Convergence and Australian content: The importance of access

In the light of new and complex challenges to media policy and regulation, the Austrlaian government commissioned the Convergence Review in late 2010 to assess the continuing applicability and utility of the principles and objectives that have shaped the policy framework to this point. It proposed a range of options for policy change and identified three enduring priorities for continued media regulation: media ownership and control; content standards; and Australian content production and distribution. The purpose of this article is to highlight an area where we feel there are opportunities for further discussion and research: the question of how the accessibility and visibility of Australian and local content may be assured in the future media policy framework via a combination of regulation and incentives to encourage innovation in content distribution

Exploring policy options for a new rural America : a conference summary

The United States needs a new rural policy. That was the conclusion of ten policy experts and 250 rural leaders from throughout the nation who met in Kansas City for the Center for the Study of Rural America’s second annual conference on rural policy matters, Exploring Policy Options for a New Rural America. The conference examined a menu of promising policy options and also considered ways to combine these options into a more coherent overall approach to the challenges facing rural communities.> Drabenstott and Sheaff highlight the issues raised at the conference. Participants agreed that new rural policy will be needed to help local communities seize the economic opportunities ahead. Fostering more entrepreneurs and tapping digital technology will be critical ingredients of a new policy approach. Participants also agreed that capital—especially equity capital—will be an important part of the mix. Cooperation among firms and communities was a major theme in discussing ways to reinvigorate traditional rural industries, whether helping manufacturing clusters to form, encouraging new alliances in a more product-oriented agriculture, or helping rural places make more of their scenic amenities.> Perhaps the most challenging discussion at the conference centered on building a new overall framework for rural policy and a new slate of policy options. The United Kingdom and Italy provided interesting new experiments in rural policy. Yet participants concluded that moving the United States from a longstanding reliance on supporting one sector to a broader focus on rural policy will not be easy. No matter how difficult, though, participants agreed that the transition was one worth making.Rural areas ; Rural development

Exploring policy options for a new rural America

Rural areas ; Rural development

Malthus' Revenge

In this paper, we take inspiration from Thomas Malthus' hypothesis that food shortage and hunger would remain "nature's last most dreadful resource" and that "the power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race". We revise and reinterprete it into a modern and thus global version and we elaborate on such a possible new interpretation and what its policy implications might be. In a first section, and somewhat as a parenthesis, we briefly comment on the financial crisis as it has unfolded over the last four months of 2008 and impacted gradually the real economy. In the second section of the paper we review the different policy responses to past Malthusian challenges: how food production succeeded particularly over the second half of the 20th Century to keep pace with rapid population growth. In a third section, we replace the word "population" in the above cited Malthus' quote with "consumption" and illustrate what this might imply for global world growth and Europe's place in the world in 2025. In a fourth and final section, we then draw some initial policy conclusions. The nature of the Malthusian challenges raised today appears both global and local in nature. On the one hand it raises questions with respect to the need for open, international research collaboration. Imposing national, or regional, boundaries with respect to research participation and funding, certainly appears (with respect to some of the most urgent Malthusian research problems) to be the expression of an outdated and wasteful research nationalism. On the other hand, the growing need for local knowledge re-use, adaptation and embedment in many emerging and developing countries involving efforts at local innovation, is in many ways similar to, and reminiscent of the development of the many innovation policy tools in European countries and regions. The first policy challenge, we refer to as "recherche sans frontières"; the second one as "innovation for local development".Thomas Malthus, economic forecasting, population growth, economic growth, resource scarcity, innovation, globalisation, economic development, regional development

Corporate Social Responsbility in Business Courses: How Can Generation Y Learn?

This paper deals with the teaching of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Business courses to Generation Y Business students in Australian universities. Generation Y students embody particular characteristics that may seem paradoxical, such as placing an increased emphasis on an improved materialistic lifestyle alongside green marketing or climate change issues. Generation Ys also highly value a balanced work-leisure environment but are comfortable with living on high levels of debt and expenses. The question then emerges: what is the most effective method of educating Generation Y Business students about CSR? A three-fold approach is proposed: a foundation of life-long learning about the theory and principles of how one goes about making intrinsic decisions in life and business, incorporating concepts of CSR into Business units, and then applying these concepts in Business Internships

Doing IT for Themselves: Management versus Autonomy in Youth E-Citizenship

Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. This chapter explores tensions between managed and autonomous conceptions of youth e-citizenship as manifested in six UK-based projects. Managed youth e-citizenship projects are characterized as seeking to establish "connections" between young people and institutions that have power over their lives. Regarding youth as apprentice citizens who need to learn appropriate ways of engaging with encrusted structures of governance, they seek to promote habits of civility, while at the same time encouraging young people to think of themselves as empowered social actors whose (virtual) voices deserve to be heard. In contrast, autonomous e-citizenship projects tend not to be funded by government, and express strong reservations about having relationship too close to the state. These projects are less interested in engaging with powerful institutions than in forming powerful networks of young people, engaged with one another to resist the power of institutions. Regarding youth as independent political agents, autonomous e-citizens expect less from the communicative potential of having their say; for them, empowerment entails an intimate relationship between voice and action. The chapter concludes by proposing a set of policy recommendations that might lead to a productive convergence between these two models of youth e-citizenship

