|
|
|
Contents
Abstracts
David McKnight
‘Not attributable to official sources’: Counter-propaganda and the mass media
During the Cold War in Australia, the political agenda was dominated by the threat of communism. One factor in building this agenda was the ‘counter-propaganda operations’ of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) which regularly released unattributable information to selected mass media outlets. In the period when these activities were most prevalent (1960–72), ASIO officers had regular contact with editors and with selected journalists on major newspapers and television. This formed part of a broader ‘cultural Cold War’ in which anticommunism was an organising principle. This article outlines new information on these activities, suggests that these operations were more extensive than previously thought, and discusses this relationship in terms of the scholarly work on media sources, government-sponsored intervention in the media and classical theories of propaganda. It suggests that one way to understand the controversial media role in counter-propaganda.
back to top 
Susan Bye
Sydney Tonight versus In Melbourne Tonight: Television, Taste and Identity
In this discussion, I focus on the varying fortunes of Sydney Tonight and In Melbourne Tonight (IMT) in order to explore the very local nature of television in Australia in the 1950s and early 1960s. As part of this process, I document the way that the success of IMT and the perceived failure of Sydney Tonight became the basis for a sustained discussion in both the Sydney and Melbourne print media about the respective discernment of each city’s viewers. Buttressed by continuing public anxieties about the sophistication of the developing Australian television culture, the rejection of inferior locally produced programs became understood as a marker of discrimination and maturity.
back to top
Peichi Chung
The creative industry of Singapore: Cultural policy in the age of globalisation
This article examines the development of the creative industry in Singapore in the context of globalisation. In studying the application of a government-based development model that prioritises economic goals in fostering a culture-based creative industry, the article explores the effects on the complex social network when the state is involved in introducing Western globalisation into the local society of Singapore. It discusses the major government initiatives to develop the creative industry and the views of local new media artists towards this policy. The article concludes with the resilience of local culture, arguing that the public response and the ‘bottom-up’ artist movement are beginning to embrace new media art forms as part of the national culture in Singapore. New media technology has been a site of cultural practice that allows media artists to participate in the state’s development of a homegrown new media industry.
back to top
Kelly McWilliam, John Hartley and Mark Gibson
Introduction: Digital literacy
This issue of MIA is based on several of the papers presented at the Digital Literacy and Creative Innovation in a Knowledge Economy symposium held by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at QUT and the ARC Cultural Research Network in March 2007. The articles in this issue consider how the rapid development of digital technologies has changed the production and consumption of media content, altering the very nature of the relationship between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’.
Download [pdf 165kb]
back to top
Sir Ken Robinson
The other climate crisis: Digital culture, demography and education
The world is facing two urgent crises. The first is the climate change crisis, a result of hundreds of years of problematic use of the planet’s natural resources. The second, this article argues, is a crisis in public education, which is the result of an ‘exactly parallel’ misunderstanding and mismanagement of human resources. This article proposes that these crises need to be tackled together, and considers the emergence of digital cultures as presenting both significant challenges and opportunities.
Download [pdf 235kb]
back to top
John Hartley, Kelly McWilliam, Jean Burgess and John Banks
The uses of multimedia: Three digital literacy case studies
We identify some tensions between formal education and informal learning in the uses of popular literacy since the nineteenth century, in order to argue for a ‘demand-led’ model of education in digital literacy. We go on to analyse three case studies — digital storytelling, the Flickr photosharing site and the MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) Fury — to discuss issues arising from demand-led learning, which requires a procedural (not propositional) model of knowledge, a vernacular and informal model of creativity, and a ‘navigator’ and entrepreneurial model of consumer agency. In light of these examples, the article raises the question of how digital literacy can and should be taught.
Download [pdf 393kb]
back to top
Mark Gibson
Beyond literacy panics: Digital literacy and educational optimism
Public debate over education has been beset in recent years by highly charged ‘literacy wars’ between conservatives and progressives, casting a pall of gloom over the direction of education generally. This article argues that the theme of ‘digital literacy’ has a potential to shift these debates, opening new possibilities for educational optimism. It draws attention first to the discipline involved in the use of digital media, challenging easy assumptions that such discipline belongs only to print; second, to cognitive processes over content or values, significantly altering the way we think about the social significance of media; and third, to the production end of media.
Download [pdf 244kb]
back to top
Catharine Lumby and Kath Albury
Homer versus Homer: Digital media, literacy and child protection
Despite growing work on the educational potential of digital media, literacy debates in Australia have remained locked in a banal opposition between serious educational aims and trivial entertainment media. To reinvigorate these debates, this article overviews progressive approaches to media literacy and case studies debates around the sexualisation of girls and young women in popular media. Ultimately, the authors — drawing on their submission to the recent Senate Inquiry on the subject — identify two ways to reset the media education and literacy agenda by incorporating a more productive engagement with digital media literacy.
back to top
Gerard Goggin
Opening up literacy with the digital turn: Ideas from mobiles
This paper argues that digital technologies offer an opportunity to open up and rethink cultural literacy. It discusses and critiques prevalent approaches to digital literacy, and examines the kinds of new literacies emerging from mobile phone culture and developments in mobile media. The paper concludes with suggestions for how mobiles can inform not only an understanding of digital literacy, but directions in literacy in general.
