UQ in Vietnam: Teaching journalism students foreign correspondence

The University of Queensland has developed Work Integrated Learning (WIL) courses for groups of 10 students at a time to travel to Vietnam to engage in intercultural learning and working as foreign correspondents for a dedicated UQ multimedia website. Their radio, television, print and photojournalism reports have also been made available to media around the world under Creative Commons arrangements. This article reports on the students' experience in both WIL courses where they were exposed to intensive, immerse and experiential teaching and coaching by a lecturer (the researcher who is a former foreign correspondent for the ABC) and two tutors with expertise in editorial and technical production.

Blogging

Weblogs, or blogs, constitute a form and genre of online publishing that emerged in the mid-1990s as a logical consequence of the confluence of personal and professional home pages and new web publishing technologies. To overcome technological limitations, where news updates had to be manually inserted by editing the underlying HTML code, the early content-management systems in the second half of the 1990s built on server-side database technology to dynamically generate web pages; this enabled more convenient and more frequent content updates. Weblogs utilised such technologies to provide an up-to-date news feed, presenting individual news items in reverse chronological order. Most blogging platforms provide commenting functions that enable readers to respond to and discuss individual blog posts...

Co-creating stories in social learning systems : The role of community media and cultural organisations in disseminating knowledge

This paper investigates how community based media organisations are co-creative storytelling institutions, and how they learn to disseminate knowledge in a social learning system. Organisations involved in story co-creation are learning to create in fluid environments.They are project based, with a constant turnover of volunteers or staff. These organisations have to meet the needs of their funding bodies and their communities to remain sustainable. Learning is seen as dialogical, and this is also reflected in the nature of storytelling itself. These organisations must learn to meet the needs of their communities, who in turn learn from the organisation’s expertise in a facilitated setting. This learning is participatory and collaborative, and is often a mix of virtual and offline interaction. Such community-based organisations sit in the realm of a hybrid-learning environment; they are neither a formal educational institution like a college, nor do their volunteers produce outcomes in a professional capacity. Yet, they must maintain a certain level of quality outcomes from their contributors to be of continued value in their communities. Drawing from a larger research study, one particular example is that of the CitizenJ project. CitizenJ is hosted by a state cultural centre, and partnered with publishing partners in the community broadcasting sector. This paper explores how this project is a Community of Practice, and how it promotes ethical and best practice, meets contributors’ needs, emphasises the importance of facilitation in achieving quality outcomes, and the creation of projects for wider community and public interest.

Restraint in the age of speed: Protecting vulnerable news sources in the 24/7 global news cycle

As news communication speeds up, investigative journalists have an increasing responsibility to minimise the risk of harm to vulnerable news sources. In addition, the increased longevity and instant global search-ability of news coverage and investigative journalism outputs such as documentaries, places upon journalists an increased responsibility for accuracy since online coverage cannot be easily corrected or retracted. This paper will examine how the risks to a news source and her family were considered and mitigated during the production of a radio documentary and newspaper story about an intended victim of child sacrifice. Pre-publication considerations included the possible risks to the mental health of the news source, the potential physical risk to her children and the risk to future family relationships. To hear the ABC Radio National documentary, A living sacrifice, on 360 Documentaries prior to the conference, see http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/a-living-sacrifice/5359744. To read the Sunday Mail newspaper coverage of the story see http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/susannah-birch-talks-about-her-throat-being-slit-by-her-mother-when-she-was-a-baby/story-fnihsrf2-1226881911465.

The favelas through the lenses of photographers: Photojournalism from community and mainstream media organisations

Photographers from community and mainstream media organisations bring the everyday of favela communities to the attention of Rio de Janeiro’s society from different perspectives. While mainstream photojournalists mainly report on favelas from outside to inside, denouncing wrongdoings and human rights abuses, community photographers do it from the opposite direction, from inside to outside, presenting images of the everyday life of favela communities. This paper takes an ethnographic and discursive approach to comparing these two categories of photographers to ask how their different practices can yield benefits for the people living in marginalised communities. Furthermore, by adapting Foucault and Bourdieu’s theories, this study examines photographers’ habitus so as to determine how cultural capital and economic capital that they possess shape their subjectivity and, as such, the fields of community and mainstream photojournalism. This study has no intention of creating polarised distinctions between community and mainstream photojournalism. Instead, the research aims, through the investigation of the working practices, identities, and discourses of photographers from community and mainstream media organisations, to identify the activities and limitations of both community and mainstream in order to build an understanding about how the media ecology works best within both.

