Community language media and Australia’s changing language demography

This paper examines the availability of radio, TV and newspapers in community languages at the time of the last census against the background of changes in Australia’s language demography. Radio programs in 80 languages, television in 48 languages and newspapers in 30 languages continue to provide information, companionship and language and cultural maintenance opportunities for Australia’s multilingual population. But it would appear from the data that media provision of some of the newer and rapidly increasing language communities is disproportionately low. However, there are factors other than sheer numbers of home speakers that need to be considered in the allocation of services. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s