Where do First Nations travel in the news media? Spatial analysis of news stories on First Nations in The Australian and the Daily Liberal

This chapter undertakes a spatial analysis of new stories on First Nations in Australia focusing on two newspapers, the national newspaper The Australian, and the local newspaper the Daily Liberal, which services the regional New South Wales town of Dubbo and surrounding areas. Content analysis of news stories from the month of June 2019 was performed to determine where First Nations travel in the news media and the spatial mobility of First Nations at national and local levels of news treatment. While the majority of news stories in The Australian took place in major cities, and reflect the urban demography of First Nations, a high number of stories focused on issues in remote and very remote locations. This focus suggests that remoteness and symbolic exclusion is still a salient spatial feature of non-Indigenous representations of First Nations. The Daily Liberal stories covered a more concentrated regional area, and there was a tendency to portray First Nations issues as aligned with regional development, opportunity, and progress. This chapter reveals how the physical and symbolic boundaries of news media refract Indigenous mobility and geographical presence in Australia.