Feeding the chooks in the country: a study of successful public relations media strategies in regional Victoria

"Media reporting on regional issues has tended to focus on the negative leaving many urban based Australians with a bleak portrait of rural Australia and it's fuure." (McNeill 2003) This paper looks at the two regional centres of Ballarat and Warrnambool. Through analysis of local papers and in conjunction with interviews with local journalists and public relations practitioners, it begins a dissection of the news production process in these locales. Content analysis reveals the nature of news coverage and the role of key sources, in particular public relations, determining the type of coverage in these centres.

Study of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emissions from burning of local wood species in Australia

Four kinds of Australian local wood species were burned in a domestic wood heater installed in a laboratory. The selected wood species include pine, red gum, yellow box and sugar gum, that are the most popular domestic fuel wood in Australia. Particulate matter emissions from burning of each load of wood were sampled isokinetically on filter media from the flue by standard stack emission sampling train. The particle laden filters then went for Gas Chromatography/ Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS) analysis to determine polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrations. The sampling was conducted under two different burning conditions – air inlet of the combustion chamber fully open and half open. Approximately 15 types of PAHs were detected. Emission factors were derived as microgram of PAHs /kg of wood burned. Total particulate emission factors were also obtained from gravimetric measurement before and after the sampling. PAH emission profiles for four species were generated from the results. Comparisons of emission factors have been conducted among different species of wood, as well as under different burning conditions, ie. fast burning and slowing burning. According to the derived emission factors, pine displayed the highest level of PAHs among the four species, followed by red gum and yellow box, whereas sugar gum showed the lowest level of PAHs. Emission factors were compared between each type of wood under two different burning conditions, the slow burning condition, which was air inlet half open, clearly showed higher PAH levels compared to the fast burning condition. Total PAH fractions on particulate matter were calculated and compared among wood types under two burning conditions. During the fast burning condition, red gum and pine have the higher percentage of PAH to total particulate matter emission than sugar gum and yellow box. When changed to slow burning, the PAH fraction on particulate matter are all increased with sugar gum having the largest increase.

The Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games : what does it mean for the local property market?

In 2006 Melbourne will host the 18th Commonwealth Games with Brisbane being the last Australian city to host this event over two decades ago in 1982. Melbourne has not held a major global sporting event since the 1956 Olympic Games, although the 2006 Commonwealth Games follows on from the successful 2000 Sydney Olympics. These sporting events have continued to grow from strength to strength, and have been assisted by Australia's close affiliation with sport and the widespread global media coverage. In a similar manner to other sporting events that Melbourne hosts, including the Australian Tennis Open, Formula One Grand Prix, Motorcycle Grand Prix, Melbourne Cup and Australian Football League, the city and its inhabitants are consumed by these events. The 2006 Commonwealth Games is certain to follow this trend.
The task of hosting the Commonwealth Games is enormous, although actively pursued in a fierce bidding process by competing cities. The benefits are undisputed and include an influx of visitors to the host city, an opportunity to enhance or rebuild infrastructure such as transport, plus the worldwide focus on the host city before and during the event. A high level of planning is undertaken for years well in advance of the event, and this may have an effect on the surrounding property market. Through the media both buyers and sellers are constantly reminded of the upcoming Games, the venues and the increased demand that will occur. Accordingly, this research investigates the task of hosting a major global sporting event such as the Commonwealth Games, and importantly how affects infrastructure in a host city. Attention is placed on the 2006 Commonwealth Games and the Melbourne property market. Whilst every host city differs in characteristics such as size, location and timing of the event, the findings of this study will assist a future host city to plan for the highly irregular circumstances that accompany a high profile one-off major sporting event.

Social inclusion in local places

With the decline of official multiculturalism in Australia the focus of the government has turned to promoting programs and services that will provide greater social inclusion.  This paper illustrates that although institutions within society such as the media, federal government agencies, and local governments aim to value cultural diversity, social practices unintentionally regulate inclusion by privileging whiteness and scrutinising ethnic minorities on local places.  An analysis of metropolitan and local newspaper reports and government document provides an insight into these practices that construct 'ethnic' citizens in particular ways.

