bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
How to Be a Man: Masculinity in Australian Teen Culture and American Teen Movies
Authors: McKinnon Scott
Published: January 2017

This paper examines the reception of American teen films by Australian audiences in the 1950s, focusing specifically on issues of masculinity and sexuality. Using material gathered from sources such as oral history interviews, autobiographical writing and Australian media reports, an attempt is made to locate the films as one element in a developing local culture based more on age than nationality. The paper argues that, screened within the context of a society which defined masculine behaviour in the light of the ideals of war, a range of popular American films and their stars acted to complicate the idea of what it meant to be male. Audiences were offered new, or at least more ambiguous, notions of gender and sexuality. These changes caused concern among some Australian adults, as they watched the teenage boys of the nation learn how to be men.
The Decline of Traditional News and Current Affairs Audiences in Australia
Authors: Young Sally
Published: January 2017

With attention focused on the battle for news ratings between Channels Seven and Nine, an underlying trend has tended to go unnoticed: audiences have been switching off televised news and current affairs programs since the 1990s. Drawing on detailed OzTAM ratings, this article shows how this is particularly true for specific audience segments. Allied with this is the longer-term decline in newspaper circulation. These data raise a central question: are Australians merely switching off ‘outdated’ media such as TV and newspapers (and getting their news from somewhere else such as the internet), or are they switching off the genre of news/current affairs altogether? This article weighs the evidence and concludes that the news audience is fragmenting in particular ways, especially by age, and that some (but certainly not all) groups are going online for news.
Sending a Message? Refugees and Australia's Deterrence Campaign
Authors: Richardson Roslyn
Published: January 2017

While Australia's immigration deterrence policies, such as the temporary protection visa (TPV), mandatory detention system and ‘Pacific Solution’ have been criticised on ethical and legal grounds, the core justification for these policies has remained largely untouched. This article challenges the key justification behind many of Australia's immigration policies — that they ‘send a strong message’ to potential irregular migrants and people smugglers. Drawing on a communication studies perspective and cultural studies audience research, the study outlined in this article demonstrates that these policies are based on a flawed and outdated view of the communication process and a simplistic understanding of refugee audiences. The article reveals that, like all audiences, refugee audiences are diverse, unpredictable and capable of producing a variety of interpretations of the messages they receive. This article calls for a recognition that the transmission and reception of Australia's deterrence ‘messages' are far from straightforward.
Framing Australian Telecommunication Policy: A Case Study of the 1996 Review of Standard Telephone Service
Authors: Bourk Michael
Published: January 2017

This article discusses the influence of sociolinguistic structures such as metaphors and narratives as organising cognitive frames on telecommunication policy, its representation in the media and other public documents. In particular, it identifies the tension between competing narratives of national development and competition in the public debates and official records of the 1996 Review of Standard Telephone Service. The article argues that metaphors and narratives perform similar but distinctive persuasive and formative functions that extend beyond mere description. Collectively, they influence not only what we think of telecommunication technology and associated policy but how we imagine alternative policy scenarios and future technological innovation.
Raunch Culture Goes to School? Young Women, Normative Femininities and Elite Education
Authors: Charles Claire
Published: January 2017

Public concern about popular culture's sexualisation of women and girls is regularly voiced in the Australian media. Young women grow up against a backdrop of ‘raunch culture’ (Levy, 2005), which for some scholars represents a ‘new’ femininity (Gill, 2007), in which ‘hyper-sexual’ forms of (hetero)sexual expression are now expected of young women and girls, despite ostensibly being about choice and personal empowerment. In this article, I explore the constructions of girlhood and femininity amongst young women attending an elite, single-sex, private school in Melbourne, Australia. Elite schooling for girls is often associated with highly classed notions of (hetero)sexual modesty and propriety, epitomised in the reality television program Ladette to Lady. Here I consider how hypersexualities are configured within students' constructions of themselves and others, and I explore their relationship to classed expectations of identity for privileged girls. I examine the role that classed norms of identity play in mediating these girls' negotiations of hypersexualities.
The Innocence Fetish: The Commodification and Sexualisation of Children in the Media and Popular Culture
Authors: Faulkner Joanne
Published: January 2017

