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This paper addresses the theme of this special issue of MIA in the context of music festivals. It discusses the continuing growth of music festivals as avenues for musical performance, and for regional economic development, and considers what festivals mean for musicians in terms of changing audience demographics and the conditions of work. Festivals are increasingly important for musicians in building audiences and incomes. They have proliferated particularly in rural, coastal and ex-urban parts of Australia, linked to day-tripper and short- stay tourism and the wider socioeconomic transition of those places. Festivals both reflect and contribute to social and cultural changes, such as the diffusion of musical genres with specialist audiences, inward migration of particular demographic groups and shifting place identities. They also offer new opportunities for places seeking to develop tourism, and local music and performance-based industries. This paper explains these trends, and draws on results from a recent large research exercise that sought to document the extent and impact of festivals. Although they are not new, festivals continue to reconfigure musical touring networks, audiences and performance opportunities. Such reconfigurarions have occurred with less public fanfare than developments surrounding digital technology and downloading cultures, but their influence on the working lives of musicians is no less profound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the question: who is calling talkback radio in Australia and why? It suggests that callers should not be regarded as one large homogenous group. Instead, it argues that talkback callers pick up their phones for a number of reasons, from genuinely seeking information to seeking company and, since September 11, to make sense of their world. In doing so, this paper looks at the ways in which callers are integrated into programs and the ways in which they contribute to the creation of radio content and public debate. Finally, this paper analyses the small group of repeat callers who, like 'Sylvia of Turner', become, as Todd Gitlin calls them, familiar strangers, and analyses the role of producers and announcers in the construction of the celebrity talkback caller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial FM stations in Rockhampton, Sea FM and Hot FM have been operating in the city since late 2000. Previously owned by competing networks (Sea FM by RG Capital Radio and Hot FM by DMG), they are both now owned by Macquarie Regional Radioworks. The push for listeners has always been through the stations' breakfast programs. Traditionally, commercial FM breakfast slots have been marked by comedy or humour-oriented teams. Interaction with these teams in a metropolitan environment has not been studied academically, but studies of interaction between listeners and presenters of breakfast programs in the Rockhampton and Gladstone region reveal that talkback in a traditional sense has emerged as a vital component of the programs, at times focusing on serious local issues. This paper reveals the results of analysis of interaction between listeners and breakfast presenters on Hot FM and Sea FM It shows that the commercial FM stations provide an important opportunity for locals to voice their opinions on local issues in a format generally renowned for its light-hearted approach to engaging listeners. Where previously `talkback' has been associated with ABC and commercial AM stations, this paper will consider definitions of talkback in terms of its application in a regional setting, and reveals the popularity of the format for a demographic previously ignored in the Central Queensland media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores (he relationship between the audience of commercial talkback radio and the actual existing democratic public sphere in Australia. Drawing upon Anderson's (1987) notion of an imagined community and Warner's (2002) discussion of publics, the paper suggests that two different but entwined modes of address operate around the talkback audience. The first centres on the active creation of an imagined community brought into being and maintained through host and caller interaction, whilst the second, which is dependent on this prior formation, involves the audience being treated as a political public within the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public conversation about the fiftieth anniversary of Australian television in the media and on TV has reinvigorated the nostalgia of popular memory, but has also highlighted its institutionally inflected construction. In this paper, I conceive of Australian viewing history as a series of purpose-built narratives. My interest is in the public stories that define the experience of watching television and the nature of the invitation offered to viewers. Accordingly, in my extended examination of The Daily Telegraph archive, I reconstruct a narrative in which the paper's Sydney readers are encouraged, initially, to imagine themselves as pioneers in Australian TV history and, a few months later to become a part of the local TV community. Within the lively tabloid format of the Telegraph, television becomes the centre of a critical discourse about its duty to entertain that focuses on issues of both community and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents aspects of an historical analysis of commercial television as a cultural industry by reference to the introduction of the third licences in Sydney and Melbourne. I am looking at the period between 1964 and 1972 and the development of ATV-0 and TEN-10. In the first part of the paper I examine some aspects of the industry and organisational structures of the time. Since programming flow is the structuring logic of television as a cultural industry, the second part of the paper looks at the programming strategies used by the stations to differentiate them from and allow them to compete with the other commercial stations. I will do this with reference to particular Australian programs scheduled by the stations. My argument is that, for most of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, these stations pursued an essentially defensive strategy attempting to change the station's competitive position within the existing rules. The change to a more offensive strategy with the genesis of Number 96 was what laid the foundation for financial