bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Representing Australianness: Our National Identity Brought to You by Today Tonight
Authors: McIver Damian
Published: January 2017

Since first being broadcast in 1995, Today Tonight has become one of Australia's most watched current affairs programs. It has also arguably become one of the most talked about and controversial programs on Australian television. This article explores the links between Today Tonight and discourses of Australian identity. By placing this program within a theoretical tradition that views television as a cultural storyteller, this article explores the complex and somewhat contradictory representations of the Australian identity made by the Today Tonight text. It will argue that, throughout a range of representations — from the discourse of the ‘Aussie battler’ to contrasting depictions of Australian society under threat and in decay, or as a place of opportunity — Today Tonight maintains a steady focus on ‘ordinary Australians’ as its main target audience and the bearers of our true national identity.
‘Reading in Brown Paper’: Beckett's Budget and the Sensationalist Press in Interwar Sydney
Authors: Loy-Wilson Sophie
Published: January 2017

This article addresses the audience reception of sensationalist newspapers in interwar Australia through a case study of Sydney weekly Beckett's Budget. During a libel trial brought against Beckett's in 1928, readers came to its defence and their testimony reveals overlaps between reading and political allegiances: reading Beckett's equated with voting Labor. While histories of sensationalist media in Australia have rightly emphasised illicit sexuality and public outcry, connections between sensationalism and working-class political movements remain on the margins of academic interest. Responding to the question ‘Do you read Beckett's?’ readers' evidence at the trial constitutes an audience response and invites debate over the ways gender and class could inform political engagement in the 1920s. Viewing Beckett's Budget outside of ‘brown paper’ and beyond the sensationalist genre reveals a shift in Australian political culture as party strategists embraced a broader electorate, using Beckett's Budget to tap into the culture and concerns of interwar society.
Debating the Barrel Girl: The Rise and Fall of Panda Lisner
Authors: Bye Susan
Published: January 2017

The letters published in Melbourne's three TV magazines ( Listener In-TV, TV Week and TV Times) during the establishment period of the city's television service offer an insight into a number of the issues, concerns and interests that were a feature of the public negotiation of television during this period, as well as attesting to an understanding that the local production landscape was a shared enterprise answerable to the viewers who supported it. The vociferous discussions that took place in the public arena of the letters pages were not necessarily representative of any general response to the city's TV service, but they unsettle the idea that TV was something that ‘happened to’ viewers who would soak up whatever entertainment was on offer. In this discussion, I explore the role and function of these print-based TV forums by focusing on the correspondence generated by In Melbourne Tonight's most famous barrel girl, Panda Lisner, whose changing fortunes demonstrated the determination of a number of viewers to play a participatory, even regulatory, role in the Melbourne production landscape.
Remembering Changi: Public Memory and the Popular Media
Authors: Hamilton Paula
Published: January 2017

Media arenas are increasingly the place where most of our negotiation over the meaning of the past is carried out. Indeed, many commentators argue that television plays a particularly central role in the shaping of social memory. This paper seeks to examine how the various forms of media are changing the relationship between personal (and often silent) memories and public ones by asking what happens when personal memories of experience, which are not passed on within families — or only in a limited way — finally become public. I argue here that television and the internet, as increasingly interdependent cultural forms, have an important role in mediating between the personal experience and the public memory of events, as well as between genders and generations. As a case study, I examine the audience response to the television series Changi, aired on the ABC in 2001, using comments posted on the Changi guestbook internet forum. From this example, I examine how technologies of popular culture — especially new digital media — interact to create new ‘publics’, thus both increasing democratisation and access for individuals and also encompassing much larger collectives than in former times.
Uniform Defamation Laws in Australia: Moving towards a More ‘Reasonable’ Privilege?
Authors: Breit Rhonda
Published: January 2017

A new uniform defamation regime now operates in Australia. This article canvasses the Uniform Defamation Laws (UDLs), focusing on the defence of qualified privilege and its capacity to protect mass media publications in the public interest. Drawing on case law and analysis of the key approaches to statutory privilege, the article evaluates the current approach to statutory qualified privilege. Taking account of observations in O'Hara v Sims (2008, 2009) about the operation of qualified privilege, it questions whether the UDL statutory qualified privilege will ultimately censor publications in the public interest and restrict the application of the qualified privilege defence.
Doing Chinese Media Studies: A Reflection on the Field's History and Methodology
Authors: Yu Haiqing
Published: January 2017

