PACMAS state of media and communication report 2013

The PACMAS State of Media and Communication Report 2013 was undertaken through a partnership between RMIT University (Australia), the University of Goroka (Papua New Guinea) and UNITEC (New Zealand). The research for this report was developed and undertaken between June 2012 and April 2013 across 14 Pacific Island nations: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Republic of Nauru, Niue, Republic of Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. The report provides a regional overview of the PACMAS key components (Media Policy, Media Systems, Media Capacity Building and Media Content) as they emerged through 212 interviews focused upon the six PACMAS strategic areas. It also provides basic background information, an overview of the media and communications landscape and discusses in detail media and communications technicians; emergency broadcast systems, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVETs), media associations, climate change and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). For this reason, observations on the four PACMAS components should be understood to represent changes in the media and communication environment based upon an investigation focused on the PACMAS strategic activities. Part 1 & Part II of the report make up a Regional Overview of the State of Media and Communication in the Pacific.  The report also includes 14 separate Country Reports which provide additional information on the media and communications landscape specific to each of the Pacific Island countries included in the PACMAS program.  The country reports were written with the objectives of the PACMAS program in mind, however they may have utility for media, communication and development practitioners across the region

Media Ecologies

In this chapter, we frame the media ecologies that contextualize the youth practices we describe in later chapters. By drawing from case studies that are delimited by locality, institutions, networked sites, and interest groups (see appendices), we have been able to map the contours of the varied social, technical, and cultural contexts that structure youth media engagement. This chapter introduces three genres of participation with new media that have emerged as overarching descriptive frameworks for understanding how youth new media practices are defi ned in relation and in opposition to one another. The genres of participation—hanging out, messing around, and geeking out—refl ect and are intertwined with young people’s practices, learning, and identity formation within these varied and dynamic media ecologies

Ringtones of Opportunity: Policy, Technology and Access in Caribbean Communications

Book review of Ringtones of Opportunity: Policy, Technology and Access in Caribbean Communications. Hopeton S. Dunn (ed.). Kingston: Ian Randle, 2012

Media and technology skills

When equipped with responsibility to self-manage their media engagements, young people often do so in ways that demonstrate complex, inadvertent and strategic relationships between self and technology. In doing so some Australian teens display critical engagement between differing publics and the affordances these alternate personas can facilitate within social media services and videogaming respectively, as well as support rather than drive the development of social relationships and interest-based activities. But as Patricia Lange (2013) and many others have pointed out, not all young people experience equality in their mediated lives. Age and gender continue to persist as key determinants to navigating media use and engagement. At the same time the way in which youth participate in and perceive their media culture does not reflect key theoretical arguments. The value of making culture and the continuums that authors such as Jenkins and Bruns articulate in relation to culture do not correspond to the ways in which youth perceive and describe their media use. The ease at which young people such as Hailey point to when they create, send and share photos and videos via a SNS platform such as Snapchat is reflective of use that is “very normal” within their everyday media practices. This reflects the ongoing discrepancy that exists between the traditional institutions of home and school and that of academia that attributes increased value to the way in which young people participate within a convergent media landscape

A Brief Guide to Decisions at Each Step of the Propensity Score Matching Process

Propensity score matching techniques are becoming increasingly common as they afford applied practitioners the ability to account for systematic bias related to self-selection. However, best practices for implementing these techniques in applied settings is scattered throughout the literature. The current article aims to provide a brief overview of important considerations at each step of the propensity score matching process. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource to assessment practitioners and augment previously published papers. Accessed 7,131 times on https://pareonline.net from February 19, 2016 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

Smartphones and parenting in fiji: regulation and responsibility

With growth in smartphones and social media use in places such as the global south, we see the emergence of new challenges for the practice of parenting. These include decisions about how to monitor or control children’s access and use of technologies, as well as broader questions about where responsibility lies. For www.parenting.digital, Heather Horst, Romitesh Kant and Eliki Drugunalevu discuss the tensions between regulation and responsibility that emerged in their documentary film “Parenting in the Smart Age: Fijian Perspectives”. The film is available on YouTube under a Creative Commons License

Being at home with privacy : privacy and mundane intimacy through same-sex locative media practices

Smartphones have ushered in new forms of locative media through the overlay of global positioning system digital media onto physical places. Whereas mobile communication research has focused on corporate, hierarchical, or government surveillance, emerging studies examine the ways locative media practices relate to privacy and surveillance in everyday, intimate contexts. Studies of same-sex forms of intimacy in and through locative media practices have largely attended to the growth and use of male hook-up apps, but have overlooked same-sex female relationships. Beyond hook-up apps, mundane forms of intimacy in same-sex relationships have also received scant attention. This article draws from a broader ethnographic study in Australia over three years exploring the use (and non-use) of locative media in households as part of their management of privacy, connection, and intimacy with family and friends. By moving the discussion about intimacy beyond hook-up apps, this article focuses on locative media practices of use and non-use by female same-sex couples

IDEAS Guide: Innovating, Designing, Evaluating and Applying to Small-scale Projects: A Guide for Media and Communication Projects

The IDEAS Facilitators’ Guide provides briefing notes on how you, as a facilitator, can support small-grant recipients to use the IDEAS Guide to clarify their project design, and to plan and manage their evaluation. The Facilitators’ Guide is best used in conjunction with the IDEAS Guide. These guides are designed to be used together in the planning and implementation of a workshop. Facilitators can also adapt the steps to suit the mode and length of delivery

IDEAS Facilitators' Guide: Innovating, Designing, Evaluating and Applying to Small-scale Media and Communication Projects

The IDEAS Facilitators’ Guide provides briefing notes on how you, as a facilitator, can support small-grant recipients to use the IDEAS Guide to clarify their project design, and to plan and manage their evaluation. The Facilitators’ Guide is best used in conjunction with the IDEAS Guide. These guides are designed to be used together in the planning and implementation of a workshop. Facilitators can also adapt the steps to suit the mode and length of delivery