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Community broadcasting is anecdotally considered a 'training ground' for the mainstream media. However, there is little empirical research that supports these claims around skill development and career outcomes. Similarly, while community broadcasting is broadly recognized as contributing to social cohesion, the focus of much of this research is on audiences rather than the experiences of community media practitioners. This article is based on a broader programme of research that interrogated the experiences of people with significant involvement in the Australian community broadcasting sector to examine the impact of community media participation on career pathways. Here we consider a key finding: working or volunteering in community radio plays an important role in developing robust and meaningful networks, connections, and relationships which are central to shaping personal and professional pathways. These findings draw on rhizome theory to highlight the importance of community broadcasting for building and maintaining diverse and enduring networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when local journalism is under threat, regional newsrooms can play a crucial role in working with communities to confront shameful truths and profound failures. The regional city of Ballarat emerged as an "epicentre" of clergy sexual abuse through Australia's landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017). This article examines how the regional city's newspaper, The Courier, bore witness to these crimes and their impacts within its local community. A content and thematic analysis of coverage of child sexual abuse from 2010 to 2019 documents how The Courier's locally produced journalism revealed to its audience the extent of abuse, helping to acknowledge and face crimes that had occurred in Ballarat's local institutions. The interlinked themes of revelation, reckoning and recovery demonstrate how local journalism can work with its community to address traumatic events that occur within its geosocial space. Local media bore witness on multiple levels, as both the amplifier of stories told by survivors and the facilitator of community processes of reckoning and recovery. We refer to this special form of local journalism as "proximal" media witnessing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate activists and environmental communicators stress that addressing the climate crisis requires both global and local advocacy for transformational change-making. While journalists in small, rural communities are known to actively advocate on issues for the common good, there has been little investigation of local media advocacy on climate change in rural Australia: a region at the forefront of global heating. This paper analyses the accounts of local journalists of their media coverage of the School Strikes 4 Climate in rural and regional Australia, as an empirical entry point for a conceptual discussion of local media advocacy in reporting climate change. We find that normative ideas about journalism coupled with polarised community views on climate change hindered these journalists from taking an advocacy stance. We explore and critique the tacit 'quiet advocacy' practices used by these journalists reporting on climate in rural and regional Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare services face persistent barriers in reaching and improving access for marginalized or hardly reached people. This paper details the strategic use of social media among community connectors, or members of a community who address health issues in their local contexts by spanning socio-cultural boundaries within the community. Undertaking qualitative research in rural Australia and Ireland, we find evidence that through their strategic use of social media, connectors enhance the local communication infrastructure and create bridges between community and healthcare services due to their: (1) established connections with diverse hardly reached socio-cultural groups; (2) understanding of needs and opportunities for hardly reached people; (3) ability to seek out, 'translate' and pass on health information and (4) community building and health promotion practices at individual and social levels. Healthcare access and communication can be improved by identifying connectors and partnering with them to span boundaries enabling connection with the hardly reached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue addressed: Published evaluations of population‐level social marketing campaigns predominantly focus on impact and outcome evaluation. Evaluation of complementary locally implemented activities and programs, despite being common and important components of social marketing campaigns are rarely published. This study sought to examine the drivers of engagement of local implementers in the Make Healthy Normal campaign, implemented in New South Wales (NSW), Australia from 2015 to 2018, and to describe their engagement with the campaign as well as the scope and extent of complementary activities. Methods: We conducted 13 in‐depth semi‐structured qualitative interviews with health and nonhealth stakeholders from a range of urban, regional and rural settings across NSW. We analysed the interviews thematically, using an inductive and iterative approach. Results: We found stakeholder engagement (ie decision to buy into and commit resources) to the campaign was underpinned by two main drivers: "understanding", or how well they understood the campaign and their role in it, and "perceived fit", or how appropriate it was to their context. A third factor, "communication" functioned to enhance both understanding and perceived fit. Conclusion: Our results suggest that stakeholders would engage with the campaign more where they had a sound understanding of the campaign objectives and content, and an appreciation of how the campaign fits their strategic and procedural context. So What?: Campaign managers should incorporate clear, regular and efficient communication with local implementers and