That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance!

"That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance!" A novel in which a part-blood Aboriginal Australian becomes a full-blood vampire (see the above pdf for the first 50 pages FREE!). Synopsis. In this bold and cheeky meditation on religion, middle-aged muscleman, uncertain Catholic and wanna-be academic Sterling de Bortoli is a self-described Octaroon: a one eighth Aboriginal Australian. Neither black nor white this part-blood Blackfella struggles with concepts of identity, moving between the two worlds but not really belonging to either. Thus he pursues a frustrated, anarchic, homeless existence in Canberra and Melbourne, until, through the influence of the Anti-Christ, his Dark Lord Maria, he travels to Islamic Morocco. It's a land completely foreign to his Dreamtime totem, and it's where de Bortoli learns to be a full-blood vampire ... a monster who never says sorry. ISBN: 978-3-8454-4518-2 Available in hard copy and E-book.

Research in action for community informatics : A matter for conversation (editorial introduction)

This special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics brings together people from a diverse range of disciplines to discuss how academic researchers and community practitioners and activists can work together to explore the use of information and communication technologies, social media, augmented reality, and other forms of network technologies for research and action in pursuit of social responsibility. The aim is to connect people with ideas, ideas with research projects, and harness new media to further inquiry into socially just outcomes in our community. Some of the papers are based on presentations given at the "Research for Action: Networking University and Community for Social Responsibility" workshop chaired by Matthew Allen and Marcus Foth, at the Making Links 2010 conference in Perth, WA on 15 Nov 2010.

The borders that law sets on entertainment

It is natural for those involved in entertainment to focus on the art. However, like any activity in even a free society, those involved in entertainment industries must operate within borders set by the law. This article examines the main areas of law that impact entertainment in an Australian context. It contrasts the position in relation to freedom of expression in Australia with that in the United States, which also promotes freedom of expression in a free society. It then briefly canvases the main limits on entertainment productions under Australian law.

A review of the acculturation experiences of international students

Universities in Western countries host a substantial number of international students. These students bring a range of benefits to the host country and in return the students gain higher education. However, the choice to study overseas in Western countries may present many challenges for the international student including the experience of acculturative stress and difficulties with adjustment to the environment of the host country. The present paper provides a review of current acculturation models as applied to international students. Given that these models have typically been empirically tested on migrant and refugee populations only, the review aims to determine the extent to which these models characterise the acculturation experience of international students. Literature pertaining to salient variables from acculturation models was explored including acculturative stressors encountered frequently by international students (e.g., language barriers, educational difficulties, loneliness, discrimination, and practical problems associated with changing environments). Further discussed was the subsequent impact of social support and coping strategies on acculturative stress experienced by international students, and the psychological and sociocultural adaptation of this student group. This review found that the international student literature provides support for some aspects of the acculturation models discussed, however, further investigation of these models is needed to determine their accuracy in describing the acculturation of international students. Additionally, prominent acculturation models portray the host society as an important factor influencing international students’ acculturation, which suggests the need for future intervention.

David F. Treagust : congenial soul, science educator, and international research leader

For almost a half century David F. Treafust has been an exemplary science educator who has contributed through his dedication and commitments to students, curriculum development and collaboration with teachers, and cutting edge research in science education that has impacted the field globally, nationally and locally. A hallmark of his outstanding career is his collaborative style that inspires others to produce their best work.

YouTube

Originally launched in 2005 with a focus on user-generated content, YouTube has become the dominant platform for online video worldwide, and an important location for some of the most significant trends and controversies in the contemporary new-media environment. Throughout its very short history, it has also intersected with and been the focus of scholarly debates related to the politics, economics, and cultures of the new media—in particular, the “participatory turn” associated with “Web 2.0” business models’ partial reliance on amateur content and social networking. Given the slow pace of traditional scholarly publishing, the body of media and cultural studies literature substantively dedicated to describing and critically understanding YouTube’s texts, practices, and politics is still small, but it is growing steadily. At the same time, since its inception scholars from a wide range of disciplines and critical perspectives have found YouTube useful as a source of examples and case studies, some of which are included here; others have experimented directly with the scholarly and educational potential of the platform itself. For these reasons, although primarily based around the traditional publishing outlets for media, Internet, and cultural studies, this bibliography draws eclectically on a wide range of sources—including sources very closely associated with the web business literature and with the YouTube community itself.

