Global Media Journal - Australian Edition - ISSN 1550 7521

Volume 3, Issue 1: 2009

Editorial

Articles

  1. Beyond Globalisation: Rethinking the Scalar and the Relational in Global Media Studies
    Terry Flew - Media and Communications, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology

    This paper traces how the concept of globalisation has been understood in media and communications, and the ongoing tension as to whether we can claim to be in an era of ‘global media’. A problem with this discussion is that it continues to revolve around a scalar understanding of globalisation, where the global has superseded the national and the local, leading to a series of empirically unsustainable, and often misleading, claims. Drawing upon recent work in economic and cultural geography, I will argue that a relational understanding of globalisation enables us to approach familiar questions in new ways, including the question of how global large media corporations are, global production networks and the question of ‘runaway production’, and the emergence of new ‘media capitals’ that can challenge the hegemony of ‘Global Hollywood.’

  2. Binding Time in Digital Civilisations: Re-evaluating Innis after New Media
    Chris Chesher - Digital Cultures, University of Sydney

    The spectacular history of the computer's power for calculation and command over distance has tended to divert attention from its very mixed record in mediating time. Gradual refinements in digital storage technologies have not overcome the tendency for digital artefacts to degrade, corrupt and disappear. The most distinctive feature of computer media though, is the diversification of spatiotemporal configurations that they have come to mediate.

  3. Marginalising Multiraciality in Miss Saigon: an Analysis of Print Media's Effect on People of Mixed Race
    Lyn Dickens — Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney

    In March 2007 a new season of the musical Miss Saigon opened in Australia, advertising itself as "Now more than ever the classic love story of our time" (Miss Saigon Australia website, 2007). As "one of the most successful musicals in the world" (Miss Saigon Australia website, 2007) the production garnered a significant degree of media coverage. The themes of the production however, are more ambiguously addressed. While ideas and controversies surrounding imperialism and war are remarked upon by a number of articles, with comparisons drawn between Iraq and the Vietnam War, print media is significantly silent regarding concepts of multiraciality.

Biography

  1. A Biography of Sir Charles Moses
    Neville Petersen - former ABC journalist, academic and author.

    Fate had clearly taken a hand when I was invited in October 2005 to write the short biography of Sir Charles Moses for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18 (1981-1990). He knew that I had written a university thesis on the ABC and spent an additional number of years developing this work into a book on the ABC. The upshot was that, during the last seven years of his life, he invited me to accompany him on trips to three overseas broadcasting conferences and to a number of Sydney lunches. So we spent much time together talking about the ABC as he, and I, had known it prior to his retirement as General Manager in 1965.

Interview

  1. In conversation with Bridget Griffen-Foley
    Neville Petersen - Interviewer

    Associate Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley is the Director of the Centre for Media History, established at Macquarie University. She is the convenor of the ARC Cultural Research Network’s Media Histories node and the Australian Media History database and listserv. Associate Professor Griffen-Foley writes a regular media column for Australian Book Review, and serves on the Library Council of NSW, the editorial board of Media International Australia, and the NSW Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Since completing her PhD thesis at Macquarie University in 1996, she has been specialising in the history of the Australian media. Associate Professor Griffen-Foley spoke to Neville Petersen, the former ABC journalist, academic and author of News not Views:, the ABC, the Press and Politics, 1932-1947 and Whose news? Organisational Conflict in the ABC, 1947-1999.

Postgraduate Submissions

  1. Tracing Audiences + New Audiences
    Celia Lam, Phd Candidate, University of Sydney, Australia

    The historical progression of audience research has almost always been inextricably linked to the advancement of media technologies. From the large screen spectacle of cinema complexes, to the privacy of television boxes, the intimacy of portable media devices to the personalised experiences of the internet , the way in which audiences interact and relate to media products, often in a constant state of flux, has long been shaped by shifts in media technology. In a media environment that espouses a landscape of highly varied forms of media content, media audiences and media entertainment behaviour, it is prudent to scrutinize just how contemporary audiences are affected by the technology around them, and where mass media content is situated in a landscape that is constantly growing in scope. How is current audience behaviour affected by current media technology, and how does this behaviour affect their relationship to media content? This paper provides an overview of the current media landscape and considers the way in which audience behaviour has evolved with shifts in technology.

  2. Diaspora Films as Cultural Contact Zones: A Case Study of The Home Song Stories
    Hilary HE Hongijin, PhD candidate at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia

    Diaspora films are media-based contact zones where new identities emerge and cultures are in confrontation. Drawing on immigrant experiences, these films provide a cultural contact zone, or as Mary Louise Pratt suggests, a “space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish relations, usually involving coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict” (1990). This paper offers a case study of a recent Chinese diaspora movie in Australian cinema, The Home Song Stories (2007), and examines identity and cultural conflicts between old and younger generations in immigrant families in 1960s Australia. An autobiographical film, The Home Song Stories is about director Tony Ayers’ traumatic childhood as a second-generation immigrant in Australia. It is also about his relationship with his mother. The purpose behind the film, according to Ayers (Home Song Stories Movie Trailer, 2007), was to “try to understand her and the things she did.” Through the analysis of the mother-son relationship, their respective identities in the host society, and the examination of underrepresented historical and political context, this paper argues that the heart-wrenching tale that informs The Home Song Stories is not just personal, it is also the epitome of displacement and disorientation of immigrant families.

Book Reviews