Developing a participatory impact assessment approach and action research culture within a communication for social change organisation in Nepal

Developing an effective impact evaluation framework, managing and conducting rigorous impact evaluations, and developing a strong research and evaluation culture within development communication organisations presents many challenges. This is especially so when both the community and organisational context is continually changing and the outcomes of programs are complex and difficult to clearly identify.----- This paper presents a case study from a research project being conducted from 2007-2010 that aims to address these challenges and issues, entitled Assessing Communication for Social Change: A New Agenda in Impact Assessment. Building on previous development communication projects which used ethnographic action research, this project is developing, trailing and rigorously evaluating a participatory impact assessment methodology for assessing the social change impacts of community radio programs in Nepal. This project is a collaboration between Equal Access – Nepal (EAN), Equal Access – International, local stakeholders and listeners, a network of trained community researchers, and a research team from two Australian universities. A key element of the project is the establishment of an organisational culture within EAN that values and supports the impact assessment process being developed, which is based on continuous action learning and improvement. The paper describes the situation related to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and impact assessment before the project began, in which EAN was often reliant on time-bound studies and ‘success stories’ derived from listener letters and feedback. We then outline the various strategies used in an effort to develop stronger and more effective impact assessment and M&E systems, and the gradual changes that have occurred to date. These changes include a greater understanding of the value of adopting a participatory, holistic, evidence-based approach to impact assessment. We also critically review the many challenges experienced in this process, including:----- • Tension between the pressure from donors to ‘prove’ impacts and the adoption of a bottom-up, participatory approach based on ‘improving’ programs in ways that meet community needs and aspirations.----- • Resistance from the content teams to changing their existing M&E practices and to the perceived complexity of the approach.----- • Lack of meaningful connection between the M&E and content teams.----- • Human resource problems and lack of capacity in analysing qualitative data and reporting results.----- • The contextual challenges, including extreme poverty, wide cultural and linguistic diversity, poor transport and communications infrastructure, and political instability.----- • A general lack of acceptance of the importance of evaluation within Nepal due to accepting everything as fate or ‘natural’ rather than requiring investigation into a problem.

Media Studies: "Media, History and Society", and "Thinking Popular Culture".

“When cultural life is re-defined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk.” (Postman) The dire tones of Postman quoted in Janet Cramer’s Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of US Media introduce one view that she canvasses, in the debate of the moment, as to where popular culture is heading in the digital age. This is canvassed, less systematically, in Thinking Popular Culture: War Terrorism and Writing by Tara Brabazon, who for example refers to concerns about a “crisis of critical language” that is bothering professionals—journalists and academics or elsewhere—and deplores the advent of the Internet, as a “flattening of expertise in digital environments”.

Journalism, History and the Politics of Popular Culture

I argue that a divergence between popular culture as “object” and “subject” of journalism emerged during the nineteenth century in Britain. It accounts not only for different practices of journalism, but also for differences in the study of journalism, as manifested in journalism studies and cultural studies respectively. The chapter offers an historical account to show that popular culture was the source of the first mass circulation journalism, via the pauper press, but that it was later incorporated into the mechanisms of modern government for a very different purpose, the theorist of which was Walter Bagehot. Journalism’s polarity was reversed – it turned from “subjective” to “objective.” The paper concludes with a discussion of YouTube and the resurgence of self-made representation, using the resources of popular culture, in current election campaigns. Are we witnessing a further reversal of polarity, where popular culture and self-representation once again becomes the “subject” of journalism?

"Her lively Looks a sprightly Mind disclose, Quick as her Eyes, and as unfix'd as those." - looking, fashion media, and risk culture

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of fashion from the perspective of ‘the look.’ This is achieved by the wearer (as opposed to the designer) and also forms the basis of fashion media, where it represents the ‘decisive moment’ of photography. The chapter argues that the evolving ‘look’ of fashion can be analysed to identify tensions between novelty and emulation, the unique and the universal, in contemporary consumer culture and status-based social-network markets. It explores the work of fashion photographer Corinne Day and artist Olga Tobreluts to identify the theme of ‘risk culture.’

Fashion as consumer entrepreneurship : emergent risk culture, social network markets, and the launch of 'Vogue' in China

China has a reputation as an economy based on utility: the large-scale manufacture of low-priced goods. But useful values like functionality, fitness for purpose and efficiency are only part of the story. More important are what Veblen called ‘honorific’ values, arguably the driving force of development, change and value in any economy. To understand the Chinese economy therefore, it is not sufficient to point to its utilitarian aspect. Honorific status-competition is a more fundamental driver than utilitarian cost-competition. We argue that ‘social network markets’ are the expression of these honorific values, relationships and connections that structure and coordinate individual choices. This paper explores how such markets are developing in China in the area of fashion and fashion media. These, we argue, are an expression of ‘risk culture’ for high-end entrepreneurial consumers and producers alike, providing a stimulus to dynamic innovation in the arena of personal taste and comportment, as part of an international cultural system based on constant change. We examine the launch of Vogue China in 2005, and China’s reception as a fashion player among the international editions of Vogue, as an expression of a ‘decisive moment’ in the integration of China into an international social network market based on honorific values.

The entrepreneurial vlogger : participatory culture beyond the professional-amateur divide

In this chapter, we frame YouTube as an example of “co-creative” culture – whatever YouTube is, it is produced dynamically (that is, as an ongoing process, over time) as a result of many interconnected instances of participation, by many different people. In order to understand these co-creative relationships, it is important not to focus exclusively on how the “ordinary consumer” or “amateur producer,” are participating in YouTube; rather, we argue it is necessary to include the activities of “traditional media” companies and media professionals, and more importantly, the new models of media entrepreneurialism that are grounded in YouTube’s “grassroots” culture. Hence, this chapter focuses the role that “YouTube stars” – highly visible and successful “homegrown” performers and producers – play in modelling and negotiating these co-creative relationships within the context of YouTube’s social network; and the new models of entrepreneurship within participatory culture that they represent.

