Journal of Communication InquiryM lticulturalism a d Australia’s SBS Television

Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Television is unique as a specifi-cally multicultural public broadcaster. The manner in which SBS addresses and recognizes differentmodes of community is also distinctive. As a national broad-caster, SBS Television observes the uniformity of a nationally defined commu-nity through reflecting the interests of a dominant culture and audience. However, formations of community that are not as static or reified will also rec-ognize themselves as communities through the way they respond to the address of SBS as a narrowcast television service. This article will examine not only the history and changing role of SBS Television within the shifting topography of Australian multiculturalism but also the differing notions of community that are rehearsed across SBS programming practices. It will then turn to the individual documentary texts in the Hybrid Life series to explore how community and col-lective identity can be narrated at the localized level of the subject. The current phase of modernity is marked by a heightened rate of global change and the intensification of population flows. Modern subjectivities ar