Framing Culture : Criticism and Policy in Australia

How is contemporary culture 'framed' - understood, promoted, dissected and defended - in the new approaches being employed in university education today? How do these approaches compare with those seen in the public policy process? What are the implications of these differences for future directions in theory, education, activism and policy? Framing Culture looks at cultural and media studies, which are rapidly growing fields through which students are introduced to contemporary cultural industries such as television, film and video. It compares these approaches with those used to frame public policy and finds a striking lack of correspondence between them. Issues such as Australian content on commercial television and in advertising, new technologies and new media, and violence in the media all highlight the gap between contemporary cultural theories and the way culture and communications are debated in public policy. The reasons for this gap must be investigated before closer relations can be established. Framing Culture brings together cultural studies and policy studies in a lively and innovative way. It suggests avenues for cultural activism that have been neglected in cultural theory and practice, and it will provoke debates which are long overdue.

Hypercapitalism : an investigation into the relationship between language, new media, and social perceptions of value

Overall, this thesis purports to make two significant contributions to knowledge. The first is a foundational critique of political economy in the context of an emergent global knowledge economy. The second is a method for analysing evaluations in language. The relationships that give coherence to those two contributions are as follows. The widely-heralded emergence of a knowledge economy indicates that more intimate aspects of human activity have become exposed to commodification on a massive scale, specifically, activities associated with thought and language. Correspondingly, more abstract forms of value have developed as the products of thought and language have become dominant commodity forms. Historical investigation shows that value has moved from an objective category in political economy, pertaining to such substances as precious metals and land, to become situated today predominantly in “expert” expressions of language, or more precisely, their institutional contexts of production. These are now propagated and circulated on a global scale. Legal, political, and technological developments are key in the development of new, more abstract forms of labour and value, although the relationships connecting these are neither simple nor direct. They are, however, inseparably related in the trajectories that this thesis describes. Consequently they are dealt with inseparably throughout.

Road network extraction with new vectorization and pruning from high-resolution RS images

With the increasing resolution of remote sensing images, road network can be displayed as continuous and homogeneity regions with a certain width rather than traditional thin lines. Therefore, road network extraction from large scale images refers to reliable road surface detection instead of road line extraction. In this paper, a novel automatic road network detection approach based on the combination of homogram segmentation and mathematical morphology is proposed, which includes three main steps: (i) the image is classified based on homogram segmentation to roughly identify the road network regions; (ii) the morphological opening and closing is employed to fill tiny holes and filter out small road branches; and (iii) the extracted road surface is further thinned by a thinning approach, pruned by a proposed method and finally simplified with Douglas-Peucker algorithm. Lastly, the results from some QuickBird images and aerial photos demonstrate the correctness and efficiency of the proposed process.

“Filming in Progress”: New spaces for multimodal designing

Global trends call for new research to investigate multimodal designing mediated by new technologies and the implications for classroom spaces. This article addresses the relationship between new technologies, students’ multimodal designing, and the social production of classroom spaces. Multimodal semiotics and sociological principles are applied to a series of claymation movie-making lessons in an upper primary school in Australia. The analysis focuses on the social meanings embedded in the multimodal spaces of the classroom—dialogic, bodily, embodied, architectonic, and screen spaces. The findings demonstrate how the uses of new technologies and the students’ multimodal learning were tied to important transformations of space.

Mobile data technologies and SME adoption and diffusion : an empirical study on barriers and facilitators

The technological environment in which Australian SMEs operate can be best described as dynamic and vital. The rate of technological change provides the SME owner/manager a complex and challenging operational context. Wireless applications are being developed that provide mobile devices with Internet content and e-business services. In Australia the adoption of e-commerce by large organisations has been relatively high, however the same cannot be said for SMEs where adoption has been slower than other developed countries. In contrast however mobile telephone adoption and diffusion is relatively high by SMEs. This exploratory study identifies attitudes, perceptions and issues for mobile data technologies by regional SME owner/managers across a range of industry sectors. The major issues include the sector the firm belongs to, the current adoption status of the firm, the level of mistrust of the IT industry, the cost of the technologies and the applications and attributes of the technologies.