This article reflects on the history and methodology of ‘Chinese media studies' as a (sub)-field of inquiry in academia. It identifies some key features in its trajectory of development, and particularly addresses some of the methodological concerns with regard to doing media studies – some of which are specific to ‘Chinese’ media studies and some of which are relevant to all inquiries about our mediated lives. It discusses methodology as outlook and orientation in ‘approaching’ Chinese media studies and as techniques and methods in ‘doing’ Chinese media studies. This article provokes, rather than promotes, questions and thoughts on the state of Chinese media studies.
China Media Research: The Trans-Disciplinary Challenge
Authors: Keane Michael
Published: January 2017

This article addresses the permeability of the field of China media research and its openness to new ideas; it argues that we need to adopt a wide angle view on research opportunities. Expansion of China's media during the past decade has opened up possibilities for broadening the field. The discussion first identifies boundary tensions as the field responds to transdisciplinary knowledge, before addressing challenges faced by Chinese researchers or visiting scholars in ‘Western’ media environments. Finally, the article addresses what a wide-angle perspective might include.
Chinese Media Studies from an Inter-Asian Perspective
Authors: Khoo Olivia
Published: January 2017

This article interrogates what might be considered specifically ‘Chinese’ about Chinese media studies. Examining Chinese media studies from the complementary perspectives of Inter-Asian cultural studies and diasporic interventions into Chinese media, the article seeks to define (and to extend) the current limits of the field as it has emerged in both teaching and research. In doing so, it considers what has hitherto constituted the ‘legitimate’ object of Chinese media studies and asks what might be encompassed by this field in the future as it continues to grow.
Credibility or Convenience? Political Information Choices in a Media-Saturated Environment
Authors: Moody Kim E.
Published: January 2017

This article considers how a range of personal characteristics (media scepticism, political interest, need for cognition and media gratifications) influence the political information choices of Australians. Data collection was conducted in Brisbane via a postal survey during March and April 2008. The data revealed that the characteristics associated with information quality have very little influence on media use patterns, indicating that use of the media appears to occur simply as a consequence of other everyday life practices, rather than as an information-seeking activity. People regularly use media they do not trust to find out about politics, calling into question the previously assumed centrality of trust to information choices. If convenience trumps credibility in information selection, the importance of media literacy is heightened. The findings also emphasise the need for more holistic contexts for media research, which consider the broader social contexts and practices in which media-oriented behaviours occur.
Children's Content Regulation and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’
Authors: Rutherford Leonie , Biron Dean , Skouteris Helen
Published: January 2017

Some 30 years ago, Australia introduced the Children's Television Standards (CTS) with the twin goals of providing children with high-quality local programs and offering some protection from the perceived harms of television. The most recent review of the CTS occurred in the context of a decade of increasing international concern at rising levels of overweight and obesity, especially in very young children. Overlapping regulatory jurisdictions and co-regulatory frameworks complicate the process of addressing pressing issues of child health, while rapid changes to the media ecology have both extended the amount of programming for children and increased the economic challenges for producers. Our article begins with an overview of the conceptual shifts in priorities articulated in the CTS over time. Using the 2007–09 Review of the CTS as a case study, it then examines the role of research and stakeholder discourses in the CTS review process and critiques the effectiveness of existing regulatory regimes, both in providing access to dedicated children's content and in addressing the problem of escalating obesity levels in the population.
Regulating Film Content in the United States and Australia, 1900–1940
Authors: Walker Sonia
Published: January 2017

Historically, in both Australia and the United States, the issue of film censorship has been a source of conflict between the film industry, community groups and the government. This article compares the methods used to regulate film content in each jurisdiction between 1900 and 1940. It argues that while the legal structure and community pressure groups had a significant influence on the form of control that was implemented, it was the economic strength and structure of the film industry in each country that played a pivotal role in determining the method of film censorship that was adopted.
A Profile of Australian Sport Journalists (Revisited)
Authors: Nicholson Matthew , Zion Lawrie , Lowden David
Published: January 2017

This article presents key findings from a survey of Australian sport journalists, the first of its kind since Henningham's (1995) seminal study in the early 1990s. Australian sport journalists participated in an online survey, which asked questions related to their profile and work practices. The findings reveal that in many respects the profile of Australian sport journalists is similar to what it was almost twenty years ago, yet there are indications that both the professional lives of sport journalists and the broader sport media industry are undergoing significant change. Like their predecessors, contemporary Australian sport journalists are ‘30-something’, predominantly Australian-born, work in a male-dominated environment, plan to be working in journalism or the media in five years’ time and have similar views about the functions of the news media. The contemporary Australian sport journalists differ in that they are far more educated, are more likely to be located in Victoria and are now more likely to work in non-print media forms such as radio and online than their predecessors, who were far more likely to work in the print media.
A Tale of Two Events? Media Analysis of the Melbourne 2008 Homeless World Cup
Authors: Sherry Emma , Osborne Angela
Published: January 2017

