Rural sociology and the media
Hugh Campbell
Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment, School of Social Sciences, Otago University, New Zealand
Geoffrey Lawrence
Professor, Sociology; Head, School of Social Science, University of Queensland, QLD
PP: 013 - 013
Keywords
media, communications
Article Text
There is an adage at universities that nothing beneficial can come from the meeting of academics and the mass media. Academics, by habit and training, excel in providing complicated arguments and in disclosing the uncertainties of findings, the media want a quick and racy story.
This is not to say the relationship between the two groups is not productive. On the positive side, the presentation of otherwise incomprehensible scientific knowledge to the public provides information and knowledge which aids understanding of our complex society. On the negative side, university findings can be sensationalised; researchers can become the victims of the increasingly common 'beat up'.
Rural sociologists try hard to provide theoretically insightful and methodologically sound research findings. Sometimes they are castigated by the media for their troubles. A recent example is that of La Trobe sociologist Ken Dempsey who conducted fieldwork in 'Smalltown' in central Victoria. His carefully documented findings were considered by one reviewer to be 'sociological sludge'. He was accused of being boring, unspectacular and of 'not telling us anything we didn't already know'. He was guilty, of course, of couching his findings in impartial sociological prose.
The media are attracted to the bizarre or uncommon aspects of rural community life - if only Mad Max inhabited more rural towns! Four years ago - this time in New Zealand - a popular weekend magazine ran a series of reports on 'small town NZ'. The reporter spent three days in a rural village chatting quietly to the locals and then thrilled the New Zealand public with an expose of vice, hypocrisy and perversion. The town was accused of having 'invented incest'. More recently, a work on rural drinking in New Zealand, co-authored by Centre doctoral student Hugh Campbell, was subjected to a spot of unsubtle media scrutiny. The story first appeared in The Christchurch Press and within three days had found its way into the newspapers of rural Australia. International recognition came with a price. The main 'finding' highlighted by the press was that New Zealand men drink in pubs to escape their wives; this point was not one of the conclusions of the study. It was a brief summary of the findings of another team of researchers and was referred to only in a discussion of background, comparative, material.
In a nutshell, eighteen months of careful research and a 173 page report gained notoriety for having mentioned a 'finding' from elsewhere in a review of relevant literature. The simplistic notion that pubs provide a haven for working men who can then discuss the important affairs of the world away from their shrewish women folk conforms nicely with a popular media image of rural life. The research was condemned for 'bashing our kiwi blokes' and for promoting a 'load of meaningless stereotypes'. Ironically, the study had sought to avoid exactly the kind of rural stereotyping for which the urban media is renowned.
In April of this year the Centre was quoted as having produced a new report on farm suicide. 'Farm Suicides Rise' was the headline in a Melbourne Sunday paper; findings of the new report were quoted in the four introductory paragraphs. There was a 'strong trend towards suicide and violence on the farm'. People from all over Australia began phoning the Centre for more details. Their calls were in vain; there was no such study. The journalist had extracted material from a National Farmers' Federation submission which quoted a finding from the mid-1980s. The writer was largely unapologetic when accused of having used out-of-date information. Suicide was an important issue, he stated, and the truth must not be hidden! He was asked why he wrote the story without corroborating the findings with the Centre. I tried Friday but no one answered', he said. The story appeared on Easter Sunday. The Friday he 'tried' was Good Friday. The irony of this little episode was that Robert Bush of the Centre had actually written an article which included the phrase 'rural suicide' in the title. He was urging caution when interpreting the available statistics. By the end of the week Robert had been hauled through the ABC radio hierarchy and was being grilled by Andrew Olle about the drama of youth suicide.
The prejudices of town and country are part of a bizarre ideological dualism concerning rural affairs. On one side we have the 'Rural Idyll' with its glorification of the countryside. Rural areas are seen to offer a high quality of life; they are considered to be closer to nature and remote from the superficiality of urban society. On the other side there is the image of rural backwaters with their deprived and ignorant citizens struggling to survive. People here are suspicious of outsiders, they are conservative and poor. They are the people left behind - the remnants of an uncompromising economic system which limits their ability to escape from the realities of social decline.
Both images are ideological constructions which obscure the more important aspects of rural life. But both images appeal to the media. Researchers who expose the fallacy both of the Australian arcadia and of the 'Deliverance derelicts' get up the nose of reporters whose job it is to capture the attention of the story-hungry urbanites. As part of their research activities, rural sociologists aim to expose common prejudice. They should not forget that repackaging prejudice is the stock in trade of much of the mass media industry.
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