Volume 2, Issue 1 : 2008
Editorial
It gives me great pleasure to introduce Volume 2, Issue 1 of Global Media Journal/ Australian Edition. This issue continues with our publishing commitments that arose from the 2007 Sydney Our Media conference. The impact of this conference is still felt in this part of the world and we understand that plans are well advanced for the next Our Media conference to be held in Ghana in August 2008. Our refereed section reflects our engagements with communication and media research as well as the interests of Our Media in grassroots media practices.
In Handsome devils: Mobile Imaginings of Youth Culture, Kate Crawford and Gerard Goggin examine the manner in which mobile technologies have become central to contemporary media practices, in particular the way that uses of mobiles are bound up with ‘individualistic interpretations of youth culture’. Their paper is a timely contribution to the analysis of popular media that present troubling representations (or ‘imaginaries’ as the authors put it), of youth culture in relation to new communication technologies. Targeting mobiles (from phones to iPods), Crawford and Goggin are keen to locate the sources of pressure and panic that mobiles and youth engender in media discourses such as advertising. This analysis may lead to a greater perspective on the media that would better serve contemporary youth culture.
In Argentine Workers’ Documentaries as Counter-Information: Implications for Alternative Media, Kathryn Lehman’s extensive association with Argentina provides a comprehensive overview of media related to the Argentinean crisis of 2001. The paper focuses on the alternative media that engages with workers’ movements and the economic negotiations that have taken place between workers and the state. Reminiscent of Habermas’s concept of a counter-public sphere, Lehman describes the use of the term counter-information to describe a more open and exposed set of relationships between the state and the workers’ movement. The paper turns to examine the issue of gaps and lags in the capacity for various media to emerge in a timely fashion and the implications for the concept and practice of counter-information.
The third article in this issue to emerge from Our Media, is from Michael Barker of Griffith University’s Urban Research Program. In The Liberal Foundations of Media Reform? Creating Sustainable Funding Opportunities for Radical Media Reform, Barker’s interest is in the manner through which liberal media is financed in the US by philanthropic foundations. His paper is a cautionary tale of concern that this form of subsidy for public broadcasting and public advocacy in the media is not sustainable. Instead, Barker recommends a more democratically constructed strategy so that alternative media in this sector of media production and advocacy, may replace this funding with more viable long-term arrangements.
Though Dave Robie and Jane Berney’s paper did not emerge from the Our Media stable, the theme of the paper continues the interests presented by the kind of Our Media scholarship in this journal. Robie and Berney’s paper is an account of the progress, and then ultimate withdrawal, of a social marketing advocacy campaign in New Zealand. The material for the campaign was produced through Auckland University of Technology’s Journalism training newspaper, Te Waha Nui, as well as billboard and postcard outlets. The paper takes us through the problems related to the building of a high voltage transmission line in the Waikato region of New Zealand and the subsequent issues that arose, resulting in the non-publication of the campaign materials. Some of these issues are germane to the production of social advocacy journalism in the context of both student journalism and social advocacy marketing.
This issue is ably rounded out by commentaries and book reviews. An extended interview is conducted by Antonio Castillo with Adel Iskander. Dr. Iskandar is one of the most authoritative academic voices on Arab media. He is the co-author with Mohammed El-Nawawy of AL-JAZEERA: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East (Westview Press).
In the non-refereed section of this journal, we have included Robert Hackett and William Carroll’s address to Our Media conference, Building Our Media: Community Broadcasting, Social Movements and Media Democratisation. Robert Hackett is Professor in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University and William Carroll is Professor in the Department of Sociology of the University of Victoria. Professor Hackett’s most recent book is Remaking Media: The struggle to Democratise Public Communication, Routledge, New York and London, 2006 reviewed in GMJ/AU vol 1/1 2007.
Finally, six book reviews complete the effort in bringing contemporary and relevant scholarship to you in this edition.
As with any effort of this magnitude there are a number of people to thank. I would like to extend my thanks to the editorial committee working collectively on this issue. I am especially grateful to Antonio Castillo (book review editor), Rachel Morley (editorial assistant), Roman Goik (designer and website developer), Myra Gurney (sub-editor) and Juan Francisco Salazar, Our Media conference organiser. I would also like to thank all the authors, referees and reviewers who contributed to the production of this issue.
We would like to invite postgraduate students to contribute articles and commentary to our postgraduate section. Please see our homepage for more details on this and other new initiatives for Volume 2, 2008.
We invite feedback to this issue to be forwarded to Associate Professor Hart Cohen (h.cohen@uws.edu.au) or Rachel Morley (r.morley@uws.edu.au).
Hart Cohen
For the Editorial Committee
