The media and communications in Australia (3rd ed.)

Traditional media are under assault from digital technologies. Online advertising is eroding the financial basis of newspapers and television, demarcations between different forms of media are fading, and audiences are fragmenting. We can podcast our favourite radio show, data accompanies television programs, and we catch up with newspaper stories on our laptops. Yet mainstream media remain enormously powerful. The Media and Communications in Australia offers a systematic introduction to this dynamic field. Fully updated and revised to take account of recent developments, this third edition outlines the key media industries and explains how communications technologies are impacting on them. It provides a thorough overview of the main approaches taken in studying the media, and includes new chapters on social media, gaming, telecommunications, sport and cultural diversity. With contributions from some of Australia's best researchers and teachers in the field, The Media and Communications in Australia is the most comprehensive and reliable introduction to media and communications available. It is an ideal student text, and a reference for teachers of media and anyone interested in this influential industry.

Digital media literacy : connecting young people’s identities, creative production and learning about video games

This chapter outlines examples of classroom activities that aim to make connections between young people’s everyday experiences with video games and the formal high school curriculum. These classroom activities were developed within the emerging field of digital media literacy. Digital media literacy combines elements of ‘traditional’ approaches to media education with elements of technology and information education (Buckingham, 2007; Warschauer, 2006). It is an educational field that has gained significant attention in recent years. For example, digital media literacy has become a significant objective for media policy makers in response to the increased social and cultural roles of new media technologies and controversies associated with young people’s largely unregulated online participation. Media regulators, educational institutions and independent organizations1 in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have developed digital media literacy initiatives that aim to provide advice to parents, teachers and young people.

Emailing experts and novices : effects of knowledge, copy type and testimonials on email advertising effectiveness

In this article we examine how consumer knowledge and two aspects of email ad design (copy type and testimonial type) influence attitudes and purchase intentions. Results from a field experiment reveal differences between experts and novices in their responses to email advertising. Specifically, experts report more favorable evaluations for email advertising than novices. Experts also demonstrate a preference for expert testimonials, when exposed to attribute copy. Yet when benefits-only ad copy was used, experts are most influenced by novice testimonials. In contrast, novice consumers show no copy-testimonial preference. Expert testimonials are also more effective than novice testimonials for expert and novice consumers. We discuss the results with respect to theoretical contributions and managerial implications.

Digital storytelling, podcasts, blogs and vlogs : exploring a range of new media texts and forms in English

Curriculum initiatives in Australia emphasise the use of technologies and new media in classrooms. Some English teachers might fear this deployment of technologies because we are not all ‘digital natives’ like our students. If we embrace new media forms such as podcasts, blogs, vodcasts, and digital stories, a whole new world of possibilities open up for literary response and recreative texts, with new audiences and publication spaces. This article encourages English teachers to embrace these new digital forms and how shows we can go about it.

A fully Bayesian approach to inference for Coxian phase-type distributions with covariate dependent mean

Phase-type distributions represent the time to absorption for a finite state Markov chain in continuous time, generalising the exponential distribution and providing a flexible and useful modelling tool. We present a new reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo scheme for performing a fully Bayesian analysis of the popular Coxian subclass of phase-type models; the convenient Coxian representation involves fewer parameters than a more general phase-type model. The key novelty of our approach is that we model covariate dependence in the mean whilst using the Coxian phase-type model as a very general residual distribution. Such incorporation of covariates into the model has not previously been attempted in the Bayesian literature. A further novelty is that we also propose a reversible jump scheme for investigating structural changes to the model brought about by the introduction of Erlang phases. Our approach addresses more questions of inference than previous Bayesian treatments of this model and is automatic in nature. We analyse an example dataset comprising lengths of hospital stays of a sample of patients collected from two Australian hospitals to produce a model for a patient's expected length of stay which incorporates the effects of several covariates. This leads to interesting conclusions about what contributes to length of hospital stay with implications for hospital planning. We compare our results with an alternative classical analysis of these data.

The impact of property title type on residential property returns

Residential property in New Zealand comprises both freestanding residential properties and medium to high density residential properties. Medium to high density residential property comprises the typical units, townhouses and semi-detached houses common in most residential property markets. However, in many of the larger cities of New Zealand the free standing residential property market has evolved into two separate markets being freehold residential property and cross lease residential property. Cross leases have developed as a form of infill housing to reduce the urban sprawl in major canters, while reducing the time and cost for residential property developers. A cross lease is created when an existing freestanding residential property subdivides a portion of the existing land for the erection of another house on the original title, basically dividing one larger residential section into two smaller residential blocks. This paper will analyse house prices in Christchurch over the period 1992 to 2006 to determine if the various housing markets have shown similar capital returns or if there is a specific preference for a particular residential property title.

