School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemRelatively benign corruption? Critical discourse analysis for media students( 2007)Don Watson, in his book Death Sentence, claims that the way in which the media disseminate information and the way politicians manipulate this process have resulted in a kind of corruption. Assuming this is the case, I suggest in this paper that it is therefore useful to equip students in media courses with the skills of critical discourse analysis. A useful starting point for teaching these skills to undergraduates, I have found, is a newspaper article by Alexander Downer, excerpted from one of his speeches about the 'war on terror'. Such a mediated political linguistic act as this will of course inherently involve power or resistance to power, and will contribute to the formation of a specific discourse community via strategies of coercion, resistance, opposition or protest, and dissimulation/de-legitimisation. This necessarily results in relations of struggle that are played out at the lexicogrammatical level, on which I invite students to focus. Such media texts, which represent and foreground starkly opposing ideologies, can be useful vehicles for teaching the concept of discourse communities, as well as the reading strategies of critical discourse analysis.
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ItemNetwork Time and the New Knowledge Epoch(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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ItemInternational audience research: continuing concerns and novel developments( 2006)Recently there has been a proliferation of texts, edited volumes, and essays on audience research that testifies to both the conceptual and empirical advances as well as the on-going debates in the field. These have been engendered by the continuing theoretical advances and by the refinement of research methodologies and areas of research focus, all of which have in turn, been promoted by debates within the field – almost, family quarrels – as well as by the influence of developments in other, cognate fields of enquiry, from anthropology to political philosophy to development studies. These influences have been particularly important in encouraging the emergence of cross-cultural studies of audiences. But while an increasing amount of the research has been emerging from most of the continents, much of the conversation and debate has appeared to be happening among those researchers working on projects that are mainly based in Europe and North America. This special issue on International Audience Research is an attempt to bring into the dialogue a range of work which engages with or challenges existing conceptual orthodoxies or make empirical advances in terms of novel methodologies or relatively under-explored audiences.
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ItemDream cities: the uncanny powers of electric light( 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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ItemTV news titles: picturing the planet( 2006)The structures of globalization are insanely complex. The world's news media must at least try to make some sense of these structures visible. That is, the news must gratify the needs of an audience which requires an understanding of what causal systems are responsible for such felt effects as oil prices, currency fluctuations, and the migration of employment. Media professionals' ethics, peer pressure and pride in their craft impel them to make some effort towards educating the citizenry in the terms and conditions of participation in the global economy. And, in light of popular movements like the Live8 concerts in support of Bob Geldoff's "Make Poverty History" campaign, the news touches on the possibilities and challenges of global governance.
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ItemThe constitution of unemployment: Journalism as a technology of citizenship(RMIT University, 2003)
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ItemMedia governmentality, Howardism and the Hanson effect( 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.