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This article provides an overview of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Digital Platforms Inquiry, as a case study in the new thinking about digital platform regulation taking place in many nations. With its focus upon the impact of digital platforms on news and journalism, the ACCC Inquiry parallels other reviews, such as the Cairncross Review on the Future of Journalism in the United Kingdom. While the Inquiry had a somewhat 'accidental' history, the core issues that it raised have acquired considerable political resonance in Australia. The concept of harms provides a useful lens through which to understand the ACCC's focus, as it identified harms caused by the market dominance of Google and Facebook for traditional news media businesses, and for consumers and citizens. Responding to the ACCC Final Report will present challenges in identifying the public good dimension of journalism and who should pay for it, the scope and reach of digital platform regulation and its relationship to media policy and regulation, and the scope for small nations to effectively manage the power of global digital platform giants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the pervasiveness of digitisation communications, those that are left behind are seen as socially excluded. In both academic and policy discourses, it is assumed that digital inclusion as a route into mainstream society is a desirable solution to problems of multiple exclusion and has led to many studies of the digital inclusion/exclusion of 'hard to reach' groups. Yet, Gypsy–Travellers, among the most marginalised people in society, have received little attention. Using data from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, we assess the impact of digital communications on Gypsy–Traveller communities. This article makes a contribution in the following ways: First, we address the theories of 'fields of inclusion' to show how exclusion and inclusion work together in different ways; Second, we explore how different policy frameworks in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom shape these possibilities; Third, we document the forms of inclusion that Gypsy–Travellers experience in terms of digital communications; Fourth, we look at how Gypsy–Travellers use digital communications to recreate their own cultures as well as selectively integrate with mainstream society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role digital television is playing in increased functionality of electronic services and on its implications for communication policy in Great Britain. Digital broadcasting delivers a range of new applications, including interactive services and online connectivity, to the home. Currently, there is a rapid development in fields of digital broadcasting and e-governance. There has been an agreement among media scholars that, in order to foster participation in common life, and in the interests of avoiding social exclusion, a broadcasting system should offer audiences shared and adequate access to a diverse and well-balanced menu of services that reflect, and provide for, the information and communication needs of society. The paradigm of Western European inheritance of public service broadcasting as regulated, free-to-air provision of generalist programme schedules has been conditioned by technology. Analogue transmission limited the effective spectrum, restricting terrestrial television carriage to a small number of channels. In September 1999 the British government announced its intention to terminate all analogue broadcast transmissions and switch over to an all-digital communications environment by the year 2010. In December 2001 the Digital Television Action Plan was launched selling out a series of actions to promote the take-up of digital television and ensure the switch-over to digital television is implemented by 2010.

Recent years have seen a frenetic public debate in Great Britain concerning the desirability, feasibility and timing of the introduction of digital television. The debate has occurred in the context of impending convergence between television, computer and telecommunications technologies, auguring radical changes in the media ecology, and the numerous uncertainties - economic, technological, regulatory and cultural - that accompany such shifts. Some writers, observing these unstable conditions, argue that public service broadcasting (PSB) faces new threats. Others argue that PSB bears new responsibilities. Little empirical light has been shed on how the public service broadcasters are responding to digitalization and convergence. This article, based on recent research, analyses the response of one of Great Britain's two main public service broadcasters, Channel Four. By late 2001 about 35 percent of British households had one of the three available platforms, and of digital households 65 percent had subscribed to Sky's digital satellite service, the dominant platform.