Audience and Market Foresight Trends and Foresight in Digital Media

This report provides an overview of trends in digital media over the period from 2009-2015. It applies scenario analysis to provide foresight on macro trends in the economy, politics, society and culture that will impact upon digital media market development in Australia, and the prospects for growth in online and digital media industries. It considers developments in the diffusion of innovations in advertising and marketing, mobile media, user-created content, and legal issues for consumers engaging in online transactions.

Biochemical characterization of Aprataxin, the protein deficient in Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia type 1

Neurodegenerative disorders are heterogenous in nature and include a range of ataxias with oculomotor apraxia, which are characterised by a wide variety of neurological and ophthalmological features. This family includes recessive and dominant disorders. A subfamily of autosomal recessive cerebellar ataxias are characterised by defects in the cellular response to DNA damage. These include the well characterised disorders Ataxia-Telangiectasia (A-T) and Ataxia-Telangiectasia Like Disorder (A-TLD) as well as the recently identified diseases Spinocerebellar ataxia with axonal neuropathy Type 1 (SCAN1), Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia Type 2 (AOA2), as well as the subject of this thesis, Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia Type 1 (AOA1). AOA1 is caused by mutations in the APTX gene, which is located at chromosomal locus 9p13. This gene codes for the 342 amino acid protein Aprataxin. Mutations in APTX cause destabilization of Aprataxin, thus AOA1 is a result of Aprataxin deficiency. Aprataxin has three functional domains, an N-terminal Forkhead Associated (FHA) phosphoprotein interaction domain, a central Histidine Triad (HIT) nucleotide hydrolase domain and a C-terminal C2H2 zinc finger. Aprataxins FHA domain has homology to FHA domain of the DNA repair protein 5’ polynucleotide kinase 3’ phosphatase (PNKP). PNKP interacts with a range of DNA repair proteins via its FHA domain and plays a critical role in processing damaged DNA termini. The presence of this domain with a nucleotide hydrolase domain and a DNA binding motif implicated that Aprataxin may be involved in DNA repair and that AOA1 may be caused by a DNA repair deficit. This was substantiated by the interaction of Aprataxin with proteins involved in the repair of both single and double strand DNA breaks (XRay Cross-Complementing 1, XRCC4 and Poly-ADP Ribose Polymerase-1) and the hypersensitivity of AOA1 patient cell lines to single and double strand break inducing agents. At the commencement of this study little was known about the in vitro and in vivo properties of Aprataxin. Initially this study focused on generation of recombinant Aprataxin proteins to facilitate examination of the in vitro properties of Aprataxin. Using recombinant Aprataxin proteins I found that Aprataxin binds to double stranded DNA. Consistent with a role for Aprataxin as a DNA repair enzyme, this binding is not sequence specific. I also report that the HIT domain of Aprataxin hydrolyses adenosine derivatives and interestingly found that this activity is competitively inhibited by DNA. This provided initial evidence that DNA binds to the HIT domain of Aprataxin. The interaction of DNA with the nucleotide hydrolase domain of Aprataxin provided initial evidence that Aprataxin may be a DNA-processing factor. Following these studies, Aprataxin was found to hydrolyse 5’adenylated DNA, which can be generated by unscheduled ligation at DNA breaks with non-standard termini. I found that cell extracts from AOA1 patients do not have DNA-adenylate hydrolase activity indicating that Aprataxin is the only DNA-adenylate hydrolase in mammalian cells. I further characterised this activity by examining the contribution of the zinc finger and FHA domains to DNA-adenylate hydrolysis by the HIT domain. I found that deletion of the zinc finger ablated the activity of the HIT domain against adenylated DNA, indicating that the zinc finger may be required for the formation of a stable enzyme-substrate complex. Deletion of the FHA domain stimulated DNA-adenylate hydrolysis, which indicated that the activity of the HIT domain may be regulated by the FHA domain. Given that the FHA domain is involved in protein-protein interactions I propose that the activity of Aprataxins HIT domain may be regulated by proteins which interact with its FHA domain. We examined this possibility by measuring the DNA-adenylate hydrolase activity of extracts from cells deficient for the Aprataxin-interacting DNA repair proteins XRCC1 and PARP-1. XRCC1 deficiency did not affect Aprataxin activity but I found that Aprataxin is destabilized in the absence of PARP-1, resulting in a deficiency of DNA-adenylate hydrolase activity in PARP-1 knockout cells. This implies a critical role for PARP-1 in the stabilization of Aprataxin. Conversely I found that PARP-1 is destabilized in the absence of Aprataxin. PARP-1 is a central player in a number of DNA repair mechanisms and this implies that not only do AOA1 cells lack Aprataxin, they may also have defects in PARP-1 dependant cellular functions. Based on this I identified a defect in a PARP-1 dependant DNA repair mechanism in AOA1 cells. Additionally, I identified elevated levels of oxidized DNA in AOA1 cells, which is indicative of a defect in Base Excision Repair (BER). I attribute this to the reduced level of the BER protein Apurinic Endonuclease 1 (APE1) I identified in Aprataxin deficient cells. This study has identified and characterised multiple DNA repair defects in AOA1 cells, indicating that Aprataxin deficiency has far-reaching cellular consequences. Consistent with the literature, I show that Aprataxin is a nuclear protein with nucleoplasmic and nucleolar distribution. Previous studies have shown that Aprataxin interacts with the nucleolar rRNA processing factor nucleolin and that AOA1 cells appear to have a mild defect in rRNA synthesis. Given the nucleolar localization of Aprataxin I examined the protein-protein interactions of Aprataxin and found that Aprataxin interacts with a number of rRNA transcription and processing factors. Based on this and the nucleolar localization of Aprataxin I proposed that Aprataxin may have an alternative role in the nucleolus. I therefore examined the transcriptional activity of Aprataxin deficient cells using nucleotide analogue incorporation. I found that AOA1 cells do not display a defect in basal levels of RNA synthesis, however they display defective transcriptional responses to DNA damage. In summary, this thesis demonstrates that Aprataxin is a DNA repair enzyme responsible for the repair of adenylated DNA termini and that it is required for stabilization of at least two other DNA repair proteins. Thus not only do AOA1 cells have no Aprataxin protein or activity, they have additional deficiencies in PolyADP Ribose Polymerase-1 and Apurinic Endonuclease 1 dependant DNA repair mechanisms. I additionally demonstrate DNA-damage inducible transcriptional defects in AOA1 cells, indicating that Aprataxin deficiency confers a broad range of cellular defects and highlighting the complexity of the cellular response to DNA damage and the multiple defects which result from Aprataxin deficiency. My detailed characterization of the cellular consequences of Aprataxin deficiency provides an important contribution to our understanding of interlinking DNA repair processes.

