Populist hand-book for Kansas; a compilation from official sources of some facts for use in succeeding political campaigns.

Mode of access: Internet.

Mortgage nation : the 2004 Australian election

A comprehensive study of the historic win by the Howard Coalition Government providing analyses of the campaigns, an insight from the key players at the centre of devising the campaigns and covers election results and their interpretation.

Julia 2010 : the caretaker election

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of one of Australia’s most historic elections, which produced a hung parliament and a carefully crafted minority government that remains a heartbeat away from collapse, as well as Australia’s first elected woman Prime Minister and the Australian Greens’ first lower house Member of Parliament.

The volume considers the key contextual and possibly determining factors, such as: the role of leadership and ideology in the campaign; the importance of state and regional factors (was there evidence of the two or three speed economy at work?); and the role of policy areas and issues, including the environment, immigration, religion, gender and industrial relations. Contributors utilise a wide range of sources and approaches to provide comprehensive insights into the campaign. This volume notably includes the perspectives of the major political groupings, the ALP, the Coalition and the Greens; and the data from the Australian Election Survey. Finally we conclude with a detailed analysis of those 17 days that it took to construct a minority party government.

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.

Citizenship and the political institutions of cultural diversity in Australia

This thesis uses political theory to analyse and compare the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia. It argues that 'self-determination' and 'multiculturalism' in practice hide the power of the Anglo-Australian dominant culture and stifle the possibilities of more viable intercultural political innovation.

Political information choices in a media saturated environment : credibility or convenience?

This thesis examines the ways in which citizens find out about socio-political issues. The project set out to discover how audience characteristics such as scepticism towards the media, gratifications sought, need for cognition and political interest influence information selection. While most previous information choice studies have focused on how individuals select from a narrow range of media types, this thesis considered a much wider sweep of the information landscape. This approach was taken to obtain an understanding of information choices in a more authentic context - in everyday life, people are not simply restricted to one or two news sources. Rather, they may obtain political information from a vast range of information sources, including media sources (e.g. radio, television, newspapers) and sources from beyond the media (eg. interpersonal sources, public speaking events, social networking websites). Thus, the study included both media and non-news media information sources. Data collection for the project consisted of a written, postal survey. The survey was administered to a probability sample in the greater Brisbane region, which is the third largest city in Australia. Data was collected during March and April 2008, approximately four months after the 2007 Australian Federal Election. Hence, the study was conducted in a non-election context. 585 usable surveys were obtained. In addition to measuring the attitudinal characteristics listed above, respondents were surveyed as to which information sources (eg. television shows, radio stations, websites and festivals) they usually use to find out about socio-political issues. Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to explore patterns of influence between the audience characteristics and information consumption patterns. The results of this analysis indicated an apparent difference between the way citizens use news media sources and the way they use information sources from beyond the news media. In essence, it appears that non-news media information sources are used very deliberately to seek socio-political information, while media sources are used in a less purposeful way. If media use in a non-election context, such as that of the present study, is not primarily concerned with deliberate information seeking, media use must instead have other primary purposes, with political information acquisition as either a secondary driver, or a by-product of that primary purpose. It appears, then, that political information consumption in a media-saturated society is more about routine ‘practices’ than it is about ‘information seeking’. The suggestion that media use is no longer primarily concerned with information seeking, but rather, is simply a behaviour which occurs within the broader set of everyday practices reflects Couldry’s (2004) media as practice paradigm. These findings highlight the need for more authentic and holistic contexts for media research. It is insufficient to consider information choices in isolation, or even from a wider range of information sources, such as that incorporated in the present study. Future media research must take greater account of the broader social contexts and practices in which media-oriented behaviours occur. The findings also call into question the previously assumed centrality of trust to information selection decisions. Citizens regularly use media they do not trust to find out about politics. If people are willing to use information sources they do not trust for democratically important topics such as politics, it is important that citizens possess the media literacy skills to effectively understand and evaluate the information they are presented with. Without the application of such media literacy skills, a steady diet of ‘fast food’ media may result in uninformed or misinformed voting decisions, which have implications for the effectiveness of democratic processes. This research has emphasized the need for further holistic and authentically contextualised media use research, to better understand how citizens use information sources to find out about important topics such as politics.

Democratic participation in a globalised World : immigrants in Australia in the early 21st century

This study considers patterns of political participation in Australia in the early 21st Century, using recent data from the Australian Election Study. The paper reassesses how Australia fits within broader patterns of political participation and investigates major predictors of participation in Australia to see how these have or have not changed in a globalised era that has brought new challenges. Factors considered include socio-demographic variables, such as education, age, gender, birthplace and place of residence and also attitudinal orientations towards politics, such as political interest, efficacy and trust. The paper pays particular attention to those who have moved to Australia from other countries. One of the most important findings is that immigrants show little or no sign of any participatory disadvantage and indeed tend to participate more than the Australian-born in some modes of participation, such as campaign activities. The analysis also identifies a clear participatory divide within a number of socio-demographic groups in use of the internet for gaining election information.

Self-determination in Aboriginal political thought

Part 1 - Political Ideas -- Liberalism and the Liberal Party of Australia -- The Australian Labor Party and the Third Way -- Australian feminism: the end of 'the universal woman'? -- Self-determination in Aboriginal political thought -- From the 'social laboratory' to the 'Australian Settlement' -- Australian nationalism and internationalism -- Part 2 - Institutions of Democracy -- Parliament and the Executive -- Political integration and the outlook for the Australian party system: party adaptation or regime change? -- Administrative agencies and accountability -- The institutional mediation of human rights in Australia -- The news media and Australian politics -- The role of the state: welfare state or competition state? -- Part 3 - Political Issues and Public Policies -- National policy in a global era -- The economic policy debate -- The decentralisation of industrial relations -- The labour market and the future of employment -- The welfare reform agenda -- The social consequences of the rural reform agenda -- Politics and the environmental policy debate -- Immigration policy and the attack on multiculturalism.

Babylonia : reconfiguring the Australian political novel in the 'postfeminist', 'postmodern', 'postcolonial' era

The thesis comprises the comic novel "Babylonia", set in the Northern Territory, the Middle East and the United States in August 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the accompanying exegesis that links "Babylonia" to selected Australian fiction and to political and cultural concerns of the current era.