TY - JOUR
T1 - Did Australia listen to Indigenous people on constitutional recognition? A big data analysis
AU - Parkinson, John
AU - Franco-Guillén, Núria
AU - de Laile, Sebastian
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant DP160102598]. We extend our thanks and respect to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders, academics and public servants who supported the project, some over several years, particularly Jackie Huggins, Adrian Miller, Peter Radoll, and Lawrence Swann. Workshop participants and interviewees are acknowledged in the online resources that accompany this paper. Thanks also to Cameron Summers-Borchard, and the Kungullanji Indigenous Summer Research Programme at Griffith University that supported his work. We acknowledge the Ngunnawal, Yuggera and Turrbal peoples as owners of the Country on which much of the work for this research was conducted. We pay our respects to your Elders, past and present, and thank you for your hospitality and custodianship. Thanks also to Adrian Little, Mark McMillan, Paul Muldoon, Juliet Rogers, Erik Doxtader, and Andrew Schaap for inviting us to participate in a workshop on their related project (DP30101399); to Rhys Thomas, who produced an annotated bibliography of the Recognise campaign; Michael Jensen, for guiding us into topic modelling; and Haidee Kotze, Chris Reed, and Theodore Scaltsas for essential conversations on computational linguistics. Thanks to the journal?s editors and reviewers for their constructive and helpful criticism.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/1/22
Y1 - 2022/1/22
N2 - This paper uses novel electronic tools to identify the degree to which Australia was listening to Indigenous peoples in a ‘national conversation’ about constitutional recognition between 2015 and late 2017. The results show that while there was a superficial overlap in themes, there were important differences of framing. Recognition remained a largely formal, elite and non-Indigenous concern, with First Nations focusing on treaties, sovereignty, listening and respect. Interaction was noticeably aggressive, but not exclusively so. Non-Indigenous people avoided discussing racism, and talked more frequently about history, framing issues in the past tense; First Nations talked about the here and now. And despite more focus on everyday racism, Indigenous peoples were consistently more positive and proud, rejecting ‘plight’ constructions.
AB - This paper uses novel electronic tools to identify the degree to which Australia was listening to Indigenous peoples in a ‘national conversation’ about constitutional recognition between 2015 and late 2017. The results show that while there was a superficial overlap in themes, there were important differences of framing. Recognition remained a largely formal, elite and non-Indigenous concern, with First Nations focusing on treaties, sovereignty, listening and respect. Interaction was noticeably aggressive, but not exclusively so. Non-Indigenous people avoided discussing racism, and talked more frequently about history, framing issues in the past tense; First Nations talked about the here and now. And despite more focus on everyday racism, Indigenous peoples were consistently more positive and proud, rejecting ‘plight’ constructions.
KW - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
KW - big data
KW - Constitutional recognition
KW - democracy
KW - Indigenous politics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121330513&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10361146.2021.2009764
DO - 10.1080/10361146.2021.2009764
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85121330513
SN - 1036-1146
VL - 57
SP - 17
EP - 40
JO - Australian Journal of Political Science
JF - Australian Journal of Political Science
IS - 1
ER -