In 2008, Melbourne became the first Australian city to host the Homeless World Cup (HWC), an annual international sporting event that aims to raise the profile of homelessness and social marginalisation. This article first examines relevant print media articles relating to the HWC by identifying key themes through thematic and content analysis. It then examines the polarised reporting of the HWC by two print media outlets, The Age and the Herald Sun, and argues that each outlet's coverage served to reinforce its own established position on the key political and social issues, in this instance homelessness, asylum seeking and immigration. The divergence in the discourses constructed in each paper provides a demonstrative example of the capacity of the media to use events of all sorts to consolidate their political and commercial positions.
Mindless Thugs Running Riot? Mainstream, Alternative and Online Media Representations of Football Crowd Violence
Authors: Spaaij Ramón
Published: January 2017

This article examines the nature of media coverage of football (soccer) crowd violence in three European countries (England, The Netherlands and Spain). It presents an analytic framework that draws on etic (outsider) and emic (insider) perspectives, and illustrates how each perspective is (re)presented in different forms of media. Whereas the mainstream media's reporting of football crowd violence generally is consistent with the notions of etic representation and moral panic, alternative media tend to construct emic perspectives and use dramatised personal experience in reporting. The framework presented provides a foundation for further analysis and empirical investigation of media depictions of football crowd violence.
What League? The Representation of Female Athletes in Australian Television Sports Coverage
Authors: Caple Helen , Greenwood Kate , Lumby Catharine
Published: January 2017

This article explores why women's sport in Australia still struggles to attract sponsorship and mainstream media coverage despite evidence of high levels of participation and on-field successes. Data are drawn from the largest study of Australian print and television coverage of female athletes undertaken to date in Australia, as well as from a case study examining television coverage of the success of the Matildas, the Australian women's national football team, in winning the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women's Asian Cup in 2010. This win was not only the highest ever accolade for any Australian national football team (male or female), but also guaranteed the Matildas a place in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany [where they reached the quarter-finals]. Given the close association between success on the field, sponsorship and television exposure, this article focuses specifically on television reporting. We present evidence of the starkly disproportionate amounts of coverage across this section of the news media, and explore the circular link between media coverage, sponsorship and the profile of women's sport.
Transitions in the Film Trade among Oecd Countries: A Network Approach
Authors: Choi Junho H. , Lee Sang-Woo , Chon Bum-Soo
Published: January 2017

This article explores the structural transitions of the international film trade among 32 OECD countries over eleven years since 1996. A network analysis of the trade data shows that there have been changes in the pattern of the film trade over the past decade, and this transition is markedly apparent around 2002, when the WTO Doha Round was launched. A discrepancy between film import and export partnership patterns has enlarged since 2002. While the export pattern among OECD countries is stable over time, the film-import pattern shows a temporal transition before and after 2002. The results also demonstrate that the US film industry has utilised partial localisation strategies, such as co-production and runaway production, in an effort to maintain dominance in the international film market.
‘I'm Alright, Thanks’: Non-Conformity and the Media Framing of Social Inclusion
Authors: Snowden Collette
Published: January 2017

The concept of social inclusion generally is discussed as an ideal to which there is no opposition, and to which policy and practices in society necessarily must be directed. This article discusses how current notions of social inclusion in policy, academic and media discourses are related to historical representations of social disadvantage. It also discusses how social inclusion policies and ideas in Australia accord with cultural values and ideals of egalitarianism, but conflict with the values of non-conformity and anti-authoritarianism celebrated in the national identity. It examines how the media framing of social inclusion is influenced by the received understanding and historic representation of social inclusion, as well as how media representations of non-conformity in Australia are framed by a mythology of Australian journalists and journalism as larrikins and non-conformist. It argues that while media framing of social inclusion frequently reflects and promotes the dominant perspective as constructed by government and academic discourses, Australian media reporting is able at times to provide a positive alternative to the homogenising and bureaucratic view of social inclusion by championing and celebrating non-conformity and anti-authoritarianism.
Socially Inclusive Processes: New Opportunities with New Media?
Authors: Penman Robyn , Turnbull Sue
Published: January 2017

