Global journalism in the digital age

Mass media have transitioned in the past five years from being one-way communication mediums, from journalists to audiences, into an era of networked digital media in which individuals can easily publish text, photos and video to a world-wide audience.The power of the press is severely threatened and its business model is broken...

WIL-power: Developing journalism students' intercultural communications and international reporting skills on field trips to Vietnam

This article examines journalism students' learning experience that is intercultural, immersive and intensive. Accounts of 'intercultural' experience date back to Herodotus of Halicarnassus; 'immersion' is integral to contemporary practice in language learning; and 'intensive' delivery has been refined to an art by postgraduate business education. Together they can be grouped under the broader pedagogical concept of work-integrated learning (WIL). This article examines two WIL projects that involved field trips by journalism students to Vietnam in 2012 and 2014, and their implications for future WIL initiatives.

UQ in Vietnam: Teaching journalism students foreign correspondence

The University of Queensland has developed Work Integrated Learning (WIL) courses for groups of 10 students at a time to travel to Vietnam to engage in intercultural learning and working as foreign correspondents for a dedicated UQ multimedia website. Their radio, television, print and photojournalism reports have also been made available to media around the world under Creative Commons arrangements. This article reports on the students' experience in both WIL courses where they were exposed to intensive, immerse and experiential teaching and coaching by a lecturer (the researcher who is a former foreign correspondent for the ABC) and two tutors with expertise in editorial and technical production.

Global journalism investigations in the digital age: Connections and collaborations

Investigative journalists who join what theorist Manuel Castells describes as the ‘network society’ can locate potential news sources using various social media platforms and interview them using Web-based communication technologies. The potential for journalistic investigations involving multi-directional conversations with news sources across the globe is beginning to be explored. Potential news sources who are part of the network society have unprecedented access to specialist investigative reporters irrespective of their location and can speak to them more cost effectively than in the past. This paper explores how new journalism technologies are allowing journalists to call powerful individuals and institutions to account, irrespective of national borders; and how previously silenced individuals are being given a voice. To read an example of international investigative journalism facilitated by a combination of social media, Web-based communications, reporter collaboration and news outlet collaborations see http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/churchs-wall-of-silence-on-sexual-abuse/story-e6frg6z6-1226639077238.

Ants, apples and the ABCs: The use of commercial phonics programmes in prior-to-school children's services

Commercial phonics programmes (e.g. Jolly Phonics and Letterland) are becoming widely used in the early years of school. These programmes claim to use a systematic explicit approach, considered as the preferred method of phonics instruction for teaching alphabetic code-breaking skills in Australia and the UK in the first years of school (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005; Rose, 2006). However, little is known about the extent to which they are being used in prior-to-school settings, and the reasons behind decisions to use them. This study surveyed 283 early childhood staff in Sydney, Australia and found that commercial phonics programmes were being used in 36% of the early childhood settings surveyed. Staff with early childhood univer- sity qualifications and staff working in not-for-profit service types were less likely to use a commercial phonics programme than staff without university qualifications and staff working in for-profit services. Staff with less than 10 years’ experience were also more likely to use a commercial phonics programme. The rationale behind decisions deter- mining whether or not staff used the programmes ranged from pragmatic reasons, such as parent pressure or higher management decisions, to pedagogical reasons, such as teacher beliefs about how children learn to read and write. The practices staff engage in to teach phonics are explored.

Australian Commercial Law

Australian Commercial Law offers a concise yet comprehensive introduction to commercial law in Australia. The textbook provides a thorough and detailed discussion of a variety of topics in commercial law such as agency, bailment, the sale of goods, the transfer of property and the Personal Property Securities Act. The book also offers a detailed overview of topics within the Australian Consumer Law that are now relevant to commercial practice such as unconscionable conduct, consumer guarantees, and misleading and deceptive conduct. Written in a clear and accessible style, each chapter features key points and further reading to enhance students' understanding. Significant cases are discussed in detail and include excerpts from judgments to illustrate points of law. Australian Commercial Law is an indispensable resource for students who are seeking a comprehensive understanding of commercial law.

