Blurring the journalistic boundaries between pedagogy and a mediatised society

Journalism is no longer the preserve of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Every facet of academia, education and universities are impacted by the mediatisation of society. Scientists, both natural and social, are ever more including analysis of grant applications, student thesis, pedagogical practices, and the curriculum. At the same time, technical innovations have generated new threads to pedagogical practice and research outputs. Post graduate students are including journalistic discourse in their research proposals. The media is the message, and we are the media. For example, The Conversation.com.au is a multi-disciplinary concept involving politics, scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, business, environmentalists and a plethora of academic fields, linked through a common discourse of journalism. Such websites are filtering down into pedagogical practices as journalism and the curriculum are increasing bound together in academic analysis. Increasingly, academics are infused with messages to tweet their research, tell friends on Facebook and examine media impacts from non-traditional fields. Through original empirical research and textual analysis of media text, this paper explores the mediatisation of academia; and asks if there is a clear boundary between journalism and academics? Or do academics have to keep the journalist in mind when presenting their research; and how much has the shift in traditional journalistic practices altered our pedagogical practises

Great Barrier Reef: Australia's climate politics and the media

The Great Barrier Reef is a global icon and its future health is a metaphor for Australia’s environmental politics. A weakened climate change policy, unprecedented back-to-back-bleaching (2016/2017), port development to feed expanding terrestrial mines, plastics and poor water quality are all adding to the declining health of the world’s largest eco-system.Despite the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act (1975), that formally seals shared stewardship between the Queensland and Federal governments, there remains clashes between state and federal politics that are as old as the Act itself. Whilst political ambition and advocacy drove the first campaign to Save the Barrier Reef (1967-1975). The federal governments’ thwarting of Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen plans to mine the Barrier Reef, set up a contentious relationship between the state and federal government that remains today.Today, conflict between the Queensland coal lobby and the ‘environmentalists’ continues to drive much of Australia’s climate policy. In the last ten years, the Liberal dismantling of four federal climate change programs, new Queensland legislation and a joint attempt to temper UNESCO worries, are yet to show solutions. UNESCO made the Great Barrier Reef one of its World Heritage properties (1981) and Australiaguardians of the world’s largest eco-system. Another bleaching event could do irreparable damage, and UNESCO has concerns over whether enough is being done. Australia has an environmental plan –the Reef 2050, but is it enough?This paper explores two fundamental environmental politics questions, 1.Why did the Great Barrier Reef become a trope for Australia’s environmental politics? 2.What political influences do lobbyists and the media exert on national policy

Environmentalism, mega-events and the global south

Environmentalism has become one of the key issues in the bidding, building and legacy processes of sporting events. Thousands of sports fans converging to witness competitive sports, lasting anything from ninety minutes, five days, up to six weeks has an inevitable environmental impact. From 120,000 people attending the Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata, or 100,018 cricket fans heading for the Boxing Day test in Melbourne, Australia, to a summer or winter Olympic and Paralympics Games generates environmental problems. The average carbon footprint increases with the production, consumption, construction and transportation of goods, people and consumables. In the global north technology and governance can help overcome these problems–but what about the global south? Environmentalism can intensify existing economic and social problems found between the local and the global, and the global north and global south. Hosting a mega-event demands that the global south implements global north environmental policies in order to qualify as host. As power shifts from the West to the 'rest' of the world it brings new problems. The next three FIFA World Cup Tournaments (Brazil, 2014, Russia 2018 and Qatar, 2022) and the most recent (South Africa, 2010) have been awarded to 'less established' countries. The IOC’s 2016 Summer Games will be held in Brazil. As the global north increasingly awards the hosting of mega-events to 'developing' nations, it creates new challenges for such countries to implement global policy defined by the rich and impacting on the poor. This paper will examine the eco-challenges facing the global south's ambition to host mega-events whilst countering the environmental impacts of major sporting events. It will examine the difficulties in striking a balance between mega-events and environmental governance, as defined by sporting bodies of the global north

Environmental activism and the media: the politics of protest

If protesters take to the streets at climate summits, start anti-fracking camps, or take direct action over airport expansion, should they run the risk of arrest? The author addresses this question by drawing on research in environmental and media politics to take a closer look at why it’s acceptable to find climate change solutions in economics, but not acceptable to stop the source of climate change through direct action and protest camps. Taking the reader through different cultural, political and socio-economic landscapes of environmental activism, the author examines the ecoActivist movement in the UK to understand where environmental politics, economics and contentious politics sit within the climate debate. Proposing an original theorization of the relationship between the state, activists and traditional media, the book illustrates how current climate change solutions shift between environmental governance, free-market economics, and activism nestled in media discourse

From Hyperlink to Ink: Media Tactics and Protest Strategies of the UK Radical Environmental Activism Movement