The tools of Web 2.0 and its culture of open collaboration offer a number of new opportunities to individuals, communities and governments. At first glance, many of these opportunities appear to lend themselves to fostering socially inclusive practices, and the report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce in 2009 certainly claimed this. However, while there has been much discussion of social inclusion in policy terms, there has been little consideration of what it means in practice, and no evidence to link the efficacy of new media in enhancing that practice. We develop a conceptual framework to account for the practice of social inclusion, drawing on recent developments in media theory focused on the themes of hospitality and listening. This framework is used to analyse the government's Social Inclusion website and the online forum. Our analysis suggests new media may offer the potential for new opportunities for social inclusion, but there are a number of factors militating against these opportunities being taken up to good effect.
A Partial Promise of Voice: Digital Storytelling and the Limits of Listening
Authors: Dreher Tanja
Published: January 2017

The continual rise of participatory media offers increasing opportunities for nonprofessionals and marginalised communities to tell their stories. In the policy arena, Australia's Social Inclusion Agenda and international debates on indicators of well-being name ‘voice’ as a key capability for social inclusion and individual flourishing. In this article, I engage recent scholarship on ‘listening’ and ‘voice that matters’ to highlight the limits of the participatory media genre of digital storytelling and of the social inclusion category of ‘voice’. The discussion is illustrated via examples from public launch events for ‘mini-films’ produced in digital storytelling projects facilitated by Information Cultural Exchange (ICE), a new media arts organisation working in Sydney's cosmopolitan western suburbs. While these public events ensure a process of ‘voice’, I argue for a greater commitment to political listening in media research, practice and policy, lest the promise of ‘voice’ remain only partially fulfilled.
Transforming Scandal: The ‘St Kilda Schoolgirl’, Digital Media Activism and Social Change
Authors: Cover Rob
Published: January 2017

Between May 2010 and March 2011, a sex scandal involving members of the St Kilda Football Club, other AFL stakeholders and a young woman was played out in both traditional media and online sites. The scandal involved claims of pregnancy to a player, the online distribution of nude and sexual images of several footballers, and an affair with a much older player-manager. This article examines the series of incidents comprising the scandal with a view to demonstrating that the young woman's use of digital media not only allowed her to maintain a media focus on herself as complainant rather than through the traditional victim narrative of sex scandals, but that her actions can be read as a tactical form of digital media activism over gender relations in the celebrity social world of Australian Rules Football.
Questions about the Usefulness of Microcomputers in 1980s Australia
Authors: Swalwell Melanie
Published: January 2017

Relatively cheap, low-end 8-bit machines were embraced by hobbyists interested in computing in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But what were these early computers good for? Opinion was split as to whether these early computers were useful, and what for. As early adopters, hobbyists were in the vanguard of inventing new uses for computers. To date, their pursuits have tended to be overlooked or dismissed as insignificant. This article focuses on consumption in the early microcomputing period and considers the Australian history of computing in terms of several interrelated questions about utility. Based on extensive archival research, it discusses doubts about the usefulness of these computers, the actual uses to which these micros were put, the invention of new uses by hobbyists and factors behind the change in perceptions of computers' usefulness in the latter part of the decade.
Confrontation and Cooptation: A Brief History of Australian Political Blogs
Authors: Highfield Tim , Bruns Axel
Published: January 2017

Even early on, political blogging in Australia was not an entirely alternative endeavour – the blogosphere has seen early and continued involvement from representatives of the mainstream media. However, the acceptance of the blogging concept by the mainstream media has been accompanied by a comparative lack of acceptance of individual bloggers. Analyses and commentary published by bloggers have been attacked by journalists, creating an at times antagonistic relationship. In this article, we examine the historical development of blogging in Australia, focusing primarily on political and news blogs. We track the evolution of individual and group blogs, and independent and mainstream media-hosted opinion sites, and the gradual convergence of these platforms and their associated contributing authors. We conclude by examining the current state of the Australian blogosphere and its likely future development, taking into account the rise of social media, particularly Twitter, as additional spaces for public commentary.
The Construction of Karen Karnak: The Multi-Author Function
Authors: Snake-Beings Emit
Published: January 2017

The context of this article is the changes in authorship that have occurred within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia. The mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture, compared with that of a Read/Only tradition, is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such represents new functions and attributes. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Karen Karnak and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, while concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names forms an important tool of deconstruction involving an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology in the creation of a collective multi-author pseudonym, Karen Karnak. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of multi-authorship on the concept of the body of work, ownership and copyright.
Lifestyle Media and Social Transformation in Asia
Authors: Martin Fran , Lewis Tania , Sinclair John
Published: January 2017

