In 2003, Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa bought a local newspaper, Grocott’s Mail. The Uni set it up as an experiential training centre for students and plough any profits back into student bursaries. It reports your average local news stories; on the website front page today are two articles about the local council, Makana Muncipality.
Category: Media
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Case Studies
I have settled on a case-study approach to my PhD research. It will focus on five local governments in the greater Illawarra region of New South Wales, considering how they form and react to public issues via participatory media. The five local governments, Wingecarribee Shire, Wollondilly Shire and Wollongong City, Shellharbour City, and Kiama Municipality, have been […]
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Two Definitions of Pop Culture
From the same page of an excellent book called YouTube ((Burgess, J. & Green, J., 2009. YouTube, Malden, MA: Polity Press, p.12.)), two competing academic definitions of popular culture: “popular culture is most commonly thought of – often pejoratively – as mass, consumer culture – reality TV, shopping malls, celebrity gossip, the Top 40, and […]
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Bart vs Australia
An episode that once deeply offended me is now one of my favourites in a long line of classics from The Simpsons. Here are my comments on Bart vs Australia from my honours thesis. Page 13: it is worth noting that there are occasions where audiences, broadcasters and governments in countries like Australia, Brazil and […]
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Irony in The Simpsons
I briefly tackled irony in The Lord of the Rings in my last post, focussing on a quintessential speech by Bilbo Baggins at his birthday to make my point. The use of irony in popular texts is a rich vein, one that I first seriously delved into while researching and writing about The Simpsons in […]
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Eleventy-One Today
Most of his guests were drunk to the point of “filling up the corners” after a large feast to celebrate his birthday, so Bilbo Baggins thought it time to make a speech. After greeting everyone, he said: Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today! I hope you’re enjoying yourselves as […]
I’ve noticed what might be called a ‘long-tail‘ of search referrals from people looking for information on content analysis. As a result, I’ve decided to write up my experiences with content analysis in some detail in this post. For a brief primer on what content analysis actually is, please see this Wikipedia page. My introduction […]
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What is participatory media?
One of the key aspects of my PhD research is the practice and theory of participatory media, which I originally took to be more self-explanatory than it apparently is. For me, the term participatory media has always encompassed and been greater than the term Web 2.0, which I find reflects old paradigms of thinking about […]
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A Framework of Questions
Some questions to consider during my PhD project. Why do local governments use social networks? Is it because the councillors think its a good idea? Because the managers do? Is there a push from the ‘citizen’ for social media use? Is it just what everyone else is doing? How do local governments use social networks? […]
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Someone is going to get Mendelaid
Have you heard that Elsevier is buying Mendeley? No? Well, that’s probably because you don’t care. In the hustle of daily start-up takeover news that has been the staple of TechCrunch and Mashable for the last few years, this one is small bikkies. But TechCrunch did report on it, which spurred others to re-report. Then […]