Two Australian islander communitities as audiences, and their news needs

Many of the 8000 mapped islands within the Australian Exclusive Economic zone are home to full-time but small communities, and many in the far north are home to relatively large Indigenous communities. But small remote communities such as on these islands, and individuals within those communities, become isolated because conventional news media providers regard them as unviable markets. Community development is at risk in such apparently unviable news media markets because individuals an lose touch with each other, others in the community and those in the "outside world".

UMA NOVA CARTOGRAFIA COGNITIVA PARA O ENSINO DA COMUNICAÇÃO

O trabalho proposto é a montar um projeto exploratório funcional que parta da cartografia cognitiva, que é definida como a arte, teoria e técnica de construir mapas do conhecimento, visando com esta cartografia a sua aplicabilidade na estruturação de um conjunto de cursos/saberes da área da Comunicação. Assemelhado ao conceito de mapas conceituais, ou cognitivos, representam o conhecimento organizado e são compostos por conceitos. Este mapas foram desenvolvido a partir da década de setenta por vários pesquisadores. A tese experimento foi montada tendo como base os softwares de relacionamento por temas e interesses dentro de um ambiente de interatividade tridimensional , montado no conceito de arvore do conhecimento relacional. Esta experiência é construída em ambiente tridimensional com uso de softwares 3D que rodam como aplicativos de engines de vídeo games, que são motores gráficos. A base de dados e a interatividade de textos e tarefas é realizada sob a plataforma do MediaWiki, que é o software aberto que roda a Wikipédia. A plataforma de mapas roda dentro de um software MindJet MindManager e do CMAPS. As vídeo conferências são administradas pelo FlashMeeting, de Web conferência. A maioria deles são softwares abertos. Todos operando em sistemas presenciais ou de modulação EAD. A base conceitual está estruturada dentro de uma visão de educação disruptiva, que lança um novo modelo educacional baseado em mapas, visto dentro de uma abordagem de um mundo de múltiplas telas, um mundo da era hiper, um mundo hipermoderno, que tem como base uma cultura da era tecnológica, numa renovação dos conceitos de Cultura, agora revigorados à luz das novas tecnologias e da nova sociedade interligada em rede.

Digital business discourse

Digital Business Discourse offers a distinctively language- and discourse-centered approach to digitally mediated business and professional communication, providing a timely and comprehensive assessment of the current digital communication practices of today's organisations and workplaces. It is the first dedicated publication to address how computer-mediated communication technologies affect institutional discourse practices, bringing together scholarship from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including organisational and management studies, rhetorical and communication studies, communication training and discourse analysis. Covering a wide spectrum of communication technologies, such as email, instant messaging, message boards, Twitter, corporate blogs and consumer reviews, the chapters gather research drawing on empirical data from real professional contexts. In this way, the book contributes to both academic scholarship and business communication training, enabling researchers, trainers and practitioners to deepen their understanding of the impact of new communication technologies on professional and corporate communication practices.

Regional variation in written American English

The first study of its kind, Regional Variation in Written American English takes a corpus-based approach to map over a hundred grammatical alternation variables across the United States. A multivariate spatial analysis of these maps shows that grammatical alternation variables follow a relatively small number of common regional patterns in American English, which can be explained based on both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Based on this rigorous analysis of extensive data, Grieve identifies five primary modern American dialect regions, demonstrating that regional variation is far more pervasive and complex in natural language than is generally assumed. The wealth of maps and data and the groundbreaking implications of this volume make it essential reading for students and researchers in linguistics, English language, geography, computer science, sociology and communication studies.

Measuring centrality by a generalization of degree

Network analysis has emerged as a key technique in communication studies, economics, geography, history and sociology, among others. A fundamental issue is how to identify key nodes in a network, for which purpose a number of centrality measures have been developed. This paper proposes a new parametric family of centrality measures called generalized degree. It is based on the idea that a relationship to a more interconnected node contributes to centrality in a greater extent than a connection to a less central one. Generalized degree improves on degree by redistributing its sum over the network with the consideration of the global structure. Application of the measure is supported by a set of basic properties. A sufficient condition is given for generalized degree to be rank monotonic, excluding counter-intuitive changes in the centrality ranking after certain modifications of the network. The measure has a graph interpretation and can be calculated iteratively. Generalized degree is recommended to apply besides degree since it preserves most favorable attributes of degree, but better reflects the role of the nodes in the network and has an increased ability to distinguish between their importance.

