Playing Catch-up: How Australian Indigenous Broadcasting Services and Their Audiences Are Navigating the Digital Transformation

The Australian Indigenous broadcasting sector is vast, delivering content to 214 communities in urban, regional and remote areas since 1982. The sector’s radio and television services are well-established and highly valued by their communities, especially in remote areas – but the place of Indigenous broadcasting in the lives of communities is shifting as the media landscape transforms. This paper draws on a national study of the Australian Indigenous Broadcasting and Media Program, a major government-funded media initiative. For more than 30 years, this program has supported Indigenous community broadcasting to deliver unique content, providing cultural content, language maintenance, community connection and a forum for the broader political goals of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This national study conducted throughout 2023-2024 found a valued community media sector at a critical juncture – maintenance of radio services and technical support is uneven, leaving some communities without active radio service; communications infrastructure is poor in many remote areas, creating a significant digital divide; and funding and policy levers have not kept up with audience behaviour, meaning traditional radio and television services are not engaging with communities active on social and digital media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

These are important issues to highlight, as Indigenous broadcasting provides Indigenous communities with the opportunity to create a ‘black public sphere’ (Squires, 2002) – in our case, an Indigenous public sphere – to produce and consume unique, community-centred content. This is essential in the context of a colonised nation that boasts a media system that does not cater to (or consider) their Indigenous audience in any real way. Drawing on a survey of 762 Indigenous people and qualitative fieldwork at 18 community sites, this paper outlines the critical juncture of Australian Indigenous broadcasting and possible solutions to secure its ‘digital future’.