Audiences and Australian media policy: the relevance of George Gerbner

This chapter outlines the relevance of George Gerbner's work on television violence to audience informed, policy-directed Australian media research. Gerbner founded the Cultural Indicators Project (CIP) in the 1960s. Bringing a CIP perspective to Antipodean conversations adds historical weight to the notion that policy should use nuanced understandings of what violence and pornography represent, as core elements of media culture. The chapter explores recent Australian media research on the management of violent and sexually explicit materials. It explains why Gerbner's work is significant to these developments, since it reimagined the geography of audience studies, particularly around the concept of message systems. The chapter discusses why Gerbner's reconceptualization of media risk suggests that we need to spend as much time listening to what the public doesn't like about screen sex and violence, as to the enjoyment they get from such material. It describes how digital media set the foundation for the kind of audience-driven media activism that Gerbner wanted to provoke.