In a socially mediatised world, why do some environmental activists movements still think in terms of front page newspaper coverage? The movements’ over reliance on social media as a media tactic, over time negated any genuine political strategy. Environmental activists and the traditional media have discovered there is a need to concentrate less on virtual and more on physical communities. Activists should concentrate on online tools, to get people off line, just as activists should know where and when to use technology. But, any media tactic is worthless, without a political strategy in which to hang it on

Environmental activism, environmental politics, and representation: the framing of the british environmental activist movement

This thesis explores the relationship between environmental activism, environmental politics and the mainstream media. In exploring the power relations between government, activists and the media, this work draws on Foucauldian theories of governmentality, power and space (heterotopia). The central hypothesis is that environmental politics has witnessed a shift in power away from activism and towards environmental governance and free-market economics, nestled in a media discourse that has depoliticised many environmental activist movements. Foucault’s theories on power, biopower and governmentality are combined with a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of newspaper reports and original empirical research derived from a focus group with environmental activists. The empirical data and analysis provides original knowledge on relations between environmental activists and journalists. The premise that economics has become the dominant solution to the detriment of environmental activism movements is argued through a historical analysis of advanced liberal governments’ role in creating new green markets and instruments (‘green governmentality’ in Luke’s terms). The shift towards green governmentality has been accompanied by an increased application of state measures, from legislation and surveillance, to conflating environmental activism with terrorism, and the neologism of eco-terrorism. Journalists reaffirm such governance, and the critical discourse analysis charts the shift from positive to negative reporting in the mainstream media. However, activists also contest such power relations through social and new media, alongside traditional repertoires of protest within the space of activism, to challenge such advanced liberal discourse, and bypass traditional media practices. As neoliberalism has increasingly become the main position in environmental politics, it places activism into a discourse of deviance. The activists’ movement counters this measure through new media, liminoid practices and repertoires of protest

Tweeting the reef revolution: an analysis of public debates on the Great Barrier Reef restoration

The Great Barrier Reef's back-to-back bleaching events (2016/17) have seen a shift towards more interventions and restoration project to save the Reef. With traditional media still holding gatekeeper roles, the Twittersphere has become an ideal space to debate the merits of Reef restoration research. From scientists to pollies and the public, opinion is divided over the best approach to restore the Reef's health. This paper is part of research for the Reef Restoration and Adaption (RRAP) project that is analysing social media to identify key theme in online public debates around social licence and restoration projects. Drawing on public Twitter and Facebook pages, we are measuring social perceptions of restoration and intervention projects. Analysis of Twitter posts over a 12-month period since the last bleaching event, identifies public sentiment and discourse around Reef Restoration projects. Drawing on public tweets from social media and environmental communication literature; this study investigates the public perceptions of interventions via the micro-blogging site Twitter. The data provides insights into the public perception and debates surrounding the feasibility and viability of reef restoration and adaptation interventions. Therefore, this research aims to establish if better understanding of the social perceptions of the Great Barrier Reef can help to find ways of improving the Reef in Australia and around the world

Training political reporters during a federal election: The UniPollWatch student journalism project

UniPollWatch was the largest student journalism project ever undertaken in Australia. Approximately 1000 students from 28 universities worked to cover the 2016 federal election. The project aimed to provide effective training on political reporting in a work-integrated learning environment. Utilising a combination of analysis and descriptions of the project and a survey research methodology, the results of this project suggest that by placing student reporters in the midst of a fluid and highly contested election environment they learn by observing and doing. The project demonstrated that students’ attitudes to, and aptitude for, covering politics varied greatly, but that the skills needed for political reporting can be improved through projects such as UniPollWatch

Valuing ecosystem services in complex coastal settings: An extended ecosystem accounting framework for improved decision-making

What gets measured gets managed is an axiom common to the business world that also applies to the management of environmental assets and processes. But what is the most adequate way to measure ecosystem value to optimise ecosystem management? In this paper, we unpack three valuation frameworks often applied in understanding ecosystem services and their benefits: 1) the Ecosystem Services framework, operationalised by the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting - Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework; 2) value-centric approaches operationalised by the Total Economic Value framework; and 3) First Nations Peoples (FNP) frameworks, which seek to capture values from FNPs’ perspective. By assessing the strengths and weaknesses of these value frameworks for managing the World’s largest reef ecosystem—the Australian Great Barrier Reef—we construct an extended SEEA-EA valuation framework tailored to complex coastal settings. The significance of our approach is the inclusion of the whole range of benefits from all coastal and marine uses and users and therefore the integration of non-market and FNP values into the more traditional market-based valuation approach. Assessments that jointly consider multiple values originating from these three different frameworks are more likely to produce sustainable management outcomes than more restrictive approaches