Across Asia, the past three decades have been marked by shared experiences of hyper-accelerated social, cultural and economic transformation. Consumer culture plays an increasing role in countries once dominated by socialism, and neo-liberal economic and social policies increasingly are being adopted by authoritarian statist regimes. More and more, governments address their citizens as individualised, sovereign consumers with reflexive ‘choices' about their lifestyles and identities. One of the correlates of these processes of (neo-) liberalisation has been the emergence of new formations of consumption-oriented middle classes with lifestyle aspirations that are shaped by national, regional and global influences. How are everyday conceptions and experiences of identity and citizenship being transformed by rearticulated cultures of modernity across the region? This article draws upon the insights of existing Euro-American research on lifestyle culture and consumption, but extends its focus by relocating such concerns within the context of Asia and within a trans-national comparative frame. Examining how the rise of lifestyle media and culture is involved in a series of complex, local-level ideological contestations around emergent forms of sociality and identity across a range of geo-cultural sites, including India, China, Singapore and Taiwan, the authors challenge reductive assumptions about the global translatability and mobility of ‘Euro-modernity’.
Scaling Lifestyle in China: The Emergence of Local Television Cultures and the Cultural Economy of Place-Making
Authors: Sun Wanning
Published: January 2017

Media in China consist less and less of national-scale media, and more and more of media at a range of sub-national scales, including the region, province, municipality, county and village. In the television sector, local and provincial television has become national in terms of access, and television at sub-national levels has had to become much more intensely local and provincial as a way to achieve difference, and therefore survive and thrive in the competitive media market. Against this background, this article is a comparative analysis of the production, consumption and actual programs of lifestyle television between local/semi-rural, metropolitan and national television. It argues that a growing recognition of the appreciable value of the ‘local’ and ‘regional’ in the cultural economy of place-making has given rise to a plethora of place-specific media forms, and that scale plays a pivotal role in shaping distinct locality-appropriate taste, outlook and sensibility.
Writing Onê: Deviant Orthography and Heternormativity in Contemporary Japanese Lifestyle Culture
Authors: Maree Claire
Published: January 2017

Since the turn of the millennium, Japanese variety television has witnessed a revival in onê-kyara (queen personalities). In contemporary lifestyle media, the trans-gendered onê-personality figure is demonstrative of how suitable consumption and personal effort can bring forth the transformational happiness of the individual. The transgressive, radical potential of the figure of transformative non-normative gender is muffled by the onê-personality's positioning within variety television as a friendly expert of extraordinary and often comical proportions. Language is one of the key sites where the tensions of critical expertise and queerness are negotiated via synthetic friendship and comic relief. In lifestyle media, onê-kyara-kotoba (queen-personality-talk) is juxtaposed with conventional Japanese and emerging practices of digital orthography. This social practice of writing effectively facilitates the contemporary fetish of the onê (queen), and the consumption of homosexual and trans-gendered lifestyle experts selling the promise of heteronormative romantic love.
Localised Audiences and Transnational Media: Media Use by Iranian-Australians
Authors: Budarick John
Published: January 2017

This article investigates the ways in which Iranian-Australians engage with Iranian state and diasporic media. Through a series of in-depth interviews, the article analyses the social, geographical and political factors that influence the use of Iranian media. While media have an important role to play among Iranians in Australia, the diverse nature of the audience, as well as the continuing importance of the political, social and cultural space of media production and consumption, must be taken into account. Participants in this study have an ambivalent relationship with Iranian media, with media produced in Iran, Australia and by the diaspora approached in different ways.
Australian Gothic Soundscapes: The Proposition
Authors: Milner Johnny
Published: January 2017

While recent studies demonstrate a significant increase in the level of interest in the soundtracks of Australian cinema, very little attention has focused on the way soundtracks can convey the ‘gothic’ within an outback-cinematic context. This article attempts to begin to address this issue by providing a close reading of the Australian gothic Western The Proposition – looking specifically to its sonic dimensions, namely the amalgam of score, dialogue and sound effects. The article argues that the film's soundtrack draws from a range of Australian literary and cinematic tropes, and draws specifically on the aural and epistemological gothic traits of Australia, the outback and its perception as unfamiliar space during the time of settlement. Following this discussion, the focus shifts to ways in which The Proposition's soundtrack foregrounds significations that offer new, and complex, articulations of a specifically ‘Australian gothic’.
Record Collectors: Hollywood Record Labels in the 1950s and 1960s
Authors: Messenger Cory
Published: January 2017

