Blog

Brisbane.
The next plenary session at the CCi conference responds to Mark Deuze's talk - John-Paul Marin from SBS and Tony Walker (blogger at ABC Digital Futures and the ABC's Manager of Digital Radio) will share their own experiences of operating in the new, user-led, media environment that Mark has sketched out.

Brisbane.
The third and last day of the CCi conference starts with a keynote by the fabulous Mark Deuze, author of Media Work. He begins by pointing to Henry Jenkins's work on convergence culture, and reminds us of the magnitude of that trend. Why is this happening, what is the context for this - how do media professionals work in this environment?

Media organisations are very well positioned to make sense of this from a production perspective - they are well placed to find new ways to tell stories across multiple (new) platforms, but in doing so reproduce mainly what they did before. We need to move forward beyond this approach, though: how do we start from scratch in developing new content forms and forms of participation which are native to the new (media) environment, characterised as it is by niche communities and diverse interests? (Mark's upcoming book Beyond Journalism tells this story for the journalistic environment.)

Brisbane.
The last speaker on this second day of the CCi conference is John Quiggin. His interest is in the impact of the amateurisation of content production on innovation policy. John begins by noting the outgoing 20th century model of technical innovation, which involved publicly funded pure research (with a public good rationale), followed by private sector R&D (creating patents and IP with some direct subsidy) and finally the marketing of new products to end users. He contrasts this with the 19th century model of cultural innovation, where individual artists created cultural works (protected by copyright) to be delivered through cultural institutions (often under public funding, outside of the commercial mass media).

Brisbane.
We're back to keynotes here at the CCi conference now, and I'm in a session with Kim Dalton, Director of Television at the ABC. His main theme here, however, is broadband. He begins by noting the overall audiovisual policy framework in place in Australia, which arises from the perceived and real influence of the broadcasting media. A critically important goal of this policy is to achieve social and cultural outcomes - delivering diverse, quality, and engaging content. Elements of this are Australian content regulations, Australian drama productions, children's programmes, and content reflecting the nature of the Australian community. This even applies for pay-TV and advertising. Additionally, there are funding bodies for film, TV, and new media industries, and various other support structures.

Brisbane.
The post-lunch session at the CCi conference starts for me with a panel on citizen journalism which involves my colleague Jason Wilson from Youdecide2007 (and Gatewatching.org), Larvatus Prodeo's Mark Bahnisch, and Graham Young from Online Opinion. Their theme is the role of citizen journalism in the 2007 Australian federal election.

Brisbane.
We're back to paper sessions at the CCi conference now, and for a change I'm in the cultural science stream. The first speakers here are Chris Brennan-Horley from the University of Wollongong Susan Luckman from the University of South Australia and deals with mapping the creative industries in Darwin. This ties into wider creative industries and creative cities theory, and Chris's approach here has been to focus especially on mapping the micro-level through qualitative ethnographic approaches - this is necessary as much grassroots-level creative industries activity remains unaccounted for in standard quantitative surveys of creative industries performance. Chris operated especially through interviews with creative industries practitioners in the city, and he was interested especially in geographic information - what spaces in the city were of importance to such practitioners in relation to their creative work?

Brisbane.
The next plenary speaker in this very enjoyable session on day two of the CCi conference is Margaret Simons, asking the question "What are journalists for?" She begins by noting the role of the Australian Press Council, long perceived as a publishers' poodle, and recounts how she has recently been contacted by a researcher at the APC inquiring about the development of journalistic staff numbers in Australian publishers - publishers themselves were not interested to share these numbers, presumably because there is a strong decline in numbers in the current, distressed context of the journalism industry.

Brisbane.
The next plenary speaker here at the CCi conference is Camilla Cooke. She managed the Australian Labor Party's digital campaign during the 2007 Australian federal election - "Australia's first digital election", as she describes it. Initial ideas for this campaign (even before the arrival of Kevin Rudd as opposition leader) were to engage debate, to use the Web for propagating messages, to utilise it as the key route to youth, and to use it for highly efficient and cost-effective marketing. Ultimately, these goals transformed into components like the Kevin07 Website, the social networking spaces, in Facebook and elsewhere, the YouTube channel, and a variety of other online platforms - and they also enabled the campaign to do some slightly cheeky things which would not have worked in other media works.

Brisbane.
There's a great line-up of keynotes and plenary speeches starting this second day of the CCi conference, before we get back to paper sessions: we kick off with Convergence Culture guru and serial book launcher Henry Jenkins, then move on to Camilla Cooke who was the driving force behind the online arm of the Australian Labor Party's successful Kevin07 campaign in the last federal election, and follow this with journalist and commentator Margaret Simons speaking on future directions for mainstream journalism. Should be good!