NGO's use of the media to create changes in corporate activities and accountabilities : evidence from a developing country

This paper investigates how social and environmental NGOs use the news media to create changes in the operations and associated accountabilities of multinational companies operating in, or sourcing products from, a developing country. In this research, we explicitly seek the views of senior officers from global and local NGOs operating in Bangladesh, as well as the views of journalists from major global and local news media organisations. Our results show that social and environmental NGOs strategically use the news media to effect change in the operating and disclosure policies pertaining to corporate labour practices. More particularly, both the NGOs and the news media representatives stated that NGOs would be relatively powerless to create change without media coverage. Our results also show that the media agenda has been responsible for creating improvements in working condition within Bangladesh, but further improvements are necessary. This is the first known study to specifically address the joint role of NGOs and the news media in creating changes in the social and environmental operating and disclosure practices of organisations operating in developing countries.

Event extraction using behaviors of sentiment signals and burst structure in social media

Significant world events often cause the behavioral convergence of the expression of shared sentiment. This paper examines the use of the blogosphere as a framework to study user psychological behaviors, using their sentiment responses as a form of ‘sensor’ to infer real-world events of importance automatically. We formulate a novel temporal sentiment index function using quantitative measure of the valence value of bearing words in blog posts in which the set of affective bearing words is inspired from psychological research in emotion structure. The annual local minimum and maximum of the proposed sentiment signal function are utilized to extract significant events of the year and corresponding blog posts are further analyzed using topic modeling tools to understand their content. The paper then examines the correlation of topics discovered in relation to world news events reported by the mainstream news service provider, Cable News Network, and by using the Google search engine. Next, aiming at understanding sentiment at a finer granularity over time, we propose a stochastic burst detection model, extended from the work of Kleinberg, to work incrementally with stream data. The proposed model is then used to extract sentimental bursts occurring within a specific mood label (for example, a burst of observing ‘shocked’). The blog posts at those time indices are analyzed to extract topics, and these are compared to real-world news events. Our comprehensive set of experiments conducted on a large-scale set of 12 million posts from Livejournal shows that the proposed sentiment index function coincides well with significant world events while bursts in sentiment allow us to locate finer-grain external world events.

Breaking Boundaries : recasting the “local” newspaper as “geo-social” news in a digital landscape

This paper reconceptualises the role of the small “local” newspaper in a new media environment and argues that definitions and concepts currently used to describe and define such publications are becoming increasingly problematic as newspapers shift into both print and online formats. The paper highlights the continued importance of geography for such newspapers at a time when there is wide academic debate on the relevance of territory and boundaries and the impact of time–space compression in a new media world. It argues, however, that a focus on a newspaper’s geographic connection must also acknowledge the increasing boundlessness and openness of the social space in which a newspaper operates. Ultimately this paper suggests the concept of “geo-social” news may be a more appropriate framework for scholars to consider such publications. I draw on the work of geography scholars, and discussions around “space” and “place” to construct the notion of “geo-social” news, highlighting some exemplars of small commercial newsroom practices in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada and discussions with newspaper editors in Australia to demonstrate the relevance of the “geo-social” concept.

The promise of a new media and development agenda

The role of the press is underpinned by a concern for public welfare, and the discourses and debates in journalism practice and theory stem from the notion that the press is one of the pillars of a democracy and an essential element of the public sphere (Rosen, 2005; Dahlgren and Sparks, 1991). The public sphere, in turn, is linked to the theory of modernisation and the development agenda of a society, where the media are expected to play an important function as watchman, policy disseminator and teacher (Schramm, 1964). This article looks at citizen journalism’s potential to provide yet another opportunity to disadvantaged communities in India to communicate with the world, via information and communication technologies. The new media also open up the possibility of these earlier disenfranchised communities becoming partners in the country’s development and democratic agenda. This is a discussion paper based on a survey of initiatives undertaken by various community groups in India to provide a voice to local communities who would otherwise remain silent. It explores the impact of these citizen journalism initiatives on local communities vis-à-vis their effectiveness as a tool for development and social change, and argues that the growth and success of these initiatives around the world, though piecemeal, should become an important part of discourse concerning the role of journalism in society.