The affiliation between film and music is the cornerstone of modern entertainment industry synergy. This article examines one of the key chapters in that relationship: the period in the 1950s during which the major studios entered the record business. Ostensibly designed to capitalise on the emerging film soundtrack market, the flurry of mergers, acquisitions and the establishment of new record labels coincided with the rise of rock‘n’ roll and the explosion of the market for recorded popular music. The studios quickly found that in order to keep their record labels afloat, they needed to establish a foothold in popular music. The processes by which they achieved this transformed the marketing of recorded music, sparking a period of unprecedented commercial success for the record industry in the late 1960s. Simultaneously, from these record subsidiaries Hollywood learned how to market cinema to a youth audience, heralding the arrival of ‘New Hollywood’.
Can You Hear Me Now? Musical Values, Education and ‘Voice’
Authors: Rimmer Mark
Published: January 2017

This article addresses a number of questions concerning the use of music by young people. In particular, the argument presented seeks to bring to the fore a set of concerns whose significance is often overlooked or downplayed in debates about young people's engagements with music. These relate to music's capacity to function, on the one hand, in a way that reflects and embodies ethical and ideological commitments of varying kinds and, on the other, as a vehicle of expression through which people might ‘give an account’ of themselves. The article first surveys some of the ways in which scholars have conceived of the relation between forms of musical activity and their broader social force before turning to recent research and policy developments concerned with school-based music education in Britain and considering the ways in which certain forms and dimensions of young people's expressive musical activity are granted legitimacy and state support while others are ignored or marginalised. The final part of the article reflects upon the foregoing discussion and introduces the concepts of ‘voice’ (Couldry, 2010) and ‘recognition’ (Honneth, 1995), to consider how the promotion of some musical values to the detriment of others has important implications for the ways in which young people understand the extent to which their claims – and not just cultural ones – are taken seriously within society.
Globalisation from within? The De-Nationalising of Australian Film and Television Production
Authors: O'Regan Tom , Potter Anna
Published: January 2017

Saskia Sassen argues that globalisation is taking place deep inside countries and ‘institutional domains that have largely been constructed in national terms’. This type of globalisation is localised to ‘national’ and ‘subnational’ settings, but is reorienting them towards global agendas and systems. The result is an unremarked de-nationalising of national policy domains, processes, activities and instruments. In this article, we argue that these globalising and de-nationalising processes are radically reshaping contemporary Australian film and TV production, and the terms and policy settings under which it is developed and monetised.
Social Media Use during Japan's 2011 Earthquake: How Twitter Transforms the Locus of Crisis Communication
Authors: Cho Seong Eun , Jung Kyujin , Park Han Woo
Published: January 2017

This article explores social media use during Japan's 2011 earthquake. In the era of social media, this earthquake provides an opportunity for analysing the role of communication during a crisis. To explain how social media use transforms the locus of crisis communication, we collected sufficient data on tweets in Japan from the Twitter public timeline during the earthquake and examined the Japanese government's Twitter account and its URLs. The results indicate that crisis communication on Twitter was led by peer-to-peer communication and relied on peer-generated information. In addition, the government's traditional leadership role in exercising tight control over crises and facilitating disaster communication was not clearly apparent on Twitter. By examining the shift in the locus of crisis communication through social media, this study provides new insights into the current use of social media.
Indigenous Media Practice
Authors: McCallum Kerry , Waller Lisa
Published: January 2017

This article introduces the Indigenous Media Practice special issue through a discussion of the aims and scope of the edition. It identifies three major currents in contemporary international research on media and indigeneity, which are reflected in the suite of scholarship presented here. The first is the importance of continuing to critically analyse media systems, institutions and policies that enable and constrain the production and dissemination of information for, by and about Indigenous populations. The second emphasises media-related practices in specific media production and social policy contexts, and the third underlines the importance of interrogating underlying and pervasive societal discourses in understanding Indigenous media practice. The contributions to this themed issue highlight that there is a vibrant body of research among a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, typically working in teams in the pursuit of better understanding the relationships between media and indigeneity in both global and local contexts.
Charting a Theoretical Framework for Examining Indigenous Journalism Culture
Authors: Hanusch Folker
Published: January 2017