Democracy, participation and convergent media : case studies in contemporary online news journalism in Australia

The shift from 20th century mass communications media towards convergent media and Web 2.0 has raised the possibility of a renaissance of the public sphere, based around citizen journalism and participatory media culture. This paper will evaluate such claims both conceptually and empirically. At a conceptual level, it is noted that the question of whether media democratization is occurring depends in part upon how democracy is understood, with some critical differences in understandings of democracy, the public sphere and media citizenship. The empirical work in this paper draws upon various case studies of new developments in Australian media, including online- only newspapers, developments in public service media, and the rise of commercially based online alternative media. It is argued that participatory media culture is being expanded if understood in terms of media pluralism, but that implications for the public sphere depend in part upon how media democratization is defined.

Media scepticism, media diets and media landscapes: A consideration of US versus Australian political information environments

The range of political information sources available to modern Australians is greater and more varied today than at any point in the nation’s history, incorporating print, broadcast, Internet, mainstream and non-mainstream media. In such a competitive media environment, the factors which influence the selection of some information sources above others are of interest to political agents, media institutions and communications researchers alike. A key factor in information source selection is credibility. At the same time that the range of political information sources is increasing rapidly, due to the development of new information and communication technologies, audience research suggests that trust in mainstream media organisations in many countries is declining. So if people distrust the mainstream media, but have a vast array of alternative political information sources available to them, what do their personal media consumption patterns look like? How can we analyse such media consumption patterns in a meaningful way? In this paper I will briefly map the development of media credibility research in the US and Australia, leading to a discussion of one of the most recent media credibility constructs to be shown to influence political information consumption, media scepticism. Looking at the consequences of media scepticism, I will then consider the associated media consumption construct, media diet, and evaluate its usefulness in an Australian, as opposed to US, context. Finally, I will suggest alternative conceptualisations of media diets which may be more suited to Australian political communications research.