Over the past century, a great deal of cultural energy has been invested in the ideal of childhood innocence, to the extent that innocence is frequently cited as our society's most valuable asset. More recently, however, the dominant sentiment — frequently represented in news and current affairs media — has been that childhood innocence is imperilled, and that the ‘less responsible’ aspects of our popular media are putting it at risk. This article argues that the reasoning that engenders innocence with cultural value invites, and even demands, its violation. Specifically, the very same influences through which the child has come to be valorised also lead to the desire for and consumption of innocence. Innocence has become a ‘fetish’, positioned as a lost freedom and plenitude inciting desire. This article draws upon psychoanalytic theory to place into its correct context the anxiety about childhood innocence. It argues that these ‘responsible’ lamentations about the sexualisation of children and the loss of childhood innocence contribute to (rather than avert) a fetishisation of innocence that both prepares the ground for childhood to become the ultimate commodity, and ignores the concrete circumstances, desires and capacities of children.
Representations of Foreign Places outside the News: An Analysis of Australian Newspaper Travel Sections
Authors: Hanusch Folker
Published: January 2017

Despite continued growth over recent decades, travel journalism has so far gained little attention in journalism research, with scholars often ridiculing it and other forms of lifestyle journalism as not being ‘real’ journalism. This article aims to shift the focus by arguing that non-news journalism is becoming increasingly important as a site for research. It reports the results of a content analysis of Australian newspaper travel sections and examines the role they play in mediating foreign places. The results demonstrate that travel stories mostly can be classed as service stories in that they focus on destinations that are already popular with Australians. At the same time, they report very little about local cultures at the destinations, demonstrating a focus on the tourist experience and representing a missed opportunity for improving intercultural understanding. A visual analysis of photographs shows stereotypical portrayals of destinations broadly in line with tourism promotion materials.
Australian Films at the Cinema: Rethinking the Role of Distribution and Exhibition
Authors: Aveyard Karina
Published: January 2017

Australian films are criticised regularly for their failure to engage local audiences and for their lack of commercial success. Academic and industry analysis of these shortcomings has tended to focus on problems in production and financing, but has given inadequate attention to the role of distribution and exhibition. This article examines how the commercial and cultural situation of Australian films is fundamentally shaped by the manner in which they are circulated and screened. It highlights the complex interrelations between the production, distribution and exhibition sectors, and addresses the implications of these issues for contemporary film policy and practice in Australia.
Soap Characters and Life Skills: An Interview Study on Shortland Street
Authors: de Bruin Joost
Published: January 2017

Shortland Street is New Zealand's most successful domestic television soap opera. For this study, 112 regular Shortland Street viewers (92 women and 20 men) were interviewed in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The interviewees spent a considerable amount of time evaluating the soap's characters. They classified characters as either ‘likeable’ or ‘annoying’, and grouped them according to their ‘life skills’. Talking about characters' life skills urged viewers to reflect on their own experiences, views and positions. The Shortland Street characters articulate a discursive community with which viewers can interact to discuss life skills they regard as important. While previous soap opera studies have shown that viewers appreciate stronger female characters, in this study female characters seen as lacking life skills were heavily criticised by many interviewees.
A Meta-Review of Chinese Media Studies, 1998–2008
Authors: Nip Joyce
Published: January 2017

This article aims to provide the first comprehensive meta-review of Chinese media studies in an international academic journal. It situates the state of the field against the historical context of institutional development and the flow of ideas related to the study of media in China. Content analysis was conducted on 147 articles in 52 top academic journals between 1998 and 2008. Results show that research on Chinese media has increasingly drawn interest beyond ethnic Chinese researchers, with a rising proportion of articles published by non-ethnic Chinese, and growing collaboration between non-ethnic and ethnic Chinese researchers. The industries and genres have broadened, but journalism remains the most studied industry – as it has been since media studies started in China. The internet has become the most researched medium. Partly due to the influence of mass communication research in the United States, the media message has become the most popular subject of study. Qualitative methods have been used more often than quantitative ones, but an increase in quantitative methods is expected among scholars in Mainland China, as positivist hypothesis-testing methods gain wide acceptance there.
Reg Grundy: A Review Essay
Authors: Moran Albert
Published: January 2017

Adaptation and remaking are central dynamics of culture industries, most especially television. There is now a formal trade in program formats that is part of the evolution of a worldwide screen industry. However, the practice of program cloning is not new: various instances of such activity have been noticed by television historians. Yet systematic investigation of this earlier phase is largely lacking. One major reason has to do with the unavailability of insider accounts by media professionals of how program remaking worked in other times and places. Thus the recent publication of the memoirs of a leading Australian figure in this trade is a significant event. This review essay pinpoints the importance of Reg Grundy in a national and international context, and reflects upon the dynamic of cultural adaptation in the sphere of television content production.
2011 Henry Mayer Lecture Television - Convergence and Local Content: The National Broadcaster in the Digital World Order
Authors: Dalton Kim
Published: January 2017

