Asynchronicity and the ‘time envelope’ of online annotation : the case of the photosharing website, Flickr

This paper examines a sequence of asynchronous interaction on the photosharing website, Flickr. In responding to a call for a focus on the performative aspects of online annotation (Wolff & Neuwirth, 2001), we outline and apply an interaction order approach to identify temporal and cultural aspects of the setting that provide for commonality and sharing. In particular, we study the interaction as a feature of a synthetic situation (Knorr Cetina, 2009) focusing on the requirements of maintaining a sense of an ongoing discussion online. Our analysis suggests that the rhetorical system of the Flickr environment, its appropriation by participants as a context for bounded activities, and displays of commonality, affiliation, and shared access provide for a common sense of participation in a time envelope. This, in turn, is argued to be central to new processes of consociation (Schutz, 1967; Zhao, 2004) occurring in the life world of Web 2.0 environments.

The Special Broadcasting Service after 30 years : public service media and new ways of thinking about media and citizenship

This article considers the distinctive ways in which the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) has evolved over its history since 1980, and how it has managed competing claims to being a multicultural yet broad-appeal broadcaster, and a comprehensive yet low-cost media service. It draws attention to the challenges presented by a global rethinking of the nature of citizenship and its relationship to media, for which SBS is well placed as a leader, and the challenges of online media for traditional public service media models, where SBS has arguably been a laggard, particularly when compared with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It notes recent work that has been undertaken by the author with others into user-created content strategies at SBS and how its online news and current affairs services have been evolving in recent years.

The league of men : masculinity, the media and rugby league football

The rhetoric of masculinity is at melting point in Australian culture. In the nineties, Australian television news and sporting programs have constructed a particularly shrill and insistent form of brash, heterosexual sporting masculinity in football reporting. Against this norm of rippling 'muscularity' and aggressive competition, all so-called aberrant forms of humanity such as women, homosexuals, and men who do not fit into Connell's 'hegemonic masculinity' paradigm have been effectively marginalised and silenced. Class and ethnicity discourses are at best muted, and at worst, ignored in much of the writing about sporting masculinity. While acknowledging the significance of class and ethnicity, this paper explores the nexus between gender, sexuality, the media and League football.

Australian media ethics regime and ethical risk management

Media organizations are simultaneously key elements of an effective democracy and, for the most part, commercial entities seeking success in the market. They play an essential role in the formation of public opinion and the influence on personal choices. Yet most of them are commercial enterprises seeking readers or viewers, advertising, favorable regulatory decisions for their media, and other assets. This creates some intrinsic difficulties and produces some sharp tensions within media ethics. In this article, we examine such tensions—in theory and practice. We then consider the feasibility of introducing an ethics regime to the media industry—a regime that would be effective in a deregulated environment in protecting public interest and social responsibility. In the article, we also outline a rationale and a methodology for the institutionalization of an acceptable and workable media ethics regime that aims to protect the integrity of the industry in a future of undoubtedly increasing commercial pressure.

Europe and the Media: Building a new kind of Europe; is mass media the key?

The book is a joint effort of eight academics and journalists, Europe specialists from six countries (Australia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States). They give sometimes divergent views on the future of the so-called “European Project”, for building a common European economy and society, but agree that cultural changes, especially changes experienced through mass media, are rapidly taking place. One of the central interests of the book is the operation of the large media centre located at the European Commission in Brussels – the world’s largest gallery of permanently accredited correspondents. Jacket notes: The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 is the latest success of the European Union’s drive to restructure and expand; yet questions persist about how democratic this new Europe might be. Will Brussels’ promotion of the “European idea” produce a common European culture and society? The authors consider it might, as a culture of everyday shared experience, though old ways are cherished, citizens forever thinking twice about committing to an uncertain future. The book focuses on mass media , as a prime agent of change, sometimes used deliberately to promote a “European project”; sometimes acting more naturally as a medium for new agendas. It looks at proposed media models for Europe, ranging from not very successful pan-European television, to the potentials of media systems based on national markets, and new media based on digital formats. It also studies the Brussels media service, the centre operated by the European Commission, which is the world’s largest concentration of journalists; and ways that dominant national media may come to serve the interests of communities now extending across frontiers. Europe and the Media notes change especially as encountered by new EU member countries of central and eastern Europe.

Critical discourse analysis and political economy of communication : understanding the new corporate order

This article uses critical discourse analysis to analyse material shifts in the political economy of communications. It examines texts of major corporations to describe four key changes in political economy: (1) the separation of ownership from control; (2) the separation of business from industry; (3) the separation of accountability from responsibility; and (4) the subjugation of ‘going concerns’ by overriding concerns. The authors argue that this amounts to a political economic shift from traditional concepts of ‘capitalism’ to a new ‘corporatism’ in which the relationships between public and private, state and individual interests have become redefined and obscured through new discourse strategies. They conclude that the present financial and regulatory ‘crisis’ cannot be adequately resolved without a new analytic framework for examining the relationships between corporation, discourse and political economy.

