Media International Australia

This article revisits a set of long-standing debates to suggest how the role of universities in providing a ‘professional education’ in journalism might be (re)considered. Existing arguments over journalism education identify a need to move beyond the limiting frame of a presumed ‘industry–academic dichotomy’ to develop a more critical approach to professional education. While supporting this direction, this article draws on work suggesting that a more careful consideration of both the concept of professionalism and its implications for stakeholders is required. It argues that, by approaching professionalism as a discursive and socially valorised basis of identity rather than simply a series of ‘traits’, a more analytical perspective on how universities are both subject to and implicated in processes of ‘professionalisation’ is gained. These processes situate universities as both major stakeholders in, and an increasingly important influence on, emergent formations of journalistic professionalism.

In 2006 Queensland's Courier-Mail was relaunched in a ‘compact’ format. This study compares one week of the broadsheet format of The Courier-Mail (the third week of September 2005) with the corresponding week from the new compact format a year later. The study demonstrates that the new format of the newspaper was not merely an aesthetic change: increased advertising and a more regular use of pullouts were accompanied by often-significant changes in editorial content. Refining Sparks' model of print media fields (2000: 14–15), the authors demonstrate how this change in positioning of the newspaper might be mapped against other print media and suggest that this model might also have wider application in understanding a media landscape experiencing legislative and technological change.

This report describes the outcomes of extensive research (questionnaires, focus groups, drawings) on the media use of students aged between eight and 13 years (n=860) in the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The research replicates earlier child-centred research by the authors, but with a greater emphasis on newer media technology, such as cell phones. The various facets of the research, framed within theoretical explorations, produced detailed and often candid insights into the role played by contemporary media in the lives of New Zealand children with respect to the overt and covert use of technology, shifts in relationships between children and adults. It also generated some interesting cautionary tales.

The place of Islam in a multicultural society is high on the agenda of every Western nation at the moment. In the wake of a series of local and global events, Australia's Muslims have found themselves in the glare of media scrutiny over what it means to be Australian and a Muslim. Increasingly, that media discourse contributes to a rising tide of anti-Islamic feeling, also known as Islamophobia, in the community. Diasporic communities across the globe are using new technology to overcome some of the structural difficulties inherent in being cast as ‘outsiders’, even in the country in which they were born. This paper examines the use of communications and media technologies to establish, assert and define social groups and notions of social identity, using a research project with Melbourne's Turkish community as a case study. The qualitative research, which forms part of a broader study of the Turkish community in Melbourne, focuses on the experiences of a small cohort of young people of both first- and second-generation Turkish background, who are completing their education in the Australian university system. The very rapid recent spread of new information and communication technologies has had important repercussions for the way these young people communicate and maintain their interpersonal relationships, as well as the way they organise and communicate with wider networks of acquaintances, peers and communities of interest.

TV is being reshaped, reimagined and reinvented in unpredictable ways. Broadcasting has become only one of a set of options for the distribution of TV content, alongside cable, DVDs, internet downloads, and online video streams. Simultaneously, audiences have embraced new modes of engagement with audio-visual products, with many seamlessly shifting from the role of consumer to that of producer. Broadcasting still reigns, but its place as the normative television form is under greater threat than ever. The articles in this issue of MIA suggest that, while it may no longer be the cultural norm, broadcasting may still have a role to play in whatever television becomes. The current phase of television suggests contested continuities rather than radical seismic shifts, as the new technologies open up possibilities beyond broadcasting. Of most interest is the emerging tension between what newly empowered users want television to be, and the institutional desire to dictate the direction and pace of change.

This article emerges from the early stages of a large international study of the social, cultural and political role of television in the post-broadcast era where the convergence of media platforms has challenged conventional understandings of how the mass media work. Even though it might be premature to jump on the bandwagon which claims that national media systems are now irrelevant and that television, as the leading ‘old media’ format, is history, there is significant theoretical and empirical work to be done to adjust to the new, and highly contingent, environment — to find out what ‘television is’ today.

The rise of user-led content creation and distribution, or produsage, is by now well recognised. User-produced content is providing a well-needed corrective to industrial journalism; user-produced creative work has become a regular component of the standard media diet for many users; and user-led distribution of content through file-sharing networks is now an important means of accessing content, and is cautiously being explored as a means of distribution by mainstream media producers. Such phenomena are beginning to affect the television industry. On the one hand, the user-led distribution of television programming now enables producers to bypass traditional distribution channels altogether; on the other, traditional television channels are already anticipating such moves through an increase in live content and event television. There is also a contrary movement of user-produced material further into the mainstream of the mediasphere. This article outlines a number of the operational models now available to players in the television industry: enlisting file-sharers in the direct distribution of TV shows to audiences; moving further towards a focus on live event television; and embracing user creativity in pursuit of produsage-based television models. It examines these options against a context of continuing convergence and change in the content industries.