Porn and the mediasphere

The history of public discourse (and in many cases, academic publishing) on pornography is, notoriously, largely polemical and polarised. There is perhaps no other media form that has been so relentlessly the centre of what boils down to little more than arguments “for” or “against”; most famously, on the basis of the oppression, dominance or liberation of sexual subjectivities. These polarised debates leave much conceptual space for researchers to explore: discussions of pornography often lack specificity (when speaking of porn, what exactly do we mean? Which genre? Which markets?); assumptions (eg. about exactly how the sexualised “white male body” functions culturally, or what the “uses” of porn actually might be) can be buried; and empirical opportunities (how porn as media industry connects to innovation and the rest of the mediasphere) are missed. In this issue, we have tried to create and populate such a space, not only for the rethinking of some of our core assumptions about pornography, but also for the treatment of pornography as a bona fide, even while contested and problematic, segment of the media and cultural industries, linked economically and symbolically to other media forms.

How to pick a fight : Visualisation and sharing in catastrophic times

In a post September 11 era “the fight”, as a cultural construct, could hardly be more pertinent. We are seemingly forever poised on the edge of controversial U.S. led attacks on wayward Middle Eastern states and unexamined oppositions between the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are evoked as valid justifications for battle. Our leaders muster us into wars of vigilance and national cohesion against unseen, unknown and uncomprehended terrorists hiding where communists once lurked under our beds. The articles in this issue examine fights in terms of media strategies and cultural divides in a range of contexts.

Rethinking regulatory design : The Australian National Classification Scheme review

This paper considers issues of methodological innovation in communication, media and cultural studies, that arise out of the extent to which we now live in a media environment characterised by an digital media abundance, the convergence of media platforms, content and services, and the globalisation of media content through ubiquitous computing and high-speed broadband networks. These developments have also entailed a shift in the producer-consumer relationships that characterised the 20th century mass communications paradigm, with the rapid proliferation of user-created content, accelerated innovation, the growing empowerment of media users themselves, and the blurring of distinctions between public and private, as well as age-based distinctions in terms of what media can be accessed by whom and for what purpose. It considers these issues through a case study of the Australian Law Reform Commission's National Classification Scheme Review.

Print media portrayals of giving : exploring national ‘cultures of philanthropy’

In their 2010 study drawing on 500 empirical philanthropy studies, Bekkers and Wiepking identified eight consistently significant giving mechanisms. The pilot study reported here extends what is known about one mechanism, values, as a giving driver, in particular considering how national cultural values apply to giving. Personal values are not formed in a vacuum. They are influenced by the wider culture and society: thus values have a socio-cultural dimension. Accordingly, this pilot research draws on media theory and cultural studies work on national ethos to explore how these national cultural values interact with giving. A directed qualitative content analysis has been undertaken to compare US and Australian print media coverage about philanthropy. The two nations share an Anglo–Saxon orientation but differ significantly in national character and philanthropic activity. This study posits that a nation's media coverage about giving will reflect its national cultural ethos. This coverage can also shape personal values, thus implications exist for theory about the antecedents of personal giving values. Wider national values may drive or stifle giving, so this wider view of values as a driver has implications also for philanthropy promotion and fundraising.

Middle India as revealed by Chetan Bhagat

The middle classes form the bulk of Indian migrants who head for Australian shores today. Yet, within Australia, general knowledge of the conditions that drive Indians’ determined search for opportunities overseas is limited to the few who have contact with international students and migrants from the sub-continent, and the skewed, melodramatic antics of Bollywood. It is my suggestion that a broader understanding of the underlying reasons that push Indians to migrate to societies like Australia can be had through readings of Chetan’s Bhagat’s four hugely popular novels: Five Point Someone, One night @the Call Center, The 3 mistakes of My life and Two States. Bhagat is a graduate of India’s famed Indian Institute of Technology and a former Non-Resident Indian investment banker who has since returned to live in Delhi. His experiences make him the perfect mouthpiece for middle India and his paperbacks depict that stratum of Indian society’s obsessions with social mobility, marriage, regional and religious divides with great sympathy and conviction. Drawing on observations made during a recent visit to India, I illustrate what an exploration of Bhagat’s paperbacks reveals about everyday, contemporary India and what it adds to Australian understandings of Indians and India today.

