Editorial:
Editorial - D. Bruno Starrs and Sean Maher
Feature Article:
Less than Equal: Secularism, Religious Pluralism and Privilege - Anne Aly and Lelia Green
Past Issues:
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| 'vote / citizen' | 'error' | 'home' | 'complex' |
Today's Term:
Privacy
With the technological advances in new media, privacy issues have become more relevant and prevailing. Privacy issues involving the Internet and mobile phones are the most threatening and controversial. With the public more conscious of their civil liberties and rights, invasions of privacy through these media are becoming issues of debate.
See also:
Mediating Cultural Politics: A Dialogue with Georgina Born
22 August 2007
By Jean Burgess
Georgina Born is Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge University, and was Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She trained as a classical cellist, and then played in a number of jazz and avant-garde rock bands, including Henry Cow, following which she studied for her first degree and PhD in Anthropology at University College London. Born works on the sociology of culture, and in particular on cultural production and the politics of culture in relation to music, information technologies and broadcasting. She is known for her ethnographic studies of major cultural institutions, and has published two major books based on them. Rationalizing Culture (1995) is drawn from Born’s ethnographic study of Pierre Boulez’s Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. The study combines ethnography and history to give a critical socio-cultural analysis of computer music and of the institutionalisation of the musical avant-garde. Her 2005 book Uncertain Vision, based on her ethnographic study of the BBC, provides a comprehensive and critical account of the transformation of the public service broadcaster through neo-liberal policies and the ‘new public management’ in the last decade. It links historical and institutional analysis to textual analysis and criticism. She has also edited Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music (2000).
Social History of the Internet and its Uses in Indonesia with Merlyna Lim
3 April 2007
by Lenore Lyons
Merlyna Lim is Assistant Professor at Arizona State University School of Justice and Social Inquiry in joint appointment with Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. Her current teaching and research interests revolve around the socio-political shaping of new media and ICT, in relation to issues of globalization, identity politics and democratization. Prior to her appointment at Arizona State University in 2006, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California from September 2005 – August 2006. She received her PhD, with distinction, from the University of Twente in the Netherlands in September 2005. She has held the following awards: Henry Luce Southeast Asia Fellowship (2004), Wotro Fellowship (2003-2005), Social Science Research Council ITIC Grant (2003-2004), Oxford Summer Doctoral Fellowship (2003) and ASIST International Paper Contest Winner (2002). Her recent publications include a monograph entitled Islamic Fundamentalism and Anti-Americanism in Indonesia: Role of the Internet (Honolulu: East West Center, Hawai’i). For a complete list of publications, see http://www.merlyna.org/pubs.
Metrosexuality: What’s happening to masculinity?
29 November 2006
by Jenny Burton
Toby Miller, Professor of English, Sociology, 
and Women's Studies and Director of Program in Film and Visual Culture at the University of California, came to Brisbane over April and May 2006 as a Queensland Government Smart Returns Fellow and Distinguished Visitor at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). As part of the Queensland Government's Smart State initiative, the Fellowship program invites back previous residents who have made a distinguished global contribution in their field of professional work. Prof Miller is a prolific academic author, editor, international speaker, and respected public figure. With over 20 authored/edited books, and around a hundred book chapters and journal articles published over an academic career spanning 20 years, he has addressed public audiences worldwide through television appearances, radio presentations internationally and in print and online, the latter mostly for BBC World News.
Open Systems and Opening Societies: Guo Liang on China's Internet
16 October 2006
By Randy Kluver
Guo Liang is the deputy director at the Centre for Social Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy, CASS. In the fall of 2006, he is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication. Professor Guo’s academic background is in Philosophy, and he is a graduate of People’s University in Beijing and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is also a contributing scholar to the World Internet Project. His project website is http://www.wipchina.org/en/.
Does Reality Really Bite? Between Academia and ‘The Real World’: An Interview with Jane Roscoe
28 July 2006
by Henk Huijser
Dr Jane Roscoe is currently Programme Executive at SBS Television in Australia. She started her 
career as an academic in London with a fondness for theory. During her time at The University of Waikato in Aotearoa, she became drawn to empirical research, and in particular audience research, in combination with an ongoing interest in documentary. She published numerous journal articles and authored two books on documentary: Documentary in New Zealand: An Immigrant Nation (1999) and (with Craig Hight) Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality (2001). She moved to Griffith University in 2000, and quickly became an influential intellectual presence in the field of Media and Cultural Studies in Australia. Her article 'Big Brother Australia: Performing the Real Twenty Four Seven' in The International Journal of Cultural Studies is still the most cited article of that journal five years on. However, it is not only her academic work that gives her presence importance, but also her tireless commitment to move her ideas beyond the academic context. She frequently appears on both radio and television, and in 2001 she was the first media academic to appear on Big Brother Australia. In short, she is the embodiment of 'the public intellectual'. After two years at Griffith, Jane moved out of the academy to become Head of the Centre for Screen Studies and Research at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She has been a programmer at SBS since 2005.
George Negus: News in Media & Society in the 21st Century
3 July 2006
by Lee Duffield
George Negus is a celebrated Australian television presenter and interviewer, over the years talking to thousands in front of hundreds of thousands - millions all told. In 2006 he hosts the SBS flagship current affairs program Dateline, following on from a long period as a reporter and presenter on Channel Nine's Sixty Minutes and the Today Show. He has had many roles with the ABC, most recently hosting trends and issues programs, and Foreign Correspondent. In recent times, with partner Kirsty Cockburn, he lived in Northern New South Wales, establishing a family and working together on a wide-ranging series of films and books. George says that as time permits he enjoys conference facilitating and consultancy work for business or government. George Negus was brought up in Queensland, he is presently based in Sydney, and has accepted an appointment as an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology to take effect in 2007.
Toby Miller on Games
5 June 2006
by Sal Humphreys
Toby Miller is Professor of English, Sociology, and Women's Studies and Director of the Program in Film & Visual Culture at the University of California, Riverside. His teaching and research cover the media, sport, labor, gender, race, citizenship, politics, and cultural policy. Toby is the author and editor of over 20 books, and has published essays in more than 30 journals and 50 volumes. His current research covers the success of Hollywood overseas, the links between culture and citizenship, and anti-Americanism. His forthcoming book is Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Doctor Who, Popular Culture and Politics: An Annotated Interview with Paul Magrs
28 May 2006
by Alan McKee
Paul Magrs is a consumer and a producer of cult media. He has written many novels, which can be 
broadly divided into two groups. His working-class magic-realist 'literary' novels - including Marked for Life (1995), Could it be Magic (1997), and All the Rage (2001) - have been extremely highly regarded, and reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. His Doctor Who novels - The Scarlet Empress (1998), The Blue Angel (1999), Verdigris (2000) and Mad Dogs and Englishmen (2001) have not been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. They are, however, highly regarded by many Doctor Who fans; and despised by many others. These novels - born of a love for British popular culture in general, and Doctor Who in particular - have rewritten the adventures of the BBC's time-travelling hero as a series of self-referential fictions; as a conspiracy faked by an arm of the British government; and as the dreams of a mentally-challenged man living in a working-class council estate. They have featured dragons, robotic sheep, and nasty parodies of the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Straddling the consumer/producer boundary, Paul manages to play both roles simultaneously - as do many fans of cult media.
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Published at QUT Creative Industries on behalf of M/C - Media and Culture