The long-discussed convergence of communications devices, platforms and content is happening. Digital multi-channels, IPTV, intelligent hand-held devices, EPGs, VOD, PVRs and a range of new social media applications are making the experience of consuming what was once simple linear television content so much more complicated, dynamic, fragmented and compelling. As a participant in these major shifts and as a public broadcaster, the ABC has its own perspective and stake in both traditional models and the evolution to new models of production, distribution and consumption. Central to the role of the public broadcaster in this changing landscape is commissioning and distributing local content. How can the local content industry survive in a market limited by scale and inundated with cheap foreign content? How have the changes we see happening impacted local demand and local production? More importantly, how can the regulatory and funding support mechanisms that successive governments have developed over the years remain effective? And finally, where does the public broadcaster place itself in this new world?
Media Coverage of Sport for Athletes with Intellectual Disabilities: The 2010 Special Olympics National Games Examined
Authors: Tanner Stephen , Green Kerry , Burns Shawn
Published: January 2017

In April 2010, Adelaide hosted the IXth national Special Olympics – a sporting event for athletes with intellectual disabilities. This article explores how the print media covered the Games. In particular, our interest is in the language adopted by reporters to describe the athletes and their performances. We were interested to see whether journalists adopted sporting language in their accounts of performances or, alternatively, adopted language that focused on the individual athlete's disability. The article explores a number of issues surrounding media coverage of sport for people with disabilities, including the extent to which media organisations perpetuate stereotypes about disability and whether this, if established, links back to the media's reliance on traditional news values.
The Politics of Blogs: Theories of Discursive Activism Online
Authors: Shaw Frances
Published: January 2017

Many discussions of discursive politics online take a deliberative democracy, or public sphere, approach. Public sphere theory has had value for the discussion of discursive politics online, but I argue that the problems of public sphere theory have led to the neglect of counter-hegemonic political projects in understandings of online deliberative democracy. Agonistic democracy should be explored further as an alternative framework for the study of online political communities. In addition, I propose that this conception be modified with greater analysis of the affective dimensions of online politics, the productive uses of conflict, the role of political listening and an understanding of discursive activism informed by feminist philosophy. The Australian feminist blogging community, a network comprising group and individual blogs, provides a case study for my research into discursive activism in online contexts.
Raising the Volume: Indigenous Voices in News Media and Policy
Authors: McCallum Kerry , Waller Lisa , Meadows Michael
Published: January 2017

This article explores Indigenous contributions to shaping public and policy agendas through their use of the news media. It reports on research conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policy-making 1988–2008 project that is investigating relationships between the representation of Indigenous peoples in public media and the development of Indigenous affairs policies. Interviews with Indigenous policy advocates, journalists and public servants identified the strategies that have been used by individuals and Indigenous organisations to penetrate policy debates and influence public policy. The article concludes that in the face of a neo-liberal policy agenda amplified through mainstream media, particular Indigenous voices nevertheless have had a significant impact, keeping alive debate about issues such as the importance of bilingual education programs and community involvement in the delivery of primary health care.
Exploring the Unity in Australian Community Radio
Authors: Ewart Jacqui
Published: January 2017

It's no secret that the representation of migrant groups in the media has been particularly problematic, as has been their access to mainstream media, and both issues have attracted a great deal of research. Far less attention has been paid by researchers to how these groups respond when they experience such difficulties, and the various forms of media they use to engage with a variety of issues pertinent to them and their settlement experiences. This article uses data from two projects: Australia's first, and to date only, national study of community radio audiences; and a more recent case study of a community radio station undertaken in the course of research into talkback radio audiences. It reveals that community radio stations and programs provide migrant communities with a space in which they can discuss and negotiate their civic and social rights and responsibilities. Drawing on the reflections of audience members who listen to and call specific radio programs, this article explores the under-examined but vital role performed by these stations and programs in the social and civic lives of immigrants. It reveals that ethnic community radio programs are helping some audience members to formulate notions of good citizenship, and thus engage with democratic processes, which is vital to feeling socially included. The research reveals immigrants are using community radio proactively to reach out to and connect with the broader Australian community, while also reminding themselves of their homeland, culture and language. However, this article warns that researchers have largely focused on the ‘good news story’ of community broadcasting and suggests that a more critical approach to future research is warranted.
Scalar Politics of Climate Change: Regions, Emissions and Responsibility
Authors: Waitt Gordon , Farbotko Carol , Criddle Barbara
Published: January 2017