back to top
Ellie Rennie and Julian Thomas
Inside the house of SYN: Digital literacy and youth media
This paper examines the role of community media organisations in the diffusion of digital literacy. In Australia, a number of media organisations, established by the so-called ‘digital generation’, are experimenting with new training methods and content forms. Such groups aim to provide their constituents with deep and immersive media opportunities. We examine the methods and outcomes of SYN Media (a youth-run media organisation in Melbourne) and discuss the implications for digital literacy. Our research suggests that, although the systems and forms that make up digital literacy are in still under development, organisations like SYN are allowing that development to occur. Both audience and the particular habitus of the media workplace are important factors in SYN’s success.
back to top
Greg Hearn and Justin Brow
60Sox: An experiment in building digital literacies for emerging professionals in the digital content industries
What are the education-to-work transition experiences of graduate creative professionals in a time when user-generated content is radically changing the organisations in which they will work? 60Sox is an online creative ecology for these emerging professionals that attempts to answer this question, in the process of showcasing and developing their creative and generic career capacities. We report here on the development and operation of 60Sox.org.au, and argue for its significance in terms of: (1) the centrality of human capital arguments in the operation of the creative economy; (2) the importance of ‘creative ecologies’ as an emerging business concept, particularly in the digital industries; (3) the arrival of online and peer-to-peer (p2p) architecture as a changing distribution mode within the digital content industries; (4) the related importance of pro-am creativity; and (5) the recognition of skill shortages and training requirements in Australia’s digital content industries.
back to top
Susan Luckman
Turning play into pay: Digital literacies and new lessons for the post-Web 2.0 generation
Digital technologies are clearly enabling greater access to cultural production, broadening the spaces in which we market our sense of self, and thus facilitating small-scale creative entrepreneurialism. However, alongside the many opportunities undoubtedly offered by co-creator Web 2.0 technologies, true digital literacy requires an as yet unclear level of control over the whole process — both in the short and long term — in order to ensure that creative development is undertaken in a personally and collectively sustainable fashion. This article briefly outlines some of new digital literacies on which educators need to focus if we are to empower people for creation (production), not just consumption, in this emerging media landscape.
back to top
Jerry Watkins
Digital literacy and cultural institutions
This paper argues that a focus on digital literacy could be critical to the further development of a content-rich interaction between cultural institutions and communities of interest. Passive cultural audiences and active cultural participants will continue to expect higher levels of interactivity with institutionally located content. Social media could redefine the exchange of information and meaning between content-rich cultural institutions and content-hungry, digitally literate communities of interest. The digitally literate community not only consumes digital culture, it can produce and distribute its own artefacts in collaboration with the institution.
back to top
Melissa Gregg and Catherine Driscoll
Message me: Temporality, location and everyday technologies
In this article, we investigate the impact of online platforms on the everyday lives of users, including how the interests of those users affect the forms of emerging digital culture. In doing this, we stress temporality and location as crucial to digital literacies of various kinds and thus undo some of the clichés about freedom, constraint and opportunity associated with various web platforms. We also pay heed to the complex cultural literacies at work in online life at a time when their benefits seem dangerously poised to be instrumentalised for business and management ends. Finally, we stress the significance of the forms of support and solace offered in online venues that exceed, when they don’t actually resist, efforts to translate them into the more commercially recognised languages of profit and productivity.
back to top
Kate Oakley
The art of education: New competencies for the creative workforce
This article is a summary of a longer study entitled Educating for the Creative Workforce: Rethinking Arts and Education, commissioned by the Australia Council as part of its research partnership with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation. That study analyses the claims for the role of the arts in education, concentrating on empirical research studies that looked at arts education programs and sought to explore whether, and how, they can contribute to contemporary approaches to education for the ‘creative workforce’. In line with the focus of this special issue, this paper seeks to draw parallels between this debate and that on digital literacy. In both cases, we look at how these areas are said to contribute to the skills and competencies required for the contemporary workforce, the differences between formal and informal approaches to skill acquisition, and the degree to which both areas are often surrounded by notions of empowerment.
back to top
John Quiggin and Jason Potts
Economics of non-market innovation and digital literacy
This article is an abbreviated version of a debate between two economists holding somewhat different perspectives on the nature of non-market production in the space of new digital media. While the ostensible focus here is on the role of markets in the innovation of new technologies to create new economic value, this context also serves to highlight the private and public value of digital literacy.
back to top
Reviews
Edited by Kitty van Vuuren
American Society of Magazine Editors, The Best American Magazine Writing 2006
Andrejevic, Mark, iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era
Awkward, Michael, Soul Covers: Rhythm and Blues Remakes and the Struggle for Artistic Identity — Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Phoebe Snow
Beebe, Roger and Middleton, Jason (eds), Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones
Couldry, Nick, Livingstone, Sonia and Markham, Tim, Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention
Grainge, P., Brand Hollywood: $elling Entertainment in a Global Media Age
Haas, Tanni, The Pursuit of Public Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism
McMillin, Divya C., International Media Studies
Pickering, Michael (ed.), Research Methods for Cultural Studies
Rajan, Nalini (ed.), 21st Century Journalism in India
Redmond, Sean and Holmes, Su (eds), Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader
Scheuer, Jeffrey, The Big Picture: Why Democracies Need Journalistic Excellence
Shimizu, Celine, P., The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene
Slade, Giles, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America
Stanton, Richard, Media Relations
Trapeze Collective (eds), Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing the World
Wood, Aylish, Digital Encounters
Young, Sally (ed.), Government Communication in Australia
back to top
|
