Media as creative industries : conglomeration and globalization as accumulation strategies in an age of digital media

This chapter will begin by considering some of the distinctive features of media as creative industries, including their assessment of risk and return on investment, team-based production, the management of creativity, the value chain of production, distribution and circulation, and the significance of intellectual property in their revenue strategies. It will then critically appraise three strategies to capture new markets and revenue streams in the context of the rise of the Internet, digital media and globally networked distribution. The three strategies to be considered are conglomeration, networking and globalization, and the focus will be on the media giants such as News Corporation, Disney and Time-Warner. It will be argued that all three present considerable challenges in their application, and digital media technologies are weakening rather than strengthening their capacity to control the global media environment. The chapter will conclude with consideration of some implications of this analysis for questions of media power.

Teachers’ and parents’ perspectives of digital technology in the lives of young children

The pervasiveness of technology in the 21st Century has meant that adults and children live in a society where digital devices are integral to their everyday lives and participation in society. How we communicate, learn, work, entertain ourselves, and even shop is influenced by technology. Therefore, before children begin school they are potentially exposed to a range of learning opportunities mediated by digital devices. These devices include microwaves, mobile phones, computers, and console games such as Playstations® and iPods®. In Queensland preparatory classrooms and in the homes of these children, teachers and parents support and scaffold young children’s experiences, providing them with access to a range of tools that promote learning and provide entertainment. This paper examines teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and considers whether they are techno-optimists who advocate for and promote the inclusion of digital technology, or whether they are they techno-pessimists, who prefer to exclude digital devices from young children’s everyday experiences. An exploratory, single case study design was utilised to gather data from three teachers and ten parents of children in the preparatory year. Teacher data was collected through interviews and email correspondence. Parent data was collected from questionnaires and focus groups. All parents who responded to the research invitation were mothers. The results of data analysis identified a misalignment among adults’ perspectives. Teachers were identified as techno-optimists and parents were identified as techno-pessimists with further emergent themes particular to each category being established. This is concerning because both teachers and mothers influence young children’s experiences and numeracy knowledge, thus, a shared understanding and a common commitment to supporting young children’s use of technology would be beneficial. Further research must investigate fathers’ perspectives of digital devices and the beneficial and detrimental roles that a range of digital devices, tools, and entertainment gadgets play in 21st Century children’s lives.

What is food literacy and does it influence what we eat : a study of Australian food experts

This report details the findings of the Food Literacy Delphi Study. This study was the first of three studies commissioned by Health Promotion Queensland, Queensland Health. It examines the views of experts from around Australia about food literacy; its meaning, potential components and relationship to nutrition.

Neo-planning: Location-based social media to engage Australia’s new digital locals

Community engagement with time poor and seemingly apathetic citizens continues to challenge local governments. Capturing the attention of a digitally literate community who are technology and socially savvy adds a new quality to this challenge. Community engagement is resource and time intensive, yet local governments have to manage on continually tightened budgets. The benefits of assisting citizens in taking ownership in making their community and city a better place to live in collaboration with planners and local governments are well established. This study investigates a new collaborative form of civic participation and engagement for urban planning that employs in-place digital augmentation. It enhances people’s experience of physical spaces with digital technologies that are directly accessible within that space, in particular through interaction with mobile phones and public displays. The study developed and deployed a system called Discussions in Space (DIS) in conjunction with a major urban planning project in Brisbane. Planners used the system to ask local residents planning-related questions via a public screen, and passers-by sent responses via SMS or Twitter onto the screen for others to read and reflect, hence encouraging in-situ, real-time, civic discourse. The low barrier of entry proved to be successful in engaging a wide range of residents who are generally not heard due to their lack of time or interest. The system also reflected positively on the local government for reaching out in this way. Challenges and implications of the short-texted and ephemeral nature of this medium were evaluated in two focus groups with urban planners. The paper concludes with an analysis of the planners’ feedback evaluating the merits of the data generated by the system to better engage with Australia’s new digital locals.

Functional fixation : experimental evidence on the presentation of financial information through different digital formats

This study examines whether, in the presentation of financial information, digital formats address the concern over users’ functional fixation. The accounting literature indicates that the presentation of financial information either within the financial statements or in the notes to the financial statements often creates functional fixation where users of financial statements fail to adjust for differences in accounting policy. This leads users to judge what would otherwise be identical financial situations as being different due to the different accounting policies and methods adopted. It has been suggested that the use of digital formats in presenting financial reports may overcome functional fixation. Using an experimental design involving accountants in public practice, the results indicate that the use of digital formats to present financial reports does not fully overcome the issue of functional fixation in the processing of financial information. Although the participants were able to identify and extract relevant information, irrespective of whether or not the information was presented within the financial statements or in the notes to the accounts, the evidence indicates that functional fixation remained when the participants made final decisions based on available information. This suggests that functional fixation may not be caused by access to or extraction of information but by the level of perceived significance based on where the information is reported in the financial statements. In general, the results indicate that current technology may not be able to fully reduce functional fixation in the evaluation of financial information prepared in accordance with different accounting policies and methods.

Investigating literacy years 4-9 : a pilot. Final report.

Investigating Literacy Years 4-9: A pilot acknowledges that the literacy required of students in the middle years of schooling changes as they begin to read and write to learn across the subject areas using various resources and media. Teachers begin to look for evidence of understanding of concepts, content details, appropriate genre uses and the capacity to work with extended and complex texts. Yet, in comparison to the early years, there has been relatively little research conducted during this period of schooling, especially Years 4-7 of primary schooling (Comber et al, 2002). However, evidence suggests that gaps between those who perform highly and those who perform poorly on standardised measures of literacy increase rather than decrease, and these gaps relate to social background. Hence there is a need to investigate how different school communities with diverse student populations design rich curriculum at these stages of schooling and explicitly teach young people to handle new and changing literacy demands.