Semi-Strong Form Market Hypothesis: Evidence from CNBC\u27s Jim Cramer\u27s Mad Money Stock Recommendations

Mad Money has become one of the most popular shows on CNBC. The host, Jim Cramer, has an outlandish style and personality that viewers find intoxicating. Cramer\u27s goal for the show is to make people money. Does he succeed? This paper finds that investors can expect to gain above-average, risk adjusted returns by following Cramer\u27s stock recommendations and trading accordingly. These findings challenge the semi-strong form market hypothesis. According to this hypothesis investors should not recognize gains trading on public information since it states that the market has already adjusted prices for that information. It also contributes to current literature by providing analysis on the different segments of the Mad Money program and serving as a jumping-off point for future research on a possible Jim-Cramer-Mad-Money hedge fund strategy

CONFRONTING LAND FRAGMENTATION: OPPORTUNITIES FOR FEDERAL RESEARCH AND OUTREACH PROGRAMMING PARTNERSHIPS

Land Economics/Use,

From skepticism to mutual support: towards a structural change in the relations between participatory budgeting and the information and communication technologies?

Until three years ago, ICT Technologies represented a main “subordinate clause” within the “grammar” of Participatory Budgeting (PB), the tool made famous by the experience of Porto Alegre and today expanded to more than 1400 cities across the planet. In fact, PB – born to enhance deliberation and exchanges among citizens and local institutions – has long looked at ICTS as a sort of “pollution factor” which could be useful to foster transparency and to support the spreading of information but could also lead to a lowering in quality of public discussion, turning its “instantaneity” into “immediatism,” and its “time-saving accessibility” into “reductionism” and laziness in facing the complexity of public decision-making through citizens’ participation. At the same time, ICTs often regarded Participatory Budgeting as a tool that was too-complex and too-charged with ideology to cooperate with. But in the last three years, the barriers which prevented ICTs and Participatory Budgeting to establish a constructive dialogue started to shrink thanks to several experiences which demonstrated that technologies can help overcome some “cognitive injustices” if not just used as a means to “make simpler” the organization of participatory processes and to bring “larger numbers” of intervenients to the process. In fact, ICTs could be valorized as a space adding “diversity” to the processes and increasing outreach capacity. Paradoxically, the experiences helping to overcome the mutual skepticism between ICTs and PB did not come from the centre of the Global North, but were implemented in peripheral or semiperipheral countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Portugal in Europe), sometimes in cities where the “digital divide” is still high (at least in terms of Internet connections) and a significant part of the population lives in informal settlements and/or areas with low indicators of “connection.” Somehow, these experiences were able to demystify the “scary monolithicism” of ICTs, showing that some instruments (like mobile phones, and especially the use of SMS text messaging) could grant a higher degree of connectivity, diffusion and accountability, while other dimensions (which could risk jeopardizing social inclusion) could be minimized through creativity. The paper tries to depict a possible panorama of collaboration for the near future, starting from descriptions of some of the above mentioned “turning-point” experiences – both in the Global North as well as in the Global South

The Internet for the Public Interest: Overcoming the digital divide in Brazil

The re-democratization of Latin America’s social and political institutions since the 1990s has seen various changes affecting the whole continent following from the collapse of military dictatorships in the mid-80s., from the adoption of economic neoliberal reforms and demands for social and economic inclusion to calls for wider equality for less privileged groups and updated media reforms and regulation policies directed to the public interest. A key global geopolitical player in Latin America, Brazil has managed to reduce poverty levels and grow its middle class, but little has changed in the media sphere, which is still heavily skewed towards the market and highly concentrated. The Internet nonetheless has slowly emerged as a powerful counter-public sphere that is invigorating debate, challenging the status quo and creating avenues for wider political pluralism. It is also beginning to provide a space for the articulation of new ideas, for the criticism of the media’s self-proclaimed objectivity during presidential elections and is opening up possibilities for more complex and less stereotypical representations of subordinated groups. It is also assisting civil society players and other citizens in political mobilizations and organizations of protests against the limits of the social and economic reforms carried out in the last decade by Brazilian centre-left to centre governments, as the June 2013 demonstrations showed. Since the late 1990s, the World Wide Web has began to be actively used for political campaigning. It was used by female politicians like Dilma Rousseff and Marina da Silva during the 2010 presidential elections to advocate their causes and mobilize voters. Nonetheless, the lack of access of less privileged sectors of the Brazilian population to the Internet poses problems for its democratization and use for political mobilization, its capacity to offer challenging counter-discourses and criticism of politicians and policies as well as its general use for the public interest. In this paper I argue that despite problems of lack of access to the web in Brazil, the potential of the Internet for democratization is strong and is already having a powerful role in not only political mobilization, but in contributing to challenge taken for granted discourses, boosting diversity and undermining the concentration of the market media