The print media have facilitated multiple types of claim-making and an oppositional climate change politics. Drawing on arguments about the social construction of geographical scale as a category for understanding media practice, this article examines such politics. We focus on the Illawarra Mercury, the only daily newspaper in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, to showcase exactly how this tabloid newspaper engages readers in a scalar politics of climate change. We argue that a regional scalar politics shapes the framing of emissions in the Illawarra Mercury. A key question organising this article concerns the way in which geographical scale is invoked, and reproduced, in this newspaper to structure a certain rationale in reporting on emissions from one of Australia's largest greenhouse gas emitters, the Port Kembla Steelworks. The argument is that the regional scale is evoked as a pre-given, natural and contained entity to justify why the steelworks need not shoulder greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We argue that a better understanding of scalar politics is integral to explain how responsibility for emissions is shifted elsewhere.
‘This Big Hi-Tech Thing’: Gender and the Internet at Home in the 1990s
Authors: Waller Vivienne
Published: January 2017

This article provides a snapshot of the relationship between the internet and gender in the early days of home internet connections in Australia. Based as it is on one of the first qualitative studies of home use of the internet and what appears to be the earliest Australian study of home use of the internet, it helps to fill a gap in the history of the internet in Australia. It draws from 76 in-depth interviews conducted in 1998 with members of nineteen household families who had a home internet connection. At the time of the research, there were a variety of stories in circulation regarding the relationship between the internet and gender. The analysis presented in this article presents a more nuanced picture of this relationship in the early days of domestic internet connections. Rather than just comparing the different experiences of males and females, it looks at how gender was constituted in the meanings users invested in particular uses or non-uses of the internet at home, and in particular in the idea of technical mastery.
Gaining a Past, Losing a Future: Web 2.0 and Internet Historicity
Authors: Allen Matthew
Published: January 2017

This article explore how, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the internet became historicised, meaning that its public existence is now explicitly framed through a narrative that locates the current internet in relation to a past internet. Up until this time, in popular culture, the internet had been understood mainly as the future-in-the-present, as if it had no past. The internet might have had a history, but it had no historicity. That has changed because of Web 2.0, and the effects of Tim O'Reilly's creative marketing of that label. Web 2.0, in this sense not a technology or practice but the marker of a discourse of historical interpretation dependent on versions, created for us a second version of the web, different from (and yet connected to) that of the 1990s. This historicising moment aligned the past and future in ways suitable to those who might control or manage the present. And while Web 3.0, implied or real, suggests the ‘future’, it also marks out a loss of other times, or the possibility of alterity understood through temporality.
The New (Old) War on Copyright Infringement, and How Context is Opening New Regulatory Possibilities
Authors: Weatherall Kimberlee
Published: January 2017

The internet blackout in January 2012 saw thousands of websites ‘go dark’ to protest proposed US laws designed to implement a ‘multi-system denial of service attack’ against alleged IP-infringing websites by making them both unfindable, and by cutting off any financial support. Within days, the laws – known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) – effectively were dead. But when and how did such laws even reach the stage of serious discussion? This examines what has changed, and looks at how and why regulating internet intermediaries and making them the internet ‘police’ has gradually become more acceptable to governments.
Electronic Documents in a Print World: Grey Literature and the Internet
Authors: Lawrence Amanda
Published: January 2017

Reports and documents from government and other organisations have existed for centuries, but in the post-war period their production increased significantly. Computers, databases, desktop publishing software and the internet have revolutionised the ways documents can be produced and disseminated, allowing individuals, groups and organisations access to a whole new world of information. The result has been an explosion in online publishing that has transformed scholarly communication. Research reports – or grey literature as they are also known – are now an essential part of many disciplines, including science and technology, health, environmental science and many areas of public policy. While access to these reports has become easier in many respects, online publishing presents many challenges as well, particularly for collecting organisations faced with the task of adapting their systems. The management of grey literature raises many issues that are still not resolved today. This article provides some background to these ongoing challenges in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
History in the Making: The NBN Rollout in Willunga, South Australia
Authors: Gregg Melissa
Published: January 2017

The 2010 press release announcing the first-release sites for Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) identified five locations chosen for their contrasting ‘housing density, housing type, geography, climate and local infrastructure’. On these measures, the South Australian town of Willunga was described as a ‘small rural town’ with ‘dispersed housing’. It thus served as a model for the country constituencies crucial to securing support for the federal government's large-scale infrastructure investment. But what else made Willunga an ideal first-release site? Are there local histories that shed light on the decision to grant its residents access to high-speed broadband before the rest of the country? This article shares findings from ethnographic research conducted in Willunga during the 2011 NBN roll-out to answer these questions.
Australian Internet Histories, Past, Present and Future: An Afterword
Authors: Brügger Niels
Published: January 2017