Financial media, globalisation, and China’s economic integration: comparing narrative construction of the Economist and Caijing

In June 2015, legal frameworks of the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank were signed by its 57 founding members. Proposed and initiated by China, this multilateral development bank is considered to be an Asian counterpart to break the monopoly of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In October 2015, China’s Central Bank announced a benchmark interest rate cut to combat the economic slowdown. The easing policy coincides with the European Central Bank’s announcement of doubts over US Fed’s commitment to raise interest rates. Global stock markets responded positively to China’s move, with the exception of the indexes from Wall Street (Bland, 2015; Elliott, 2015). In the meantime, China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (or New Silk Road Economic Belt) became atopic of discourse in relation to its growing global economy, as China pledged $40 billion to trade and infrastructure projects (Bermingham, 2015). The foreign policy aims to reinforce the economic belt from western China through Central Asia towards Europe, as well as to construct maritime trading routes from coastal China through the South China Sea (Summers, 2015). In 2012, The Economist launched a new China section, to reveal the complexity of the‘meteoric rise’ of China. John Micklethwait, who was then the chief editor of the magazine, said that China’s emergence as a global power justified giving it a section of its own(Roush, 2012). In July 2015, Hu Shuli, the former chief editor of Caijing, announced the launch of a think tank and financial data service division called Caixin Insight Group, which encompasses the new Caixin China Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). Incooperation with with Markit Group, a principal global provider of PMI, the index soon became a widely cited economic indicator. One anecdote from November’s Caixin shows how much has changed: in a high-profile dialogue between Hu Shuli and Kevin Rudd, Hu insisted on asking questions in English; interestingly, the former Prime Minister of Australia insisted on replying in Chinese. These recent developments point to one thing: the economic ascent of China and its increasing influence on the power play between economics and politics in world markets. China has begun to take a more active role in rule making and enforcement under neoliberal frameworks. However, due to the country’s size and the scale of its economy in comparison to other countries, China’s version of globalisation has unique characteristics. The ‘Capitalist-socialist’ paradox is vital to China’s market-oriented transformation. In order to comprehend how such unique features are articulated and understood, there are several questions worth investigating in the realms of media and communication studies,such as how China’s neoliberal restructuring is portrayed and perceived by different types of interested parties, and how these portrayals are de-contextualised and re-contextualised in global or Anglo-American narratives. Therefore, based on a combination of the themes of globalisation, financial media and China’s economic integration, this thesis attempts to explore how financial media construct the narratives of China’s economic globalisation through the deployment of comparative and multi-disciplinary approaches. Two outstanding elite financial magazines, Britain’s The Economist, which has a global readership and influence, and Caijing, China’s leading financial magazine, are chosen as case studies to exemplify differing media discourses, representing, respectively, Anglo-American and Chinese socio-economic and political backgrounds, as well as their own journalistic cultures. This thesis tries to answer the questions of how and why China’s neoliberal restructuring is constructed from a globally-oriented perspective. The construction primarily involves people who are influential in business and policymaking. Hence, the analysis falls into the paradigm of elite-elite communication, which is an important but relatively less developed perspective in studying China and its globalisation. The comparing of characteristics of narrative construction are the result of the textual analysis of articles published over a ten-year period (mid-1998 to mid-2008). The corpus of samples come from the two media outlets’ coverage of three selected events:China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, its outward direct investment, and the listing of stocks of Chinese companies in overseas exchanges, which are mutually exclusive in sample collection and collectively exhaustive in the inclusion of articles regarding China’s economic globalisation. The findings help to understand that, despite language, socio-economic and political differences, elite financial media with globally-oriented readerships share similar methods of and approaches to agenda setting, the evaluation of news prominence, the selection of frame, and the advocacy of deeply rooted neoliberal ideas. The comparison of their distinctive features reflects the different phases of building up the sense of identity in their readers as global elites, as well as the different economic interests that are aligned with the corresponding readerships. However, textual analysis is only relevant in terms of exploring how the narratives are constructed and the elements they include; textual analysis alone prevents us from seeing the obstacles and the constrains of the journalistic practices of construction. Therefore, this thesis provides a brief discussion of interviews with practitioners from the two media, in order to understand how similar or different narratives are manifested and perceived, how the concept of neoliberalism deviates from and is justified in the Chinese context, and how and for what purpose deviations arise from Western to Chinese contexts. The thesis also contributes to defining financial media in the domain of elite communication. The relevant and closely interlocking concepts of globalisation, elitism and neoliberalism are discussed, and are used as a theoretical bedrock in the analysis of texts and contexts. It is important to address the agenda-setting and ideological role of elite financial media, because of its narrative formula of infusing business facts with opinions,which is important in constructing the global elite identity as well as influencing neoliberal policy-making. On the other hand, ‘journalistic professionalism’ has been redefined, in that the elite identity is shared by the content producer, reader and the actors in the news stories emerging from the much-compressed news cycle. The professionalism of elite financial media requires a dual definition, that of being professional in the understanding of business facts and statistics, and that of being professional in the making sense of stories by deploying economic logic.

