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Brisbane.


The second keynote at ANZCA 2009 is by Philip Kitchen, whose interest is in integrated marketing communication, which he says is especially important in the context of the current financial crisis. In this context, there's a need for curriculum, not conquest marketing, for relationship building rather than just sales, for sharing with consumers rather than shouting at them. Consumer marketplace empowerment, however, may only be apparent at this point - while we are moving in that direction, we haven't reached the end yet.

Brisbane.


The third speaker in this ANZCA 2009 session is Rowan Wilken, whose interest is in the metaphors applied to mobile telephony. The power of metaphor lies in the fact that it enables one well-know domain to provide an interpretive framework for another, less known domain. Metaphor proliferates, therefore, especially also in descriptions of new technologies, and has been studied in some detail in relation to the Internet, but less so for mobile technologies.

Common metaphors include navigation - cyber, for example, comes from the Greek kybernetes, or steersman, and the information superhighway is a more recent metaphor in the same vein. Such metaphors also point to the need to regulate and control these spaces, and are also related to a common group of transportation metaphors. Another common metaphor is linked to pioneer myths - as in Howard Rheingold's book Virtual Communities, at one point subtitled Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. These perpetuate western colonial metaphors and a private property model, some have argued - again highlighting possible regulatory frameworks for these new technologies.

Brisbane.


The next speaker at ANZCA 2009 is Jess Pacella, who focusses on new opportunities in cultural geography by combining Global Information Services and cultural studies approaches. The role of mental maps emerging from semi-structured interviews is particularly interesting here, and Jess explores this in the context of media depictions of Adelaide's northern suburbs and their effects on residents' mental depictions of the area.

South Australian media present a consistently negative image of the northern suburbs; this leads to Adelaide watching this place in a particular way. Jess and her team monitored news stories in a number of state outlets, and found an overwhelmingly negative coverage, focussing especially on crime. This also leads to residents downplaying their origins in job applications and similar documents.

Brisbane.


The first session here at ANZCA 2009 begins with a paper by Lincoln Dahlberg, whose interest is in the analysis of economic systems by various discourse theories. He begins by noting that Habermas after 1989 gave up on the possibility of post-capitalism, shifting to arguing for a democratic oversight of capitalism instead; critics say that at best this is a weak stance. His separation of spheres between culture and economy is also seen as flawed, according to his critics.

Laclau's theory provides what may be a more cogent theory of capitalism; it dispenses with that binary division, and more explicitly focusses on power and contestation of dominant forces and social relations, providing opportunities for how capitalism may be countered. What does it mean to think of capitalism and contestation in terms of discourse, then? In contrast to Habermas, Lincoln sees discourse as all meaningful practices, ideas, objects, and thus includes the economy in this; capitalism can therefore be seen as a hegemonic discourse in its own right, which positions its subjects. It is ideological in that it has become seen as natural.

Brisbane.


Over the next few days I'll be blogging from the ANZCA 2009 conference - one which I didn't have to travel very far for, as it's held right here on the QUT Creative Industries Precinct down from my office. We begin with a keynote by Barbie Zelitzer, President of the International Communication Association, whose focus is on the visual depiction of death in the news. Such images require the viewer to imagine what we cannot see, but then, news is supposed to tell us what is there. The moment of death is one of the most powerful images in the news, and raises (amongst others) a wide range of ethical issues. Key recent examples include images related to the 'war on terror', from the 11 September attacks to the hanging of Saddam Hussein.

Hamburg.


The final speaker for Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009 is Gabriele Siegert from the University of Zürich, who summarises the conference. She begins by noting the unwillingness of citizens to continue to pay for media, and suggests that changed orientation in media organisations will necessarily also change the content of the media - product placement, for example, will necessarily affect the content within which products are placed.

There are two key areas here: the structural changes in advertising, for which product placement is one phenomenon - it is a sign of a new logic which is present well beyond television entertainment. However, this new model will not replace more conventional advertising; not least, it has yet to be researched in full.

Hamburg.


The next speaker is Dieter Klumpp, Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, host of Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009. Changes in what is considered to be quality content are driven by changes to the entire media sector - old media are perhaps being substituted in part by new media, but the demand for information has not grown as quickly as the availability of content, so this is nowhere near a full substitution. There is a suggestion that the public is being atomised, that it is fragmenting, and what quality means is ever more difficult to identify.

Hamburg.


The next speaker at the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009 conference is me, speaking about produsage and appropriate approaches for business to cooperate with produsage communities. Here's the Powerpoint with audio soundtrack; audio to come as soon as possible:

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