Entering the Political Arena

I've been invited to take part in a two-day event in Canberra this coming week, organised by the Council for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS) - they're inviting early-career researchers (a definition which I'm slowly starting to slide out of) to talk to politicians about their research in order to better inform members of the legislative about current research agendas and the need for policies which address these aims and build on the findings.

As part of the 'Expanding Horizons' programme, we'll have breakfast with Julie Bishop, the Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, morning tea with the Lindsay Tanner, Shadow Minister for Finance, and will then pair off to meet selected parliamentarians for more private meetings - I've been selected to talk to Senator George Campbell, the Oppositiom Whip. Along the way, we'll also hear from a variety of other high-profile politicians, researchers, and other officeholders in the nexus between education, research, and politics. Should be an interesting (and exhausting) programme!

We've been asked to prepare some brief (120 words!) outlines of our research agendas which are distributed to the politicans before we meet them. My angle will be to talk about new modes of produsage, of course, especially also in an economic context that is informed by creative industries and knowledge economy theories:

Dr Axel Bruns researches collaborative content production in a variety of environments. He is the author of Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production, which examines the emergence of alternative news and commentary publications (including blogs and open news Websites) that enable citizens to become involved in the deliberative processes of democracy.

He is currently extending this research into other fields of user-led and collaborative production. Such approaches open significant new avenues for the content and creative industries, knowledge production, and innovation; this is evident for example in the continuing success of open source software or the emergence of the user-authored Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Such models make an increasingly important contribution to our economies, but need to be supported through legislative and institutional frameworks which recognise their potential and aid their development.

Hopefully this will be enough to get started - it would be great if (beyond the Smart State agenda here in Queensland) federal politicians also put some more support towards the creative industries and related areas of the economy.

Technorati : Australian politics, produsage, produsers
Del.icio.us : Australian politics, produsage, produsers