El humor gráfico español ante el referéndum escocés del 18 de septiembre de 2014 ¿Dibujando la independencia de Cataluña?

El presente artículo analiza el discurso que los principales diarios españoles dieron al referéndum por la independencia de Escocia, celebrado el 18 de septiembre de 2014, a través del humor gráfico. Mediante el Análisis Textual, el objetivo primordial de este estudio es examinar el tratamiento informativo que realizaron El País, El Mundo, ABC, La Razón, La Vanguardia y El Periódico por medio de sus viñetas de opinión. Esta investigación presenta un campo novedoso de análisis tanto en el tema, abriendo nuevas áreas de trabajo sobre el nacionalismo y el papel de los medios, como en la metodología, pues el examen del humor gráfico continúa siendo una asignatura pendiente en los estudios de comunicación.

On a first-name basis: Englishization and naming in Flanders

Following and contributing to the ongoing shift from more structuralist, system-oriented to more pragmatic, socio-cultural oriented anglicism research, this paper verifies to what extent the global spread of English affects naming patterns in Flanders. To this end, a diachronic database of first names is constructed, containing the top 75 most popular boy and girl names from 2005 until 2014. In a first step, the etymological background of these names is documented and the evolution in popularity of the English names in the database is tracked. Results reveal no notable surge in the preference for English names. This paper complements these database-driven results with an experimental study, aiming to show how associations through referents are in this case more telling than associations through phonological form (here based on etymology). Focusing on the socio-cultural background of first names in general and of Anglo-American pop culture in particular, the second part of the study specifically reports on results from a survey where participants are asked to name the first three celebrities that leap to mind when hearing a certain first name (e.g. Lana, triggering the response Del Rey). Very clear associations are found between certain first names and specific celebrities from Anglo-American pop culture. Linking back to marketing research and the social turn in onomastics, we will discuss how these celebrities might function as referees, and how social stereotypes surrounding these referees are metonymically attached to their first names. Similar to the country-of-origin-effect in marketing, these metonymical links could very well be the reason why parents select specific “celebrity names”. Although further attitudinal research is needed, this paper supports the importance of including socio-cultural parameters when conducting onomastic research.

Censura no governo de Vargas

O presente trabalho tem diferentes objetivos: o primeiro deles é apresentar resultados da pesquisa que vem sendo realizada pelo Observatório de Comunicação, Liberdade de Expressão e Censura (OBCOM-USP), a partir do Arquivo Miroel Silveira da Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (AMS/ECA-USP), sobre censura aos meios de comunicação e à produção artística. O tema da liberdade de expressão tem se tornado cada vez mais importante para os estudos de comunicação. O segundo objetivo é, relembrando os 60 anos do suicídio do presidente Getúlio Vargas, falar de sua atuação no controle e intervenção sobre a imprensa e a produção artística. Ele foi o criador do sistema de censura que vigorou no Brasil de 1937 a 1988 (quando a Constituição eliminou os órgãos oficiais de censura), através do Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda (DIP), do qual o Arquivo Miroel Silveira é resultado e exemplo. O terceiro objetivo do presente trabalho é mostrar que a censura moral ou estética é um subterfúgio para o principal intuito de toda censura, que é controlar a produção simbólica e impedir a crítica e a dissidência. Isso será feito através da análise dos documentos do processo 268 de censura prévia da peça Ben-Hur, de 1943, que deveria estrear em São Paulo. Finalmente, o quarto objetivo deste texto é mostrar que a extinção dos órgãos oficiais de censura, a chamada censura “clássica”, não evitou que outros meios indiretos, plurais, particulares e governamentais continuassem a controlar meios de comunicação e manifestações artísticas, impedindo a livre expressão.