Information literacy programs and research : an international review

This paper provides an overview of contemporary information literacy research and practice. While the content is highly selective, the intention has been to highlight international and Australian developments which have achieved significant recognition, which are representative of similar trends in other places, or which are unique in some way. There are three main foci in the paper. Firstly, an exploration of ways of interpreting the idea of information literacy. Secondly, a synthesis of various efforts to seek new directions in educational, community and workplace contexts, beginning with the major initiatives being undertaken in the United States. Thirdly, an introduction to some recent research, concluding with a summary of my own investigation into different ways of experiencing information literacy

Information literacy research : dimensions of the emerging collective consciousness

Information literacy researchers are beginning to develop a collective consciousness, a consciousness that represents the newly appearing territory of information literacy research. This paper analyses the information literacy research territory as it is represented by the emerging collective consciousness of information literacy researchers. Five dimensions of the collective consciousness are proposed: 1) the sectoral location of the research, 2) ways of seeing information literacy, 3) ‘what’ is being investigated; that is the research object, 4) ‘how’ the object is being investigated; that is the research approaches and paradigms, and 5) disciplinary influences. These dimensions are used to: 1) reveal the character of the information literacy research territory which is in early stages of construction; 2) show how different kinds of research approaches can shed different kinds of light on the object of research; and 3) demonstrate how the five dimensions work together in the development of new studies.

What Could Socially-just Literacy Instruction Look Like?

Schools in Australia today are expected to improve student outcomes in an increasingly constrained context focused on accountability. At the same time as teachers work within these constraints, they are also working to ensure that all students are able to achieve quality outcomes from schooling while dealing with increasing diversity of the student population. So what is a teacher’s role in providing equitable possibilities for all of the students in their care? Teachers are left with the difficult task of balancing the many mandatory requirements placed on them, and on their students, such as gaining improvements on high stakes test scores, with the important work of dealing with individual students and student cohorts in equitable and socially just ways. This impacts on the work of all teachers, however for those teachers working in schools in contexts of complexity and duress these pressures are never greater.

Expert science teacher's notion of scientific literacy

This paper will report on the way expert science teachers’ conceive of scientific literacy in their classrooms, the values related to scientific literacy they hold and how this conception and the underpinning values affect their teaching practice. Three perceived expert science teachers who teach both at senior and middle school levels and across the range of sub-disciplines (one senior biology, one senior chemistry and one senior physics) were interviewed about their understanding of scientific literacy and how this influenced their teaching practice. The three teachers were video recorded teaching a junior science class and a senior science class. The data were analysed to identify values that underpin their conceptions of science and science education. The analysis focussed on the matching of the verbalised conceptions and values with their practice of teaching science. This paper will report on these data.

Scaling digital radiographs for templating in total hip arthroplasty using conventional acetate templates independent of calibration markers

We describe a scaling method for templating digital radiographs using conventional acetate templates independent of template magnification without the need for a calibration marker. The mean magnification factor for the radiology department was determined (119.8%, range117%-123.4%). This fixed magnification factor was used to scale the radiographs by the method described. 32 femoral heads on postoperative THR radiographs were then measured and compared to the actual size. The mean absolute accuracy was within 0.5% of actual head size (range 0 to 3%) with a mean absolute difference of 0.16mm (range 0-1mm, SD 0.26mm). Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) showed excellent reliability for both inter and intraobserver measurements with ICC scores of 0.993 (95% CI 0.988-0.996) for interobserver measurements and intraobserver measurements ranging between 0.990-0.993 (95% CI 0.980-0.997).

Reflection of My Digital Mind

This artwork visualised my digital mind which is built on my technology experience. The contemporary technologies make available many small pieces of factual information that have affected the formation of my identity. This results that multiple identities can exist in a rhizomatic form through a vertical gene transfer. This does not refer to schizophrenia, but an ongoing transformation of digital mind.

Academic faculty’s teaching social networks : what is the extent of library faculty’s inclusion?

Collaboration between academic and library faculty is an important topic of discussion and research among academic librarians. Partnerships are vital for developing effective information literacy education. The research reported in this paper aims to develop an understanding of academic collaborators by analyzing academic faculty’s teaching social network. Academic faculty teaching social networks have not been previously described through the lens of social network analysis. A teaching social network is comprised of people and their communication channels that affect academic faculty when they design and deliver their courses. Social network analysis was the methodology used to describe the teaching social networks. The preliminary results show academic faculty were more affected by the channels of communication in how they taught (pedagogy) than what they taught (course content). This study supplements the existing research on collaboration and information literacy. It provides both academic and library faculty with added insight into their relationships.

Developing a digital image watermarking model

This paper presents a key based generic model for digital image watermarking. The model aims at addressing an identified gap in the literature by providing a basis for assessing different watermarking requirements in various digital image applications. We start with a formulation of a basic watermarking system, and define system inputs and outputs. We then proceed to incorporate the use of keys in the design of various system components. Using the model, we also define a few fundamental design and evaluation parameters. To demonstrate the significance of the proposed model, we provide an example of how it can be applied to formally define common attacks.

Andrzej Zielinski : pulp digital fictions

This is a review of painter Andrzej Zielinski's exhibition at gallery 9 in Sydney. It highlights the artist's expressionistic style and strong colour sense as well as his association with American painterly traditions. The artist application of acrylic modelling paste and his paintings also gives them a sculptural and architectural dimension, and on a conceptual level play with notions of mimesis and material form.