Spatial stories: Mythologising Pacific young men in Australia’s print media

This thesis examined representations of Pacific young men in Australia’s newsprint media. Using Lefebvre’s concept of the production of space to analyse the data, the thesis established that a mythology of Pacific young men as a ‘problem group’ is produced in newsprint media through spaces which are spatial, cultural, geographical and political all at once. Such complexity sustains the power of whiteness and the way it shapes the visibility of young people already deemed as ‘Other’ in many Australian newspapers.
This research contributes to a new way of analysing newsprint media representations of young people in general, and Pacific young people specifically. By drawing on the conceptual triad as a method of analysing media, existing ideas about what it means to question representations of young people, and especially young men with dark bodies, are reframed as spatial.