success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers 1970s television character Norman Gunston's coverage of the dismissal of Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975. The paper explores the power of television comedy to intervene in the construction of a political event and transform it into a joke. Specifically, the paper describes how Gunston's comic practice of carnival mobilises resistance to the usual view of the Whitlam dismissal. The paper also considers television's capacity to transform a political episode into a television event resonating with the technology's cultural force. In particular, the paper considers Deleuze c (1995a). proposition of the connection between television and cultural operations of control. Exploring Deleuze's suggestion, the paper proposes that the Gunston-Whitlam television event demonstrates television's potential to produce a mode of resistance to control—a point about which Deleuze is not particularly optimistic (1995a: 76; 1995b: 175). With this critical perspective on Gunston's intrusion into an Australian political crisis, the paper provides an explanation of the way television comedy can transform and shape our understanding of such an event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents early results from an ARC-funded research project on the content, audience and influence of Australian talkback radio. Drawing upon the analysis of data from a survey of three talkback programs — John Laws and Neil Mitchell from the commercial sector and Australia Talks Back from the ABC — the paper focuses upon two aspects: the topics canvassed and the participation of the callers. Although very preliminary, the results of this survey narrow down the kinds of questions we need to ask as we move towards more sophisticated analysis of this media format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper positions current Australian discussions about practice-led research within international, national, historical and policy contexts and relates them to the developing pedagogical debate around performing and creative arts doctorates. Arguing that the creative industries offer benefits across the economy, it suggests that recognition for the research methodology specific to practice-led disciplines and the creative industries is overdue. The discussions in this paper, and in this theme issue of MIA, are all the more critical as a result of their articulation with the imminent introduction of the Research Quality Framework (RQF), which will allow nuanced, rigorous and internationally benchmarked evaluation of the quality and impact of research outputs. The RQF and the proposed research assessment panel for ‘creative arts, design and built environment’ herald the way for wider acceptance of practice-led outputs in the Australian research environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the call for studies that 'turn away from speculative theory and argument-by-anecdote towards a more empirical consideration of media institutions as one of the contested interfaces between national and global forces' (Curtin, 2005: 159), this paper investigates the institutional logics of Nickelodeon in the Asia-Pacific region. Focusing on Nickelodeon's operations in New Zealand can provide a particularly revealing case study in the dynamics of media globalisation and the 'globalisation/fragmentation dialectic' that defines the existence of media conglomerations today. The paper concludes that – especially when compared to Australia – Nickelodeon in New Zealand represents a revealing case which underscores the domination of the 'global' in the globalisation/fragmentation dialectic. It is particularly ironic that Nickelodeon, among global media companies, distinguishes itself as a promoter of customisation, and that the future of pay and digital television in New Zealand is primarily shaped by politicians who have the tendency to 'believe that only the market has the necessary understanding' (Horrocks, 2004: 66). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refers to a research project that has been launched to compile a range of related resources into a digital repository with the intention of (hyper)linking this material to relevant points in the text Those elements of the text of potential and particular relevance to the Arrernte (Aranda) community and Aboriginal sense of place (such as specific totems, sacred ceremonies, kinship connections, etc.) will explicitly be mapped into a range of visual representations (including geographic maps and genealogy charts), and then supplemented with (hyper)links to relevant images, documents, media resources and other online collections. Finally, feedback from the Arrernte (Aranda) community on this visually mediated text will be recorded as oral histories, digitised and (hyper)linked to further supplement the specific cultural content of the Journey to Horseshoe Bend text. The project is in its early stages of execution, and this paper is intended to introduce the project and its background, and to place its knowledge interests within a contemporary framework of similar projects. This paper utilises a complex memoire authored by T.G.H. Strehlow, titled Journey to Horseshoe Bend, as a means of indicating the full range of strategies and techniques for the exploration of its narrative elements. These explorations will traverse the geographic locations of sites and specific totems, the conceptual relationships between narrative elements of place, the historical connectedness and physical migration of the Arrernte (Aranda) community over time, cultural ceremonies and myths specific to place, and links between a sense of place and other important motifs in the text The engagement with the Horseshoe Bend story, itself referenced to the death journey of Lutheran Pastor Carl Strehlow in 1922, continues to have resonances for contemporary Arrernte (Aranda) social practices. Indeed, the cultural work of articulating a modern social existence in a white-dominated civilisation, along with an abiding interest in the continuities of tradition, makes cultural practice active, fluid and dynamic. While the paper is only able to sketch these relationships, it also suggests how the formulation of these interests is related to the full range of remediation strategies available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates media representations of international insecurity through a selection of newspaper cartoons from some of the major daily