The promise of computational journalism

Computational journalism involves the application of software and technologies to the activities of journalism, and it draws from the fields of computer science, the social sciences, and media and communications. New technologies may enhance the traditional aims of journalism, or may initiate greater interaction between journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists. The enhanced use of computing in news production is related in particular to three factors: larger government data sets becoming more widely available; the increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous nature of software; and the developing digital economy. Drawing upon international examples, this paper argues that computational journalism techniques may provide new foundations for original investigative journalism and increase the scope for new forms of interaction with readers. Computer journalism provides a major opportunity to enhance the delivery of original investigative journalism, and to attract and retain readers online.

Large scale participatory acoustic sensor data analysis : tools and reputation models to enhance effectiveness

Acoustic sensors play an important role in augmenting the traditional biodiversity monitoring activities carried out by ecologists and conservation biologists. With this ability however comes the burden of analysing large volumes of complex acoustic data. Given the complexity of acoustic sensor data, fully automated analysis for a wide range of species is still a significant challenge. This research investigates the use of citizen scientists to analyse large volumes of environmental acoustic data in order to identify bird species. Specifically, it investigates ways in which the efficiency of a user can be improved through the use of species identification tools and the use of reputation models to predict the accuracy of users with unidentified skill levels. Initial experimental results are reported.

Developing sustainable housing through building utilities and transport innovation

Sustainability concerns every citizen. Housing affordability and sustainable solutions are being highlighted in research and practice in many parts of the world. This paper discusses the development of a Commuter Energy and Building Utilities System (CEBUS) in sustainable housing projects as a means of bridging the gap between current median house pricing and target affordable house pricing for low income earners. Similar scales of sustainable housing development cannot be achieved through independent application of current best practice methods in ecologically sustainable development strategies or transit oriented development master plans. This paper presents the initial stage of research on first capital and ongoing utilities and transport cost savings available from these sustainable design methods. It also outlines further research and development of a CEBUS Dynamic Simulation Model and Conceptual Framework for the Australian property development and construction industry.

The role of gender and framing in shaping community activists' perceptions of environmental risks

campaign to oppose projects proposed in their local community. The social constructionist perspective advocates that these motivations are driven by activists’ interpretation of reality, such that activists will assign multiple meanings to and frame environmental issues in a way that reflects their view of reality. Past research suggest that these are also influenced by patterns of shared meaning and interpretation that develop over time in protest movements that shape activists’ perceptions of the environmental risks and impacts associated with construction activity. This paper explores the role of gender distinctions in shaping perceptions of environmental risk and how this affects their framing of the environmental, social, cultural/ historical impacts associated with a construction project. Using Snow and Benford’s (1988) 3-prong analytical tool for framing: diagnostic framing, prognostic framing and motivational framing, this paper presents findings from the content analysis of in-depth interviews of 24 activists protesting against a highly controversial housing project in the greater Sydney metropolitan area. The research adopts a single case study approach, and is particularly significant as it investigates an extensive and on-going community-based protest campaign (dating back almost 20 years) that has generated the longest standing 24-hour community picket in Australia.

Surrogacy - A Path of Obstacles

Surrogacy has become an effective and accepted form of reproductive technology. It enables couples, regardless of gender or sexuality, to achieve the dream of becoming a parent in circumstances where other forms of reproductive technology and adoption are either not possible or have failed. To its credit, the Queensland parliament has recently brought this state up to date by enacting surrogacy laws that are in line with the majority of statutes implemented throughout the country. The Surrogacy Act 2010 (Qld) allows for the court to make a parentage order in certain circumstances where parties have entered into a surrogacy arrangement. A parentage order effectively transfers parental rights from the birth mother (and her spouse or de facto if there is one) to the intended parents. The requirements which must be satisfied to obtain a parenting order are comprehensive and onerous, making the path to parenthood through a surrogacy arrangement by no means easy. At the heart of the surrogacy issue lies a question, the answer to which has shifted and continues to shift as reproductive technologies continue to increase in success, method and popularity - what is a parent? A recent decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Hudson v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, brought to attention the meaning of the word ‘parent’ as it appears in s 16(2) Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) (‘the Act’). Section 16(2) deals with citizenship by descent and provides that a person born outside Australia may make an application to the Minister to become an Australian citizen if a parent of the person was an Australian citizen at the time of the birth.