Reorienting diaspora : China and India as franchise nations

In this paper, I outline a new approach towards media and diaspora using the concept of the ‘franchise nation’. It is my contention that current theories on migration, media and diaspora with their emphasis on exile, multiple belongings, hybrid identities and their representations are inadequate to the task of explaining the emergence of a new trend in diaspora, home and host nation relationship. This, I suggest, is a recent shift most notable in the attitudes of the Chinese and Indian governments toward their diasporas. From earlier eras where Chinese sojourners were regarded as disloyal and Indians overseas left to fend for themselves, Chinese and Indian migrants are today directly addressed and wooed by their nations of origin. This change is motivated in part by the realisation that diasporic populations are, in fact, resources that can bring significant influence to bear on home nation interests within host nations. Such sway in foreign lands gains greater importance as China and India are, by virtue of their economic rise and prominence on the world stage, subject to ever more intense international scrutiny. Members of these diasporas have willingly responded to these changes by claiming and cultivating pivotal roles for themselves within host nations as spokespersons, informants and representatives, trading on their assumed familiarity with home cultures, language and commerce. As a result, China and India have initiated a number of statecraft strategies in recent years to (re)engage their diasporas. Both nations have identified media as amongst the key instruments of their strategies. New media enhances the ability of all parties—home and host states, institutions and individuals—to participate, interact and reciprocate. While China’s centralised government has utilised the notion of soft power (ruan shili) to describe its practices, India’s efforts are diffused along the lines of nation branding via myriad labels like India Inc. and the Global Indian. To explain this emergent trend, I propose a new framework, franchise nation, defined as a reciprocal relationship between nation and diaspora that is characterised by mutual obligations and benefits. In appropriating this phrase from Stephenson, I liken contemporary statecraft operating in China and India to a business franchising system wherein benefits may be economic or cultural and; those thus connected signal their willingness for mutual exchange and concede a sense of obligation. As such, franchise nation is not concerned with remote, unidirectional interference in home nation affairs a la Anderson’s ‘long-distance nationalism’. Rather, it is a framework that seeks to reflect more closely the dynamism of the relationship between diaspora, home and host nations.

Looking through the corridor : Malaysia and the MSC

As part of a development plan-in-progress spanning a total of 25 years(1996 to 2020), Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) provides a unique opportunity to witness a brief and microcosmic unfolding of the reciprocally formative process between society and technology that Lewis Mumford lays out in exhaustive detail in Technics and Civilization (Mumford, 1963). The interlocking of national imagining, destiny and progress with a specific group of technologies, information and communication technologies(ICT) is, in itself, worthy of interest. However, what renders the MSC doubly remarkable is its introduction in Malaysia, one of the most well established of contemporary ethnocracies. This chapter reads the development and implementation of the MSC as the text through which the association between nation and ethnicity is examined. Broadly speaking I argue here that the MSC inflects the imagining(s) of Malaysia at two levels. At the first level where the MSC is understood to be the insertion of a new policy into Malaysia’s pre existent ethnocratic climate, I contend the MSC inflects the nation through its incongruence with prevalent conditions. At the second level, where the MSC is viewed through the position of its Chinese populace, I suggest that the MSC inflects Malaysia (perhaps to a lesser degree) through the re-emphasis it lends to issues of transnationalism and belonging for the Malaysian Chinese.

No longer Singaporean : visibilising the everyday contestations of identities

In the past decade or so, the citizens of Singapore have been vigorously urged by the state to turn their cultural and linguistic affinities with China to economic advantage. At the same time, the city-state has opened its doors to selected, skilled migrants from Asia including many of those from mainland and Greater China. These concurrent emphases have coincided with the trend and growing numbers of Singaporeans heading overseas for one reason or another. Through a reflexive journey sparked by a recent visit, I argue in this paper that the resultant change in the makeup of its population produces tensions that may well have important repercussions for a nation that is constitutionally multiethnic though pragmatically meritocratic. However, because these frictions find form only in everyday, pedestrian practices, they are often dismissed or ignored. It is my contention that as the stage on which innocuous, creeping shifts in social identities are enacted, finessed and (re)embedded into social imaginaries, these everyday contestations of identities need to studied for indications of what is at stake.

Engaging the practice of yarning in Action Research

This paper discusses the technique of ‘yarning’ as an action research process relevant for policy development work with Aboriginal peoples. Through a case study of an Aboriginal community-based smoking project in the Australian State of Victoria, the paper demonstrates how the Aboriginal concept of ‘yarning’ can be used to empower people to create policy change that not only impacts on their own health, but also impacts on the health of others and the Aboriginal organisation for which they work. The paper presents yarning within the context of models of empowerment and a methodological approach of participatory action research. The method is based on respect and inclusivity, with the final policy developed by staff for staff. Yarning is likely to be successful for action researchers working within a variety of Indigenous contexts.