School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemStill the Main Source: The Established Media(ANU Press, 2018)The Australian federal election of July 2016 came at a time of ongoing turbulence and transition for the established press and broadcasting sectors—the ‘legacy’ media, as they are often described. In the period since 2013, when Wayne Errington argued that ‘mainstream media still matters’ (2015: 67), there have been more redundancies in the Fairfax, News Coporation, and ABC newsrooms. More local newspapers, such as the Cooma Monaro Express, have closed. New entrants to the Australian public sphere such as The Conversation, and local versions of global news brands such as the Guardian, Huffington Post, Daily Mail and Buzzfeed have emerged as serious competitors for the established providers such as Fairfax Media and News Corporation Australia (News Corp). And yet, as recent research has found (Watkins et al. 2015; McNair et al. 2017), mainstream broadcast and press news brands remain the main sources of news for the majority of Australians.
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ItemCivil Voices: Researching Not-For-Profit Advocacy(Pro Bono Australia and Human Rights Law Centre, 2017)In 2004 The Australia Institute led a survey of the non-government sector and produced the report Silencing Dissent: Non-government organisations and Australian democracy. It concluded that NGOs felt the government was undermining their credibility, shutting them out of civic discourse, defunding (or threatening to defund) organisations that were considered uncooperative, and micromanaging NGO activities by dismantling peak bodies. The report detailed the growing fears across the NGO sector concerning their right to advocate in the public policy domains of most concern to them, and more broadly about their changing role in the democratic process. A lot has happened in the 13 years since this report was published including changes to the political and regulatory landscape, the formation of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission, the passing of the Charities Act and advances in the digital landscape. However the threat to advocacy remains a concern. Civil Voices set out to re-examine NGO perceptions about their capacity to participate in public debate and see how public debate and advocacy has changed since the last study. What we found is that not for profits are on a path of quiet advocacy. To a greater or lesser degree civil society organisations are engaging in various forms of “self silencing” – treading very carefully in their advocacy work less they risk financial security and political retribution. Australian civil society needs to be supported, and encouraged to engage in frank and fearless advocacy. We cannot allow ourselves to become complacent in this regard. The more the silencing of civil society is normalised the higher the risk becomes to the overall quality of Australian democracy.
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ItemPublic opinion and policy responsiveness: the case of same-sex marriage in Australia(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2018)This article examines congruence between public opinion and politicians’ positions on same-sex marriage in the Australian House of Representatives from 2012 to 2016. In contrast median voter theorem and other office-motivated frameworks, Australian federal politicians have largely ignored majority opinion, which has been supportive of same-sex marriage for a decade. Using a unique dataset (n = 601,550) of voter preferences collected during the 2013 federal election, and collated Hansard and media data, we compare public opinion on same-sex marriage with politicians’ public positions. We find a status quo bias, suggesting the influence of special interest groups in this policy area. Yet, we also find parliamentarians are responsive to public opinion once it reaches a critical level, and that very low opposition to same-sex marriage in an electorate predicts policy support from its MP, which varies by party and over time.
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ItemThe Future Newsroom(Facebook, 2017-09-18)
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ItemPOLITWEETS: social media as a platform for political engagement between Victorian politicians and citizens(TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2016)
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ItemA new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2016-11)This article draws on ‘hyperlocal’ journalism scholarship to explore the civic functions of Australian local reporting in the digital age. Through place-based case studies based on interviews with media and civic leaders from three disparate communities, we find community groups are engaging with social media, particularly Facebook, to connect locals to services and community news. Community service providers are increasingly adept at using social media and, in many cases, prefer it to legacy media to gather, disseminate and exchange news. Concurrently, legacy media have lost newsroom resources that limit their practice of ‘shoe leather’ journalism and increase their dependence on official sources without independent verification. Yet, journalists are adapting to newsroom cutbacks by forming symbiotic relationships with non-media news providers, including local police. We find there are promising alternatives for fostering civic discourse and engagement through digital technologies despite less traditional local news and a reduced capacity for verified journalism.
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ItemThe political economy of the print media and the decline of corporate investigative journalism in Australia(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2014-10-02)
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ItemUnderstanding the civic impact of journalism: A realistic evaluation perspective(Taylor & Francis, 2017-10-03)The importance of journalism to civil society is constantly proclaimed, but empirical evidence on journalism's impact, and how this operates, is surprisingly thin. Indeed, there is confusion even about what is meant by the term “impact”. Meanwhile, the issue of the role of journalism is becoming increasingly urgent as a consequence of the rapid changes engulfing the news media, brought about by technological change and the flow-on effect to the traditional advertising-supported business model. Assessing the impact of journalism has recently been the topic of debate among practitioners and scholars particularly in the United States, where philanthropists have responded to the perceived crisis in investigative journalism by funding not-for-profit newsrooms, with resulting new pressures being placed on journalists and editors to quantify their impact on society. These recent attempts have so far failed to achieve clarity or a satisfactory conclusion, which is not surprising given the complex web of causation within which journalism operates. In this paper, the authors propose a stratified definition of journalistic impact and function. They propose a methodology for studying impact drawing on realistic evaluation—a theory-based approach developed primarily to assess large social programmes occurring in open systems. The authors argue this could allow a conceptual and methodological advance on the question of media impacts, leading to research capable of usefully informing responses at a time of worrying change.
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ItemBehind the newspaper paywall – lessons in charging for online content: a comparative analysis of why Australian newspapers are stuck in the purgatorial space between digital and print(SAGE Publications, 2015)This article examines one response to the financial ‘crisis’ of print newspapers addressing the rise of digital paywall systems to monetise journalism. It analyses selected daily mastheads’ paywalls in the United States, Britain and Australia, comparing the type, pricing and audience uptake. This article reviews scholarly and industry literature to identify international newspaper paywall trends and considers these in the Australian context. The article finds paywalls are becoming the norm, with metered paywalls favoured over hard paywalls; paywall prices are increasing, after initial reductions, to offset digital subscriptions cannibalising print subscription revenues. As audiences and advertising migrate from print to our screens, a broader view is required. The argument here is that, in the short term, revenues generated from Australian digital subscriptions and digital advertising alone cannot sustain newsrooms, but the cost of print together with falling hardcopy circulations suggest digital paywalls must not be overlooked. In the immediate, Australia’s major newspapers are stuck in a purgatorial space between paywalls and print.