Scene: Boardman Rd, Bowral, NSW, Australia. A quiet residential street. Enter: Holden, with location sourcing company Sach Australia, production company Exit Films, Wingecarribee Shire Council and Cato Traffic & Logistics.
Category: Academia
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.
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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 […]
This is an extract from my PhD research proposal review, submitted and approved in September 2013. As this is an introduction to a proposal, it is exploratory and sometimes vague. It does not contain all information and data I have collected on a particular point to the moment of writing, nor does it claim to […]
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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 […]
I’ve been thinking and writing about these two terms a bit recently as I work through my preliminary PhD research. The term e-government is largely used in an organisational context. That is, it describes the strategies used to arrange governments to respond to the possibilities and perceived challenges that digital communications tools pose. Meanwhile, e-democracy […]
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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 […]
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Academic Blergh
I’ve decided to set up a new academic blog for me to ruminate on the big questions I grapple with in my studies and, in the future, my work. I chose the title ‘Blergh’ from one of my favourite TV shows, 30 Rock. For a blog that will mesh my interests in academia, pop culture, […]