The moral economy of social media

In this chapter we take a high-level view of social media, focusing not on specific applications, domains, websites, or technologies, but instead our interest is in the forms of engagement that social media engender. This is not to suggest that all social media are the same, or even that everyone’s experience with any particular medium or technology is the same. However, we argue common issues arise that characterize social media in a broad sense, and provide a different analytic perspective than we would gain from looking at particular systems or applications. We do not take the perspective that social life merely happens “within” such systems, nor that social life “shapes” such systems, but rather these systems provide a site for the production of social and cultural reality – that media are always already social and the engagement with, in, and through media of all sorts is a thoroughly social phenomenon. Accordingly, in this chapter, we examine two phenomena concurrently: social life seen through the lens of social media, and social media seen through the lens of social life. In particular, we want to understand the ways that a set of broad phenomena concerning forms of participation in social life is articulated in the domain of social media. As a conceptual entry-point, we use the notion of the “moral economy” as a means to open up the domain of inquiry. We first discuss the notion of the “moral economy” as it has been used by a number of social theorists, and then identify a particular set of conceptual concerns that we suggest link it to the phenomena of social networking in general. We then discuss a series of examples drawn from a range of studies to elaborate and ground this conceptual framework in empirical data. This leads us to a broader consideration of audiences and publics in social media that, we suggest, holds important lessons for how we treat social media analytically.

Service delivery in one-stop government portals : observations based on a market research study in Queensland

New government service delivery models based on a “franchise” metaphor are being proposed recently to allow more citizen-centric service delivery by decoupling the government’s internal departmental structure from the way services are presented and delivered to citizens. In order to evaluate the approach from an online channel perspective, the Queensland Government commissioned a market research study to compare their websites with the online presences of the UK Government and the South Australian Government, who both have adopted the “franchise” approach. The study aimed to inform an understanding of citizens’ preferred model for interacting in the online channel and to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the existing websites. In this paper, we will a) report on the findings of this third party usability study and b) position the study, in the form of a critical reflection, against the background of a more comprehensive “Transformational Government” approach using a “franchise marketplace”. The critical reflection points towards limitations of the study with regard to this bigger picture and discusses the potential benefits of service bundling that remained unconsidered in the study.

Gatekeeping, gatewatching, real-time feedback : new challenges for Journalism

How bloggers and other independent online commentators criticise, correct, and otherwise challenge conventional journalism has been known for years, but has yet to be fully accepted by journalists; hostilities between the media establishment and the new generation of citizen journalists continue to flare up from time to time. The old gatekeeping monopoly of the mass media has been challenged by the new practice of gatewatching: by individual bloggers and by communities of commentators which may not report the news first-hand, but curate and evaluate the news and other information provided by official sources, and thus provide an important service. And this now takes place ever more rapidly, almost in real time: using the latest social networks, which disseminate, share, comment, question, and debunk news reports within minutes, and using additional platforms that enable fast and effective ad hoc collaboration between users. When hundreds of volunteers can prove within a few days that a German minister has been guilty of serious plagiarism, when the world first learns of earthquakes and tsunamis via Twitter – how does journalism manage to keep up?

Urban food futures : ICTs and opportunities

Food is a vital foundation of all human life. It is essential to a myriad of political, socio-cultural, economic and environmental practices throughout history. However, those practices of food production, consumption, and distribution have the potential to now go through immensely transformative shifts as network technologies become increasingly embedded in every domain of contemporary life. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are one of the key foundations of global functionality and sustenance today and undoubtedly will continue to present new challenges and opportunities for the future. As such, this Symposium will bring together leading scholars across disciplines to address challenges and opportunities at the intersection of food and ICTs in everyday urban environment. In particular, the discussion will revolve around the question: What are the key roles that network technologies play in re-shaping the food systems at micro- to macroscopic level? The symposium will contribute a unique perspective on urban food futures through the lens of network society paradigm where ICTs enable innovations in production, organisation, and communication within society. Some of the topics addressed will include encouraging transparency in food commodity chains; value of cultural understanding and communication in global food sustainability; and technologies to social inclusion; all of which evoke and examine the question surrounding networked individuals as changes catalysts for urban food futures. The event will provide an avenue for new discussions and speculations on key issues surrounding urban food futures in the network era, with a particular focus on bottom-up micro actions that challenge the existing food systems towards a broader sociocultural, political, technological, and environmental transformations. One central area of concern is that current systems of food production, distribution, and consumption do not ensure food security for the future, but rather seriously threaten it. With the recent unprecedented scale of urban growth and rise of middle-class, the problem continues to intensify. This situation requires extensive distribution networks to feed urban residents, and therefore poses significant infrastructural challenges to both the public and private sectors. The symposium will also address the transferability of citizen empowerment that network technologies enable as demonstrated in various significant global political transformations from the bottom-up, such as the recent Egyptian Youth Revolution. Another key theme of the discussion will be the role of ICTs (and the practices that they mediate) in fostering transparency in commodity chains. The symposium will ask what differences these technologies can make on the practices of food consumption and production. After discussions, we will initiate an international network of food-thinkers and actors that will function as a platform for knowledge sharing and collaborations. The participants will be invited to engage in planning for the on-going future development of the network.

