gatewatching

Just posting an author copy of the latest paper I’ve submitted for a journal special issue. In it I discuss the looming NBN investment in the context of the decline of regional public spheres.

I use Townsville as a case-study, and argue that the regional public sphere there has declined over many years, to the detriment (and chagrin) of citizens there, and yet despite a level of Internet service provision that’s often comparable with the capitals, people haven’t engaged with the opportunities of public sphere blogging. This is a problem, then, that big fat cables alone won’t fix. I suggest we need to think about the role of creative clusters and intermediary institutions, and think about ABC Open in that light.

This will be the first in a series of articles that talk about the regional uptake of tools for public sphere engagement. I think that we are too often technologically-determinist when we think about things like the NBN investment, and we too seldom think about who’s excluded from online public spheres. I think there are systematic silences generated by our “networked public sphere” in Australia - future pieces will use empirical tools to investigate this.

Anyway, it’s embedded as a Scribd document below the fold. Comments welcome, and I’ll let you know whether it gets through peer review.

Oh, but please don’t quote it at this point without letting me know.

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broadband, journalism, regional bloggers blogging, broadband, journalism, public sphere, Queensland, townsville

One of the topics that consistently exercises the Australian blogosphere is global warming. What’s at issue, of course, is whether or not human, industrial activity is contributing to an increase in global temperatures, and possible environmental catastrophe.

There is an orthodox scientific view on this, as expressed in documents like the IPCC Report, the Stern Report, the Garnaut Report etc. It’s fair to say that most left-leaning bloggers and many centrists accept this view. But there are prominent blogospheric voices - including very popular bloggers like Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt and Jennifer Marohasy - who hold to a minority opinion that not all is as it seems in climate science.

Variously, they argue that climate change is not happening (or it isn’t as severe as we’re told it is), and/or that it is happening but it has nothing to do with human activity, and/or that the scientific orthodoxy is really just groupthink/counter-enlightenment propaganda/institutional capture by leftist scientists/scientific careerism.

The debates in this area can, of course, be quite heated. Each side has been ranging its favoured experts and arguments in tetchy exchanges for years. What’s fascinating is that it amounts to precisely the kind of thing that has come up in recent discussions here - an intra-elite debate, for which there is only so much space in a gatekept MSM, being carried on and maintained on a range of prominent and not-so-prominent blogs, which has ongoing implications in terms of its possible influence on public debate and policy. I’m not concerned here to take a position on global warming - I’m more interested in how it’s playing out on A-list blogs and prominent independent news spaces.

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blogging blogging, Bolt, Brisbane, climate change, Graham Young, intra-elite debate, Jennifer Marohasy, John Quiggin, On Line Opinion, public sphere, Tim Blair

I got somethin’ in New Matilda today reporting on my recent travels to conferences at home and abroad. There’s a cross-post over the fold, but you should go there instead and read the other stuff on the site while you’re at it.

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UK, public sphere academic, conferences, e-democracy, journalism, Margaret Simons, MEAA, newspapers, public sphere, quality, research, Roy Greenslade, Steven Coleman, sustainability, UK