This Afterword compares the articles in this issue of MIA to the ‘first wave’ of Australian internet historiography, a field of study established by Australian internet scholars around 2000. After identifying what is new in the present issue, I outline four paths that may be worth considering in the future: constituting the field based on shared theoretical and methodological reflections; using archived web material to a larger extent; participating in the shaping of a digital research infrastructure for internet studies; and increasing international research relations.
Convergence and Australian Content: The Importance of Access
Authors: Goldsmith Ben , Cunningham Stuart , Thomas Julian
Published: January 2017

In the light of new and complex challenges to media policy and regulation, the Australian government commissioned the Convergence Review in late 2010 to assess the continuing applicability and utility of the principles and objectives that have shaped the policy framework to this point. It proposed a range of options for policy change and identified three enduring priorities for continued media regulation: media ownership and control; content standards; and Australian content production and distribution. The purpose of this article is to highlight an area where we feel there are opportunities for further discussion and research: the question of how the accessibility and visibility of Australian and local content may be assured in the future media policy framework via a combination of regulation and incentives to encourage innovation in content distribution.
The Ethnographer as Community Manager: Language Translation and User Negotiation
Authors: Hutchinson Jonathon
Published: January 2017

This article investigates the ethnographic methodological question of how the researcher observes objectively while being part of the problem they are observing. It uses a case study of ABC Pool to argue a cooperative approach that combines the role of the ethnographer with that of a community manager who assists in constructing a true representation of the researched environment. By using reflexivity as a research tool, the ethnographer engages in a process to self-check their personal presumptions and prejudices, and to strengthen the constructed representation of the researched environment. This article also suggests combining management and expertise research from the social sciences with ethnography, to understand and engage with the research field participants more intimately – which, ultimately, assists in gathering and analysing richer qualitative data.
The Business of Multi-Platform Public Service: Online and at a Profit
Authors: Bennett James , Medrado Andrea
Published: January 2017

In this article, we explore the notion of hybrid public service media (PSM) in relation to two interconnected issues: economic and platform hybridity. We examine the creation of PSM content by privately owned, commercially driven independent production companies in the United Kingdom as a hybrid economic arrangement. In so doing, we ask not only whether public service can act as a motivation beyond profit for production cultures and business models, but also whether PSM can be created at a profit without compromising the fulfilment of public service values. In relation to platform hybridity, we study examples of interlinking public service content created, delivered and distributed across multiple platforms (as opposed to merely video-on-demand services). In particular, we are interested in how such multi-platform texts might fulfil public service, but also the way in which multi-platform content creation brings together digital and television production cultures to produce hybrid PSM business models and cultures.
Digital Literacies and the National Broadband Network: Competency, Legibility, Context
Authors: Nansen Bjorn , Wilken Rowan , Arnold Michael , Gibbs Martin
Published: January 2017

This article reports on findings from an ethnographic study of fifteen participant households in North Hobart and Midway Point, Tasmania. Key themes emerging from this research have been gathered and presented here through the metaphor ‘digital literacy’. The first half of the article is concerned with developing a critical understanding of what is at stake in the notion, or metaphor, of digital literacy. The second half tests these understandings against our research. In our conversations with the people of North Hobart and Midway Point, we found evidence of digital illiteracy, and also evidence of the weaknesses of digital literacy as an explanatory trope. We group these findings using three themes: (1) the presence of instrumental literacy; (2) the illegibility of the NBN and its HSB services; and (3) structural conditions limiting the acquisition of the NBN and its HSB services. These three draw upon the digital literacy metaphor, but make its shortcomings clear, and the latter two in particular extend the metaphor from a personal deficit model to one that embraces technologies and social structures.
Media Miracles: The Separation of Conjoined Twins, and Tv News Health Coverage in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Authors: Imison Michelle , Chapman Simon
Published: January 2017

