The Australian We All Aspire to Be

Commemorative Journalism and the Death of the Crocodile Hunter

Bibliographic Data

ID5770641
AuthorsFolker Hanusch (0000-0002-7344-0483, University of the Sunshine Coast, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume130
Issue1
Pages28-38
Publication date2009-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia International Australia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1329-878X • E-ISSN: 2200-467X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1329878x0913000105
OpenAlexW1592499204
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

This article examines the news coverage generated in Australia by the death of Steve Irwin, widely known as the Crocodile Hunter. In line with past research on commemorative journalism, the study demonstrates the dominant discourses employed in the reporting of Irwin's death. It is argued that Australia's newspapers invoked a number of national myths, such as mateship, larrikinism and anti-elitism, in order to reassert notions of Australian identity and social values and to deal with the widespread grief over his loss. Most importantly, the study sheds new light on how news media deal with challenges to the dominant memorialising discourse. Past studies had not been able to investigate alternative discourses in much detail, but in examining Irwin's death we are able to see how the media deal with such an unwanted interruption. It is argued that newspapers appropriated the alternative perspective within the mythical terms of their memorialising discourse, thereby not allowing it to disrupt the memorialisation itself and in fact further strengthening the process of mythologising the Crocodile Hunter

Elitism · Media Studies and Communication · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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