This paper examines a set of ‘new television’ projects and their relationship to existing understandings of the object of television. The rise of online video-sharing has been surrounded by discourse about the decline of broadcast television's role for content delivery and advertising revenue. Amidst discussions of ‘piracy’ and debates about new audience measurement techniques and user-generated content, official and unofficial platforms for the distribution of television content have emerged. Some of these sites — like ‘internet TV’ projects such as the Participatory Culture Foundation's Miro TV player — have positioned themselves directly in opposition to television itself, orienting themselves as alternatives or replacements for the broadcast-and-cable-delivered-to-your-set experience. Others — such as CBS's Innertube — attempt to reapply network logics to the online space. Interrogating how the term ‘television’ succeeds or fails to describe these services helps to contextualise the object of television itself, as well as exploring the insights new services provide into audiencehood, national broadcasting and the community-forming roles television has traditionally played.

This article maps out some of the implications of interactivity and convergence for television's textual and industrial forms in relation to the BBC's status as a public service broadcaster. Whilst the digitalisation of television may bring about new textual, industrial and audience configurations, the goals for broadcasters remain the same: to attract viewers in a marketplace where there is increasing competition for screen-based leisure time. John Caldwell's work on ‘second-shift aesthetics’ demonstrates how TV-dot.com synergies must now attempt to ‘master textual dispersals and user navigations that can and will inevitably migrate across brand boundaries’ in order to keep audiences engaged with their proprietary content for as long as possible (Caldwell, 2003: 136). However, for public service broadcasters, mastering these user flows does not simply take the form of an economic transaction. Rather, these second-shift strategies must serve and fulfil public service (PS) obligations and engage viewers in new relationships. Based on a combination of textual analysis and critical industrial research, including interviews with key industry personnel, this article examines the BBC's early second-shift practices in relation to interactive television (iTV) and ‘multi-platform projects’, as the corporation moves from being a PS broadcaster to a PS content-provider.

This paper traces the migration of North American children's television into the realm of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), and the issues this raises in terms of the commercialisation of children's (digital) play. Through a content analysis of three television-themed MMOGs targeted to children, Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis, Cartoon Network's Big Fat Awesome House Party and Corus Entertainment's GalaXseeds, I examine how this new development within children's online culture operates in relation to existing industry practices of cross-media integration and promotion. Dominant trends identified in the content analysis are compared with emerging conventions within the MMOG genre, which is generally found to contain numerous opportunities for player creativity and collaboration. Within the cases examined, however, many of these opportunities have been omitted and ultimately replaced by promotional features. I conclude that all three case studies operate primarily as large-scale advergames, promoting transmedia intertextuality and third-party advertiser interests.

Since its launch in early 2005, video-sharing website YouTube has emerged as a culturally, politically and economically significant medium, and as one of the inheritors of the social role played by broadcast television. However, its continued growth and journey to profitability are not guaranteed. This paper queries the future of YouTube by exploring the tension inherent in the site's three key characteristics embodied within its slogan ‘Broadcast Yourself™’. The site is based within regimes of consumer production and identity practices, yet it is also located within a traditional fiscal economy as indicated by the trademark identifier. The contradictory pulls of these positions pose challenges for YouTube and its parent company Google. The difficulty of sustaining an emergent social economy alongside the requirements of advertising-driven economics raises questions about the future of YouTube, and indicates the complex terrain of what lies beyond broadcasting.

In an era where communication technologies can move digital media at close to the speed of light, this paper explores the rupture between this technical potential and the actual model by which international television screening dates are determined in Australia. As the delays between overseas and Australian airdates can be as long two years, and average over six months, the rapid rise in both official and fan-produced online material and interaction relating to television series has given rise to a massive but largely unfulfilled demand for simultaneous access to episodes across the globe. Using the case study of the critically acclaimed fan favourite Battlestar Galactica, this paper outlines some of the strategies by which producers build global fan loyalty — from official websites, blogs, commentary podcasts and online deleted scenes to exclusive webisodes and official participation in fan forums. The paper argues that these trends, combined with the time delay between release dates, are the largest factors contributing to the unlawful downloading of television via peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms such as BitTorrent. In attempting to maintain distribution models that began as geographic necessities, but have become exclusively political and economic decisions in an era of digital communication technologies, this paper argues that media corporations are perpetuating a ‘tyranny of digital distance’ and alienating their own audiences.