Chapter 5: On the Road to Roon?: Rural Australia's Storied Role in the Nation's Ice ‘Epidemic’

The way crystal methamphetamine or ‘ice’ use in rural Australia has been represented for national television audiences provides rich evidence of the intersections between media, crime and rurality. This chapter explores these connections through a framing analysis of three Australian television news and current affairs features about this topic. It investigates how concepts such as ‘fluidity’ and ‘boundedness’ operate in relation to the representation of ice use and drug-related crime in rural and regional communities. This raises questions about how certain images and associations come to circulate through media as well as their potential to evolve and change over time or to even be contested – sometimes by the very individuals and communities who serve as the subjects of stories about such problems in society.