Australasia

Australia and New Zealand are home to some of the hungriest media consumers in the world. On a per capita basis newspaper and magazine readership in Australia is one of the highest in the world. Australian homes have an average of two television sets and five radios.<br />Internet penetration is high, with almost universal adoption in offices and almost 11 million people using the Internet from home, as of June 2007, in a population of 21 million. The Australian information and communications technology market was worth about US$38 billion in 2007, the third largest in the Asia Pacific region after Japan and China. New Zealand's information technology (IT) goods and services sector was estimated at almost US$9 billion. New Zealanders are also major media consumers. This chapter looks first at Australian media and journalism, and then New Zealand before looking briefly at the Pacific.<br />