358 research outputs found

    The turn to regulation in digital communication: the ACCC’s digital platforms inquiry and Australian media policy

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    © The Author(s) 2020. This article provides an overview of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Digital Platforms Inquiry, as a case study in the new thinking about digital platform regulation taking place in many nations. With its focus upon the impact of digital platforms on news and journalism, the ACCC Inquiry parallels other reviews, such as the Cairncross Review on the Future of Journalism in the United Kingdom. While the Inquiry had a somewhat ‘accidental’ history, the core issues that it raised have acquired considerable political resonance in Australia. The concept of harms provides a useful lens through which to understand the ACCC’s focus, as it identified harms caused by the market dominance of Google and Facebook for traditional news media businesses, and for consumers and citizens. Responding to the ACCC Final Report will present challenges in identifying the public good dimension of journalism and who should pay for it, the scope and reach of digital platform regulation and its relationship to media policy and regulation, and the scope for small nations to effectively manage the power of global digital platform giants

    Building a Small Cinema: Resisting Neoliberal Colonization in Liverpool

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    In its stated aim of “creating cinemas not supermarkets,” the Small Cinema project voiced its alterity to the recent redevelopment of Liverpool’s city center and those of other former industrial cities throughout the Midlands and the north of the UK. These regeneration projects addressed the problem of a shrinking manufacturing base by replacing them with service industries, a move which has entailed the privatization of vast tracts of public space. Conversely, the building, functioning, and general praxis of the Small Cinema project suggests a mode of practice that more accurately fits within the paradigm of a collaborative commons than a capitalist marketplace. The project’s exemption from market criteria grants it the freedom to pursue public over private goods, thereby constituting a point of resistance to the ongoing neoliberalization of the city and changes to government policy that make it increasingly difficult for non-profit projects to exist. Historically speaking, cinemas have been accessible to the working class in a way that other artistic media have not. However, while the history of film as a tool for political subversion is well documented, less attention has been paid to the physical construction of independent cinematic space, its programming/running, and its potential as a node of resistance to neoliberal colonization. This paper uses the case study of the Small Cinema project in Liverpool as a means by which to understand how cinematic spaces can counteract the effects of policies that continue to have such a detrimental impact on the arts and education, as well as social health and well-being

    Culture, geography, and the arts of government

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    This paper endeavors to prise open the theoretical closure of the conceptualization of culture in contemporary human geography. Foucault's later work on government provides the basis for a useable definition of culture as an object of analysis which avoids problems inherent in abstract, generalizing and expansive notions of culture. The emergence of this Foucauldian approach in cultural studies is discussed, and the distinctive conceptualization of the relations between culture and power that it implies are elaborated. This re-conceptualization informs a critical project of tracking the institutional formation of the cultural and the deployment of distinctively cultural forms of regulation into the fabric of modern social life. It is argued that the culture-and-government approach needs to be supplemented by a more sustained consideration of the spatiality and scale of power-relations. It is also suggested that this approach might through into new perspective the dynamics behind geography's own cultural turn

    Culture, government, and spatiality: re-assessing the 'Foucault effect' in cultural-policy studies

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    This article critically discusses the reconceptualization of culture and governmentality in recent Australian ‘cultural–policy studies’. It argues that the further development of this conceptualization requires a more careful consideration of the complex relations between culture, power and the different spatialities of social practices. The assumptions of this literature regarding social-democratic public institutions and the nation-state are critically addressed in the light of contemporary processes of globalization. It is argued that the use made of Foucault in this paradigm privileges a model of disciplinary power which is dependent on a particular spatialization of social subjects and technologies of the self. As a result, an uncritical application of this model to all cultural practices supports a far too coherent image of practices of ‘government’ in producing sought-after subject-effects. It is suggested that the different articulations of spatio-temporal presence and absence in cultural technologies require a less totalizing understanding of the forms of power exercised through governmental practices

    E1 Theme: Trust-building for collaborative win-win customer solutions. Opportunity Assessment Roadmap Report

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    This report proposes a five year roadmap that address the opportunities for understanding, building and measuring trust in the Australian energy sector. Providing customer education alone is not consistent with best practice. Deficits in public knowledge are not the problem; therefore, educating energy users about the energy system is not the solution. This roadmap leverages customers strengths, knowledge, and practices to cultivate trust using a shared value approach. The conceptual centrepiece of this report is the ‘ecosystem of shared value’ – an industry-wide approach to valuing consumers’ contributions to the creation of value
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