The internet and the changing global media environment

This chapter describes current trends in the global media environment, with a focus on their implications for the management of public agendas and political processes. It assesses the extent to which trends such as the growth of the blogosphere, "citizen journalism," and other forms if user-generated content, have complicated and problematized news and agenda management as engaged in by both media and political elites. It argues that, in large part due to the rise of the internet and the proliferation if online producers of information and commentary, alongside 24-hour news channels such as CNN and Al Jazeera, political and social actors today face a much more complex, chaotic communication environment than ever bifore, an environment characterized as one of cultural chaos. Having outlined the roots of this trend in the emergence of an expanded, globalized public sphere, the chapter goes on to ask if elite control over the political agenda has been eroded, and if it has, what the consequences for governmmt and the exercise if power might be. Can authoritarian regimes in China, the Middle East, and elsewhere survive the onset if internet-fueled global journalism, for example? In a political environment where public opinion is driven and buffeted by news coverage if unprecedented speed and volume, can democratic governments retain sufficient control over decision- and policy-making processes to enable competent social administration al'ld political management? Can the citizens of contemporary democracies use the emerging media environment to enhance elite accountability and strengthen the democratic process? The chapter concludes that the changing global media environment has the potmtial to strengthen democratic processes, though there is no sil'lgle template for the impact of the internet and other new media on specific countries.

Mapping intermedia news flows : topical discussions in the Australian and French political blogospheres

The growth of technologies and tools branded as =new media‘ or =Web 2.0‘ has sparked much discussion about the internet and its place in all facets of social life. Such debate includes the potential for blogs and citizen journalism projects to replace or alter journalism and mainstream media practices. However, while the journalism-blog dynamic has attracted the most attention, the actual work of political bloggers, the roles they play in the mediasphere and the resources they use, has been comparatively ignored. This project will look at political blogging in Australia and France - sites commenting on or promoting political events and ideas, and run by citizens, politicians, and journalists alike. In doing so, the structure of networks formed by bloggers and the nature of communication within political blogospheres will be examined. Previous studies of political blogging around the world have focussed on individual nations, finding that in some cases the networks are divided between different political ideologies. By comparing two countries with different political representation (two-party dominated system vs. a wider political spectrum), this study will determine the structure of these political blogospheres, and correlate these structures with the political environment in which they are situated. The thesis adapts concepts from communication and media theories, including framing, agenda setting, and opinion leaders, to examine the work of political bloggers and their place within the mediasphere. As well as developing a hybrid theoretical base for research into blogs and other online communication, the project outlines new methodologies for carrying out studies of online activity through the analysis of several topical networks within the wider activity collected for this project. The project draws on hyperlink and textual data collected from a sample of Australian and French blogs between January and August 2009. From this data, the thesis provides an overview of =everyday‘ political blogging, showing posting patterns over several months of activity, away from national elections and their associated campaigns. However, while other work in this field has looked solely at cumulative networks, treating collected data as a static network, this project will also look at specific cases to see how the blogospheres change with time and topics of discussion. Three case studies are used within the thesis to examine how blogs cover politics, featuring an international political event (the Obama inauguration), and local political topics (the opposition to the =Création et Internet‘, or HADOPI, law in France, the =Utegate‘ scandal in Australia). By using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, the study analyses data collected from a population of sites from both countries, looking at their linking patterns, relationship with mainstream media, and topics of interest. This project will subsequently help to further develop methodologies in this field and provide new and detailed information on both online networks and internet-based political communication in Australia and France.