In November 2009, the successful surgical separation in Australia of conjoined twins from Bangladesh generated enormous domestic media interest. This article presents a thematic analysis of local television news and current affairs coverage about the twins. In addition to the predictable newsworthiness of a rare medical condition and its inherent drama, the narrative centred on opportunities to praise Australian medical skill and national character. This focus on identified individuals requiring advanced surgical intervention abroad contrasts with the dearth of coverage for health problems experienced by millions of anonymous individuals, more long-term and mundane health considerations or broader socio-economic contexts of health in low- and middle-income countries. Reportage of foreign health appears contingent on populist ‘rule of rescue’ frames and arresting footage that resonate with audiences' expectations of such nations. This article illuminates potential implications of this kind of reporting for the wider news space available to similar health stories.
Changing Genres and Language Styles in Contemporary Chinese Lifestyle Magazines
Authors: Chen Ariel , Machin David
Published: January 2017

The magazine market in China has been changing steadily as global media corporations have brought their international titles into China and as local Chinese titles have had to transform in order to meet the changing market and the arrival of advertising-driven content. This article analyses the changing visual styles, linguistic genres and language styles in the women's lifestyle magazine Rayli over the past ten years, showing how these increasingly seek to foster identities, ideas and values appropriate to a global culture ideology of consumerism.
Saigon Style: Middle-Class Culture and Transformations of Urban Lifestyling in Post-Reform Vietnamese Media
Authors: Earl Catherine
Published: January 2017

Twenty-first-century Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is the centre of style for a growing urban middle class in post-reform Vietnam. Over the past generation, since macro-economic reform (đổi mới), and with increased opportunities for business, education and travel, urbanites have been able to climb the social ladder and wield new forms of social power stemming from emerging lifestyle and consumption practices. Middle-class lifestyles have become the most desired models for living, providing an opportunity for the government to rely on the urban lifestyle media to convey its point of view to a receptive public. Engaging with Vietnam's urban lifestyle media, this article argues that the impact of reform in Vietnam has been overstated. Popular women's magazines reveal that continuities remain in the mode and content of the delivery of the state's values in the socialist past and the market-oriented present, even with the evolution of a modern mass media system.
The Punk-Rock King: Musical Anachronism in Period Film
Authors: Hogg Christopher
Published: January 2017

Music has a powerful indexical ability to evoke particular times and places. Such an ability has been exploited at length by the often-elaborate soundscapes of period films, which regularly utilise incidental scores and featured period songs to help root their narrative action in past times, and to immerse their audiences in the sensibilities of a different age. However, this article will begin to examine the ways in which period film soundtracks can also be used to complicate a narrative sense of time and place through the use of ‘musical anachronism’: music conspicuously ‘out of time’ with the temporality depicted on screen. Through the analysis of a sequence from the film W.E. (Madonna, 2011) and the consideration of existing critical and conceptual contexts, this article will explore how anachronistic soundtracks can function beyond ‘postmodern novelty’ or ‘nuisance’ to historical verisimilitude, instead offering alternative modes of engagement with story and history.
Vocal Hierarchies in Early Australian Quiz Shows, 1948–71: Two Case Studies
Authors: Moran Albert , Aveyard Karina
Published: January 2017

This article examines the complexities involved in transferring content and genre from one media platform to another by emphasising the shifting, fragile yet stabilising part that sound can play in such a transformation. Early television is often labelled as a period of ‘radio with pictures’, and this intriguing designation directs our attention to this ‘moment’ of changeover. This analysis explores the parameters of sound in television's displacement of radio as the primary broadcasting medium in Australia in the 1950s. We focus in particular on the role of the human voice (host, audience and contestants) in two early quiz shows – Wheel of Fortune and Pick-a-Box – that began on radio and were both successfully remade as television programs.
Top of the Tots: The Wiggles as Australia's Most Successful (Under-Acknowledged) Sound Media Export
Authors: Giuffre Liz
Published: January 2017

The Wiggles produce hugely successful CDs, DVDs and interactive entertainment for pre-school children. They are Top of the Tots, as their 2004 album of the same name proclaims. However, the artists have been largely overlooked by the popular music and media academies. I argue that this omission can be attributed to problems of categorisation, particularly existing frameworks in television studies that limit how we gauge ‘quality entertainment’ and its audience; and in popular music and sound studies traditions that are yet to formally engage with listeners who are of pre-school age. The Wiggles are artists whose target audience historically has been overlooked by sophisticated, diverse and evolving academic traditions. As a result, their pioneering cross-media and international successes have largely been ignored. In this article, I seek to explore The Wiggles in terms that go beyond the narrow parameters of ‘children's entertainment’, offering more ‘grown-up’ ways to understand the group's success.
‘I Want to Leave Slovenia for a Sunny, Relaxed and Open Australia’: Imagining Australia in Slovenia
Authors: Volčič Zala , Erjavec Karmen
Published: January 2017

