Cultural threats, cop drama, and 'community PR' : diversity and security cultures in EastWest101

This study seeks to explore the ways viewers generate meanings and understandings of 'mediated reality' through television drama. It tests out the idea that drama programmes intended to reflect contemporary cultural diversity can assist viewers to negotiate anxieties about cultural difference. The analysis draws on viewer responses to SBS drama series EastWest101, including from Arabic-speaking backgrounds. EastWest101 is a cop show, set in Sydney's west and based on a real (self-titled) 'wog squad' police team, which centralizes cultural difference as the context and, often, the source of the drama. Analysis of responses explores the ways viewers interpret fictionalized portrayals of issues of belonging, personal security, and state authority and use them to negotiate their own responses to contemporary security cultures.