Community uses of co-creative media. Digital storytelling and Co-creative Media : The role of community arts and media in propagating and coordinating population-wide creative practice

This report describes a dynamic ‘Co-creative Media System’ that is emerging in the social space bounded by the following institutional pillars: • major cultural institutions (including screen culture agencies, libraries, museums, galleries and public service broadcasters) • the Community Arts and Cultural Development sector (historically supported through various programs of the Australia Council for the Arts) • the community broadcasting sector • the Indigenous media sector, and • the higher education sector. It illustrates how this system activates the immense creative potential of the Australian population through the ongoing development and application of participatory storytelling methods and media.

Designing and evaluating a persuasive child restraint television commercial

Objective Relatively high rates of child restraint inappropriate use, misuse and faults in the installation of restraints have suggested a crucial need for public education messages to raise parental awareness of the need to use restraints correctly. This project involved the devising and pilot testing of message concepts, filming of a television advertisement (the TVC), and the evaluation of the TVC. This paper focuses specifically upon the evaluation of the TVC. The development and evaluation of the TVC were guided by an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour which comprised the standard constructs of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control as well as the additional constructs of group norm and descriptive norm. The study also explored the extent to which parents with low and high intentions to self-check restraint/s differed on salient beliefs regarding the behaviour. Methods An online survey of parents (N = 384) was conducted where parents were randomly assigned to either an Intervention group (n = 161), and therefore viewed the advertisement within the survey, or the Control group (n = 223) and therefore did not view the advertisement. Results Following a one-off exposure to the TVC, the results indicated that, although not a significant difference, parents in the Intervention group reported stronger intentions (M = 4.43, SD = .74) to self-check restraints than parents in the Control group (M = 4.18, SD = .86). Also, parents in the Intervention group (M = 4.59, SD = .47) reported significantly higher levels of perceived behavioural control than parents in the Control group (M = 4.40, SD = .73). The regression results revealed that, for parents in the Intervention group, attitude and group norm were significant predictors of parental intentions to self-check their child restraint. Finally, the exploratory analyses of parental beliefs suggested that those parents with low intentions to self-check child restraints were significantly more likely than high intenders to agree that they did not have enough time to check restraints or that having a child in a restraint is more important than checking the installation of the restraint. Conclusion Overall, the findings provide some support for the persuasiveness of the child restraint TVC and provide insight into the factors influencing reported parental intentions as well as salient beliefs underpinning self-checking of restraints. Interventions that attempt to increase parental perceptions of the importance of self-checking restraints regularly and brevity of the time involved in doing so may be effective.

A simple approach to improve the electrocatalytic properties of commercial Pt/C

Here we demonstrate that commercial carbon supported Pt nanoparticles react with [AuCl4]- ions at room temperature to produce a highly active Au/Pt/C material with an ultralow coverage of elemental Au on the Pt nanoparticles that exhibits significantly enhanced activity for ethanol oxidation when compared to Pt/C.

Working the story : News curation in social media as a second save of citizen journalism

For the first decade of its existence, the concept of citizen journalism has described an approach which was seen as a broadening of the participant base in journalistic processes, but still involved only a comparatively small subset of overall society – for the most part, citizen journalists were news enthusiasts and “political junkies” (Coleman, 2006) who, as some exasperated professional journalists put it, “wouldn’t get a job at a real newspaper” (The Australian, 2007), but nonetheless followed many of the same journalistic principles. The investment – if not of money, then at least of time and effort – involved in setting up a blog or participating in a citizen journalism Website remained substantial enough to prevent the majority of Internet users from engaging in citizen journalist activities to any significant extent; what emerged in the form of news blogs and citizen journalism sites was a new online elite which for some time challenged the hegemony of the existing journalistic elite, but gradually also merged with it. The mass adoption of next-generation social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, however, has led to the emergence of a new wave of quasi-journalistic user activities which now much more closely resemble the “random acts of journalism” which JD Lasica envisaged in 2003. Social media are not exclusively or even predominantly used for citizen journalism; instead, citizen journalism is now simply a by-product of user communities engaging in exchanges about the topics which interest them, or tracking emerging stories and events as they happen. Such platforms – and especially Twitter with its system of ad hoc hashtags that enable the rapid exchange of information about issues of interest – provide spaces for users to come together to “work the story” through a process of collaborative gatewatching (Bruns, 2005), content curation, and information evaluation which takes place in real time and brings together everyday users, domain experts, journalists, and potentially even the subjects of the story themselves. Compared to the spaces of news blogs and citizen journalism sites, but also of conventional online news Websites, which are controlled by their respective operators and inherently position user engagement as a secondary activity to content publication, these social media spaces are centred around user interaction, providing a third-party space in which everyday as well as institutional users, laypeople as well as experts converge without being able to control the exchange. Drawing on a number of recent examples, this article will argue that this results in a new dynamic of interaction and enables the emergence of a more broadly-based, decentralised, second wave of citizen engagement in journalistic processes.

