A social ecological model of ICT cooption : surveillance creep in the information age

A model for ICT cooption is introduced using the example of ’surveillance creep’ which is the phenomenon of increasing dataveillance as the result of the introduction of seemingly benign, useful and convenient technological artefacts. The model identifies and discusses five main components of ICT artefact development and deployment: design, properties, affordances, appropriation and agent interests and locates them in a complex interrelated social ecology. The model provides a way to empirically examine how and why technology favours particular social or organisational outcomes.

Is proof dead in the computer-age school curriculum?

The article questions the status of proof in mathematics. The article mentions that proof has always been the driving force in historical developments in mathematics. It mentions that proof has been for centuries the staple of mathematics and is used to prepare students for higher mathematical studies and to help them learn to handle the demands of daily life. It cites that changes in school curriculum in the last decades of the twentieth century has rendered proof-free mathematics.

Protection of Australia in the cyber age

Australia has developed sophisticated national security policies and physical security agencies to protect against current and future security threats associated with critical infrastructure protection and cyber warfare protection. In this paper, the authors examine some common security risks that face Australia and how government policies and strategies have been developed and changed over time, for example, the proposed Australian Homeland Security department. This paper discusses the different steps that Australia has undertaken in relation to developing national policies to deal with critical infrastructure protection.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s multiplatform projects : industrial logics of children’s content provision in the digital television era

This paper traces the development of children’s multiplatform commissioning at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in the context of the digitalisation of Australian television. Whilst recent scholarship has focussed on ‘post-broadcast’ or ‘second-shift’ industrial practices, designed to engage view(s)ers with proprietary media brands, less attention has been focussed on children’s and young adults’ television in a public service context. Further, although multiplatform projects in the United States and Britain have been the subject of considerable analysis, less work has attempted to contextualise cultural production in smaller media markets. The paper explores two recent multiplatform projects through textual analysis, empirical research (consisting of interviews with key industry personnel) and an investigation of recent policy documents. The authors argue that the ABC’s mixed diet of children’s programming, featuring an educative or social developmental agenda, is complemented by its appeals to audience ‘participation’, with the Corporation maintaining public service values alongside the need to expand audience reach and the legitimacy of its brand. It finds that the ABC’s historical platform infrastructure, across radio, television and online, have allowed it to move beyond a market failure model to exploit multiplatform synergies competitively in the distribution of Australian children’s content to audiences on-demand.

The digital pillory: media shaming of 'ordinary' people for minor crimes

This paper discusses the intensified role of the media in shaming ‘ordinary' people when they commit minor offences. We argue that shaming is a powerful cultural practice assumed by the news media in western societies after it was all but phased out as a formal punishment imposed by the judiciary during the early nineteenth century. While shaming is no longer a physically brutal practice, we reconceptualize the idea of a ‘lasting mark of shame' at the hands of the media in the digital age. We argue that this form of shaming should be considered through a lens of media power to highlight its symbolic and disciplinary dimensions. We also discuss the role new and traditional media forms play in shaming alongside formal punishments imposed by the judiciary. While ‘ordinary' people armed with digital tools increase the degree of disciplinary surveillance in wider social space, traditional news media continue to play a particularly powerful role in shaming because of their symbolic power to contextualize information generated in social and new media circles and their privileged position to other fields of power.