Ice towns: television representations of crystal methamphetamine use in rural Australia
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journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-04, 13:59 authored by L Waller, Katrina CliffordKatrina Clifford© The Author(s) 2019. The Australian news media regularly presents crystal methamphetamine use as a non-metropolitan ‘epidemic’ sweeping through country towns with devastating consequences for affected communities. Considerations of place and the notion of rurality are therefore crucial to understanding how these media representations are constructed and their power to influence national understandings of rural people, places and policy debates. In order to explore these complexities, we apply Simon Cottle’s ‘communicative architecture of television’ methodology to an analysis of three long-form reportage television programmes on the theme of ice use in small Australian towns. Theories of ‘social imaginaries’ inform the argument that a distinctive Australian ‘agrarian imaginary’ can be discerned through the reporting’s strong associations with the connections and contradictions attached to ideas and emotions about ‘the bush’. The television programmes draw on what Cottle terms ‘mythic’ and ‘collective’ frames that reach into the cultural reservoirs of communities to reinforce national perceptions, values and narratives about how rural communities ought to be, and by extension, how they ought to deal with complex social problems, such as illicit drug distribution and use.
History
Journal
Crime, media, cultureVolume
16Pagination
185-199Location
London, Eng.Publisher DOI
ISSN
1741-6590eISSN
1741-6604Language
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2019, The AuthorsIssue
2Publisher
Sage PublicationsUsage metrics
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