Sacred cows and crashing boars : ethno-religious minorities and the politics of online representation in Malaysia

Starting with the incident now known as the Cow’s Head Protest, this article traces and unpacks the events, techniques, and conditions surrounding the representation of ethno-religious minorities in Malaysia. The author suggests that the Malaysian Indians’ struggle to correct the dominant reading of their community as an impoverished and humbled underclass is a disruption of the dominant cultural order in Malaysia. It is also among the key events to have has set in motion a set of dynamics—the visual turn—introduced by new media into the politics of ethno-communal representation in Malaysia. Believing that this situation requires urgent examination the author attempts to outline the problematics of the task.

The Remnant Emergency Artlab

The REMNANT/EMERGENCY Artlab was funded by the Australia Council InterArts ArtLab Program in 2010 and involves 22 months of rigorous research and experimentation in several countries. The process will be developed between a core transdisciplinary team of practicing media artists, designers and engineers where possible working in consultation and collaboration with local creatives at each venue. Our team asserts that today’s environmental crisis is underpinned by a deep cultural crisis - and so to get our ‘house in order’ we urgently need to create better and more powerful ‘images’ of what a ‘citizen-led’, sustainable world might be. This ArtLab’s core aim is therefore to begin to understand how to develop and create such ‘powerful images’.

'You're not fit to wear the shirt': towards a cultural sociology of the football shirt

The world of football is a matter of life and death for many of its fans, and has also attracted much sociological attention. Much of this scholarly work focuses on issues such as deviance, identity, globalisation and commodification (Elias and Dunning 1986; Giulianotti and Robertson 2009). More recently, there has been some evidence of a cultural approach to football and to the football shirt (Benzecry 2008). In this paper, we seek to develop this trend by examining the football shirt as a totem, and by understanding it as inserted into circuits of the sacred and the profane, and the authentic and the inauthentic. Through examples such as shirt throwing, badge kissing, shirt swapping and supporters‟ efforts to construct alternative, protest strips, we show that the football shirt is deeply embedded in narratives of authenticity, sacredness and profaneness. In doing so, we aim to represent football as a rich cultural practice, which involves secular rituals and performances.

The molar effect on citizenship and nomad immigration: Reading, readingthe world and self

This presentation explores molarization and overcoding of social machines and relationality within an assemblage consisting of empirical data of immigrant families in Australia. Immigration is key to sustainable development of Western societies like Australia and Canada. Newly arrived immigrants enter a country and are literally taken over by the Ministry of Immigration regarding housing, health, education and accessing job possibilities. If the immigrants do not know the official language(s) of the country, they enroll in language classes for new immigrants. Language classes do more than simply teach language. Language is presented in local contexts (celebrating the national day, what to do to get a job) and in control societies, language classes foreground values of a nation state in order for immigrants to integrate. In the current project, policy documents from Australia reveal that while immigration is the domain of government, the subject/immigrant is nevertheless at the core of policy. While support is provided, it is the subject/immigrant transcendent view that prevails. The onus remains on the immigrant to “succeed”. My perspective lies within transcendental empiricism and deploys Deleuzian ontology, how one might live in order to examine how segmetary lines of power (pouvoir) reflected in policy documents and operationalized in language classes rupture into lines of flight of nomad immigrants. The theoretical framework is Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT); reading is intensive and immanent. The participants are one Korean and one Sudanese family and their children who have recently immigrated to Australia. Observations in classrooms were obtained and followed by interviews based on the observations. Families also borrowed small video cameras and they filmed places, people and things relevant to them in terms of becoming citizen and immigrating to and living in a different country. Interviews followed. Rhizoanalysis informs the process of reading data. Rhizoanalysis is a research event and performed with an assemblage (MLT, data/vignettes, researcher, etc.). It is a way to work with transgressive data. Based on the concept of the rhizome, a bloc of data has no beginning, no ending. A researcher enters in the middle and exists somewhere in the middle, an intermezzo suggesting that the challenges to molar immigration lie in experimenting and creating molecular processes of becoming citizen.