Mobile data technologies and small business adoption and diffusion : an empirical study of barriers and facilitators

The technological environment in which contemporary small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operate can only be described as dynamic. The exponential rate of technological change, characterised by perceived increases in the benefits associated with various technologies, shortening product life cycles and changing standards, provides for the SME a complex and challenging operational context. The primary aim of this research was to identify the needs of SMEs in regional areas for mobile data technologies (MDT). In this study a distinction was drawn between those respondents who were full-adopters of technology, those who were partial-adopters, and those who were non-adopters and these three segments articulated different needs and requirements for MDT. Overall, the needs of regional SMEs for MDT can be conceptualised into three areas where the technology will assist business practices; communication, e-commerce and security

Current child restraint practice in Queensland, new legislation and future challenges

Correct use of child restraints reduces the risk of death and injury. Use of adult seat belts is better than being unrestrained but can result in injury to children who are too small. New Australian legislation extends the requirement for using child-specific restraints until children are 7 years old and thus requires more appropriate levels of protection for these children. As part of a larger study of injury prevention in Queensland, parents of children 0-9 years old were surveyed regarding their restraint practices before the introduction of the new legislation. The restraint status of 18% of the children would not be compliant with the new legislation, with the problem being more prevalent for 5-9 year olds (22%) than 0-4 year olds (16%). A high proportion of older children used an adult seat belt. Very few children aged 0-4 (1.3%) usually travelled in the front seat in contravention of the new requirement, but around 11% of this age group were reported as ever having done so. Usual travel in the front seat was higher among 5-9 year olds (8.5%), with more than half of the 5-9 year olds reported as ever having done so. Given the widespread use of adult seat belts by older children, there is a need to consider improving protection of children in the ‘gap’ between when the requirement for the child to use a booster ceases (effectively age 7) and when the adult belt is likely to actually fit the child (closer to age 9 or 10).

New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks

Presentation describling a project in data intensive research in the humanities. Measuring activity of publically available data in social networks such as Blogosphere, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube

Consuming authentic neighborhood : an autoethnography of experiencing a neighborhood's new beginnings and origins within its servicescapes

Purpose - This chapter examines individual and collective quests for authenticity, as experienced through consumption activities within an urban neighbourhood. It investigates the interplay between consumption experiences as authenticating acts and authoritative performances (Arnould and Price 2000), and considers the implications with regard to Zukin’s (2010) theories on urban authenticity, and how it may be experienced as new beginnings and origins. Methodology - The chapter is based on autoethnographic research that explores how interaction and identity definition within servicescapes can work to construct place-based community. Findings - It describes how a servicescape of new beginnings offered opportunities for individual authentication that also enabled personal identification with a specific cultural group. This authentication drew on the cultural capital embedded in such locations, including their association with gentrification. This is contrast with the collective identification offered by a servicescape operating as a place of exposure. This site of origins displayed the social practices of a different demographic, which worked to highlight a relational link between the authentication practices of the broader neighbourhood. These sites also worked cumulatively, to highlight the inauthenticities within my identification practices and offer opportunities for redress. Through this interplay it was possible to establish an authentic sense of neighbourhood that drew on its new beginnings and its origins, and was both individual and collective. Originality - Through the combination of urban and consumption-based perspectives of authenticity, and an autoethnographic methodology, this chapter offers a different insight into the ways identification with, and attachment to, a neighbourhood can develop through consumption experiences.

New stress and velocity fields for highly frictional granular materials

The idealised theory for the quasi-static flow of granular materials which satisfy the Coulomb-Mohr hypothesis is considered. This theory arises in the limit that the angle of internal friction approaches $\pi/2$, and accordingly these materials may be referred to as being `highly frictional'. In this limit, the stress field for both two-dimensional and axially symmetric flows may be formulated in terms of a single nonlinear second order partial differential equation for the stress angle. To obtain an accompanying velocity field, a flow rule must be employed. Assuming the non-dilatant double-shearing flow rule, a further partial differential equation may be derived in each case, this time for the streamfunction. Using Lie symmetry methods, a complete set of group-invariant solutions is derived for both systems, and through this process new exact solutions are constructed. Only a limited number of exact solutions for gravity driven granular flows are known, so these results are potentially important in many practical applications. The problem of mass flow through a two-dimensional wedge hopper is examined as an illustration.