Australian broadsheets. Since 2001, cartoonists such as Bruce Petty, John Spooner and Bill Leak (in The Age and The Australian) have provided an ongoing and vehement critique of the Australian government's policies of 'border protection' the 'war on terror' and the words of mass distraction associated with Australia joining the war in Iraq. Cartoonists are often said to represent the 'citizen's perspective' of public life through their graphic satire on the editorial pages of our daily newspapers. Increasingly, they can also be seen to be fulfilling the role of public intellectuals, defined by Richard A. Posner as 'someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma, to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments and corporations'. Cartoonists enjoy an independence and freedom from censorship that is rarely extended to their journalistic colleagues in the print media and it is this independence that is the vital component in their being categorised as public intellectuals. Their role is to 'question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people's mental habits, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to re-examine rules and institutions' (Posner, 2003: 31). With this useful — if generalised definition in mind, the paper considers how cartoonists have contributed to debates concerning international insecurity in public life since 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The audiovisual sector has figured significantly in recent multilateral negotiations. Within this broad domain of cultural policy, and because of the hindrance they represent to the implementation of the 'most favoured nation' clause, local content regulations and the practice of international coproduction have received particular attention. This paper considers the contrasting approaches of the French and Australian governments to cinematic coproduction. Whilst the objectives of the two countries are ostensibly aligned, the mechanism for assessing eligible films varies tremendously, reflecting a fundamental difference in policy preoccupations. Drawing upon a discursive analysis of interviews, public speeches and unpublished correspondence, and juxtaposing this with specific policy instances, the paper will identify some of the underlying motives for international coproduction and, by extension, assess the potential of `cultural diversity' to find its expression in the Australian film policy milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws upon recent research investigating news frames and risk theory to analyse Australian national news coverage of illegal drugs. Recent research has elaborated how risks are socially defined and acted upon especially given changing media representations of risks. Public understandings of the risks associated with illegal drug use, policing and policies develop through the continuing and often changing representations of these risks in the media, as well as through other social practices. This paper questions the role of some prominent newspapers in setting alarmist and sensational frames to define risk in this context, and demonstrates how journalism can heighten community fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a history of the pioneering ABC TV current affairs program, This Day Tonight (TDT). This Day Tonight has mythic status in the history of Australian television news and current affairs, and is often used as a reference point for the kind of political journalism that is now generally held to have disappeared from Australian television. The research for this paper does endorse this myth to some extent, but it also reminds us of the importance of the broader cultural contexts within which television programming must find its audience. There are significant differences to be noted, and important lessons to be learnt, from the comparison between TDT and its audience, and the kinds of current affairs programming and audiences we have today. Further, the history of TDT's demise challenges the basis for the industry nostrum that audiences find politics boring and that therefore political journalism is no longer a commercial option for contemporary current affairs television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its origins in the late 1980s, Australian hip hop continues to be fundamentally a do- it-yourself (DIY) subcultural field which has little or no music industry input or support. This paper profiles some of the small labels and producers in Australian hip hop (Obese, Elefant Traks, Nuff Said, Crookneck, Invada, etc.) and examines how they have formed from the ground up, using community radio stations such as 2SER, PBS and 3ZZZ, and websites such as Ozhiphop.com, to promote their music, as well as organising their own gigs and tours. 11 also examines Aboriginal practitioners of hip hop, who have even less infrastructure than the DIY network of independent producers and labels. Drawing on Holly Kruse's writing about 'situated practices' in independent rock music, which refers to Bourdieu's fields of practice' and 'habitus', I examine the subcultural networks and associations that have emerged in Australian hip hop, mediated through a nexus of genre, gender, space, location, race and ethnicity. The concept of habitus is arguably a useful way of referring to hip hop practices like MCing, Dung, breakdancing and graffiti, as well as the social behaviour associated with the hip hop subculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet has provided us with a global laboratory to watch community-building in action. However its role in the virtual universe is one that the more humble radio has had at the local community level since its inception. As soon as one-to-one communication gave way to one-to-many broadcasting, community-building began, based on the shared listening experience — ranging from families gathering around the wireless to local or national audiences tuning in simultaneously. Talkback made radio interactive by bringing the listener into the program, but it also gave program-makers the chance to gain first-hand experience of who was actually out there. This paper describes a radio talkback experiment which unexpectedly exposed the power of the relationship audiences can build with radio. Based on a `can you help `formula, the program found passionate drivers within its audience members to belong, to bond, and to do good works that contribute to the social good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the