gatewatching

There’s been a lot of discussion over the past few weeks about the continuing struggle between NewsCorp chairman Rupert Murdoch’s defensive and protectionist approach to online news, and ABC Managing Director Mark Scott’s ambitious ABC Open strategy to increase dissemination of its news content and incorporate user-generated content more strongly. Some of that discussion has been insightful, some, not unexpectedly, much less so.

I’m already on record as saying that I think that - outside niche markets - Murdoch’s paywall plans are doomed to fail, and fail miserably; most news users simply don’t care enough about NewsCorp’s specific flavour of news to prefer it so much that they’d be willing to pay money for it, if much the same material is also available for free elsewhere. (If this report from Forrester is right, Murdoch should certainly think twice about what he’s proposing to do.) I’ve also been less than convinced by those commentators who say that the ABC’s plans for a stronger embrace of user-generated content, and the gradual or not-so-gradual decline of commercial news organisations, are ‘bad for journalism’, for two reasons:

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journalism, media abc, ABC Open, online news, paywall, Rupert Murdoch, social media

I’ve been invited to speak at Media 140 in Sydney tomorrow. It’s now sold out so I can’t encourage readers to come along, though the ABC will be streaming it. This is an international event, which is focussed on exploring

the disruptive nature of ‘real-time’ social media looking at tools such as Twitter, live-blogging, facebook and other social networking tools as they rapidly transform the media in real-time.

I’ve been invited by way of the good people at newmatilda.com, where I occasionally pass comment on such topics.

Each speaker gets five minutes, and below the fold I’ve reproduced the text of something like what I’ll say tomorrow. Actually, this is more like what I would say I had the chance - there’s another couple of hundred words that need to come out of there by my calculations.

Comments and feedback most welcome - I was asked to speak on the Iranian elections and social media, and I’ve tried to address myself to what I saw as an overemphasis in some assessments on the specific role of Twitter in those events.

For those who are going - I’ll see you there.

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journalism abc, media140, Sydney, Twitter

Just a quick post to alert our readers to a number of PhD research opportunities in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, in cooperation with various industry partners. There’s a wide range of potential projects here, but personally, I’m particularly interested in applications from potential PhD students wishing to explore future avenues in public broadcasting in collaboration with the Australian ABC. One key question in this context is the connection between traditional public broadcasting models and the embrace of user-generated content, which the ABC and other public broadcasters have engaged in more or less actively, and this is closely connected to my own research interests in produsage and social media as well as the work we’ve done at QUT on the future of public broadcasters.

You can find a full call for applications over at snurb.info - please pass it on to anyone who may be interested. And remember that applications for Australian students close on 30 September, for international students on 9 October…

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media abc, CCi, creative industries, innovation, PhD, produsage, public broadcasting, social media

Opinion piece in the ABC’s Opinion section here.

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.

The exemplar of a successful political campaign’s use of social media is, barring a sudden upset, Obama’s campaign. Foregoing public funding and the big money of lobbyists, Obama has raised enormous amounts of money from primarily small donors, at last count over $US390 million. Obama claims this will allow him to reduce lobbyist influence in government, though inevitably, the truth is somewhat more complex than that.

Obama’s campaign has also make powerful use of social networking tools such as Twitter, MySpace-style social networking sites and even an iPhone application. This commitment to using tools to engage with a primarily younger, tech savvy audience, combined with an commitment to Network Neutrality and a progressive tech policy (Barack Obama on technology and innovation - PDF) has certainly helped his support amongst younger voters. McCain’s admission that he doesn’t know how to use a computer hasn’t helped his regain any of that support.

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Uncategorized abc, Barack Obama, democracy, e-democracy, election, McCain, Obama, politics, psephology, QUT, social media, social networking, USA

Tonight’s 7.30 Report story about the disproportionate impact of high fuel prices in the Torres Strait was excellent. While a lot of the coverage of rising energy prices has concentrated on impacts on metropolitan commuters, and the he-said she-said antics of Governments and Oppositions on who’s to blame, this showed us how much is at stake in parts of Australia where the economy is configured quite differently to cities or mining boom-towns.

In short, petrol is approaching $3 a litre on some islands. In the Strait, the main means of transport is the tinnie” - small aluminium motor boats. When petrol prices hit these levels, it affects the prospects of one of the main sources of employment in the region outside government services, the fishing industry. It also affects people’s ability to access markets for their goods, basic services, and the price of fresh fruit and vegetables. The 7.30 Report yarn made it clear that the viability of these communities is important for the rest of us too - along with preserving an amazing, unique cultural heritage, strong communities in our northernmost islands help with border security, customs and quarantine control.

But we shouldn’t have to rely on the MSM to convey all this to us in the occasional feature. It would be great if there were more people on the ground providing hyperlocal coverage of the issues affecting the Islands. This isn’t just a matter of infrastructure, but of literacy, and of actively promoting and evangelising the use of blogs and other open publishing platforms.

The State, obviously, is better-placed than anyone to do this in remote communities. That’s why I’m hoping that, along with the current emphasis on security, the Government will start to avidly spruik the potential of open publishing technologies for remote communities, so we can all get a better idea of the challenges facing our sprawling, multi-speed national economy

blogging, broadband, regional bloggers 7.30 Report, abc, blogging, broadband, Queensland, regional bloggers, remote communities

UPDATE: Download of today’s broadcast on citizen journalism available here. Well worth a listen.

Aussie readers should tune in at 6PM to ABC Radio National for Australia Talks this evening. It’s about citizen journalism.

Preview from the RN’s Australia Talks website:

citizen journalism abc, citizen journalism

New post on the ABC’s Opinion Page is cross-posted over the fold. There’s some other great stuff there today, including a piece on a useful possible running-mate for Barry O’Bama

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Andrew Landeryou, Liberal Party, Victoria, blogging abc, Andrew Landeryou, Blog-gate, blogging, Liberal Party, Victoria

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).

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blogging, citizen journalism abc, blogging, citizen journalism, elections, investigative, journalism, poll wars, psephology

Well, maybe not ever ever, but as a Queenslander it’s hard not to think that tonight’s edition was important for revisiting a turning-point in our State’s history. Four premiers were interviewed, and there was some overdue credit for unlikely heroes like Mike Ahern, who realised the State needed to change, and made it happen at personal and political cost.

One of the big criticisms that the blogosphere (right across the political spectrum) makes of the mainstream media is that it’s abandoned its “Fourth Estate” role, and is too far integrated with the PR industry and the machinery of government.

This show was a nice reprise by Chris Masters of his own classic investigative work in programmes like “The Moonlight State”, which saw investigative journalism lead directly to bringing down a corrupt government. The economics of the contemporary commercial media make this kind of blockbusting investigative work more difficult to carry out, and for now the blogosphere is not really equipped to do it either, except perhaps on a hyperlocal level (have I plugged Cairnsblog and Strewth today?)

This is something that we need to address as a society - and I think that’s what we were trying to pick up on in our latest ABC column. Meanwhile, ask a Queenslander what happens when media, business and the machinery of government get too cosy.

Link to the video of the show here.

blogging, citizen journalism abc, blogging, citizen journalism, journalism, law, Queensland

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…

blogging, government abc, academic, blogging, bulletin, business, government, investigative, journalism