This article deals with the imagery of ‘Australia’ in contemporary Slovenia. In an analysis of both Slovene media texts and interviews with 32 Slovenes who want to immigrate to Australia, we explore a constructed image of Australia. We closely consider the symbolic imagery that shapes our informants' discourses about Australia in order to focus on sociocultural elements of migration, where the imagination plays a key role. We suggest that a closer examination of Slovene informants' narratives about Australia will reveal more important contemporary global migration factors and the power of media in affecting potential migrants' migration decisions. The article assesses the image of Australia in Slovenia, with the overall objective of demonstrating the urgency of critically rethinking the sense of belonging to both motherland and host country. We suggest that images and stereotypes of Australia are not just invented, but are also actively encouraged and negotiated within Slovene society.
Unintended Consequences: Satellite Policy and Indigenous Television
Authors: Rennie Ellie
Published: January 2017

This article examines two instances of media policy involving satellite transmission and Indigenous television: the introduction of the Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) platform in 2010 and the introduction of AUSSAT in the mid-1980s. The government's failure to provide community and Indigenous broadcasters with an access regime at the time of AUSSAT resulted in Australia's first and only Indigenous commercial television licensee, Imparja. Over a quarter of a century later, Imparja now forms part of the joint-venture company that runs VAST, a key component of Australia's digital switchover planning. During the passage of the legislative amendments required to establish VAST, the issue of access resurfaced – this time in relation to Australia's national and community Indigenous television channels. The article recounts the events leading up to the 2010 Bill, and examines the intended and unintended consequences of satellite policy in relation to Indigenous media, including equalisation and transparency of government funding programs.
@Indigenousx: A Case Study of Community-Led Innovation in Digital Media
Authors: Sweet Melissa , Pearson Luke , Dudgeon Pat
Published: January 2017

The ever-increasing uses for social media and mobile technologies are bringing new opportunities for innovation and participation across societies, while challenging and disrupting the status quo. Characteristics of the digital age include the proliferation of user-driven innovation and the blurring of boundaries and roles, whether between the producers and users of news and other products or services, or between sectors. The @IndigenousX Twitter account, which has a different Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person tweeting each week, is an example of user-driven innovation and of how Indigenous voices are emerging strongly in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Its founder, Luke Pearson, a teacher and Aboriginal education consultant, wanted to share the platform he had established on Twitter for storytelling to an engaged audience. The account can thus be seen as a form of citizen, participatory, community or alternative journalism. This article provides a preliminary analysis of @IndigenousX, and suggests that this account and the diversity of Indigenous voices in the digital environment offer opportunities for wide-ranging research endeavours. Initiatives like @IndigenousX are also a reminder that journalism has much to learn from innovation outside the conventional realm of journalistic practice.
Beyond the Bars: Prisoners' Radio Strengthening Community
Authors: Anderson Heather
Published: January 2017

This article examines the connections between prisoners' radio and community, drawing on a case study of an annual Indigenous prisoners' radio project from Melbourne, Australia called Beyond the Bars, coordinated by community radio station 3CR. It demonstrates that an important aspect of prisoners' radio is its ability, as a media form, to sustain relationships between those inside and outside of incarceration, and as a result maintain community connections. The success of Beyond the Bars as a whole can be attributed in part to the special relationship forged between the local Indigenous community and the radio station itself, which has featured over 30 years of Indigenous broadcasting.
Sexting, Selfies and Self-Harm: Young People, Social Media and the Performance of Self-Development
Authors: Gabriel Fleur
Published: January 2017

As platforms for self-expression, social media sites require users to consciously, visibly, and deliberately perform their identity. While a dominant developmental discourse encourages young people to test and explore different identities, a self-conscious and highly visible performance of identity via social media brings into question the form and value of this activity. This article reviews a range of popular arguments about how young people use media, and demonstrates how this use comes into conflict with a broader developmental discourse. It proposes that this conflict contributes to the perception that young people's media use is dangerous for healthy development, and that a different kind of approach to youth is needed. Engaging Judith Butler's notion of performativity, the article argues that social media and the structures of performative display are a way to reconceptualise youth and the relationship between social media and young people's self-development.
Asynchronous Speeds: Disentangling the Discourse of ‘High-Speed Broadband’ in Relation to Australia's National Broadband Network
Authors: Dias Marcos P. , Arnold Michael , Gibbs Martin , Nansen Bjorn , Wilken Rowan
Published: January 2017

