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How do you visualise Australia?

Do you see images of kangaroos bounding through the bush, bronzed surf lifesavers patrolling the beaches or kilometres of suburban front yards dominated by Japanese cars?

Anthropologist Martin Forsey is making the most of his Australian Studies class this semester, in which more than 60 of the 97 participants are international students. He set them all a research project: to analyse forms of representation of Australia from several perspectives.

"I had made a commitment that my upper level units would all have a research component, which fits with the research-based pedagogy of the New Courses," Associate Professor Forsey said.

"These students are all in second or third year and come from an enormous range of disciplines. Out of nearly 100, there are only three or four who are majoring in Anthropology. So it has been really interesting to see what they have chosen, where their research has taken them and whether it confirmed their personal perceptions," he said.

Students chose their own topics from within six broad areas: mainstream media, online media, sport, nature, national celebrations and music. Some of them approached their topics as an ‘outsider' looking in to Australian society; others took the perspective of Australians communicating with other Australians within that society; and some looked at how Australians represented themselves on the international stage.

Their research will feed into Professor Forsey's own research on visualising Australia.

"At the beginning of the semester, I asked my overseas students to give me some words which they thought captured the idea of Australia. They came up with kangaroos, desert, bush, surf and suntanned men. The local students had a very different image, but their suburban reality is often lost in the big picture."

Brad Schroeder, an exchange student from Notre Dame University in Indiana, said the unit had given him a great opportunity to appreciate the vastness of Australian culture.

His research was in online media and he focused on the news site Reddit. "There are pages of news and pictures that are specifically Australian, and I compared these with the general pages," he said.

"I compared the top stories for 25 days with the top 25 Australian stories and I was surprised at what I found. I expected the Australian content would show the laid back, humorous nature of Australians. But, surprisingly, when Australians are posting stories and images for Australian consumption, the vast majority are quite serious.

"When Australians are posting stories and pictures for the international audience, they tend to revert to stereotype, such as posting a photo of a big spider eating a bird. There was also a comparison of sports with two photos: one showing a soccer player lying on the groundapparently uninjured, another showing an AFL player with his face covered in blood. The caption was: ‘A soccer player pretending he's injured and an Aussie Rules player pretending he isn't'.

"So I came to the conclusion that the Australian stereotype was put out there for an international audience but not a domestic one."

Erica Crooke, a mature-age local student, directed her research on ANZAC Day towards the traditional Australian Rules football match that is played every year on that day.

"I went to the dawn service for the first time but I was a bit disappointed because I couldn't see anything. The sunrise was very moving though. And I must say that as we were walking towards Kings Park, it felt like going to a football match, with thousands of people all streaming in one direction," she said.

Erica watched the pre-match telecast in which she said most of the coaches and players seemed to have a military connection. "Somebody in their families had been at AN ZAC Cove or Vietnam or were in the Rats of Tobruk.

"But I felt a real conflict and an anxiety that all the media attention on a football match was a bit disrespectful. The next day, an online article in The Drum also suggested this and there were about 100 pages of comments, many of their authors agreeing that they too felt that anxiety.

"It seems to me that the further we travel away from the AN ZAC battle, the more we are trying to make footy and war analogous."

Professor Forsey said he was finding his students' research fascinating. "Many of them were really excited about getting into research. I feel that hands-on research and inquiry are not just for academics; they are essential skills for professional life in the 21st century."

Published in UWA News , 11June 2012