Where money and meanings meet : theorizing the emergence of new values in media and education

Recent developments in technology, globalization, and consumer activism have challenged the "broadcasting model" of natonally bounded, vertically integrated, monopolistic, expert-paradigm media industries, dedicated to supplying leisure entertainment to more or less passive consumers. Instead, attention has turned to globally traded formats, social network markets, consumer-created content, multiplatform "publication," and a semiotic long tail where niche representations can be as valuable as blockbusters. Such chenges are just as much a challenge to education as they are to business models. And education, both formal and informal, is a dynamic agent in these processes, participation, and creative content require a rethink of "studies" just as much as of "media."

Re-imagining China's future : soft power, cultural presence and the East Asian media market

As various contributors to this volume suggest, the term soft power is multifaceted. In 2002 Joseph Nye, the political scientist who coined the term more than a decade previously, noted that the soft power of a country rests on three resources: a country’s culture, its political values, and its foreign policies (Nye 2002). However, several factors can be drawn together to explain China’s adoption of this concept. First, China’s economic influence has precipitated a groundswell of nationalism, which reached its apex at the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This global media event provided an international platform to demonstrate China’s new found self-confidence. Second, cultural diplomacy and foreign aid, particularly through Third World channels is seen by the Chinese Communist Party leadership as an appropriate way to extend Chinese influence globally (Kurlantzick 2007). Third, education in Chinese culture through globally dispersed Confucius Institutes is charged with improving international understanding of Chinese culture and values, and in the process renovating negative images of China. Fourth, the influence of Japanese and Korean popular culture on China’s youth cultures in recent years has caused acute discomfit to cultural nationalists. Many contend it is time to stem the tide. Fifth, the past few years have witnessed a series of lively debates about the importance of industries such as design, advertising, animation and fashion, resulting in the construction of hundreds of creative clusters, animation centres, film backlots, cultural precincts, design centres and artist lofts.

Rethinking global media : creative diversity and media dispersal

Communications media have been central to globalizing processes in modern societies. As technological forms, communication media have long extended the transmission of messages across space in ways that challenge the socio-cultural dimensions of the nation-state and national cultures, and the global communications infrastructure that has developed rapidly since the 1980s has further promoted global information flows and cross-border commercial activity. As institutional and organisational forms through which information and content is produced and distributed, media corporations have been at the forefront of international expansion of their market reach and the development of new sites of production and distribution, and media industries are highly dynamic on a global scale. Finally, as cultural forms, or providers of the informational and symbolic content that is received and used by consumers/audiences/users, global media constitute a core means through which people make sense of events in distant places, and the information and images that they carry are central to the existence of common systems of meaning and understanding across nations, regions and cultures.

The place of media in community formation for homeless youth : a case study of Gibber magazine

This paper presents the findings of a research project that was set up to establish haw well Gibber, a street magazine set up in Perth in 1994, effectively provides a 'voice' for its canstituency -'young people marginalised by society'.

The benefits of not managing change and not communicating : towards a complex systems view of communication in evolving organisations

The relationship between change in organisations and communication about change in organisations can be analysed as a particular case of a general debate in social theory about the extent to which reality is socially constructed. Social constructivists emphasise the role of language in the construction of social realities, enacted through controlling the message agenda; material determinists assert that economic and social structural factors are more constitutive of reality as seen in strategies emphasising structural and resource interventions. Here we define a third view of language and materiality - one that leads to the potential for a reflexive, experimental approach to change based on the view that organisations are complex evolving systems.

The 2008 Tibet riots : perspectives, divided group protests and divergent media narratives

Awareness of the power of the mass media to communicate images of protest to global audiences and, in so doing, to capture space in global media discourses is a central feature of the transnational protest movement. A number of protest movements have formed around opposition to concepts and practices that operate beyond national borders, such as neoliberal globalization or threats to the environment. However, transnational protests also involve more geographically discreet issues such as claims to national independence or greater religious or political freedom by groups within specific national contexts. Appealing to the international community for support is a familiar strategy for communities who feel that they are being discriminated against or ignored by a national government.

#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods

Social media, including Facebook and Twitter, played an important role in crisis communication at the height of the 2011 South East Queensland floods crisis (10-16 January). This report examines the role of the short-messaging system Twitter in disseminating and sharing crisis information and updates from state and local authorities as well as everyday citizens. We assess the overall use of Twitter, as well as that of the most important emergency service account, the Queensland Police’s @QPSMedia account.

Cultural studies and the urgency of interdisciplinarity : sooner, not later, we're going to need a cultural science (Os Estudos Culturais e a urgência por interdisciplinaridade: cedo, e não tarde, vamos precisar de uma Ciência da Cultura)

Most of creativity in the digital world passes unnoticed by the industry practices and policies, and it isn't taken into account in the cultural and economic strategies of the creative industries. We should find ways to catalyze this creative production, showing how the user's contribution may contribute to social learning, cultural and economic advancement. To that effect, we must know what is an open creative system and how it works. Based on this diagnosis, the author that interdisciplinarity is urgent and there is also a need for a science of culture. What is at stake is a strategy of integrated development, as regards the upcoming innovation in its complex, productive and learning aspects.