Think global, act global: Corporate content streaming and Australian media policy

Australia ’s media policy agenda has recently been dominated by debate over two key issues: media ownership reform, and the local content provisions of the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement. Challenging the tendency to analyse these issues separately, the article considers them as interlinked indicators of fundamental shifts occurring in the digital media environment. Converged media corporations increasingly seek to achieve economies of scale through ‘content streaming’: multi-purposing proprietary content across numerous digitally enabled platforms. This has resulted in rivalries for control of delivery technologies (as witnessed in media ownership debates) as well as over market access for corporate content (in the case of local content debates). The article contextualises Australia’s contemporary media policy flashpoints within international developments and longer-term industry strategising. It further questions the power of media policy as it is currently conceived to deal adequately with the challenges raised by a converging digital media marketplace.

Campfire culture and computer culture: Museums of the present

In Australia indigenous peoples have never had a treaty with the dominant cultures; and their on-going marginalisation is some testimony to this. However, they have not languished entirely in a policy free environment: media is one area where some policy advances have been made; but media policy development has experienced a number of problems. It has tended to be monolithic in a situation demanding multi and complex treatments. And funding, as always, never seems sufficient to meet those multi and complex needs. This paper examines a small remote community on the island of Milingimbi off the northern coast of Arnhem Land in Australia's far north. People in East Arnhem Land refer to themselves collectively as Yolngu. This community is not typical of many documented cases of media relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples; however, the fact that it tends to overturn much of the conventional scholarship surrounding indigenous peoples and the media, helps shed new light on the inadequacy of not only monolithic media policy, but the inadequacy of media-only approaches to policy. Arguably, the significance of the media in Milingimbi is part of a 'triangulated' relationship between indigenous and dominant cultures. That triangulation also involves appropriate forms of government and education, which coupled with appropriate media appear to offer new ways of seeing self-government alongside relative cultural and economic autonomy.

Prometheus unbound: 20 years of communication policy research

In this article I review 20 years of writing on communication policy in Prometheus. I examine the contribution Prometheus has made to three areas of knowledge about communication policy: communication itself, its histories, and broad notions of communication policy; telecommunications; and new communication technology. I suggest that it is in the latter two areas focusing on the technological dimensions of communication policy, that the journal has consistently contributed genuinely innovative work. Here the journal has fostered interdisciplinary writing and enquiry where policy and technology developments most required critique and new ideas.

Disabled e-nation: Telecommunications, disability, and national policy

This article considers questions of technological change, innovation, and communication from a disability perspective. Using a critical social perspective on disability, we offer an Australian case study to analyse disability in national telecommunications policy. In doing so, we critique the systemic lack of incorporation of disability in national visions, policies, and programmes. Accordingly, we argue for a cohesive, and genuine commitment to incorporating disability considerations in all areas of information and communication technology policy and scholarship.

The media, marketing, and single sex schooling

The Australian media's interest in education, as in many Anglophone countries, is frequently dominated by concerns about boys in schools. In 2002, in a country region of the Australian State of Queensland, this concern was evident in a debate on the merits of single sex schooling that took place in a small local newspaper. The debate was fuelled by the inclusion in this newspaper of an advertising brochure for an elite private girls' school. The advertisement utilized the current concerns about boys in schools to advocate the benefits of girls' only schools. Drawing on research that suggests that boys are a problem in school, and utilising a peculiar mix of liberal feminism alongside a neo-liberal class politics, it implicitly denigrated the education provided by government co-educational schools. The local government high and primary school principals, incensed at this advertisement, contacted the paper to refute many of its claims and assumptions and to assert the benefits, to both boys and girls, of their particular schools. A letters to the editor debate then followed an article representing these government school principals' views. These letters were from two private school principals. This country newspaper thus became a medium through which various school principals engaged with the current boys' debate, and research associated with it, in order to market their schools. This paper examines this particular newspaper debate and argues that, in the absence of nuanced, research based, and thoughtful policy responses to gender issues, many school policies on gender are being shaped through and by the media in ways that elide the complexities of the issues involved.

Mobile message services and communications policy

Something of a design after-thought, mobile phone SMS (Short-Message Services) have been enthusiastically adopted by consumers worldwide, who have created a new text culture. SMS is now being deployed to provide a range of services and transactions, as well as playing a critical role in offering an interactive path for television broadcasting. In this paper we offer a case study of a lucrative, new industry developing internationally at the intersection of telecommunications, broadcasting, and information services—namely, premium rate SMS/MMS. To explore the issues at stake we focus on an Australian case study of policy responses to the development of premium rate mobile messaging services in the 2002-2005 period. In the first part, we give a brief history of premium rate telecommunications. Secondly, we characterise premium rate mobile message services and examine their emergence. Thirdly, we discuss the responses of Australian policy-makers and industry to these services. Fourthly, we place the Australian experience in international context, and indicate common issues. Finally, we draw some conclusions from the peregrinations of mobile message services for regulators grappling with communications policy frameworks.

Ethnic Print Media in the multicultural nation of Canada: A case study of the black newspaper in Montreal

This article explores the social and cultural roles of ethnic print media in the country within the prism of Canada's multicultural policy. Specifically, the article examines how the ethnic groups are framed in the mainstream national media in Canada and then examines how these ethnic media are [re]constructing their own identities in contrast to their framed identities in the mainstream national print media such as the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Sun. In exploring the overall socio-political impacts of these ethnic print media on the social fabrics and cultural identity in Canadian society, Montreal Community Contact, an ethnic newspaper of the black community in Montreal, is used as a case study. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications.

The communication rights in the information society (CRIS) campaign: Applying social movement theories to an analysis of global media reform

Social movement theories offer useful conceptual and analytical tools to the study and research of global media reform movements. This article is a critical analysis of the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign. It explores its successes and blind-spots in the light of social movement theory, in particular resource mobilization theory (RMT), and offers practical directions for the movement to move on from where it is to where it ought to be.

An examination of the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes

This study draws upon cultivation theory, acculturation theory, and works on intergroup relations to examine the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes of Chinese immigrants in Australia. Data was gathered via a survey administered to 265 respondents with Chinese origin. Results indicate that exposure to mainstream newspapers is only positively related to one indicator of subjective reality, namely, outgroup perception whereas exposure to ethnic newspapers was not significantly related to any of the indicators of subjective reality. Acculturation attitudes, on the other hand, are more closely related to group perception and contact but not closely associated with exposure to print media. These findings have again challenged the direct effect assumption of cultivation theory, paved the ground for combining mediated communication variables with interpersonal communication variables in acculturation research and suggested policy implications for interethnic coexistence. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.