necessity for program-specific analysis in radio research by focusing on Jon Fame's Morning Program on ABC Radio 774 (Melbourne). After establishing the present prime minister's preference for radio appearances over all other types of media, I examine the extent to which Fame 's particular iteration of talkback has the capacity to enhance public sphere activity, given the view that this medium is strategically being utilised by politicians to gain virtually uncontested access to listeners. My examination occurs principally through a morning's observation of Fame's program, supported by information from recordings of a constructed week of the program from the previous two months. My findings suggest that, while a certain amount of 'top-down 'flow of information is unavoidable, some contestation of ideas often occurs, mitigating politicians 'exploitation of at least this particular program. Fame's program does, moreover, seem to give the impression of an acceptance of listeners' calls on topics that affect their daily lives, even though only a small number of 'ordinary' callers are featured each day. My observations suggest this program does offer processes that enhance public sphere activity, although with some qualifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of TV ratings and developments in audience measurement has been well documented in Australia, but little attention has been paid to TV networks `use of ratings in their decision-making processes. This paper examines changes to the structure of the TV ratings industry since 2000, when ATR/OzTAM replaced ACNielsen as the official provider It also examines the changing functions of audience research by Australian television broadcasters, highlighting three trends. Increased efficiency in ratings provision has made commercial broadcasters more reactive and conservative in programming decisions. At the same time, however the increasing sophistication of ratings data enables broadcasters to strategically reposition themselves in response to the changing media environment. Market fragmentation has seen increasing importance placed on commissioned and in-house research in a shift away from mass audience capture to establishing and maintaining an audience bond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 9/11, the question of the place of religion in the public sphere has re-entered public consciousness in Australia, most recently in links drawn between religion and terrorism, debates about free speech and religious vilification, and discussions about religion and the national character This paper sets a background to these contemporary issues by examining some of the influential factors and personalities in the changing legislation about the mandatory broadcast of religion on Australian commercial television, from its earliest influences through some of the key contests in its subsequent developments. A range of ambiguities and ambivalences is identified, arising primarily from the dual nature of broadcast licences as commercial enterprises and community service, and the contested place of religion in Australian society. These include questions about the constitutionality of the government mandating the broadcast of religion; contests over what is and isn't religion and who has authority to determine this distinction; conflicts arising from the competing interests of stations, churches and the government in the implementation of the legislation; difficulties in defining the purpose of mandatory broadcast of religious content as the place of religion in Australian society has changed; and resistance on the part of government agencies to acting to resolve those ambiguities in such a contested and contentious domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long before Australia's first commercial television broadcasts in 1956, advertising agencies and advertisers had been preparing themselves for what they believed would be the greatest ever selling medium. The creation of a new outlet for advertisements was not the industry's sole cause of excitement. Having dominated commercial radio, the advertising industry looked forward to extending its influence. These dreams, however were only partially fulfilled. While television enabled the industry to broadcast its commercial messages in a more effective way, legislation prevented it from controlling television in the way that it had with radio. This would have a significant impact on the relationship between the two industries. By examining television's impact on the advertising industry, this paper demonstrates that the medium of TV not only altered the face of advertising; it also caused a fundamental change in the structure and operation of Australia's advertising industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s and 1970s, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide each had their own Deadly Earnest, ghoulish presenter of Aweful Movies with Deadly Earnest, a weekly offering of schlock and B-grade horror. In Adelaide, on SAS JO, the persona of Deadly was assumed by local actor and photographer Hedley Cullen, whose maniacal laugh and pop-out eyes have remained indelibly etched in the memories of those who watched as children. Although the show was never intended for them, it was children who became his most ardent fans, inundating him with letters, drawings and miscellany, and mobbing him for autographs at suburban shopping centres and drive-ins. This paper discusses Deadly Earnest under Hedley Cullen's stewardship as a feature of the lost world of pre-network regional television and local celebrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constitutes a form of auto-ethnography, reflecting on my career as a teacher of media in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and in Australia in 2006. The biographical method was chosen in order to affirm the value of media education in relation to the personal experience of both the student and the teacher, and to question the authority and value of the various Media Studies curricula as they have evolved over the last 30 years within the institutions of the school and the university. This account constitutes part of a larger project on the part of the author entitled ‘Moments of Intensity’, which is concerned with issues of affect and aesthetics in the experience of teaching media and popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, from the beginning, Media Studies — at least in Australian schools and universities — did not display the usual organising principles of an academic subject. Media Studies in both Australian secondary schools and universities has traditionally been organised to include the written alongside the oral and practical, to integrate theory with practice, to focus on the application — often at the expense of the abstraction of knowledge. At the school level, this theory/production integration has been justified and promoted under the rubric that students ‘learn by doing’. At university level, much of the same rhetoric is used but at the tertiary level media production classes also cater for the students who see — or hope to see — that a degree in Media Studies is an entree into the media industries. This approach, the integration of training in media production with education in media theory and criticism, produces tensions, apparent contradictions and misalignments that are obvious to teachers and students alike. Drawing from post-modernist critiques and sociologies of subject knowledge, the study uses interviews with school teachers, students, academics and observations of lessons at school and university level to describe the issues and concerns from multiple perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the current developments in convergence from the perspective of community broadcasting in Australia. It examines government media reforms and plans relating to digital technology and content, and notes the potential of community broadcasting to contribute to goals of diversity, innovation and new services. The paper concludes with various policy proposals which aim to ensure that the ‘third tier’ of free-to-air broadcasting is included in the transition to digital services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This year's takeover of Australia's largest advertising agency, George Patterson Partners, by the British-based global group WPP is just the most recent and dramatic event in a longer-term trend towards globalisation and a complex concentration of ownership in the advertising business. Global advertising groups like WPP, along with their global advertiser clients, are seeking strategically to align the same advertiser with the same agency in each major national market: the phenomenon of ‘global alignment’. Australian agencies are necessarily drawn into the resulting process of consolidation, so much so that it becomes not merely difficult to distinguish between national and international ownership, but almost meaningless. At the same time, there is emerging a greater differentiation of functions amongst agencies, although often coordinated under the one corporate umbrella. Certain agencies are specialising in media buying-that is, the tactical purchase of advertising time and space on behalf of clients — while ‘creative’ agencies provide the content to fill them. Others again are positioning themselves as experts in the burgeoning field of internet advertising. Other current trends include the breakdown of the once-strict boundaries between clients, agencies and media. Advertisers are setting up their own in-house agencies, agencies have acquired their own media outlets, and media are carrying ‘news’ and ‘entertainment’ content which has been prepared by agencies for their clients. Thus even the boundary between advertising and editorial or program content is also breaking down. This paper provides an overview of all these trends, as advertising scrambles to secure its place in the contemporary era of globalisation in a deregulated, post-mass media world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For an industry that deals with the public perception of images, it perhaps ironic that advertising itself has long suffered from a severe image problem. The industry has long been equated with exaggerations, distortions and falsities. Critics and the industry alike have looked to the possibility of truth in advertising to redeem its reputation. The discourse of truth in advertising that occurred in the advertising industry ranks during the early twentieth century provides a revealing insight into the way that the ‘magic system’ of advertising has been constructed. Reaching a high point in the 1920s, concerns about truth would recede over the course of the 1930s and 1940s as the industry moved to embrace new forms of technology. By examining the rise and fall of this discourse, this paper reveals the advertising industry's fervent desire to improve advertising's status whilst illustrating the way in which technological developments not only affected the industry, but also its ability to ever be completely truthful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although they are sometimes confused, in theory government and political advertising are separate and quite distinct. By convention, government advertising — paid for directly by taxpayers — is to be used only for necessary government information campaigns which are neutral in nature and not liable to be perceived as creating a partisan benefit for the ruling party. By contrast, political advertising occurs predominantly during elections, is paid for by political parties or candidates, and is necessarily partisan, persuasive and usually highly emotive in nature. However, in the past two decades these distinctions have broken down. This paper explores the growing links between the two types of advertising at the federal level and concludes that there is a vast gap between the theory and reality of government advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike other magazines, few people subscribe to wedding magazines and, as most are annual publications, their presence on the publishing landscape is relatively intermittent and unobtrusive. Nevertheless, these publications provide a rich context for examining intersections between advertisements and editorials. In this paper, 1 draw on ethnographic and textual analysis of wedding magazines produced in Australia. I argue that the distinction between advertisement and editorial is not a useful analytical tool in this context. This is because the vast majority of advertisements and editorial pages in a wedding magazine appear almost identical: page after page of glossy photographs of wedding dresses. Rather, what is striking is the manner in which the magazine editors and advertising clients, in their discussions as each magazine issue is produced, negotiate the fine distinctions they perceive between advertising and editorial content. At stake in these negotiations