Gender and the Australian parliament

This dissertation by publication which focuses on gender and the Australian federal parliament has resulted in the submission of three refereed journal articles. Data for the study were obtained from 30 semi-structured interviews undertaken in 2006 with fifteen (15) male and fifteen (15) female members of the Australian parliament. The first of the articles is methodological and has been accepted for publication in the Australian Journal of Political Science. The paper argues that feminist political science is guided by five important principles. These are placing gender at the centre of the research, giving emphasis to women’s voice, challenging the public/private divide, using research to transform society and taking a reflexive approach to positionality. It is the latter principle, that of the importance of taking a reflexive approach to research which I explore in the paper. Through drawing on my own experiences as a member of the House of Representatives (Forde 1987-1996) I reflexively investigate the intersections between my background and my identity as a researcher. The second of the articles views the data through the lens of Acker’s (1990) notion of the ‘gendered organization’ which posits that there are four dimensions by which organizations are gendered. These are via the division of labour, through symbols, images and ideologies, by workplace interactions and through the gendered components of individual identity. In this paper which has been submitted to the British Journal of Political Science, each of Acker’s (1990) dimensions is examined in terms of the data from interviews with male and female politicians. The central question investigated is thus to what extent does the Australian parliament conform to Acker’s (1990) concept of the ‘gendered organization’? The third of the papers focuses specifically on data from interviews with the 15 male politicians and investigates how they view gender equality and the Australian parliament. The article, which has been submitted to the European Journal of Political Science asks to what extent contemporary male politicians view the Australian parliament as gendered? Discourse analysis that is ‘ways of viewing’ (Bacchi, 1999, p. 40) is used as an approach to analyse the data. Three discursive frameworks by which male politicians view gender in the Australian parliament are identified. These are: that the parliament is gendered as masculine but this is unavoidable; that the parliament is gendered as feminine and women are actually advantaged; and that the parliament is gender neutral and gender is irrelevant. It is argued that collectively these framing devices operate to mask the many constraints which exist to marginalise women from political participation and undermine attempts to address women’s political disadvantage as political participants. The article concludes by highlighting the significance of the paper beyond the Australian context and calling for further research which names and critiques political men and their discourses on gender and parliamentary practices and processes.

Citizen journalism and political participation : the youdecide project and the 2007 Australian Federal Election

The 2007 Australian Federal election not only saw the election of a Labor government after 11 years of John Howard’s conservative Coalition government. It also saw new levels of political engagement through the Internet, including the rise of citizen journalism as an alternative outlet and mode of reporting on the election. This paper reports on the You Decide 2007 project, an initiative undertaken by a QUT-based research team to facilitate online news reporting on the election on a ‘hyper-local’, electorate-based model. We evaluate the You Decide initiative on the basis of: promoting greater citizen participation in Australian politics; new ways of engaging citizens and key stakeholders in policy deliberation; establishing new links between mainstream media and independent online media; and broadening the base of political participation to include a wider range of citizen and groups.

Mapping the Australian political blogosphere

Network crawling and visualisation tools and other datamining systems are now advanced enough to provide significant new impulses to the study of cultural activity on the Web. A growing range of studies focus on communicative processes in the blogosphere – including for example Adamic & Glance’s 2005 map of political allegiances during the 2004 U.S. presidential election and Kelly & Etling’s 2008 study of blogging practices in Iran. There remain a number of significant shortcomings in the application of such tools and methodologies to the study of blogging; these relate both to how the content of blogs is analysed, and to how the network maps resulting from such studies are understood. Our project highlights and addresses such shortcomings.

The IMC concept meets political marketing : building brand relationships

There is a need to take a fresh look at the traditional application of the marketing concept to political marketing. As many businesses have learned, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) practices and principles will help them to build customer relationships and profitable brands. Political marketing must also change with the times and implement IMC practices toward building and nourishing brand relationships with voters and other important stakeholders. The nature of the contribution of this paper is the identification of a gap in the political marketing literature - the stagnation of political marketing at the 4P's marketing concept, and to play a role in the future development of political marketing. In recent developments, it is seen that there is a gradual movement away from this traditional marketing theory. There are a growing number of academics who have approached very closely to the IMC concept or aspects of it, but have not however embraced or have been reluctant to, the prospect of applying it to political marketing. IMC is a practical, logical and ultimately inevitable future for political marketing.

Gender and the Australian parliament : putting the political scientist into the picture

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research.

Media scepticism, media diets and media landscapes: A consideration of US versus Australian political information environments

The range of political information sources available to modern Australians is greater and more varied today than at any point in the nation’s history, incorporating print, broadcast, Internet, mainstream and non-mainstream media. In such a competitive media environment, the factors which influence the selection of some information sources above others are of interest to political agents, media institutions and communications researchers alike. A key factor in information source selection is credibility. At the same time that the range of political information sources is increasing rapidly, due to the development of new information and communication technologies, audience research suggests that trust in mainstream media organisations in many countries is declining. So if people distrust the mainstream media, but have a vast array of alternative political information sources available to them, what do their personal media consumption patterns look like? How can we analyse such media consumption patterns in a meaningful way? In this paper I will briefly map the development of media credibility research in the US and Australia, leading to a discussion of one of the most recent media credibility constructs to be shown to influence political information consumption, media scepticism. Looking at the consequences of media scepticism, I will then consider the associated media consumption construct, media diet, and evaluate its usefulness in an Australian, as opposed to US, context. Finally, I will suggest alternative conceptualisations of media diets which may be more suited to Australian political communications research.

The arobase in the libr@ry : new political economies of children’s literatures and literacies

This essay--part of a special issue on the work of Gunther Kress--uses the idea of affordances and constraints to explore the (im)possibilities of new environments for engaging with literature written for children (see Kress, 2003). In particular, it examines a festival of children's literature from an Australian education context that occurs online. The festival is part of a technologically mediated library space designated by the term libr@ry (Kapitzke & Bruce, 2006). The @ symbol (French word "arobase") inserted into the word library indicates that technological mediation has a history, an established set of social practices, and a political economy, which even chatrooms with "real" authors may alter but not fully supplant.

Critical Systems Theory: A Political Economy of Language, Thought, and Technology

An emergent form of political economy, facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICTs), is widely propagated as the apotheosis of unmitigated social, economic, and technological progress. Meanwhile, throughout the world, social degradation and economic inequality are increasing logarithmically. Valued categories of thought are, axiomatically, the basic commodities of the “knowledge economy”. Language is its means of exchange. This paper proposes a sociolinguistic method with which to critically engage the hyperbole of the “Information Age”. The method is grounded in a systemic social theory that synthesises aspects of autopoiesis and Marxist political economy. A trade policy statement is analysed to exemplify the sociolinguistically created aberrations that are today most often construed as social and political determinants.