Bringing the internet down to earth : emerging spaces of locative media

Web 1.0 referred to the early, read-only internet; Web 2.0 refers to the ‘read-write web’ in which users actively contribute to as well as consume online content; Web 3.0 is now being used to refer to the convergence of mobile and Web 2.0 technologies and applications. One of the most important developments in mobile 3.0 is geography: with many mobile phones now equipped with GPS, mobiles promise to “bring the internet down to earth” through geographically-aware, or locative media. The internet was earlier heralded as “the death of geography” with predictions that with anyone able to access information from anywhere, geography would no longer matter. But mobiles are disproving this. GPS allows the location of the user to be pinpointed, and the mobile internet allows the user to access locally-relevant information, or to upload content which is geotagged to the specific location. It also allows locally-specific content to be sent to the user when the user enters a specific space. Location-based services are one of the fastest-growing segments of the mobile internet market: the 2008 AIMIA report indicates that user access of local maps increased by 347% over the previous 12 months, and restaurant guides/reviews increased by 174%. The central tenet of cultural geography is that places are culturally-constructed, comprised of the physical space itself, culturally-inflected perceptions of that space, and people’s experiences of the space (LeFebvre 1991). This paper takes a cultural geographical approach to locative media, anatomising the various spaces which have emerged through locative media, or “the geoweb” (Lake 2004). The geoweb is such a new concept that to date, critical discourse has treated it as a somewhat homogenous spatial formation. In order to counter this, and in order to demonstrate the dynamic complexity of the emerging spaces of the geoweb, the paper provides a topography of different types of locative media space: including the personal/aesthetic in which individual users geotag specific physical sites with their own content and meanings; the commercial, like the billboards which speak to individuals as they pass in Minority Report; and the social, in which one’s location is defined by the proximity of friends rather than by geography.

The Brisbane media map : participatory design and authentic learning to link students and industry

The Brisbane Media Map is both an online resource and a tertiary-level authentic learning project. The Brisbane Media Map is an online database which provides a detailed overview of about 600 media industry organisations in Brisbane, Australia. In addition to providing contact details and synopses for each organisation’s profile, the Brisbane Media Map also includes supplementary information on current issues, trends, and individuals in the media and communication industry sectors. This resource is produced and updated annually by final-year undergraduate Media and Communication students. This article introduces the Brisbane Media Map, its functionality and systems design approach, as well as its alignment with key learning infrastructures. It examines authentic learning as the pedagogical framework underpinning the ongoing development work of the resource and highlights some synergies of this framework with participatory design principles. The Brisbane Media Map is a useful example of an authentic learning approach that successfully engages students of non-traditional and non-design areas of study in human-computer interaction, usability, and participatory design activities.

Residential sales by auction : a property type or geographic consideration

The sale of residential property by auction is a preferred sale method by real estate agents, but not always preferred by some vendors and most residential property buyers. In many residential property markets, the performance and measure of residential property market activity is based on the number of properties offered for sale by auction, auction clearance rates and the number of properties sold prior to auction. However, in many specific residential property markets, sale by auction may not be the preferred or supported method of sale. This paper will review the type of residential property sale within the Sydney residential property market and track the auction sales and clearance rates for Sydney over the past 5 months and compare these results in relation to clearance rates, passed in sales, and properties sold prior to auction This will provide a breakdown of real estate agency sale practice over a large metropolitan region to determine the impact of geographic location and socio-economic factors on the auction of residential property. In addition the paper will analyse the weekly auction sales in the Sydney residential property market to determine what areas of Sydney have the greatest number of house auctions and the performance of the auctions in relation location and socio economic factors.

Towards Humane Technologies: Biotechnologies, New Media and Ethics

What are the ethical and political implications when the very foundations of life —things of awe and spiritual significance — are translated into products accessible to few people? This book critically analyses this historic recontextualisation. Through mediation — when meaning moves ‘from one text to another, from one discourse to another’ — biotechnology is transformed into analysable data and into public discourses. The unique book links biotechnology with media and citizenship. As with any ‘commodity’, biological products have been commodified. Because enormous speculative investment rests on this, risk will be understated and benefit will be overstated. Benefits will be unfairly distributed. Already, the bioprospecting of Southern megadiverse nations, legally sanctioned by U.S. property rights conventions, has led to wealth and health benefits in the North. Crucial to this development are biotechnological discourses that shift meanings from a “language of life” into technocratic discourses, infused with neo-liberal economic assumptions that promise progress and benefits for all. Crucial in this is the mass media’s representation of biotechnology for an audience with poor scientific literacy. Yet, even apparently benign biotechnology spawned by the Human Genome Project such as prenatal screening has eugenic possibilities, and genetic codes for illness are eagerly sought by insurance companies seeking to exclude certain people. These issues raise important questions about a citizenship that is founded on moral responsibility for the wellbeing of society now and into the future. After all, biotechnology is very much concerned with the essence of life itself. This book provides a space for alternative and dissident voices beyond the hype that surrounds biotechnology.