is not just the economic success of both editor and client, but also their reputations as expert manipulators of symbolic representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Minister Helen Coonan's discussion paper on media reform released in March, the authors survey the recent history of media ownership policy with particular reference to the Productivity Commission's visionary 2000 report on broadcasting. They argue that the present proposals fall short of the plan laid out in this report and are premature pending further development of digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the problems involved in representing the Australian legal system on film and television, how these problems are addressed, and what commentary these texts are making about the practice of law in Australia. It is suggested that the formal and dress requirements of the Australian legal system make the trial process a ritual based around the reification of the lawyer and the stigmatisation of the accused — in short, a degradation ceremony — and that Australian legal dramas reflect this. But because of this lack of dynamism in the courtroom, Australian legal dramas must seek alternative sits of drama — often domestic, and invariably outside the courtroom. In this way, they present a more holistic view of the lawyer/judge's life, reinterpreting court proceedings (and the institution of law itself) as a repressed set-up by actively displacing dramatic tension outside the courtroom, thus denying the courtroom the centrality it occupies in American representations and, by extension, American culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews a project which has produced creative design solutions for the development of online counselling in collaboration with Australia's largest youth telephone counselling service, Kids Helpline (KHL). Our discussion focuses on the shape of interaction design research conducted against the dual background of young people's multi-literacies and professional counselling practice. Existing text-based communication tools already available for Kids Helpline's clients were integrated with graphical image-based tools, while engaging young people in problem-solving and empowerment during online counselling sessions. The paper considers the fashioning of a conducive design and interactive communication environment for distressed young people and the independent evaluation of the new site design. Preliminary results are that young people report a greater sense of control and comfort in their net-based interaction with a counsellor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a benchmarking project commissioned in 2002 by ACUADS, the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools, I conducted a series of focus groups with candidates for higher degrees in Visual Art in Australia in order to gain some insight into how the terminology of research was understood and used by visual art higher degree students. The present paper makes use of that data and examines to what extent practice-led research can engage in a general research debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aboriginal people are increasingly making use of digitising technologies for their cultural and educational work However, databases are not innocent objects. They bear within them Western assumptions about the nature of knowledge, and how it is produced, which may inhibit or undermine the intergenerational transmission of Aboriginal knowledge traditions. Words (or text strings), for example, have a particular constitutive function in Aboriginal epistemology, which implies a rethinking of traditional structures and uses of metadata. Knowledge and truth are understood more in terms of performance than content, which implies something about how digital resources are to be configured and represented. This paper looks at collaborative work done developing a database to support the ongoing work done by Yolngu (northeast Anthem Land Aboriginal) people in keeping their knowledge traditions strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of an ethical approach to pleasure does not imply a religious or moral order, but a constant re-evaluation of how each image or representation of any contemporary culture (Indigenous, musical, professional, digital, etc.) impacts on social justice, equity, tolerance and freedom. Two attempts of anthropological restitution developed with Aboriginal peoples for a mixed audience are presented here. The first is a CD-ROM (Dream Trackers: Yapa Art and Knowledge of the Australian Desert), focused on one Central Australian community (Lajamanu in the Northern Territory,), while the second is an interactive DVD (Quest in Aboriginal Land) based on films by Indigenous filmmaker Wayne Barker, juxtaposing four regions of Australia. Both projects aim to explore and enhance the cultural foundations of the reticular way in which many Indigenous people in Australia map their knowledge and experience of the world in a geographical virtual web of narratives, images and performances. The relevance of games for anthropological insights is also discussed in the paper. Non-linear or reticular thinking mostly stresses the fact that there is no centrality to the whole but a multipolar view from each recomposed network within each singularity, a person, a place (a Dreaming in the case of Aboriginal cultures), allowing the emergence of meanings and performances, encounters, creations as new original autonomous flows. Reticular or network thinking, I argue, is a very ancient Indigenous practice but it gains today a striking actuality thanks to the fact that our so called scientific perception of cognition, virtuality and social performance has changed through the use of new technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersections between journalism and democracy are explored in this paper through an analysis of the `voices' through which the news is `told' by specific segments of the Australian print media. We argue that evidence of the extent to which a newspaper fulfils its roles to democracy and society is partially found in the range of sources quoted in the news stories it publishes, and in the prominence and dominance it gives to various types of sources in those stories. Our goal was to quantify the validity of the widely held assumption that, in Australia, regional newspapers are closer than metropolitan newspapers to their readers. This suggestion guided our content analysis of