. Finally, how the stance of the reporters with respect to the
guidelines and policies coined for the issue’ (McKay et al. 2011). According to McKay et al.
(2011), their results depicted a varied nature in the reporting style followed the industry
guidelines on how to report and issue that is concerned with the asylum-seeking group and the
communication particulars that were employed during the reporting. In this research, this will be
a nice starting point for the above-named title.
Another case study during the research will be to really look into the ABC online News
to supplement in researching the Australia’s Post Apology era that can be dated back to the last
decennia. This will properly evince the matters of racial prejudices by the sampled reporters who
were found to frame the aboriginal people as criminals. Figuring out this practice will tend to
inject a nation to a state where its political journalism stature does not rouse any fears to citizens.
When citizens of a country are in fear especially when general elections are about to be held, the
economy is dragged down and hence poor standards of living. Social fora need to improve in this
context so that matters politics become more mature. A solution to this problem can be figured

Political Journalism 6
out well just in case the groups are all aware of their role in each issue. As much as freedom to
speak is a right to any citizen, the words spoken should be critically looked before they are
uttered lest they arouse a conflict.
A question of which media tool contributes more in the Australian state is one nightmare
that has to be revealed. From a research report coined ’Facebook and Twitter make us bad
people’ (CCI report, pic.), key players of this game often make use of social media as a ground
of making objectivial politics and be able to gunner much aide (Sauter & Bruns 2013, para.3).
In addition to these tools and how they affect the justice of Australian politics, we will
have to look at the users of these different media platforms. A research carried out in 2012 -2013
depicts that most journalist rarely reported on the social platforms but a positive shift was
recorded on articles that were written by the journalist. This does not qualify that they totally do
not use the social media as from then onwards, there has been a tremendous increase. However,
the politicians were fond of the social media since its availability. The citizens can not miss to be
mentions. A research on citizens during that very period indicated substantial pages of critiquing
and gossiping of politicians. From the article Moving Politics Online, Sauter and Bruns (2013)
write that this reflects a broader change in Australian political discourse, having well known
groups that arise within the social media fora.
Resultantly, democracy becomes an issue that will be partly dealt in this proposal.
Mazzolen and Schulz were inquisitive to know if a change in political communication together
with its growing influence of the mass media presented a challenge to democracy. In Australia as

Political Journalism 7
in other parts of the wold, there is a tendency of political information hitting the brim when it
tends towards political times.
‘The literature review identifies the presence of a gap in literature pertinent to political
journalism in Australia. Most studies have done their focus on disseminated practises that are
followed by a mainstream media such as complicit reporting of aboriginal people’s issues
(Proudfoot & Habibis, 2013; Wheeler -Jones et al.,2015; Mesikämmen, 2016) , framing
aboriginal people as criminals, framing Asylum and refugees from crisis as illegals and political
biasness by the reporters, (McCreanor et al., 2015; McKay et al; 2011; Porter, 2015). This
therefore is a beck and call for all parties and partisans to look for an integrative analytical
review in order to geed a deeper insight of the media statues of Australia.’(Tshomo,2019)
Research Questions.
The brink of chasm of this literature review being the following study questions.:
 Who form the media audience for politics in Australia? - between the journalist
themselves, the citizens or the politicians, the aboriginals or the asylum and
refugees
 How much of political information has been reported since 2009 to 2018? –
taking note of the increase in mass media companies and more publications and
online websites that do the reporting.
 Which category of media dominates in political reporting? – is it the traditional
media, newspapers and magazines, audios and visual media or the social media?

Political Journalism 8
 For how long has this moral decay been with respect to societal standards? –
which action has been taken to for journalist who use harsh words while
reporting, how does the court of law react to such calibre?
 Is the situation shifting positively or negatively? - with the increasing media
services and more online fora and public awareness. This is actually a very key
issue that need more critical discourse analysis.
 Are audiences of a particular statues -the politicians, normal citizens, indigenous
groups, whites etc more likely to receive coverage than others?
 How does the styles of media coverage affect this state? – if everyone is exposed
to viral information what would be the state of the nation?
 How are the topics and themes of the media houses changing over time?
 Is racism still an issue in Australia? – with the changing of the NTER and the
world intervention. Who really practice this anyway?
 What tends to increase the political journalism? – theories as explained by social
researchers on this issue. Myths such as news without any politicking is not fun.
Research Methodology:
In the proposal, the theoretical resource of information will mostly include the
newspapers from the two mention companies in the introduction paragraph. Focus will be
specifically on The Herald Sun, The Australian and the Age. Also, the online media platforms
and part of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Political Journalism 9
Interview will be a key primary source of data collection and this will be specific to the
media opinion makers and reporters. In addition to the interviews, structured observation which
has the following advantages i) reliability of the data surrounding the event; ii) higher
preciseness of the frequency and timing; iii) very high rate of accuracy especially when ordering
the variables; finally iv) much accuracy and easier cost benefit analysis for large-scale social
routines. Structure observation will be used amongst the journalist, politicians and citizens who
would be randomly sampled from each of the states in Australia.
In addition to interviews and Structured observation, a critical web scrapping software
will work handy for performing sentimental analysis and handwriting recognition of the website
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. Implementation of an algorithm to scrap out any positive
words related to the study will work out handy for this research. The proposed languages will be
Hadoop and python and any other programming language related to this kind of sentimental
analysis. Videos with the positive themes will be timestamped for further analysis. Finally,
image recognition patterns as pertaining to this theme will also be a source of our data.
The different theoretical frameworks to drive this study will basically be social theories
as discussed in the paper by McKay et al (2011). Moral standards will be a major point of
concern. The framing theory will help to gauge how audiences respond to issues and events.
Another theory to rely on is the structural impacts of discursive political media coverage
to all the races in Australia. This is brought about by the previously seen aboriginal people in
Australia. Not only this race should be qualitatively analyzed to see if indeed there is a backslash

