The CPD has just launched a new publication called Thinking Points: talking points for thinking people, providing rapid-fire responses to the debates of the day with an eye to the big picture and the decades to come.
Senator John Faulkner’s announcement of changes to Australia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) laws is long overdue, and his approach promises to address a number of concerns about FOI in Australia.
First, addressing the egregious abuse of the ‘cabinet in confidence’ provision, exemplified by the wheeling of trolleys of documents in and out of the cabinet room, is a major step forward, as is the removal of conclusive certificates. However, simply reducing the legal loopholes available for abuse by government and the public service is only part of the solution.
An upbeat piece about politics and the internet on New Matilda here.
Is there anything to look forward to? The gnomes running the internet have given us a few reasons to be optimistic about journalism and democracy.
The US is finally stepping up and implementing some of those e-democracy initiatives they’ve been promising since AOL, and Obama’s Change.gov is an encouraging sign that they might actually be serious about it. Obama’s good on net neutrality too, which bodes well for continued internet access.
Locally, however, Stephen Conroy is dead keen to slow down the Australian internet so Clive Hamilton can steam open every email to check for child porn prior to delivery, but public opinion, technical implementation and, uh, reality are putting the brakes on his plan. The campaign against the so-called Clean Feed is a great example of how new media technologies are "hyper-empowering" (for lack of a better term) ordinary people. A relatively small group of highly connected people on Twitter sparked a loud online campaign that feed into initiatives by the EFA, the Greens and later on GetUp that has comprehensively upset Conroy’s plans. While Conroy will no doubt push onwards, the online environment has allowed these single issue activists to run rings around Conroy and Hamilton’s free speech = child porn argument. The outburst on Twitter no doubt contributed to the appearance of @turnbullmalcolm and @kevinruddpm on Twitter.
With the US election likely to be decided today, it’s a good time to have a look at the way social media’s been used in this campaign. From the massive fundraising of Obama’s microdonors, to the fact checking of candidates, to the raving lunacy of the wingnut fringe, this election has really brought social media’s promises and pitfalls to the fore.
Jeff Jarvis smacks down the American media’s love for (and lack of skill at) horse race politics:
It’s amazing that reporters love horse-race coverage since they’re so damned lousy at it…
Any idiot can bet on a horse and lose. And there’s a word for them. Losers.
While we’ve also been quite critical here about the Australian election coverage and its horse-race narratives, we’re very lucky to have an electoral system that is open to good psephological analysis. As Simon Jackman points out in addressing the lack of an American Antony Green:
The United States doesn’t have an Antony Green. I’m not sure it can. It doesn’t have the ABC (the national broadcaster), it doesn’t have the AEC, nor compulsory voting, nor standardized, nationwide election administration (balloting procedures, registration procedures, etc).
Our latest piece is up at the ABC here Feel free to comment there or here.
Club Bloggery: Once were barons
By Axel Bruns, Jason Wilson, and Barry Saunders
The Bulletin magazine, published by ACP, has closed down after almost 130 years of publishing.
Though we often give the print media a hard time here at Club Bloggery, we’re not so sanguine about the end of the iconic magazine, The Bulletin, last month. Despite its virulently racist origins, and its tendency under Kerry Packer to be used now and then as the mogul’s mouthpiece, its end is an alarming symptom of something wider and more serious. The worrying structural problem it reveals is the difficulty of sustaining any venues for the specialised task of investigative journalism in Australian and international media. Read more…
Dan Hunter of the University of Melbourne at the Computer Games, Law, Regulation, Policy Symposium 2008 speaking on innovation, property and virtual worlds.
Fred von Lohmann of the EFF at the Computer Games, Law, Regulation, Policy Symposium 2008, talking about copyright and contract law as it pertains to machinima. Read more…
To all the visitors from timblair.net, welcome! Apologies for the commenting problems, clearly our funding doesn’t cover a half-decent webdesigner. We wanted to come over and chat with you, but
If your comment hasn’t appeared, it’s not cause we’ve deleted it, we’re having some minor problems with the CCS. Normal service will resume shortly. Read more…
Pip Starr was a Melbourne activist filmmaker. He made powerful, intense documentaries about injustice. His documentary, Through the Wire is a heartbreaking account of the Woomera protests and a powerful indictment of Australia’s policy of compulsory detention of asylum seekers.
This site is a group blog run by the three of us - Barry Saunders, Jason Wilson, and Axel Bruns. What we’re looking to do here is to track and analyse the further development of the phenomenon of citizen journalism, in Australia - where we’re all based - and elsewhere; in fact, the recent federal elections in Australia in late 2007, and in the U.S. in late 2008, produced plenty of interesting developments for us to observe and examine. In the Australian context, we were also part of the team behind an ARC Linkage research project into citizen journalism which operated a hyperlocal citizen journalism site for the 2007 election, at youdecide2007.org.
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