The ongoing significance of national media systems in the context of media globalization

This article argues that the concept of national media systems, and the comparative study of media systems, institutions, and practices, retains relevance in an era of media globalization and technological convergence. It considers various critiques of ‘media systems’ theories, such as those which view the concept of ‘system’ as a legacy of an outdated positivism and those which argue that the media globalization is weakening the relevance of nation-states in structuring the field of media cultures and practices. It argues for the continuing centrality of nation-states to media processes, and the ongoing significance of the national space in an age of media globalization, with reference to case studies of Internet policies in China, Brazil, and Australia. These studies indicate that nation-states remain critical actors in media governance and that domestic actors largely shape the central dynamics of media policies, even where media technologies and platforms enable global flows of media content.

Financial institutions using social media – do consumers perceive value?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions of value of financial institutions using social media to interact with consumers; if overall perceived value predicts a consumer’s intention to adopt, and if intention predicts self-reported adoption of social media to interact with a financial institution; and if perceptions of value in using social media to interact with a financial institution changes over time. Design/methodology/approach Self-administered surveys were run at two time points; 2010 and 2014. Data were analyzed using multiple and mediated regressions, and t-tests. Comparisons are made between the two time points. Findings Perceived usefulness, economic value, and social value predicted overall perceived value, which in turn predicted a consumer’s intention to adopt social media to interact with a financial institution. At Time 2, adoption intention predicted self-reported usage behavior. Finally, there were significant differences between perceptions across Time 1 and 2. Research limitations/implications The implications of the research highlight the importance of overall perceived value in the role of adoption intention, and that at Time 2, adoption intention predicted self-reported adoption to read and share content. A reduction in perceptions of value and intentions from Time 1 to Time 2 could be explained by perceptions of technology insecurity. In future studies, the authors recommend examining inhibitors to adoption including hedonic value. Practical implications The findings suggest that consumers will use social media if the sector creates and clearly articulates consumer value from using social media. The sector also needs to address technology security perceptions to increase usage of social media. Originality/value This paper is one of the first to investigate the consumer’s perspective in social media adoption by financial institutions, by exploring the role of value in consumer adoption and usage of social media.

Community uses of co-creative media. Digital storytelling and Co-creative Media : The role of community arts and media in propagating and coordinating population-wide creative practice

This report describes a dynamic ‘Co-creative Media System’ that is emerging in the social space bounded by the following institutional pillars: • major cultural institutions (including screen culture agencies, libraries, museums, galleries and public service broadcasters) • the Community Arts and Cultural Development sector (historically supported through various programs of the Australia Council for the Arts) • the community broadcasting sector • the Indigenous media sector, and • the higher education sector. It illustrates how this system activates the immense creative potential of the Australian population through the ongoing development and application of participatory storytelling methods and media.

Social Media Audience Metrics as a New Form of TV Audience Measurement

Digital media have contributed to significant disruptions in the business of audience measurement. Television broadcasters have long relied on simple and authoritative measures of who is watching what. The demand for ratings data, as a common currency in transactions involving advertising and program content, will likely remain, but accompanying measurements of audience engagement with media content would also be of value. Today's media environment increasingly includes social media and second-screen use, providing a data trail that affords an opportunity to measure engagement. If the limitations of using social media to indicate audience engagement can be overcome, social media use may allow for quantitative and qualitative measures of engagement. Raw social media data must be contextualized, and it is suggested that tools used by sports analysts be incorporated to do so. Inspired by baseball's Sabremetrics, the authors propose Telemetrics in an attempt to separate actual performance from contextual factors. Telemetrics facilitates measuring audience activity in a manner controlling for factors such as time slot, network, and so forth. It potentially allows both descriptive and predictive measures of engagement.

Australian Media Law [5th Edition]

Australian Media Law details and explains the complex case law, legislation and regulations governing media practice in areas as diverse as journalism, advertising, multimedia and broadcasting. It examines the issues affecting traditional forms of media such as television, radio, film and newspapers as well as for recent forms such as the internet, online forums and digital technology, in a clear and accessible format. New additions to the fifth edition include: - the implications of new anti-terrorism legislation for journalists; - developments in privacy law, including Law Reform recommendations for a statutory cause of action to protect personal privacy in Australia and the expanding privacy jurisprudence in the United Kingdom and New Zealand; - liability for defamation of internet search engines and service providers; - the High Court decision in Roadshow v iiNet and the position of internet service providers in relation to copyright infringement via their services; - new suppression order regimes; - statutory reforms providing journalists with a rebuttable presumption of non-disclosure when called upon to reveal their sources in a court of law; - recent developments regarding whether journalists can use electronic devices to collect and disseminate information about court proceedings; - contempt committed by jurors via social media; and an examination of recent decisions on defamation, confidentiality, vilification, copyright and contempt.

