Images in popular culture have been blamed for contributing to the stereotype that Australia is a racist country, amid claims that racism motivated a spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne this year.

Monash University academic Waleed Aly told ABC 1's Lateline that Australia is often seen overseas as an unrefined country.

"What occurs, I think, is this idea of a young country that's a bit rough and irreverent, and in some aspects of course that's true," he said.

"But even if you look at the popular culture references that seem to define us abroad, they sort of capture that image of something that's unrefined, it's Crocodile Dundee or it's Steve Irwin and so on."

He also says overseas media outlets treat stories about Australia through the prism of race.

"We make news internationally when there's some issue to do with race, whether it's Hansonism, or it's the apology to the Indigenous or the Cronulla riots," he said.

"The inherent racism of Australia is more or less assumed, and that becomes a difficult thing to erode, a very difficult perception to shift. It's kind of a stereotype that Australia as a nation suffers from, which I think is unfair."

Tanveer Ahmed, a fellow at the Centre For Independent Studies and columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, told Lateline there is no evidence to suggest institutional racism exists in Australia.

He said migrants are often attacked by other migrant groups rather than locals.

"I think that we have been very successful in integrating migrants, and in my experience of racial issues its often been more common within immigrants," he said.

"The Indian student example probably is testament to that, if you look in Sydney, where some of the attacks against Indian students were often by Lebanese immigrants here."

'Low-level' racism

Dr Aly says he experienced some racism while growing up in Australia, but it was of a low level.

"I wasn't getting bashed up daily because I looked different," he said.

"What we tend to have in Australia is kind of a fairly high level of low level racism ... so little day to day things, socially discriminatory practices, things like that that kind of operate almost below the surface, and lead to certain inequalities, but they're not major.

"When we have an event like Cronulla it shocks us, because it's in a way uncharacteristic of daily life in Australia, which is different I think to a lot of other countries where racial tensions are institutionalised."

Dr Ahmed also criticised the Indian media for being quick to seize on claims of Australian racism.

"After they lost the fifth Test at the SCG there were huge cries of racism relating to the umpiring decision," he said.

"I think it's often a defensive move as well within India, and that I think goes for many other ethnic groups as well, where rather than examine the more complex causes of an event, they can be quick to cry racism."