Wow! I had no idea about this, and it just goes to show how sharing history is a selective process, that involves all types of choices about what is shown, via what platforms, to whom and in what ways.
It also reminds me of another part of history I had no idea about until recently: this great story about two Chinese Aussie Rules teams competing against each other in Ballarat, around the same period – late 1800s. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/mar/25/forgotten-story-chinese-goldfields-aussie-rules
From the article: “Did the Chinese Australian Rules football tradition survive into the 21st century? Jamie Pi, an Australian Rules fanatic born in Xinjiang province, believes so. “It’s booming,” he said, and yet he had only heard rumours about the Ballarat Goldfields League history. “Why didn’t people tell us about this?” he asked.”

Thanks Milla! I think you brought up an important point about one of the goals behind this type of program. No doubt, one of the reasons that the Australian authorities are happy to cooperate closely with the broadcaster/producers is that they see this show as capable of acting as a teaching tool or guide to influence (potential) travelers’ behaviour.

Thanks, John! Analysing the data we collected was actually quite difficult at times, but also there was (and is) so much to say about it! Hopefully we can publish more on this soon.

Thank you, Hasan! One way these stereotypical representations are kept alive is through the erasure of diverse histories. For example, and as you mention cricket: few people know that the first Australian cricket team to ever tour internationally, in 1868, was entirely made up of Aboriginal players … https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/aboriginal-cricket-team

Thanks, Haein! Really leaves language teachers with a double challenge of both doing their job and raising awareness…

To be honest, even though it is easy to access various kinds of media, our stereotypes have not changed that much. There is still discrimination based on the English teacher’s appearance. For example, the wages of English teachers are different between white English teachers and African or Asian-looking teachers. Furthermore, Korean parents still prefer learning English from white English teachers with their children because the parents also learned English with white English teachers. For this reason, it is still difficult to succeed in their careers in Korea. 

Thanks, Connie, for going the extra mile and doing that additional bit of research!
(I’ll wait for your email on the other matter)

Thanks, koki, couldn’t agree more. Less stereotypical media representations of diverse looking and diverse sounding people as somehow suspicious would be a good start.

Thanks, 烏 (からす), for doing this extra research! Also striking that they are all male – the world of stereotyped national identity is masculine, too!

Thanks, Clara! Shows like “Friends” are such a great language learning resource – and to some degree every language learner takes on a new identity and becomes another person in their new language.
You might enjoy Kimie Takahashi’s book Language learning, gender, and desire. A short description at https://languageonthemove.com/to-english-with-love/

Thanks, Tushar! There are many great examples of diverse representations, as you mention. At the same time, I often find this kind of “diversity marketing” a bit disingenuous – it only pretends that everyone is equal and so invalidates the lived experience of exclusion, don’t you think?

Thanks, Dass! Really quite shocking how the media can create such a dissonance between image and reality. I hope you are having a good experience!