Understanding the performance of green commercial buildings: a Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) briefing report

Efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the buildings sector have been focused on encouraging green design, construction and building operation; however, the business case is not very compelling if considering the energy cost savings alone. In recent years green building has been driven by a sense that it will improve the productivity of occupants,something with much greater economic returns than energy savings. Reducing energy demand in green commercial buildings in a way that encourages greater productivity is not yet well understood as it involves a set of complex and interdependent factors. This project investigates these factors and focuses on the performance of and interaction between: green design elements, internal environmental quality, occupant experience, tenant/leasing agreements, and building regulation and management. This paper suggests six areas of strategic research that are needed to understand how conditions can be created to support productivity in green buildings, and deliver significant energy consumption reductions.

Copyright and creativity: An ongoing debate in the creative industries

This paper critically analyzes the divergent perspectives on how copyright and intellectual property laws impact creativity, innovation, and the creative industries. One perspective defines the creative industries based on copyright as the means by which revenues are generated from innovation and the dissemination of new ideas. At the same time, it has been argued that copyright and intellectual property regimes fetter creativity and innovation, and that this has become even more marked in the context of digital media convergence and the networked global creative economy. These issues have resonated in debates around the creative industries, particularly since the initial DCMS mapping study in the UK in 1998 defined creative industries as combining individual creativity and exploitable forms of intellectual property. The issue of competing claims for the relationship between copyright and the creative industries has also arisen in Australia, with a report by the Australian Law Reform Commission entitled Copyright and the Digital Economy. This paper will consider the competing claims surrounding copyright and the creative industries, and the implications for policy-makers internationally.

Commercial friendships between gay sales associates and straight female customers in luxury settings: A proposed theoretical framework

This study investigates friendships between gay sales associates and heterosexual female customers in luxury retail settings. By employing grounded theory methodology, the study integrates theories and findings from diverse literature streams into an original conceptual framework to illustrate the resources gay sales associates and straight female customers receive from and provide to each other during retail exchanges. The study explains why gay male–straight female friendships are uniquely suited for luxury consumption settings. Female customers characterize their friendships with gay sales associates as providing honesty, security, trust, and comfort, which stems from the absence of sexual interest and a lack of inter-female competition. Gay sales associates receive acceptance for who they are and for their displays of unconventional masculinity in retail settings. They also obtain a temporary rite from their female customers, a so-called mandate of privacy, which permits both parties to ignore the bounds of modesty and accept a degree of intimacy. Such intimacy facilitates transactions that require both personalization and customer–employee closeness, such as the selling of high-end apparel, accessories, and jewelry.

Commercial Law in East Asia

The shift of economic gravity towards East Asia requires a critical examination of law's role in the Asian Century. This volume explores the diverse scholarly perspectives on law's role in the economic rise of East Asia and moves from general debates, such as whether law enjoys primacy over culture, state intervention or free markets in East Asian capitalism, to specific case studies looking at the nature of law in East Asian negotiations, contracts, trade policy and corporate governance. The collection of articles exposes the clefts and cleavages in the scholarly literature explaining law's form, function and future in the Asian Century.