The ultimate edge: The case for planning media for sustaining space communities

Governments and intergovernmental organisations have long recognised that space communities – the ultimate ‘settlements at the edge’ – will exist one day and have based their first plans for these on another region ‘at the edge’, the Antarctic. United States President Eisenhower proposed to the United Nations in 1960 that the principles of the Antarctic Treaty be applied to outer space and celestial bodies (State Department, n.d.). Three years later the UN adopted the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space and in 1967 that became the Outer Space Treaty. According to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, ‘the Treaty was opened for signature by the three depository Governments (the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) in January 1967, and it entered into force in October 1967’ (Office for Outer Space Affairs, n.d). The status of the treaty (at time of writing) was 89 signatories and 102 parties (Office for Disarmament Affairs, n.d.). Other related instruments include the Rescue Agreement, the Liability Convention, the Registration Convention and the Moon Agreement (Office for Outer Space Affairs, n.d.-a). Jumping to the present, a newsagency reported in July 2014 (Reuters, 2014) that the British Government had shortlisted eight aerodromes in its search for a potential base for the UK’s first spaceplane flights which Ministers want to happen by 2018 (UK Space Agency, 2014). The United States already has a spaceport, in New Mexico (Cokley, Rankin, Heinrich, & McAuliffe, 2013)...

The challenges of Weibo for data-driven digital media research

Data generated via user activity on social media platforms is routinely used for research across a wide range of social sciences and humanities disciplines. The availability of data through the Twitter APIs in particular has afforded new modes of research, including in media and communication studies; however, there are practical and political issues with gaining access to such data, and with the consequences of how that access is controlled. In their paper ‘Easy Data, Hard Data’, Burgess and Bruns (2015) discuss both the practical and political aspects of Twitter data as they relate to academic research, describing how communication research has been enabled, shaped and constrained by Twitter’s “regimes of access” to data, the politics of data use, and emerging economies of data exchange. This conceptual model, including the ‘easy data, hard data’ formulation, can also be applied to Sina Weibo. In this paper, we build on this model to explore the practical and political challenges and opportunities associated with the ‘regimes of access’ to Weibo data, and their consequences for digital media and communication studies. We argue that in the Chinese context, the politics of data access can be even more complicated than in the case of Twitter, which makes scientific research relying on large social data from this platform more challenging in some ways, but potentially richer and more rewarding in others.

How information around acute events comes into being on social media?

In this digital age, as social media is emerging as a central site where information is shared and interpreted, it is essential to study information construction issues on social media sites in order to understand how social reality is constructed. While there is a number of studies taking an information-as-objective point of view, this proposed study emphasizes the constructed and interpretive nature of information and explores the processes through which information surrounding acute events comes into being on micro-blogs. In order to conduct this analysis systematically and theoretically, the concept of interpretive communities will be deployed. This research investigates if or not micro-blog based social groups can serve as interpretive communities, and, if so, what role might they play in the construction of information, and the social impacts that may arise. To understand how this process is entangled with the surrounding social, political, technical contexts, cases from both China (focusing on Sina Weibo) and Australia (focusing on Twitter) will be analysed.

Transformative times: Australian journalists’ perceptions of changes in their work

Numerous studies have pointed to the fact that journalism in most industrialised societies is undergoing a particularly intensive period of transformation. Yet, while many scholars have studied how news organisations are changing, comparatively fewer studies have inquired into how journalists themselves are experiencing the changes in their work brought on by the technological, economic and cultural transformations. Based on a representative study of Australian journalists, this paper reports on their perceptions of changes in a variety of influences and aspects of their work over the past five years. It finds that journalists say change has been most notable in audience interactions and technological innovation, while economic changes are somewhat less strong. Importantly, they are also very concerned about an increase in sensationalism and a drop in journalistic standards and the credibility of journalism. Results are also compared across different organisational contexts.

Combining detached watchdog journalism with development ideals: An exploration of Fijian journalism culture

Development journalism has been a key focus of discussion among journalism scholars for around half a decade, but most of the attention has been firmly on African and Asian countries. This paper examines the situation on the little-researched island nation of Fiji, which has experienced considerable political instability since independence in 1970. Based on interviews with 77 of the country’s small population of just over 100 journalists, we find that journalism in Fiji exhibits similarities to Western journalism ideals, but also a significant development journalism orientation. A comparison with six other countries from the global South shows that this mix is not unique, and we argue that Western journalism approaches and development ideals are not by necessity mutually exclusive, as has often been argued. In this way, the article aims to contribute to a reassessment of our understanding of development journalism and how journalists in developing societies view their work.