Packaged good : responses from Australian journalism educators on the Reporting Diversity project

The Reporting Diversity Project provides teaching materials on reporting cultural diversity for journalism educators and university students. This article reports the findings from a survey designed to gauge journalism educators' awareness of the online curriculum resources and their views on the usefulness of these materials. The survey was also used to capture journalism academics' views on educational resources produced with government support. This article includes the findings from a series of trials of the Reporting Diversity teaching resources with a small cohort of academics from throughout Australia. It includes their evaluation of the resources and reveals ways in which the modules are being used and adapted for different classroom settings.

‘The Snowtown we know and love’ : small newspapers and heinous crimes

This paper examines the role of small newspapers in Australia when bizarre and shocking crimes are committed locally. These crimes often attract intense media attention that casts a net of shame across entire townships through their representation as places of fascination and fear in the public imagination. We take a practice approach in the tradition of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the complex editorial considerations, news judgements and community responsibilities small newspapers must negotiate when covering these stories for local audiences. This study focuses on three towns in regional Australia that have been represented in metropolitan and international news media as ‘dead zones' after shocking crimes: Bowral in NSW, Snowtown in South Australia and Moe in Victoria.

The pillory effect : media, the courts and the punitive role of public shaming in Australia

Public shaming and humiliation have been used across cultures for centuries to punish offenders and define the boundaries of acceptable behaviour for communities. This article argues that since court-imposed shaming sanctions were phased out in Australia, the news media has assumed responsibility for performing this cultural practice. Through critical engagement with some of the research literature on shaming, the historical shift to the media as the modern pillory is explored. This article looks beyond the doctrine of open justice, which assigns the news media a dual role as a watchdog against injustice and a conduit between the courts and the public, to consider its role in shaming and suggest this role continues to evolve in a changing media landscape.

A new poolability test for cointegrated panels

This paper proposes a new test of the null hypothesis that the parameters in a cointegrated panel data regression are equal across the cross-section. The asymptotic distribution of the new test statistic is derived and simulation results are provided to suggest that it performs very well in small samples. An empirical application to the monetary exchange rate model is also provided.

Professional nursing governance in a large Australian health service

Background: Professional nursing governance refers to the processes and structures that influence nursing practice within an organisation. This study measured the effect of structured meeting communication processes on nurses' perceptions of professional governance.

Method: The intervention was implemented in eight hospital wards. After three months, nurses on the intervention wards and eight matched-control wards completed the Index of Professional Nursing Governance (n = 225). Data were compared with a sample of Magnet® (n = 3) and non-Magnet (n = 46) hospitals.

Results: There was substantial variation in nurses' perceptions of governance across the 16 wards, irrespective of the intervention. Compared to non-Magnet hospitals, the overall score and three of the six subscales scores were higher in this study. Magnet hospitals scores, however, were typically higher suggesting greater progress towards shared governance.

Conclusions: Professional nursing governance can be highly variable across individual wards and tailored interventions should be considered.

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.

Tertius tactics : 'mediated social capital' as a resource of power for traditional commercial news media

This essay reconceptualizes “social capital” as it relates to scholarship regarding the traditional news media. Much academic attention links the news media to Robert Putnam's view which focuses on social capital as enhancing “civic pride” and collective/community involvement. I suggest Putnam's perspective is often adopted without wider exploration of what the theory may offer the future of the commercial news media in western societies. This essay proposes the term “mediated social capital” may be a more suitable lens through which to consider this theory, taking a cue from Pierre Bourdieu who views social capital as a resource of power that may be utilized to maintain or build a position of advantage.

Teaching Chinese history : the issue of approach

In China, the study of history has never been a detached academic pursuit, as it has always been indistinguishable from political directions. Chinese political leaders have been unable to adopt a disinterested approach towards history, be it distant or contemporary. On the other hand, Western historians interpret Chinese history from their own point of view, and they often view Chinese history as an extension of Western history. Often, they have been preoccupied with the concern to explain or justify their own record or involvement rather than to produce an objective account, especially in regard to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ history of China. This study questions the conventional approach to China’s past, be that of a Confucian, a Communist or a Western ethnocentric historiographer. It explores the possibility of establishing a “Chinese experience-based” approach while maintaining “impartiality and neutrality”, looking to historical studies outside of China to achieve this.

Media as pillory: the power to 'name and shame' in digital times

This article reports on research being undertaken with the support of the Victorian Law Foundation that looks into media shaming of 'ordinary' people who commit minor crimes and how it might be changing in digital times.

News judgements: a critical examination of reporting non-convictions for minor crimes

This paper considers issues related to the reporting of non-convictions for minor criminal offences. The entry point for the discussion is a content analysis of press court reporting across the Australian state of Victoria that shows that many newspapers report non-convictions. The paper observes that as the practice of reporting non-convictions has extended into digital space, a person the local court decides should not have a black mark recorded against their name can now be named and shamed before a global audience for an indefinite period. 

Honk against homophobia : rethinking relations between media and sexual minorities

The theory of “symbolic annihilation” or “symbolic violence” has been used in academic literature to describe the way in which sexual minorities have been ignored, trivialized, or condemned by the media. This article aims to de-center research from issues of media representation to consider the capacity for minority groups to proactively use new media and its various avenues for interactivity, social networking, and feedback to fight social exclusion. This work suggests that new media has become a space in which the nominally marginal in society may acquire “social artillery”—a term used to describe how sexual minorities utilize their expanding and more readily accessible social connections in digital space to combat instances of homophobia. The research draws on the results of an inquiry into the relation between media and a regional youth social justice group in Australia tackling homophobia. The research demonstrates that the group is becoming increasingly adept and comfortable with using a cross-section of media platforms to fulfill their own objectives, rather than seeing themselves as passive subjects of media representation. This article argues that this sets an example for other socially excluded groups looking to renegotiate their relation with the media in regional areas.

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.

Geo-social journalism: reorienting the study of small commercial newspapers in a digital environment

This paper begins by problematizing the use of “community” to define and theorize small commercial media outlets that have geography as their primary characteristic—particularly hyper local and small traditional newspapers connected to larger media organizations in digital space. We then extend the concept of “geo-social news” to outline “geo-social journalism” as a specific form of news work currently grouped under the “community media” umbrella. Geo-social is a concept for exploring how small commercial newspapers change as media technologies evolve. It offers a framework for understanding how these news outlets and audiences connect via the notion of “sense of place”. It can also be used as a lens for theorizing their role in social flows and movements and as nodes in the global media network. The practice of “geo-social journalism”, meanwhile, has two dimensions. Firstly, journalists must engage with the land (environment/agriculture/industry), populations, histories and cultures of the places they report news. Secondly, it involves connections and understandings of the shifting constellations of global and national systems, issues and relationships of the digital era. Finally, this paper argues that by its very nature, “geo-social journalism” eschews theoretical universalizing and instead demands fine-grained analyses of the specific dynamic of each “geo-social” publication, its setting and the practices which shape it and it in turn shapes.