Why are children the most important audience for pornography in Australia?

Who watches pornography in Australia? If you listen to public debates about the genre the answer is clear – it’s children. Children are accessing pornography on smartphones (Murray and Tin 2011). Children are taking ‘lewd’ photographs of themselves, creating their own pornography (Nelligan and Etheridge 2011). Indigenous Australian children must be protected by banning pornography (the Age 2011). Pornographic magazines are placed where children can see them (O'Rourke 2011). Exposure to pornography is damaging children (Sundstrom 2011). The Australian Government insists that the Internet must be filtered to protect children from pornography (Collerton 2010). And if indeed any adults are watching pornography in Australia, then it’s child pornography (MacDonald 2011; Ralston and Howden 2011).In story after story, public debate about pornography focuses on children as its audience. There is no suggestion that children are numerically the largest audience of pornography in Australia. But emphatically the suggestion is that children are the most important audience to be taken into account when thinking about the genre. This chapter explores why this is the case, and notes the political advantages and disadvantages of focusing on children as the most important audience for pornography in Australia.

Masturbation and the media

This paper explores the important role the media play in informing young people about masturbation. A pilot study of focus groups with twenty-two young Australians, aged between 14-16 explored what they know about sex and sexuality, and where they have found that knowledge. This paper reports on their knowledge about masturbation. Although researchers agree that masturbation can be a positive part of healthy sexual development, most young people reported that they received very little positive information about it from their parents or in formal sex education in school. These young people’s discussions around this topic were largely ambivalent, but also highly complex due to the varying levels and types of information that they receive. In this context the media play a vital role in providing information about masturbation through books and magazines for young women, and television comedies for young men.

The changing role of copyright in China’s emergent media economy

This chapter introduces the changing role of copyright in China from a historical perspective. It begins by briefly tracing the history of copyright, from a censorship-related system associated with the emergence of the printing press in imperial China, through modernisation during the Republican period, abolition under communism and finally to the introduction of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) first copyright law in 1990 and the nation's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001.

Exploring emotional climate in preservice science teacher education

Classroom emotional climates are interrelated with students’ engagement with university courses. Despite growing interest in emotions and emotional climate research, little is known about the ways in which social interactions and different subject matter mediate emotional climates in preservice science teacher education classes. In this study we investigated the emotional climate and associated classroom interactions in a preservice science teacher education class. We were interested in the ways in which salient classroom interactions were related to the emotional climate during lessons centered on debates about science-based issues (e.g., nuclear energy alternatives). Participants used audience response technology to indicate their perceptions of the emotional climate. Analysis of conversation for salient video clips and analysis of non-verbal conduct (acoustic parameters, body movements, and facial expressions) supplemented emotional climate data. One key contribution that this study makes to preservice science teacher education is to identify the micro-processes of successful and unsuccessful class interactions that were associated with positive and neutral emotional climate. The structure of these interactions can inform the practice of other science educators who wish to produce positive emotional climates in their classes. The study also extends and explicates the construct of intensity of emotional climate.

Book review: "Ideologies of Breast Cancer : Feminist Perspectives" Edited by Laura K. Potts. New York: St. Martin’s Press

Laura K. Potts’s edited collection of research on the meanings of breast cancer includes authors from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada whose perspectives draw on literary criticism, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies among others. The research employs various methodological approaches—for example, media analysis (Saywell et al.), autobiographical narratives (Potts), and analysis of social activism (Fishman)—to elucidate the multiple dimensions and diversity of breast cancer experiences. The first of two parts, “Meanings of Breast Cancer,” presents the problematical relationship between biomedicine and women’s constructions of breast cancer knowledge, the sexualized and maternalized breast in the print media about breast cancer, environmental risks to women’s health in the Bay Area of San Francisco, and women’s narratives of breast cancer and situating the self. In part 2, “Discourses of Risk and Breast Cancer,” examination of the discourses of prevention and risks to health are taken up in relation to breast cancer screening, the problem of prophylactic mastectomy for hereditary breast cancer, and environmental activism...

An afternoon with Chopin and George Sand

An original edutainment piece written by Caroline Heim and Christian Heim. Frederic Chopin and George Sands' turbulent and fraught relationship is dramatised through Chopin's music and Sand's writings.

Understanding the operational structure of Southeast Asian drug trafficking groups in Australia

This thesis examined the operational structure of Southeast Asian drug trafficking groups operating on the eastern seaboard of Australia by testing the validity and application of organised crime and drug trafficking typologies using data obtained from 159 drug trafficking cases in three Australian states: New South Wales; Queensland; and Victoria. Key findings indicated that the usefulness of typologies is limited when classifying and analysing organised crime groups. In particular, Southeast Asian drug trafficking groups operated largely in small, informal, family-based hierarchies or groups that were better conceptualised using theoretical perspectives from network and cultural studies. The study recommended that replicating previous empirical research in the field is an effective approach that will contribute towards building a cumulative body of knowledge on organised crime structures.

Who’s blocking the Chinese Internet? The rise of cybercultures and the generational conflicts in China

As a decentralised communication technology, the Internet has offered much autonomy and unprecedented communication freedom to the Chinese public. Yet the Chinese government has imposed different forms of censorship over cyberspace. However, the Hong Kong erotic photo scandal reshuffles the traditional understanding of censorship in China as it points to a different territory. The paper takes the Hong Kong erotic photo scandal in 2008 as a case study and aims to examine the social and generational conflicts hidden in China. When thousands of photos containing sexually explicit images of Hong Kong celebrities were released on the Internet, gossip, controversies and eroticism fuelled the public discussion and threatened traditional values in China. The Internet provides an alternative space for the young Chinese who have been excluded from mainstream social discourse to engage in public debates. This, however, creates concerns, fear and even anger among the older generations in China, because they can no longer control, monitor and educate their children in the way that their predecessors have done for centuries. The photo scandal illustrates the internal social conflicts and distrust between generations in China and the generational conflict has a far-reaching political ramification as it creates a new concept of censorship.