Political Journalism 10
in political journalism but also all the races that have been deemed as without say or inexistent.
The whole topic of racism should be viewed as a vice by the society and should not be morally
accepted. Freedom should be encouraged within and without borders and should not be misused.
To engage the research critically, Critical Discourse Analysis will be another theoretical
framework. CDA’s aim is to understand and address any social issue through examination of
texts and themes through linguistic processes (KhosraviNik, 2010).
Analysis areas will include any met criteria whether an audience is affected by the
Asylum issue, General Federal elections of the country and the aboriginal fate during the Post-
Apology period. Any content with such a theme will be taken as a key part for the research and
hence will be nice basis for the proposal. Comparison of these three political journalistic
evidences will help get a shape and influence of the news coverage in Australian media systems.
The research method to be employed would be the use of content analysis which is better
preferred for this topic. The use of this method will ideally help in analysis of the availed
materials texts and documents bringing the quantification of the content in their categorical and
systematic nature hence ease in replicability (Bryman 2011, pg.290). According to the content
analysis to be carried out, the focus will be on papers, articles, pictures and videos relating to any
political related content. Racism in sentiments will be analyzed critically from the above
materials. Quantitative Content analysis will be applied as a way of getting standardized data
across the three newspapers.
To add a base of this research proposal the media will have to comprise of:

Political Journalism 11
 3 National newspapers – The Herald Sun, The Australian and The Age. Here,
focus will on all the newspapers that have content related to the three discussed
issues in the literature review. As for the sake of the Asylum issue, the key words
under content analysis will be the terms ‘Illegals’, ‘Refugee news’, and ‘Illegal
asylum seeker’, just to mention but a few. Any motive thematic opinion that
matches the above words will also accounted for deep analytics.
 Online articles – online materials create a rather viscous communication channel
that can easily apply scientific methods while doing research. This is due to its
availability and random usage.
 Television and Radio programs – will supplement the newspapers and online
articles. journalist who present will be done a thematical analysis and sentimental
analysis using software to determine positivity in relation to these cited political
In order to do the coding, the following will be the guidelines of the research:
 Source of the item whether it is the newspapers, television or thee SMH;
 The topic of under research will be divided into three subtopics as depicted by the
literature review and the introduction per say;
 Researchers to handle this matter must have a well background in the topic of
study and should understand the topology of the issue at hand (professional);
 The main research method would be coded also
 The audience who will be a guide for this research will be on the basis of
journalist, politician, aboriginal, asylum/refugee and a casual citizen
 Significant words i.e. ‘illegals’, ‘criminals’ etc.

Political Journalism 12
Pros when applying content analysis as a research method:
1) Involves much directness and clarity in it procedures of sampling and code.
2) Content analysis majorly permits both qualitative analytics and a wider quantitative
analysis.
3) Has an unattractive nature making it suitable for many students performing research
in sociological fields.
4) A very important fact about it is its flexibility allowing for working on all types of
document and texts without structure.
5) The thoughts of a human and all available social groups can be analyzed easily for a
deeper understanding.
Every pro has a con, and here are the disadvantages of the method:
1) Difficult to ascertain the answers that require reasoning.
2) Requires a enough time hence consumes more time.
3) Does not supplier the researcher with more resources apart from his or her own
documents.
4) Impossibility in coming up with a manual that contains the steps to coding thereby
requiring all the participants to be of a common culture.
Conclusion
As the proposal awaits review and then implementation, we can conclude that indeed the
issue of political journalism is still an issue to be researched upon. More content analysis has to
be done not only on the mention papers but on all mass media devices and thereby come up with