Indigenous media around the globe have expanded considerably over recent years, a process that has also led to an increase in the number of Indigenous news organisations. Yet research into Indigenous news and journalism is still rare, with mostly individual case studies having been undertaken in different parts of the globe. Drawing on existing research gathered from a variety of global contexts, this article theorises five main dimensions that can help us to think about and empirically examine indigenous journalism culture. They include the empowerment role of Indigenous journalism; the ability to offer a counter-narrative to mainstream media reporting; journalism's role in language revitalisation; reporting through a culturally appropriate framework; and the watchdog function of indigenous journalism. These dimensions are discussed in some detail, in an attempt to guide future studies into the structures, roles, practices and products of indigenous journalism across the globe.
Media Practices and Painful Pasts: The Public Testimonial in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Authors: Brady Miranda J.
Published: January 2017

From the 1870s through the 1990s, more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were enrolled in government-funded, church-run Indian Residential Schools (IRS) in Canada. The schools reflected policies aimed at assimilating Aboriginal peoples into majority culture. Many Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes and suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuses. As part of its Mandate, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) collects testimonials from residential school survivors in various mediated forms to create a historical record. This article explores the TRC's public statement-gathering process and the ways in which media practices shape and guide testimonials. It argues that the TRC encourages particular survivor narratives as it signals to speakers that they should anticipate the norms and uses of media and narrative guidelines. However, there is a layer of meta-narrative common in TRC statements, suggesting resistance to and subversion of the process. This article considers the nuances of First Nations testimonials against the backdrop of storytelling traditions.
Temporal Discourse and the News Media Representation of Indigenous-Non-Indigenous Relations: A Case Study from Aotearoa New Zealand
Authors: Love Tyron , Tilley Elspeth
Published: January 2017

Time is a particularly powerful construct in postcolonial societies. Intermeshed with discourses of race, place and belonging, European ideas of time as linear, Cartesian and chronological function as enduring discursive categories that frame public debate within conceptual legacies from colonialism. There is substantial evidence internationally that modernist and mechanical temporal discourses of progress and efficiency have impeded Indigenous aspirations, including attempts to achieve sovereignty. In this article, we use a critical whiteness studies framework, and a critical discourse analysis methodology, to make visible the temporal assumptions in mainstream news articles from Aotearoa New Zealand. These articles, from influential, agenda-setting media, discuss crucial issues of indigenous rights, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi negotiations. Our analysis shows that they do so within a culturally specific, Western temporal framework, which limits their ability to provide balanced, informative coverage of the issues at stake.
CCTV's Global Outreach: Examining the Audiences of China's ‘New Voice’ on Africa
Authors: Gorfinkel Lauren , Joffe Sandy , Van Staden Cobus , Wu Yu-Shan
Published: January 2017

This scoping article introduces key issues surrounding the globalisation of China Central Television (CCTV), focusing on its African operations, content and reception, specifically in Kenya and South Africa. At a time when the Chinese government is seeking to enhance positive perceptions of China and China–Africa relations, and its associated media outlets are seeking to compete with other major global players like CNN and the BBC, this article takes steps towards understanding the extent to which CCTV may be succeeding in these missions. Some of the challenges identified for CCTV-Africa in our small-scale pilot study include attempting to simultaneously target ‘African’, ‘Western’ and Chinese audience groups, which may detract from its ability to appeal to specific international audiences; competition from other international and local broadcasters who already have a strong spectator base; and a lack of accessibility, awareness and sustained interest in the channel. It calls for more in-depth research into global audiences' reception of CCTV-Africa, and CCTV more generally, in order to track CCTV's brand awareness and assess whether China's global media soft power activities actually have any leverage in enhancing cross-cultural relations and international audiences' perceptions of China in Africa and the world.
Ambient Affiliation in Microblogging: Bonding around the Quotidian
Authors: Zappavigna Michele
Published: January 2017

Microblogging is an increasingly prevalent communicative practice for negotiating identity and engaging in networked publics. It is currently of particular interest to new media and communication theorists, due to the lens it provides to view ‘real-time’ expression of online opinion and sentiment about both public events and domestic life. While many studies have investigated microblogging in relation to large-scale political events and crises, this article focuses on the latter private domain, exploring the interfacing of the personal realm with mass communicative discourse. A million-word corpus of Twitter posts (MORPHEUS) will be used to investigate a form of ‘ambient affiliation’ that is enacted as microbloggers bond around expressions of the quotidian. This corpus features discourse in the semantic domain of sleep, a surprisingly frequent topic in microblogging posts. Drawing upon corpus linguistic methods, combined with close discourse analysis of communicative patterns, the focus will be on the role of hashtags in supporting ambient communion about the everyday.
New Zealand's Ultra-Fast Broadband Plan: Digital Public Works Project for the Twenty-First Century or Playfield of Incumbent Interests?
Authors: Winseck Dwayne
Published: January 2017

