The Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance (the key union for Australian media workers) has recently begun to organise a series of events titled "The Future of Journalism", bringing together industry and citizen journalists, academics, and other media experts to explore future developments in the news media. The first of these was held in Sydney in May, covered by Jason Wilson at Gatewatching and Rachel Hills at New Matilda, and now it's Brisbane's turn - at QUT's Gardens Theatre on 13 September 2008.

ISEA 2008

Locating the Australian Blogosphere: Towards a New Research Methodology

Axel Bruns, Jason Wilson, Barry Saunders, Tim Highfield, Lars Kirchhoff, Thomas Nicolai

• 26 July 2008 - ISEA 2008 conference, Singapore

Full Paper (PDF)

CCi 2008

Beyond the Pro/Am Schism: Opportunities for Collaboration between Professional and Citizen Journalists under a Produsage Framework

Axel Bruns

• 25 June 2008 - CCi 2008 conference, Brisbane, Australia

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The emergence of citizen journalism, and the challenges it poses for the conventional journalism industry, have been well-documented over the past decade. Citizen journalism has been hailed as a new "Estate 4.5" (Singer 2006), acting as a watchdog for a journalism industry increasingly compromised by commercial and political agendas; it has been seen as making possible a return to a more dialogic, deliberative engagement with the news (Heikkilä & Kunelius 2002) in which a broader range of perspectives are represented and engage with one another; it has been described as shifting focus from the global and generic to the hyperlocal and specific.

Brisbane.
We're now in the final session of the first day at the CCi conference, which I'll try to chair and blog at the same time - we'll see how it goes. My colleague Terry Flew is the first presenter, and he begins by outlining the three layers of impact of new media technologies as artefacts or devices (technologies); communication activities and practices using these technologies; and the social arrangements, institutions, and organisational forms which develop around the use and management of such technologies. Journalism has so far responded to the Internet as a new technology mainly in the first sense, no so much in the two latter senses. This also takes place at a time of perceived crisis in journalism, and in the face of the emergence of citizen journalism in responding to that crisis.

Brisbane.
We're now starting the first panel session of the CCi conference, and this is the panel on citizen journalism that my paper is in as well, so I'm including the Powerpoint below (audio to be added later available now).

The first speaker is David McKnight from UNSW, whose focus is on the future of quality journalism in the emerging media environment. He points to a perspective that newspapers are now an 'endangered species'; The Australian passionately rejected this in a September 2006 editorial. It suggested a commitment to quality journalism as an important continuing strategy for newspapers. Nonetheless, the economic case for newspaper publishing is becoming increasingly difficult; circulations are falling and especially classified advertising is moving away from print.

I'm crossposting this from Gatewatching.org, where a discussion about the influence of Australian political bloggers on wider political processes that was kicked off by Jason Wilson's recent posts on Tim Blair's move to the Daily Telegraph and Christian Kerr's summary dismissal of Ozblogistan's political combattants in The Australian has prompted me to finally post up some more information about the research we're currently engaged in at QUT, in collaboration with our excellent colleagues at the University St. Gallen in Switzerland. I'm also attaching a detailed discussion paper which documents our methodological model in some more detail - we'd love to get further feedback on this, from fellow researchers and interested bloggers alike. (For a more condensed version of this material, please see our paper for the ISEA 2008 conference in Singapore.)

As I've mentioned here previously, the Vibewire e-Festival of Ideas is now underway, and I'm taking part in a forum on e-democracy that also involves such luminaries as Mark Pesce, Jason Wilson, Martin Stewart-Weeks, and Tony Walker. I've now posted my first contribution, which I'm republishing here - any comments welcome, and I'll try and bring them to the discussion. Or better yet - join us!

I think it might be useful to work out in some more detail what we mean by e-democracy and related terms. Broadly, for me there are two interesting areas here: ways in which the Internet and other online media can facilitate better communication between governments and citizens (g2c, as well as c2g), and ways in which they enable citizens to engage directly with one another (c2c), possibly bypassing governments as well as mainstream media altogether.

Both are interesting, and there are a few notable developments here. For example, in g2c/c2g,

Brisbane.
The last AMIC 2008 session this afternoon starts with a paper by my colleague Jason Wilson, our research associate on the Youdecide2007 project and its follow-ups, and he presents especially on the experience and lessons from Youdecide. There may be a need for a structural modification in the role of conventional journalists, and a change of attitude towards working with citizen journalists.

Brisbane.
We're now in the opening session of the AMIC conference "Convergence, Citizen Journalism and Social Change". Today is just a short afternoon with a couple of keynote speeches; tomorrow, the bulk of the papers (including my colleague Jason Wilson's and mine) will be presented. Pradip Thomas from the University of Queensland is offering some opening remarks - referring to the common trope of the decline of mainstream journalism, and the corresponding rise of citizen journalism and its effect on political developments.

AMIC 2008

Citizen Journalism in the 2007 Australian Federal Election

Axel Bruns

• 27 March 2008 - AMIC 2008 conference, Brisbane, Australia

Citizen journalists and news and political bloggers had a considerable impact on journalistic coverage of the 2007 Australian federal election campaign. Already, even before the election proper had been called, the alternative viewpoints of citizen journalists and bloggers could be seen to have significantly disrupted the previously relatively static arrangements between government and opposition parties and the journalistic establishment, and to have challenged standard modes of reporting and interpreting political events. This paper discusses the role of citizen journalists and news and political bloggers in the 2007 Australian federal election campaign by examining four key sites of such alternative reporting, analysis, and commentary: the hyperlocal citizen journalism site Youdecide2007.org, the leading left-of-centre political group blog Larvatus Prodeo, the influential psephologist blogger Possums Pollytics, and ABC Online's attempts at blogging the election campaign.