User behaviours and intentions with digital news media in Australia

This paper summarises findings from a survey of user behaviors and intentions towards digital media and information in Australia. It was undertaken in the first quarter of 2009 by the Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Faculty and was funded by the Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre. The survey targeted users of 2 news and information sites that are available online only. Findings highlighted differences between the 18-24 year age segment and older users. Social networks (specifically friends and family) were rated as the least reliable, relevant and accurate sources of news. Other findings indicate online news sources that are associated with an established newspaper are highly valued as reliable, relevant and accurate news sources by most people. While most people prefer to use online news sources, there is a great deal of variation in the ways in which people actually use online news. From a total of 524 respondents to the survey it was possible to identify three main types of online news consumers: convenience, loyal and customising users.

What advertisers need to know about the iYGeneration : An Australian perspective

A great challenge exists today: how to reach youth (a.k.a. the iYGeneration) who consume multiple media concurrently, who can access information on demand, and who have intertwined virtual social media networks in their lives. Our research finds that Australian youth multi-task and rarely use traditional media, although significant differences between males and females, as well as late tweens and 20-somethings, exist. Technology convergence facilitates two-way dialogue, allowing growing social interactions to occur in their technological environments. Our findings show that in order for marketing communication professionals to effectively communicate with this market, it is crucial to know exactly how the iYGeneration use media, which media they use, and when they use it.

Remediating vernacular creativity : photography and cultural citizenship in the Flickr photosharing network

Read through a focus on the remediation of personal photography in the Flickr photosharing website, in this essay I treat vernacular creativity as a field of cultural practice; one that that does not operate inside the institutions or cultural value systems of high culture or the commercial popular media, and yet draws on and is periodically appropriated by these other systems in dynamic and productive ways. Because of its porosity to commercial culture and art practice, this conceptual model of ‘vernacular creativity’ implies a historicised account of ‘ordinary’ or everyday creative practice that accounts for both continuity and change and avoids creating a nostalgic desire for the recuperation of an authentic folk culture. Moving beyond individual creative practice, the essay concludes by considering the unintended consequences of vernacular creativity practiced in online social networks: in particular, the idea of cultural citizenship.

Little theory, big plans : social capital and community building in Aboriginal Australia

The discourse surrounding recent Aboriginal social policy regularly refers to pragmatism and partnership. In a simpler world, we might call this ‘getting things done with Aboriginal people.’ To that extent, the discourse draws on an indisputable common sense, and it is not surprising that a variety of political agendas can be packaged within such language. While many things need to be done, the quantity and particularly the quality of social networks required to take effective policy into effective practice is something we ought to consider more carefully. This is where the concept of social capital could be useful, since it focuses attention on the social resources required to construct social policy, as well as the social resources that could be produced by effective social policy. Partnerships and pragmatism are therefore related at a most fundamental level in terms of social policy. We question whether this important conceptual bedrock has been fully explored. Hence we review here some recent ‘big plans’ for Aboriginal Australia, and ask whether the size of the theory matches the size of the plans.

The Evolution of the creative industries : creative clusters, creative citizens and social network markets 創意產業的演化 : 創意集群 ,創意公民, 社會網絡市場 [published in Chinese]

The creative industries are important because they are clustered at the point of attraction for a billion or more young people around the world. They're the drivers of demographic, economic and political change. They start from the individual talent of the creative artist and the individual desire and aspiration of the audience. These are the raw materials for innovation, change and emergent culture, scaled up to form new industries and coordinated into global markets based on social networks.

The role of social capital in reducing negative health outcomes among police officers

This paper investigates the role of social capital on the reduction of short and long run negative health effects associated with stress, as well as indicators of burnout among police officers. Despite the large volume of research on either social capital or the health effects of stress, the interaction of these factors remains an underexplored topic. In this empirical analysis we aim to reduce such a shortcoming focusing on a highly stressful and emotionally draining work environment, namely law enforcement agents who perform as an essential part of maintaining modern society. Using a multivariate regression analysis focusing on three different proxies of health and three proxies for social capital conducting also several robustness checks, we find strong evidence that increased levels of social capital is highly correlated with better health outcomes. Additionally we observe that while social capital at work is very important, social capital in the home environment and work-life balance are even more important. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that work and stress programs should actively encourage employees to build stronger social networks as well as incorporate better working/home life arrangements.

