An Island Under Siege: Negative Australian Media Narratives of Asylum Seekers and the Opportunity for Counter-Discourses

Asylum seekers to Australia in the early twenty-first century have been largely depicted in the national press as an anonymous threat demanding military action and offshore detention. Australia’s responses to asylum seekers have taken place within a paranoid atmosphere of a nation under siege. This essay examines the negative narratives regarding asylum seekers in Australia and the historical and cultural structures they are built upon. The essay suggests eyewitness accounts as a way to pierce the blanketing anonymity of asylum seekers in the media and traces some of the methods made possible by social media and corresponding networks to bring these narratives to the public at large.