Islamic Communities and Media Activism in Australia

Aljazeera is well known as an Arab television and media network that has its headquarters in Qatar. For the U.S. Aljazeera is a ‘terrorist network’. For Islamic communities it is now seen, ironically, as ‘U.S. controlled’. Islamic audiences in Australia use Aljazeera and CNN media but those audiences also use emerging community media in Arab countries as an antidote to both Western and Arab press. This paper reports on the results of an ARC study into Islamic community reactions to Australian media coverage of terrorism. Islamic citizens in Australia are proactive in using P2P media such as blogging and in actively seeking sources of information that give alternative views on both Australian and Arab media.