(Re)imagining the world : children's literature's response to changing times

(Re)Imagining the world: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times considers how writers of fiction for children imagine ‘the world’, not one universal world, but different worlds: imaginary, strange, familiar, even monstrous worlds. The chapters in this collection discuss how fiction for children engages with some of the changes brought about by new technologies, information literacy, consumerism, migration, politics, different family structures, cosmopolitanism, and new and old monsters. They also invite us to think about how memory shapes our understanding of the past, and how fiction engages our emotions, our capacity to empathize, our desire to discover, and what the future may hold. The contributors bring different perspectives from education, postcolonial studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, childhood studies, postmodernism, and the social sciences. With a wide coverage of texts from different countries, and scholarly and lively discussions, this collection is itself a testament to the power of the human imagination and the significance of children’s literature in the education of young people.

Ruptures in the heterosexual matrix through teenage flows and multiplicities

This article analyzes a series of stories and artworks that were produced in a collective biography workshop. It explores Judith Butler’s concept of the heterosexual matrix combined with a Deleuzian theoretical framework. The article begins with an overview of Butler’s concept of the heterosexual matrix and her theorizations on how it might be disrupted. It then suggests how a Deleuzian framework offers other tools for analyzing these ruptures at the micro level of girls’ everyday interactions.

The Cyndi Lauper affect : bodies, girlhood and popular culture

Using a collective biography method informed by a Deleuzian theoretical approach (Davies and Gannon 2009, 2012), this article analyses embodied memories of girlhood becomings through affective engagements with resonating images in media and popular culture. In this approach to analysis we move beyond the impasse in some feminist cultural studies where studies of popular culture have been understood through theories of representation and reception that retain a sense of discrete subjectivity and linear effects. In these approaches, analysis focuses respectively on decoding and deciphering images in terms of their normative and ideological baggage, and, particularly with moving images, on psychological readings. Understanding bodies and popular culture through Deleuzian notions of “becoming” and “assemblage” opens possibilities for feminist researchers to consider the ways in which bodies are not separate from images but are, rather, becomings that are known, felt, materialized and mobilized with/through images(Coleman 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2009, 2011; Ringrose and Coleman 2013). We tease out the implications of this new approach to media affects through three memories of girls’ engagements with media images, reconceived as moments of embodied being within affective flows of popular culture that might momentarily extend upon ways of being and doing girlhood.

The Imperial War Museum's social interpretation project

This report represents the output from research undertaken by University of Salford and MTM London as part of the joint Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture, operated by Nesta, Arts Council England and the AHRC. University of Salford and MTM London received funding from the programme to act as researchers on the Social Interpretation (SI) project, which was led by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) and their technical partners, The Centre for Digital Humanities, University College London, Knowledge Integration, and Gooii. The project was carried out between October 2011 and October 2012.

Gay men, Gaydar and the commodification of difference

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate information communications technologies (ICT)-mediated inclusion and exclusion in terms of sexuality through a study of a commercial social networking web site for gay men. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an approach based on technological inscription and the commodification of difference to study Gaydar, a commercial social networking site. Findings – Through the activities, events and interactions offered by Gaydar, the study identifies a series of contrasting identity constructions and market segmentations that are constructed through the cyclic commodification of difference. These are fuelled by a particular series of meanings attached to gay male sexualities which serve to keep gay men positioned as a niche market. Research limitations/implications – The research centres on the study of one, albeit widely used, web site with a very specific set of purposes. The study offers a model for future research on sexuality and ICTs. Originality/value – This study places sexuality centre stage in an ICT-mediated environment and provides insights into the contemporary phenomenon of social networking. As a sexualised object, Gaydar presents a semiosis of politicised messages that question heteronormativity while simultaneously contributing to the definition of an increasingly globalised, commercialised and monolithic form of gay male sexuality defined against ICT

A critical success factors model for ERP implementation

An effective IT infrastructure can support a business vision and strategy; a poor, decentralized one can break a company. More and more companies are turning to off-the-shelf ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions for IT planning and legacy systems management. The authors have developed a framework to help managers successfully plan and implement an ERP project

Going beyond ‘misfit’ as a reason for ERP package customisation

In an attempt to deal with the potential problems presented by existing information systems, a shift towards the implementation of ERP packages has been witnessed. The common view, particularly the one espoused by vendors, is that ERP packages are most successfully implemented when the standard model is adopted. Yet, despite this, customisation activity still occurs reportedly due to misalignment between the functionality of the package and the requirements of those in the implementing organisation. However, it is recognised that systems development and organisational decision-making are activities influenced by the perspectives of the various groups and individuals involved in the process. Thus, as customisation can be seen as part of systems development, and has to be decided upon, it should be thought about in the same way. In this study, two ERP projects are used to examine different reasons why customisation might take place. These reasons are then built upon through reference to the ERP and more general packaged software literature. The study suggests that whilst a common reason for customising ERP packages might be concerned with functionality misfits, it is important to look further into why these may occur, as there are clearly other reasons for customisation stemming from the multiplicity of social groups involved in the process.