the types of news story sources quoted or paraphrased in the general news published in four regional newspapers and one metropolitan newspaper in one Australian state. The assumption of closeness to readers for Australian regional newspapers did not hold up well in this test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores racism within Australian women's magazines. By centring the analysis around a selection of mainstream magazines during a single calendar month, I endeavour to illustrate the extent to which racism is embedded within both the advertising and the editorial content. Of particular interest is the practice of skin-whitening, whereby a combination of makeup, studio lighting and airbrushing techniques render the model `s skin a lighter shade. As I demonstrate, it is a practice commonly employed in the marketing of magazines and beauty products, presumably because white skin is a more acceptable (and therefore more saleable) commodity. Using white skin as its theme, the paper is couched within a discussion centring around the languages of whiteness and racism, and their intersection with the modern portrayal of beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes to Australian copyright law introduced under the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement will diminish the public domain, criminalise common copyright infringing practices and locally introduce significant portions of the controversial 1998 American Digital Millennium Copyright Act This paper examines these imminent changes to Australian copyright law, with specific attention to the potential effects of the extended duration of copyright protection and the introduction of technological anti-circumvention measures. It argues that public domain-enhancing activities are crucial for sustaining cultural creativity and technological innovation, and discusses the potential role of the Creative Commons movement in establishing economically viable and legal alternatives to the current model of trade-oriented copyright reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable time has elapsed since the last comprehensive review of Australian film assistance policy. Despite the fact the no universal agreement exists on the aims of national film assistance policies, it is nonetheless timely to consider the overall effectiveness of present film assistance programs in Australia. Accordingly, the limited objective of this paper is to examine some aggregative outcomes of the Australian film assistance program in comparison to similar programs in Canada and the United Kingdom in the areas of film development, film production, film distribution, film exhibition and film performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the genealogy of the ABC comedy series, Kath and Kim, in terms of its production history, the origins of its characters and themes, and its relationship to new hybrid comedy forms such as the mock-documentary (Roscoe and Hight, 2001). Issues such as the gender, class and taste politics of the comedy are explored in an attempt to rationalise the author's own ambivalent reactions to the show. Particular attention is paid to a number of shopping scenes in which Kath and Kim's failed suburban aesthetic becomes the source of what McCallum has described as a 'comedy of recognition' (McCallum, 1998). It is argued that the question of whether Kath and Kim is judged to be self-celebratory or self-critical has been rendered irrelevant by an extra-diagetic narrative which constructs the series as a little Aussie battler succeeding against the odds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the social construction of a site of public discourse: the letters to the editor page of an Australian regional daily newspaper, The Daily News. Of key concern are the processes through which public discourse is constructed and mediated by those who select and edit letters for publication. Drawing on a content analysis of the letters page and in-depth interviews with the editorial staff it is demonstrated how routine practices and the social knowledge of media workers play a specific and discernible role in shaping public dialogue. In light of the findings presented, the concluding section discusses the relationship between editorial practices and the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a common assumption among sport and media analysts that female athletes worldwide simply do not enjoy adequate media coverage. This article aims to challenge this notion by highlighting an important aspect of women`s sport reporting often overlooked in other analyses of sportswomen in the media - Olympic press coverage. In contrast to everyday press representations of women`s sport, the Sydney Olympic Gaines in 2000 provided several positive examples of reports written by Australian journalists about female athletes. Incorporating quantitative and qualitative approaches, this paper assesses both the allocation and content of articles printed about female Olympians during the Sydney Olympics by four major Australian newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since August 2001, Arab and Muslim communities in Sydney's western suburbs have been caught up in a spiral of signification that linked "gang" activity in the area to the standoff over asylum seekers aboard the MV Tampa, a federal election campaign fought on the theme of "border protection" and global news reporting of September 11 and the "war on terror." Many people who live and work in the Banks town area responded to this intense news media scrutiny by developing community based media interventions that aimed to shift the mains terms news agenda. Through media skills training, forums, events and cultural production, Arab and Muslim Australians in the Bankstown area positioned themselves as the subjects rather than the objects of news. This paper analyses news intervention strategies in terms of media power and the politics of representation. I argue that the activities of those working with racialised communities suggest valuable models for the wider process of improving the reporting of cultural differences in multicultural Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2001, it was alleged that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard in order to manipulate the Australian Navy to pick them up and take them to Australian territory. In response to this incident, Prime Minister John Howard announced on radio 3LO: "I certainly don't want people