ATOM2006

My colleague Justin Brow is next; he's been involved in the development of Sticky.net.au and is a researcher in the QUT Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi). He begins with a brief introduction to the economic role of the creative industries - some 140,000 people are working directly in the CI in Australia, but the focus of CI analysis is now shifting from the production of creative outputs themselves to creative industries' input into other industries; some 160,000 people in Australia work in creative occupations within other industries. A further 150,000 people work in managerial and administrative roles related to the CI, establishing a 'creative trident' of occupations and contributing some $21billion to Australian GDP (this is set to double in the coming years).

Cushla Kapitzke is the next speaker here at ATOM2006. She focusses on the implications of copyright law changes in the wake of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and how they may impact on media educators. She notes the rise of a large variety of neologisms - postindustrialism, fast capitalism, the information age, the creative economy, postmodernity, neoliberalism, globalisation, and McDonaldisation - even while the U.S. remains firmly routed in the traditional assumptions of modernity in a variety of ways. Libraries, for example, are often still excellently set up, but remain largely empty as they've failed to engage with the post-modern information needs of their clients. Cushla suggest a set of epochal shifts, from ancient ceremony to the traditional library of modernity, to the new 'libr@ry' which is being explored developed in a number of configurations by various organisations.

Lee Burton and Peter Maggs from the Australian Children's Television Foundation are the next keynote speakers at ATOM 2006, speaking on the children's television debate. The Australian Communications and Media Authority's current review of children's television standards provides a backdrop to this debate. They begin by showing a brief video of kids' statements of what thye'd like to see on TV - perhaps in the form of a dedicated kids' TV channel...

Peter now notes the long history and conflicted future of the ACTF. Government requirements call for 260 hours of C and 130 hours of P programming; within this C quota, Australian TV channels must show a total of 32 hours of first-run children's drama (financed usually around 30% with txpayers' money). However, such shows are invcreasingly shown at times when the intended audience isn't around - kids typically aren't home at 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon, for example. Daytime programming is largely filled with U.S.- and Japanese-made animation, which is often provided to channels free of charge and makes its money through selling related merchandise. In the afternoon, on the other hand, the 4 p.m. timeslot is filled with locally-made shows competing for the same audience, even though the audience isn't likely to be home yet. This could be seen as a waste of taxpayers' money. On the other hand, the audience figures for kid watching TV peak between 5 and 10 p.m. - along with primetime for other demographics.

As if there hadn't been enough conferences over the last few weeks: I'm spending this weekend (mostly) at the Australian Teachers of Media conference here at QUT in Brisbane, which was organised by my colleague Michael Dezuanni. I'm also going to be a featured speaker on Sunday afternoon, talking about how to educate the coming 'Generation C' of produsers.

However, the conference starts with Mizuko Ito from the University of Southern California, speaking about the social life of mobile media. Japan is of course one of the key drivers of (3G) mobile media uptake at this point, especially within the younger generation. Mimi has mainly focussed on the use of digital technology amongst young people outside of school or work - i.e. in what are traditionally seen as non-educational contexts. Here, it is important to understand young people's uses of new technologies on their own terms - to regard them as digial natives and study their uses as such. Further, it is important to understand the social construction of such technologies. What emerges here are kid-driven peer-to-peer knowledge economies, from which adults have much to learn. Compared to traditional anthropology, Mimi's work also looks at a hybrid of the real (the physically local) and the virtual (the online and the remote); this can capture everyday action and local knowledge in personalised, non-institutionalised, and fluid settings.