Documentary practice in a participatory culture

Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself. This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice. A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too. It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself. One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer. Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers. It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.

Realising competitive advantage through HRM in New Zealand service industries

An emerging source of competitive advantage for service industries is the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their employees. Indeed, achievement of a 'service quality' culture, considered imperative for competitive advantage in service organisations, supposedly results from the use of best practice human resource management (HRM), and from a strategic approach to their implementation. This paper empirically explores the use of these dimensions of HRM as a source of competitive advantage. It finds high-performing service organisations actively engage best practices across the areas of recruitment and selection, training and development, communication and team working. Evidence of a strategic approach to the implementation of these practices is also found.

High Culture as Subculture : Brisbane's Contemporary Chamber Music Scene

The aim of the dissertation is to discover the extent to which methodologies and conceptual frameworks used to understand popular culture may also be useful in the attempt to understand contemporary high culture. The dissertation addresses this question through the application of subculture theory to Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene, drawing on a detailed case study of the contemporary chamber ensemble Topology and its audiences. The dissertation begins by establishing the logic and necessity of applying cultural studies methodologies to contemporary high culture. This argument is supported by a discussion of the conceptual relationships between cultural studies, high culture, and popular culture, and the methodological consequences of these relationships. In Chapter 2, a brief overview of interdisciplinary approaches to music reveals the central importance of subculture theory, and a detailed survey of the history of cultural studies research into music subcultures follows. Five investigative themes are identified as being crucial to all forms of contemporary subculture theory: the symbolic; the spatial; the social; the temporal; the ideological and political. Chapters 3 and 4 present the findings of the case study as they relate to these five investigative themes of contemporary subculture theory. Chapter 5 synthesises the findings of the previous two chapters, and argues that while participation in contemporary chamber music is not as intense or pervasive as is the case with the most researched street-based youth subcultures, it is nevertheless possible to describe Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene as a subculture. The dissertation closes by reflecting on the ways in which the subcultural analysis of contemporary chamber music has yielded some insight into the lived practices of high culture in contemporary urban contexts.

Whither culture? Australian horror films and the limitations of cultural policy

Cultural policy that attempts to foster the Australian film industry’s growth and development in an era of globalisation is coming under increasing pressure. Throughout the 2000s, there has been a substantial boom in Australian horror films led by ‘runaway’ horror film Saw (2004), Wolf Creek (2005), and Undead (2003), achieving varying levels of popularity and commercial success worldwide. However, emerging within a national cinema driven by public subsidy and valuing ‘quality’ and ‘cultural content’ over ‘entertainment’ and ‘commercialism’, horror films have generally been antithetical to these objectives. Consequently, the recent boom in horror films has occurred largely outside the purview and subvention of cultural policy. This paper argues that global forces and emerging production and distribution models are challenging the ‘narrowness’ of cultural policy – a narrowness that mandates a particular film culture, circumscribes certain notions of value and limits the variety of films produced domestically. Despite their low-culture status, horror films have been well suited to the Australian film industry’s financial limitations, they are a growth strategy for producers, and a training ground for emerging filmmakers.

Australian Media and Culture

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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.

The Evolution of the creative industries : creative clusters, creative citizens and social network markets 創意產業的演化 : 創意集群 ,創意公民, 社會網絡市場 [published in Chinese]

The creative industries are important because they are clustered at the point of attraction for a billion or more young people around the world. They're the drivers of demographic, economic and political change. They start from the individual talent of the creative artist and the individual desire and aspiration of the audience. These are the raw materials for innovation, change and emergent culture, scaled up to form new industries and coordinated into global markets based on social networks.

Ourplace : the convergence of locative media and online participatory culture

The trans-locative potential of the Internet has driven the design of many online applications. Online communities largely cluster around topics of interest, which take precedence over participants’ geographical locations. The site of production is often disregarded when creative content appears online. However, for some, a sense of place is a defining aspect of creativity. Yet environments that focus on the display and sharing of regionally situated content have, so far, been largely overlooked. Recent developments in geo-technologies have precipitated the emergence of a new field of interactive media. Entitled locative media, it emphasizes the geographical context of media. This paper argues that we might combine practices of locative media (experiential mapping and geo-spatial annotation) with aspects of online participatory culture (uploading, file-sharing and search categorization) to produce online applications that support geographically ‘located’ communities. It discusses the design considerations and possibilities of this convergence,making reference to an example, OurPlace 3G to 3D, which has to date been developed as a prototype.1 It goes on to discuss the benefits and potential uses of such convergent applications, including the co-production of spatial- emporal narratives of place.

Monopoly, monopsony, and the value of culture in a digital age: An axiology of two multimedia resource repositories

Broadly speaking, axiology is the study of values. Axiologies are expressed materially in patterns of choices that are both culture-bound and definitive of different cultures. They are expressed in the language we use; in the friends we keep; in the clothes we wear; in what we read, write, and watch; in the technologies we use; in the gods we believe in and pray to; in the music we make and listen to—indeed, in every kind of activity that can be counted as a definitive element of culture. In what follows, I describe the axiological underpinnings of two closely related multimedia repository projects— Australian Creative Resources Online (ACRO) and The Canadian Centre for Cultural Innovation (CCCI)—and how these are oriented towards a potentially liberating role for digital repositories.