Loneliness and classroom participation in adolescents with learning disabilities : a social cognitive view

Students with learning disabilities (LD) often experience significant feelings of loneliness. There is some evidence to suggest that these feelings of loneliness may be related to social difficulties that are linked to their learning disability. Adolescents experience more loneliness than any other age group, primarily because this is a time of identity formation and self-evaluation. Therefore, adolescents with learning disabilities are highly likely to experience the negative feelings of loneliness. Many areas of educational research have highlighted the impact of negative feelings on learning. This begs the question, =are adolescents with learning disabilities doubly disadvantaged in regard to their learning?‘ That is, if their learning experience is already problematic, does loneliness exacerbate these learning difficulties? This thesis reveals the findings of a doctoral project which examined this complicated relationship between loneliness and classroom participation using a social cognitive framework. In this multiple case-study design, narratives were constructed using classroom observations and interviews which were conducted with 4 adolescent students (2 girls and 2 boys, from years 9-12) who were identified as likely to be experiencing learning disabilities. Discussion is provided on the method used to identify students with learning disabilities and the related controversy of using disability labels. A key aspect of the design was that it allowed the students to relate their school experiences and have their stories told. The design included an ethnographic element in its focus on the interactions of the students within the school as a culture and elements of narrative inquiry were used, particularly in reporting the results. The narratives revealed all participants experienced problematic social networks. Further, an alarmingly high level of bullying was discovered. Participants reported that when they were feeling rejected or were missing a valued other they had little cognitive energy for learning and did not want to be in school. Absenteeism amongst the group was high, but this was also true for the rest of the school population. A number of relationships emerged from the narratives using social cognitive theory. These relationships highlighted the impact of cognitive, behavioural and environmental factors in the school experience of lonely students with learning disabilities. This approach reflects the social model of disability that frames the research.

Real estate 2.0 : towards a value ecology?

This paper anatomises emerging developments in online community engagement in a major global industry: real estate. Economists argue that we are entering a ‘social network economy’ in which ‘complex social networks’ govern consumer choice and product value. In the light of this, organisations are shifting from thinking and behaving in the conventional ‘value chain’ model--in which exchanges between firms and customers are one-way only, from the firm to the consumer--to the ‘value ecology’ model, in which consumers and their networks become co-creators of the value of the product. This paper studies the way in which the global real estate industry is responding to this environment. This paper identifies three key areas in which online real estate ‘value ecology’ work is occurring: real estate social networks, games, and locative media / augmented reality applications. Uptake of real estate applications is, of course, user-driven: the paper not only highlights emerging innovations; it also identifies which of these innovations are actually being taken up by users, and the content contributed as a result. The paper thus provides a case study of one major industry’s shift into a web 2.0 communication model, focusing on emerging trends and issues.

The cultural economy moment?

This paper explores the rise of cultural economy as a key organising concept over the 2000s. While it has intellectual precursors in political economy, sociology and postmodernism, it has been work undertaken in the fields of cultural economic geography, creative industries, the culture of service industries and cultural policy where it has come to the forefront, particularly around whether we are now in a ‘creative economy’. While work undertaken in cultural studies has contributed to these developments, the development of neo-liberalism as a meta-concept in critical theory constitutes a substantive barrier to more sustained engagement between cultural studies and economics, as it rests upon a caricature of economic discourse. The paper draws upon Michel Foucault’s lectures on neo-liberalism to indicate that there are significant problems with the neo-Marxist account hat became hegemonic over the 2000s. The paper concludes by identifying areas such as the value of information, the value of networks, motivations for participation in online social networks, and the impact of business cycles on cultural sectors as areas of potentially fruitful inter-disciplinary engagement around the nature of cultural economy.