work with these groups early in the campaign development process. Organisers should also support and promote a "community of practice" approach to capitalise on the innovations of those promoting campaign messages at the community level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s First Nations media organisations have been established across remote, regional and urban Australia, and have been broadcasting and producing media in and for their local communities. Many of the resulting community-managed audiovisual collections have yet to be digitised or archived and are often stored in substandard conditions. With UNESCO's deadline of 2025 for digitisation of analogue media rapidly approaching, these rich social and cultural heritage collections are at high risk of being lost. Since 2013 First Nations Media Australia (FNMA, formerly Indigenous Remote Communications Association) has worked closely with member organisations and national collection agencies to develop a First Nations Media Archiving Strategy and to support community organisations develop the capacity to manage their collections according to best practice. FNMA is committed to keeping strong community control of media collections and recordings, and believes that the relationship between media production and access to archived recordings is intrinsically linked to the processes of self-determination and to social, cultural and economic sustainability and benefit. This paper explores the ways in which on-country archiving work enables local decision-making processes, which are considered critical to future collection access and use. The paper discusses how First Nations media organisations are often hampered by a lack of funding for the equipment, software and training needed for preservation work and ongoing management of community collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In the United States, there was an increase in calls to helplines following media reporting of Robin Williams' suicide. We aimed to determine whether this was the case in Australia. Method: The helpline services Lifeline and Beyond Blue provided us with weekly data on calls received for 2013–2015. We conducted interrupted time series regression analyses to determine whether there was an increase in the average weekly number of calls received by each helpline in two periods after the story about Williams' suicide broke (1 week and 4 weeks). Results: We found strong evidence of an increase in calls to Lifeline (incidence rate ratio [IRR] =1.13; 95% confidence interval [CI] =1.02–1.25; p = 0.016) and Beyond Blue (IRR = 1.32; 95% CI = 1.09–1.59; p = 0.004) in the week after Williams' suicide was first reported. We found no evidence of higher than normal call volumes for Lifeline (IRR = 1.04; 95% CI = 0.99–1.10; p = 0.104) or Beyond Blue (IRR = 1.10; 95% CI = 1.00–1.22; p = 0.058) over the four weeks following Williams' death, however, suggesting that calls leveled out over this period. Conclusion: Suicide prevention experts and media professionals must work together to minimize the negative impacts of reports on suicide and maximize their positive ones. In cases where the story is likely to receive extensive international coverage, it may be important for local media to encourage help‐seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Binding, or the non-invasive compression of chest tissue, is often used to facilitate a more comfortable expression of individuals' gender prior to, or in lieu of, surgical intervention for assigned people. This study aims to provide insight into the ways in which gender-diverse individuals in Sydney, Australia perceive the health impacts of ad ascribe meaning to binding. It also explores how individuals negotiate available resources and support around this practice. Ten trans or gender-diverse participants who were assigned female at birth were recruited via social media and community organisations. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and thematically analysed by a peer researcher. Four main themes were identified: (1) diversity of experiences; (2) negotiating (dis)comfort: participants negotiated between physical, emotional and social comforts and discomforts; (3) perceptions of safety: in the absence of formal research, participants mediate public narratives of fear; and (4) interactions with health care: insensitivity and incomprehension present barriers to care. These findings have implications for the way binding should be approached by health-care practitioners. Approaches require culturally competent care and appropriate harm reduction strategies which consider the importance of binding in individuals' daily lives as well as the diversity of experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community radio in Australia is now well established and considered an important part of the radio sector, however, in today's economically driven world it is at the bottom of the media money pile. In order to argue for its continuing existence, funding and development in an ever-changing media landscape, some means of capturing its value is essential. This article describes the development of a theoretical framework of value for community radio. The content of the framework was achieved by, first, examining, community media/radio literature through five relevant lenses of analysis. Secondly, a subsequent meta-analysis was applied to consolidate the framework. In order to test the utility of the draft theoretical framework of value, three case studies were conducted with different types of community radio stations in Perth, Western Australia. Two primary research methods were used: interviews with staff and audience focus groups. The testing exercise provided a multimodal insight into the values of community radio as reflected in real life practice. The analysis revealed how value was perceived by participants across three stations as personal motivations, and second, that value at individual stations was contingent upon the characteristics of the individual community radio stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]