This article examines the development of telecommunications, media and internet in New Zealand and the prospects for the government's Ultra-Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband initiatives. Several factors are identified that could contribute to consolidating the success of recent efforts: increasing telecommunications competition since 2006, a recent growth spurt in internet and mobile wireless use, an improved regulatory environment and the rise of the ‘prime-time’ internet. However, high levels of concentration, low levels of media and internet use made worse by restrictive data caps, the contradiction between a sizable government subsidy for broadband fibre development versus a very hesitant regulator, and powerful incumbents intent on preserving and extending their legacy business models into new areas – including the UFB – diminish such prospects.
Disability Media Participation: Opportunities, Obstacles and Politics
Authors: Ellis Katie , Goggin Gerard
Published: January 2017

This article discusses participatory media from a critical disability perspective. It discusses the relative absence of explicit discussion and research on disability in the literatures on community, citizen and alternative media. By contrast, disability has emerged as an important element of participatory cultures and digital technologies. To explore disability participatory cultures, the article offers analysis of case studies, including disability blogs, ABC's Ramp Up website and crowd-funding platforms (such as Kickstarter).
From Fringe to Formalisation: An Experiment in Fostering Interactive Public Service Media
Authors: Hutchinson Jonathon
Published: January 2017

The role assumed by institutions that directly develop and support online communities has emerged as a crucial factor in the development of self-governance models for online communities engaging in collaborative practices. Commonly, online communities reject top-down governance models in favour of a meritocracy that positions users in authoritative positions because of their online performance. Scholarly research into online communities suggests that their governance models are horizontal, even where the community platforms are being developed or supported by commercial institutions. Questions of authority and power emerge when institutional, top-down governance models intersect with online community meritocracy in day-to-day communicative activities and while engaging in creative production. This article examines an experiment in fostering interactive public service media by users of the now-defunct ABC Pool through the case study of Ariadne. It tracks how early user-driven ideas for creativity were aligned with the interests of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation through a process of community self-governance alongside cultural intermediation.
Enhancing Media Sport Consumption: Online Gambling in European Football
Authors: Lopez-Gonzalez Hibai , Tulloch Christopher D.
Published: January 2017

This article explores the intersections between sports bodies, media companies and gambling industries in European football. While betting, communication and sport have maintained an ongoing relationship for over two centuries, this article argues that the digitalisation of betting platforms has reconfigured the links between the traditional actors and created a new ‘online football betting ecology’. We elaborate on the intricate relationships of betting sites with top European football institutions via sponsorship, and on the role of the media, influencers and celebrities in the promotion of betting companies. An upbeat interpretation of this scenario stresses the enhancement of the act of consumption for football fans, transcending their traditional passive role as spectators. However, a more pessimistic vision points out that the economic dominance of the online gambling industry influences the way football competitions are run and endangers the integrity of the sport.
Greenhouse gas emissions from tourist activities in South Tyrol
Authors: Cai Mattia
Published: January 2017

Tourism is a non-negligible source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using South Tyrol (ST) – a small region with a tourism-intensive economy situated in the North of Italy – as a case study, this article discusses a multiregional input–output (MRIO) framework for calculating the direct and indirect emissions embodied in tourist consumption of goods and services at a subnational level. Compared to more standard single-region implementations of the input–output approach, MRIO analysis offers a more accurate depiction of the amount of emissions, that is, embodied in imports, because it acknowledges that in the modern economy supply chains often stretch across multiple borders and that the carbon intensity of production can vary widely from one location to another. Operationalizing the framework has become relatively straightforward since a number of new global MRIO databases have become available in recent years. Furthermore, the analysis could easily be extended to other environmental externalities of tourism, where the model’s capability to explicitly account for spatial spillovers might also be of interest. The modelling exercise at the heart of the article suggests that, over the course of 2010, the process of producing the goods and services consumed by tourists in ST resulted in 1092 kt CO2e of GHGs being emitted into the atmosphere. This is equivalent to average emissions of 191 kg CO2e per overnight visitor, 38 kg CO2e per night or 0.316 kg per euro of tourist expenditure. Direct emissions account for about one-fourth of the total. Almost four-fifths of total emissions appear to be the result of productive activities sited outside ST itself.