Indigenous media practice

This article introduces the Indigenous Media Practice special issue through a discussion of the aims and scope of the edition. It identifies three major currents in contemporary international research on media and indigeneity, which are reflected in the suite of scholarship presented here. The first is the importance of continuing to critically analyse media systems, institutions and policies that enable and constrain the production and dissemination of information for, by and about Indigenous populations. The second emphasises media-related practices in specific media production and social policy contexts, and the third underlines the importance of interrogating underlying and pervasive societal discourses in understanding Indigenous media practice. The contributions to this themed issue highlight that there is a vibrant body of research among a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, typically working in teams in the pursuit of better understanding the relationships between media and indigeneity in both global and local contexts.

The dynamic interplay of news media and bilingual education policy in Australia's Northern Territory 1988-2008

his study investigates the dynamic interplay between news media and the Northern Territory’s policy of bilingual education for indigenous children living in some remote communities. It provides evidence to support the argument that the media-related practices of a range of policy actors resulted in policy processes being shaped to a significant degree by ‘media logic’. The research is based on depth interviews and uses the spoken words of participants to gain access to the local experiences and perspectives of those invested in developing, influencing and communicating the bilingual education policy. Through the analysis of more than 20 interviews with journalists, public servants, academics, and politicians as well as indigenous and non-indigenous bilingual education advocates, I have identified a range of media-related practices that have enabled policy actors to penetrate the policy debate, define problems for policymaking and public discussion through the news media, and thereby exert particular forms of influence in the policy process. The study also provides a ‘southern theory’ analysis of the Yolngu public sphere and a Bourdesian understanding of the journalism sub-field of indigenous reporting in the Northern Territory. It shows that issues of physical and cultural remoteness and the need for journalists to develop cultural competence are the hallmarks of this reporting specialization. It also identifies marked differences in journalists’ relationships with government, academic and indigenous sources and how these differences play out in the way participants understand the production and reception of media texts. This research makes an innovative contribution to Australian Journalism Studies by demonstrating how indigenous epistemologies and knowledges offer fresh perspectives and insights about news media and indigeneity that can be brought into balance with northern theories to build what Connell (2007) has called ‘southern theory’. This dovetails with another key outcome, which is the development of an academic form of journalism that serves indigenous peoples’ self-determinist aims for scholarly research, based in indigenous perspectives and research methodologies.

The rhetoric of ‘community’ : ABC local radio's coverage of the 2009 Victorian bushfires

This article joins recent debates in media and communication studies concerning audience participation in news journalism. Specifically, we investigate the impact of an increasing reliance on audience-generated content on newsroom practice in traditional media organisations. We do this by recounting and analysing the experiences of journalists involved in ABC Radio's coverage of the dramatic Victorian bushfires of early 2009, which relied heavily in listener contributions and was closely integrated with the ABC's online coverage. Interviews with two staff at ABC Gippsland, and the ABC's Manager of Emergency Broadcasting provide the basis for a case study of the kinds of tensions that media workers routinely confront within an organisation like the ABC. The interviews suggest that in negotiating the possibility of increased audience participation, journalists and their managers are thinking about much more that the rhetorics of democracy and the validity of news values: their focus is also on a complex structure, the need for skill (re)development and the precise mechanics of creating and maintaining productive relationships with local communities. The significance of the research lies in its attempt to bring together a number of related factors: the increasingly active role of audiences in generating and supplying news content; the impact of digital communications technologies on news production practices; and the ABC's ongoing development of its now contested role as an 'emergency broadcaster'.

Permeability mapping in porous media by magnetization prepared centric-scan SPRITE

The ability of porous media to transmit fluids is commonly referred to as permeability. The concept of permeability is central for hydrocarbon recovery from petroleum reservoirs and for studies of groundwater flow in aquifers. Spatially resolved measurements of permeability are of great significance for fluid dynamics studies. A convenient concept of local Darcy’s law is suggested for parallel flow systems. The product of porosity and mean velocity images in the plane across the average flow direction is directly proportional to permeability. Single Point Ramped Imaging with T 1 Enhancement (SPRITE) permits reliable quantification of local fluid content and flow in porous media. It is particularly advantageous for reservoir rocks characterized by fast magnetic relaxation of a saturating fluid. Velocity encoding using the Cotts pulsed field gradient scheme improves the accuracy of measured flow parameters. The method is illustrated through measurements of 2D permeability maps in a capillary bundle, glass bead packs and composite sandstone samples.