School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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End date: 2004 × Type: Journal Article × Subject: media and communications ×

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    Network Time and the New Knowledge Epoch
    HASSAN, R (Sage Publications, 2003)
    This article analyses the temporal dimensions of knowledge production. Specifically it discusses the mechanics of the process and how these have changed through what are termed ‘knowledge epochs’. It argues that with the widespread dissemination of clock-time through the Industrial Revolution, the production of knowledge was significantly shaped by the temporality of the clock. Through the convergence of neoliberal globalization and ICT revolution a new powerful temporality has emerged through which knowledge production is refracted: network time. The article concludes that the spread of network time into the realm of the everyday has profound implications for the production of critical and reflexive knowledge in contemporary culture and society.
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    Dream cities: the uncanny powers of electric light
    MCQUIRE, SCOTT ( 2004)
    In his famous 1919 essay, Freud (1955: 219-252) defines the uncanny to include experiences in which inanimate objects seem to come to life. In early modernity, this sense of the uncanny accompanied the spread of electric light, itself a manifestation of the near-miraculous powers of electricity. From the moment of its initial recognition as an independent phenomenon, electricity has been a source of profound wonder. Romantics rapidly identified it with a universal life force, dramatised in the archetypal modern creation scene of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and distilled by Goethe into ‘the soul of the world’. A century later, the prospect of widespread electrification literally dazzled the world, inspiring entrepreneurs, artists and revolutionaries alike with visions of an irresistible electrical future. At the same time, electricity has always led a double life. Beneath the Promethean narrative of limitless possibilities lies a more utilitarian tale of practical development. Counterpointing the arcane myth of electricity’s magical properties — force without muscle or steam, light without flame — is the profane physical reality of its often cumbersome technical infrastructure. Supporting the spark of the incandescent lamp which shines brighter than any jewel are unsightly poles and criss-crossing wires, not to mention ferocious patent wars and internecine struggles to form some of industrial capitalism’s most powerful corporations.
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    Media governmentality, Howardism and the Hanson effect
    Nolan, D. ( 2003)
    In September 1996 Pauline Hanson gave her first speech as an independent MP in the Australian federal parliament. In an address that was to become infamous, Hanson not only repeated claims that government expenditure targeting Indigenous disadvantage was unfair and divisive, but criticised policies of multiculturalism on similar grounds, argued that immigration levels were too high, and suggested the country was in danger of being ‘swamped by Asians’. This speech not only attracted an enormous amount of media attention but in its own right, but was followed by a mediated ‘race debate’ that worked to propel Hanson to the status of media celebrity. In the period that followed Hanson gained a degree of media attention that was unprecedented for an independent politician, with one content analysis of national and metropolitan newspaper coverage finding that she received roughly the same amount of media coverage as the Prime Minister for the next three months (Deutchman and Ellison 1999). This profile led Hanson to establish her own party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which for a time attracted considerable support from voters in both federal and state elections, before negative publicity from financial and administrative mismanagement as well as factional infighting within the party led to a dramatic drop in support. As public debates surrounding Hanson’s coverage attested, for the period that that Hansonism constituted a significant and demonstrable (if ill-defined) political phenomenon, media coverage in general and journalistic practices in particular played a key role.