Silly Citizenship

This paper traces historical changes in the concept of citizenship, in order to show how it has shifted from a state enterprise to a form of self-organising, user-created, ludic association, modelled by online social networks in which children - formally non-citizens but crucial to the continuing and changing discursive practices of citizenship-formation - are active agents. The implications of this 'silly' citizenship for communication scholarship are considered.

Interaction, privacy and profiling considerations in local mobile social software : a prototype agile ride share system

Agile ridesharing aims to utilise the capability of social networks and mobile phones to facilitate people to share vehicles and travel in real time. However the application of social networking technologies in local communities to address issues of personal transport faces significant design challenges. In this paper we describe an iterative design-based approach to exploring this problem and discuss findings from the use of an early prototype. The findings focus upon interaction, privacy and profiling. Our early results suggest that explicitly entering information such as ride data and personal profile data into formal fields for explicit computation of matches, as is done in many systems, may not be the best strategy. It might be preferable to support informal communication and negotiation with text search techniques.

Social network markets and 'public thought'

This paper approaches its topic in a somewhat crabwise manner, but hopefully by that means it may succeed in reaching its objective without being eaten alive. It comprises a critique of a recent internet post called ‘The Shock of Inclusion’ by Clay Shirky (his contribution to The Edge World Question of 2010), in which he claims (among other things) that ‘the average quality of public thought has collapsed.’

Virtual communities as tools to support teaching practicum

The impact of Web 2.0 and social networking tools such as virtual communities, on education has been much commented on. The challenge for teachers is to embrace these new social networking tools and apply them to new educational contexts. The increasingly digitally-abled student cohorts and the need for educational applications of Web 2.0 are challenges that overwhelm many educators. This chapter will make three important contributions. Firstly it will explore the characteristics and behaviours of digitally-abled students enrolled in higher education. An innovation of this chapter will be the appli- cation of Bourdieu’s notions of capital, particularly social, cultural and digital capital to understand these characteristics. Secondly, it will present a possible use of a commonly used virtual community, Facebook©. Finally it will offer some advice for educators who are interested in using popular social networking communities, similar to Facebook©, in their teaching and learning.

Education for the creative economy : innovation, transdisciplinarity, and networks

The question posed in this chapter is: To what extent does current education theory and practice prepare graduates for the creative economy? We first define what we mean by the term creative economy, explain why we think it is a significant point of focus, derive its key features, describe the human capital requirements of these features, and then discuss whether current education theory and practice are producing these human capital requirements. The term creative economy can be critiqued as a shibboleth, but as a high level metaphor, it nevertheless has value in directing us away from certain sorts of economic activity and toward other kinds. Much economic activity is in no way creative. If I have a monopoly on some valued resource, I do not need to be creative. Other forms of economic activity are intensely creative. If I have no valued resources, I must create something that is valued. At its simplest and yet most profound, the idea of a creative economy suggests a capacity to compete based on engaging in a gainful activity that is different from everyone else’s, rather than pursuing the same endeavor more competitively than everyone else. The ability to differentiate on novelty is key to the concept of creative economy and key to our analysis of education for this economy. Therefore, we follow Potts and Cunningham (2008, p. 18) and Potts, Cunningham, Hartley, and Ormerod (2008) in their discussion of the economic significance of the creative industries and see the creative economy not as a sector but as a set of economic processes that act on the economy as a whole to invigorate innovation based growth. We see the creative economy as suffused with all industry rather than as a sector in its own right. These economic processes are essentially concerned with the production of new ideas that ultimately become new products, service, industry sectors, or, in some cases, process or product innovations in older sectors. Therefore, our starting point is that modern economies depend on innovation, and we see the core of innovation as new knowledge of some kind. We commence with some observations about innovation.