Politics

Canberra.
The next speaker in this ANZCA 2010 session is Sora Park, whose focus is on online participation behaviour in South Korea. As part of a larger study, she conducted a content analysis of online discussion boards - which are a major site for political discussion and organisation in the country. How is information exchanged, diffused, and consumed online through such spaces?

Korea has one of the highest levels of broadband penetration in the world; some 90% of the population use the Net daily, and some 29% participate in online discussions. During the political riots in 2008, online discussion boards were important for organising activities, but there are also concerns about the lack of balance in political discussion - a spiral of silence may be present here, reducing the presence of alternative voices.

Canberra.
We're now about to start the second day at ANZCA 2010, in a still very chilly Canberra. First up is the second conference keynote, by Robyn Archer. She begins with the question of what drives change - such as individual aims and ambitions; collective needs gathered in democratic processes or popular revolutions. Conservative powers will resist such change - and the mechanisms of mass communication will provide a stage for such struggles to be conducted. The matter of change still depends on how we act on the information we receive, and the technology at our disposal. This is as true for arts and culture as it is for politics.

Canberra.
The final speaker at ANZCA 2010 for this session is Myra Gurney, whose interest is also in Australian political debate; she notes the increasing intensity of judgment of politicians' public utterances and the fast dissemination of any soundbite. Speaking plainly, spontaneously, and unambiguously has become a risk for professional politicians, and is increasingly kept in check by their media minders.

Kevin Rudd has been pilloried for his sometimes overly verbose and prolix expression - and this hints at the perceived need for a vigorous control of political statements, as well as at the perception that politicians cannot be trusted and speak with forked tongues. This is not confined to Australia, nor to politics, but certainly highly noticeable here, too. Democracy is drowning in distrust, as John Faulkner has said. The politics of ideology and philosophy have been replaced by the politics of pragmatism and personality.

Canberra.
The next speaker at ANZCA 2010 is Geoffrey Craig, whose focus is on the public image of (now former) Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd has been widely criticised for an often somewhat stilted public persona. This ties into Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the permanent manners of being, seeing, acting and thinking, and the schemes of perception, conception, and action. These are also situated in fields of action which bestow individuals with authority and power once they understand and negotiate the norms and rules of the specific game.

Canberra.
The final session at ANZCA 2010 today starts with Libby Lester, whose focus is on online media in the 2010 Tasmanian state elections. She begins by describing the election tally room, at the Hobart casino (!); there tends to be little cross-traffic between the tally room and the rest of the casino. Tallying is still a very traditional process, with updates being made physically on boards, and state and local journalists going about their business, with a few national journalists thrown in. The general public is allowed in to observe the process, but without simultaneous access to broadcast media it is difficult to understand what is happening.

Canberra.
The final speaker in this session at ANZCA 2010 is Kerry Green, who presents on the Northern Adelaide Research Archive, an archive which aims to connect a range of previously isolated information on Northern Adelaide. Northern Adelaide has tended to be represented as backward and crime-ridden in the media, and this has been a cause of some concern; prominent people from the area, including singer Jimmy Barnes, have spoken out against this and pushed for a change in media attitudes.

In part, this was facilitated through the organisation of the Northern Summit, developing a number of ideas for change - for example, mapping and coordinating the positive activities happening in the area; developing life transition programmes based on these maps, linked with TAFEs and universities; and improving publicity and access to information for those who can benefit from it. Web 2.0 technology is seen as an important element in this.

Canberra.
The final speaker in this session at ANZCA 2010 is Georgie McClean from SBS, whose focus is on cultural participation in a multicultural context. SBS has a brief to enhance cultural exchange and understanding, and with the move from public service broadcasting to public service media there are new opportunities for this through the use of new participatory media platforms. However, while some barriers to access are lowered, many constituencies can still be left out of the process - those already engaged may be those most likely to profit from new forms of engagement, too.

Canberra.
The first paper session at ANZCA 2010 starts with a presentation by Tim Marjoribanks, whose interest is in media representations of Sudanese people in Australia. He begins by pointing to the societal context of debates over discrimination against African Australians; the Australian Human Rights Commission reported on this recently and found evidence of discrimination and resultant social exclusion across many aspects of their lives. Negative representations in the mainstream media were partly blamed for this, too. The experiences of Sudanese people living in Australia have been especially highlighted in this context, especially also as they are the largest groups of humanitarian arrivals from Africa into Australia.

Canberra.
After yesterday's CCI Symposium, I've made the trip down to frosty Canberra for this year's ANZCA conference. We start this morning with the first conference keynote, by John Durham Peters, who begins by considering democracy as a political category - for a very long time, it has been seen as an impossible and preposterous, so for it to be seen as a sine qua non is remarkable.

There are various obstacles to democracy, of course: chiefly, scale and human nature. For the ancient Greeks, democracy had to be small - even Athens was seen as too large, and democracy was thought to be able to be workable only if all participants were able to get to know one another personally. For Plato, the ideal number of citizens for a functioning democracy was precisely 5040, in fact. At the same time, small size was also seen as making democracy unsustainable. So, democracy was seen as most workable where citizens could meet one another in political assemblies.

With the Internet Turning 40 and International Communication Association conferences completed, I'm briefly back in Brisbane, before setting off for the Australia/New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) conference in Canberra next week (hopefully with a recharged audio recorder!).

In the meantime, here's a quick update on some new publications I've been involved in - a number of my recent book chapters on a range of topics have now been published:

First, with a chapter on "News Blogs and Citizen Journalism" in e-Journalism: New Media and News Media I'm introducing my work on gatewatching and citizen journalism to an Indian readership - the book was edited by Kiran Prasad, who was my office mate at the University of Leeds while I was there in 2007 to do some research for the produsage book, and was published by B.R. Publishing in Delhi. I don't think the publisher actually has a Website - but there's a good overview of the collection at Cyberjournalist, and it also includes contact details for BR Publishing.