La construcción de sentido (‘sensemaking’) de un entorno estratégico turbulento por parte de los altos directivos: un estudio en una multinacional automotriz

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación realizada al interior de dos contextos. Por un lado, el teórico, en el marco de uno de los discursos más relevantes en los campos de la estrategia organizacional, de la managerial and organizational cognition (MOC) y, en general, de los estudios organizacionales (organization studies): la construcción de sentido (sensemaking). Por el otro, el empírico, en una de las grandes compañías multinacionales del sector automotriz con presencia global. Esta corporación enfrenta una permanente tensión entre lo que dicta la casa matriz, en relación con el cumplimiento de metas y estándares específicos, considerando el mundo entero, y los retos que, teniendo en cuenta lo regional y lo local, experimentan los altos directivos encargados de hacer prosperar la empresa en estos lugares. La aproximación implementada fue cualitativa. Esto en atención a la naturaleza de la problemática abordada y la tradición del campo. Los resultados permiten ampliar el actual nivel de comprensión acerca de los procesos de sensemaking de los altos directivos al enfrentar un entorno estratégico turbulento.

Quality of Judgment Assessment

The intersection of Artificial Intelligence and The Law stands for a multifaceted matter, and its effects set the advances on culture, organization, as well as the social matters, when the emergent information technologies are taken into consideration. From this point of view, the weight of formal and informal Conflict Resolution settings should be highlighted, and the use of defective data, information or knowledge must be emphasized. Indeed, it is hard to do it with traditional problem solving methodologies. Therefore, in this work the focus is on the development of decision support systems, in terms of its knowledge representation and reasoning procedures, under a formal framework based on Logic Programming, complemented with an approach to computing centered on Artificial Neural Networks. It is intended to evaluate the Quality-of-Judgments and the respective Degree-of-Confidence that one has on such happenings.

Research training and national innovation systems in Australia, Finland and the United States : a policy and systems study supported by 30 case studies of research students in the fields of geospatial science, wireless communication, biosciences, and materials science and engineering

Reforms to the national research and research training system by the Commonwealth Government of Australia sought to effectively connect research conducted in universities to Australia's national innovation system. Research training has a key role in ensuring an adequate supply of highly skilled people for the national innovation system. During their studies, research students produce and disseminate a massive amount of new knowledge. Prior to this study, there was no research that examined the contribution of research training to Australia's national innovation system despite the existence of policy initiatives aiming to enhance this contribution. Given Australia's below average (but improving) innovation performance compared to other OECD countries, the inclusion of Finland and the United States provided further insights into the key research question. This study examined three obvious ways that research training contributes to the national innovation systems in the three countries: the international mobility and migration of research students and graduates, knowledge production and distribution by research students, and the impact of research training as advanced human capital formation on economic growth. Findings have informed the concept of a research training culture of innovation that aims to enhance the contribution of research training to Australia's national innovation system. Key features include internationally competitive research and research training environments; research training programs that equip students with economically-relevant knowledge and the capabilities required by employers operating in knowledge-based economies; attractive research careers in different sectors; a national commitment to R&D as indicated by high levels of gross and business R&D expenditure; high private and social rates of return from research training; and the horizontal coordination of key organisations that create policy for, and/or invest in research training.

Aligning communication, cultural and media studies research and scholarship with industry and policy : Australian instances

This article reflects on aspects of what is claimed to be the distinctiveness of Australian communication, cultural and media studies, focusing on two cases – the cultural policy debate in the 1990s, and the concept of creative industries in the 2000s – and the relations between them, which highlight the alignment of research and scholarship with industry and policy and with which the author has been directly involved. Both ‘moments’ have been controversial; the three main lines of critique of such alignment of research and scholarship with industry and policy (its untoward proximity to tenets of the dominant neo-liberal ideology; the evacuation of cultural value by the economic; and the possible loss of critical vocation of the humanities scholar) are debated.

Communication and control : case studies in Australian telecommuting

This paper discusses the results of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 39 telecommuters from 12 Australian organisations. The paper serves two broad aims: firstly, it identifies current trends in telecommuting and offers a perspective on Australian developments. Secondly, it provides a focus on significant communication aspects of the Australian telecommuting experience. Findings are that the majority of interviewees reported overall satisfaction with telecommuting as an important contributor to their improved work and lifestyle outcomes. Overall, telecommuters appear to cope with communication aspects of their work environments. They also were not overreliant on advanced communications media when telecommuting. Difficulties as reported by telecommuter interviewees included: perceived discomfort over lack of management support for their telecommuting; reduced levels of interpersonal communication suggesting the likely need to adopt a ‘media mix’ approach to servicing their communication needs; problems of information access; and telecommuters’ reported levels of difficulty with their uses of some computer and communication technologies. Problems relating to telecommuters’ perceived professional and social isolation, were also identified. Finally, the paper underscores where organisational communication theorists and practitioners need to more energetically embrace the concepts of virtual work and telecommuting