like that here." (Mares, 2002: 135) A discursive approach is adopted in this paper to examine how asylum seekers have been constructed to be "people like that" in the print media. The analysis demonstrates that asylum seekers have been represented as illegal, non-genuine and threatening in these texts. These representations were employed within nationalist discourse to legitimate the government's actions and public opinion concerning asylum seekers and to manage the delicate issue of national identity. The discursive management of the collective identity of asylum seekers by the dominant culture to construct a specific social reality is discussed and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have been an awakening time for the people, communities and governments of the global village. Escalating problems in the Middle East, global economic uncertainty and an increase in asylum seekers, refugees and migration worldwide have reignited tensions involving boundaries and borders, both geographical and cognitive. One event which highlighted these tensions in Australia, and which was given much media coverage, was the "children overboard" event in October 2001. Utilising a selection of print news coverage of the event, this paper explores how the "children overboard" event demarcated national identities and spaces through the construction and representation of "good" Australian citizens and "bad" asylum seeker "others". Specifically referring to "children overboard" as an "events," I seek to highlight the constructed and representational nature of "children overboard" as a media story and political tool, one which promoted a continuing threat of "others" to the nation in order to gain support for government policy and legitimize national security, and in so doing creating a model of Australian citizenship and identity based upon fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marketing and promotion of alcohol have attracted considerable controversy in Australia in recent years. Many researchers argue that the active promotion of alcohol has led to increases in alcohol consumption in Australia, particularly among the young, as well as a range of alcohol-related harms and problems. Others contest this view, whilst the alcohol industry itself contends that alcohol advertising is more concerned with winning and maintaining 'market share' than with attracting new drinkers. As such debates intensify, it is timely to consider changes in the content and format of alcohol advertising in this country. This paper examines a number of recent Australian alcohol advertisements, comparing those for beer with those for spirits and ready to drink' products in highlighting some significant changes in the ways leisure arid consumption are represented in youth cultures I argue that many of these advertisements present alcohol as a potent means of enhancing young people's leisure experience in ways that risk endorsing excessive alcohol consumption as an appropriate or 'normal' leisure activity for young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The men's lifestyle magazines FHM (For Him Magazine) and Ralph are a significant presence in the Australian market, and both target a specific readership of young, heterosexual men. My central research question concerns how desired audiences are constructed or imagined at the 'front end' of magazine production. One of the major tasks of the editors and publishers of these magazines is to access, and compete for, an audience. This paper aims to examine the contradictions apparent in the editorial practices of defining or envisioning an audience for Ralph and FHM. To understand the process of how they produce the magazines, I examine the editorial staffs' conceptions of the 'audience'; the ways in which it is created and for what purposes, as well as the terms used to describe this integral part of the industry. How the audience is defined and constructed highlights how contradictions, creativity and constraint operate in defining the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media representations of the terrorist attacks of September 11 in the United States and their aftermath bear strong similarities to the media coverage of 'Lebanese youth gangs' over the last few years — both rely significantly on the metaphor of war. This paper explores two media narratives about Lebanese youth gangs which draw on this metaphor — the first deploys a simple us/them structure which, like the dominant Western reportage of the terrorist crisis, turns on a form of moral reduction in which the forces of good and evil are relatively clear. The accumulated imagery of Lebanese gangs, drugs, crime, violence and 'ethnic gang rape' articulates a dangerous otherness of those of Arabic-speaking background — echoed in the coverage of the terrorist 'attack on America'. This simple narrative, however, gives way to a second, emerging narrative about Lebanese youth gangs which also relies on the metaphor of war but acknowledges the moral duplicity of both 'combatants' — registering the culpability of the state and its police service but distancing 'the ordinary Australian' from this culpability. The second narrative, like the first, tries to recuperate a moral innocence for the 'ordinary Australian', but in doing so underlines a crisis in Australian multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the 2005 Australian and New Zealand Communication Association's (ANZCA) conference. This year's conference theme is "Communication at Work," and the program is shaping up to be as stimulating as ever. Vice President Colleen Mills has organized panels, a documentary and papers on topics and from perspectives that reflect the field, including peace and political communication, PR, journalism, new media, technology, organizational communication, gender and communication. The papers, as in previous years, come not only from scholars in Australia and New Zealand, but also from other countries, this year including Ireland, the United States and France. And the highly acclaimed international keynotes, each from different disciplinary perspectives, yet the work of all three can lie within the broader field of Communication; Professor of Linguistics Janet Holmes, Professor of Management Communication George Chaney and Professor of Cultural Studies Graeme Turner. Rooms reserved for ANZCA conference attendees at Rydges Hotel and the YMCA are being snapped up fast, as are the cheap fares from Australia to Christchurch.