This article analyses the substantive problems related to the term ‘high-speed broadband’ in relation to the implementation of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN). It argues that an understanding of speed in relation to broadband must take into account a complex assemblage of infrastructure networks, communication devices, software, location, user subjectivity and political input. Within this assemblage are varied definitions, discourses and materialities of speed that do not necessarily synchronise. Instead, speed is subject to asynchronous perceptions and implementations, which impact on the potential of the NBN. With the aim of contextualising and problematising the understanding of speed in relation to the NBN, this article explores four key points: first, how the perception of speed is dependent not so much on technical performance, but on the subjectivities of internet experience; second, how the term ‘broadband’ is politically shaped, especially in the context of the Coalition government's alternative multi-technology mix plan; third, how the assemblage of different social, technical and political actants that constitute high-speed broadband determines the perception of speed; and finally, how asynchronous speeds of broadband implementation and adoption may impact on the potential benefits of the NBN.
Wired-up or Wind-up? The Political Economy of Broadband Policy in New Zealand/Aotearoa
Authors: Thompson Peter
Published: January 2017

Government policy has played a crucial role in driving the development of broadband technology in New Zealand, but this has evidently been shaped by the interplay of different ministerial imperatives and rationales under different administrations. The Labour-led government's 2005 Digital Strategy primarily aimed at increasing consumer uptake of basic broadband to overcome the ‘digital divide’. This evolved into the more ambitious 2008 Digital Strategy 2.0 which, consistent with Labour's ‘third way’ philosophy, focused both on grassroots community engagement and economic goals (involving both the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Ministry of Economic Development). However, the election of the National-led government later in 2008 brought a shift in the principles and outcomes driving broadband policy. National's Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative has seen NZ$1.35 billion allocated to telecommunications companies that won contracts to develop a nationwide fibre-optic infrastructure. The political rationale more strongly reflects macro-economic imperatives informed primarily by the revamped Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. This more commercial policy orientation has nevertheless led the government into some complex and contradictory positions, particularly with respect to its reluctance to insulate the UFB initiative from demands to re-regulate the media sector in response to convergence and competition issues. Taking a critical institutionalist approach and drawing on evidence from key policy documents and interview data with policy actors, this analysis outlines several policy tensions underpinning the shifts in New Zealand's telecommunications and broadband policy between 2005 and 2013.
Hindsight in 2020? New Zealand's ‘Wait and See’ Approach to Mobile Broadband Regulation
Authors: Daubs Michael S.
Published: January 2017

New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's Review of the Telecommunications Act 2001, released in 2013, highlighted an increased demand for mobile broadband service, particularly in relation to the 700 MHz spectrum auction of 14 January 2014 – space ideal for next-generation 4G or Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile services. The government seemingly adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach to mobile broadband regulation, however, delaying its development until 2020 when there will be ‘a clearer sense of the impact of new networks and technology’. One can look to Canada to see the need for robust mobile broadband policies. Like New Zealand, Canada has relied primarily upon spectrum auctions to stimulate market competition. The spectrum auction frameworks used there, however, have done little to promote market competition. Applying the lessons learned from Canada to a New Zealand context, this article argues for a more assertive regulatory framework sooner rather than later.
Approaching Media through the Senses: Between Experience and Representation
Authors: Pink Sarah
Published: January 2017

Over recent years, there has been a growing interest in media and the senses. Yet there has to date been no sustained focus on the implications of existing approaches to the senses in terms of how we understand this relationship. In this article, I demonstrate how contemporary debates rooted in, but by no means exclusive to, anthropology that pivot around concepts of culture, representation and experience can inform the ways we might conceptualise the relationship between media and the senses. This article explores the tensions between and analytical consequences of, on the one hand, culturalist approaches to both the senses and to media and, on the other, phenomenological approaches. Such debates reveal the need to explore further how the relationality between representational and non-representational elements of media and content might be articulated.
Situating a New Voice in Public Relations: The Application of Positioning Theory to Research and Practice
Authors: James Melanie
Published: January 2017

The role of speech acts in public relations practice, and how they are used by entities to intentionally position themselves and others, are examined through the application of positioning theory. Studies have found that successful positioning is achieved when there is congruence between the position taken or assigned, the speech acts used to enact it, and the storylines used as support. This triad is central to positioning theory, which is a social constructionist approach that defines a position as a cluster of rights and duties that limits the repertoire of possible social acts available to a person or person-like entity (such as an organisation). Examining public relations using positioning theory articulates practices relating to the power to position self and others, and can inform decision-making in communication program design. It moves away from organisation/management-centric theory that has dominated the field, and situates public relations firmly in the communication discipline.