This is the first book to examine the emergence of social media as a new force in the coverage of Australian politics. It makes use of original research to reveal who makes up the Australian political blogosphere, and tackles head-on some of its key developments.
The first comprehensive volume on the impact of digital media on Australian politics, this book examines the way these technologies shape political communication, alter key public and private institutions, and serve as the new arena in which discursive and expressive political life is performed. -- Publisher's description.
"The rise of the press led to the development of an independent institution: the Fourth Estate, central to pluralist democratic processes. In the digital age, the internet and related information and communication technologies are enabling a network power shift - empowering a Fifth Estate. Networked individuals are becoming an independent and highly distributed force for accountability in politics and society. By connecting diverse strands of decades of research with a wide range of case studies, this book explains how this emerging Fifth Estate has been empowered by the ability of ordinary people to search, originate, network, collaborate, and leak information in ways that enhance their informational and communicative power. The Fifth Estate compliments the existing distribution of power in pluralistic societies. It is not a substitute for other estates and more established bases of institutional authority, such as the press and governments, which the Fifth Estate can hold more accountable. However, threats to freedom of expression and privacy online could undermine the promise of the Fifth Estate power shift. To meet this challenge, the book concludes by discussing approaches to the governance and security of the internet and social media that that take advantage of the empowerment of networked individuals and help ensure the vitality the internet can bring to pluralistic processes in democratic politics and across all sectors of society"--
Creating Space in the Fifth Estate explores what is new and valued about the digital media environment. The deep and far-reaching changes that are being wrought by the digital revolution are as radical in their effect as the impact of the industrial revolution was in the nineteenth century. While the long-term significance of these changes is uncertain, the nature of the power of differing forms of media offers interesting possibilities for research, as does the potential for a new mainstream space that shares characteristics with older loci of power. This space is not, as this book suggests, merely a space for journalistic endeavors, as shown by contributions here examining a diverse range of communication practices and forms including blogs, journalism, social media, digital literary magazines, disruptive twitter campaigns, and online music production. The book asks a number of questions. What exactly is the fifth estate? What are the power structures that exist there? What is the relationship between the fourth and fifth estates? What do we lose and what do we gain in that transition? How does the fifth estate change various forms of communication? How does the fifth estate constitute new communities and social movements? What about traditional forms that are still finding their niche in the new world? What actions do we as communicators and communication scholars now need to engage with? Why is it important? Creating Space in the Fifth Estate is accessible to scholars and students in a range of academic disciplines, including communication and media studies, sociology, cultural studies, and the arts. It will also appeal to those who work in the media and communication industries.
Social media are now widely used for political protests, campaigns, and communication in developed and developing nations, but available research has not yet paid sufficient attention to experiences beyond the US and UK. This collection tackles this imbalance head-on, compiling cutting-edge research across six continents to provide a comprehensive, global, up-to-date review of recent political uses of social media. Drawing together empirical analyses of the use of social media by political movements and in national and regional elections and referenda, The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics presents studies ranging from Anonymous and the Arab Spring to the Greek Aganaktismenoi, and from South Korean presidential elections to the Scottish independence referendum. The book is framed by a selection of keystone theoretical contributions, evaluating and updating existing frameworks for the social media age.
This book aims to further the research in the fields of social media and political communication by moving beyond the hype and avoiding the most eye-catching and spectacular cases. It looks at stable democracies without current political turmoil, small countries as well as large continents, and minor political parties as well as major ones. Investigating emerging practices in the United States, Europe, and Australia, both on national and local levels, enables us to grasp contemporary tendencies across different regions and countries. The book provides empirical insights into the diverse uses of different social media for political communication in different societies. Contributors look at the ways in which novel arenas connect with other channels for political communication, and how politicians as well as citizens in general use social media services. Presenting state-of-the-art methodological approaches, drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses, the book brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers in order to address emerging practices of the mediation of politics, campaign communication, and issues of citizenship and democracy as expressed on social media platforms. This book was originally published as a special issue of Information, Communication & Society.
Online platforms have widened the availability for citizen engagement and opportunities for politicians to interact with their constituents. The increasing use of these technologies has transformed methods of governmental communication in online and offline environments. (R)evolutionizing Political Communications through Social Media offers crucial perspectives on the utilization of online social networks in political discourse and how these alterations have affected previous modes of correspondence. Highlighting key issues through theoretical foundations and pertinent case studies, this book is a pivotal reference source for researchers, professionals, upper-level students, and consultants interested in the influence of emerging technologies in the political arena.
Australia’s development, from the most unpromising of beginnings as a British prison in 1788 to the prosperous liberal democracy of the present is as remarkable as is its success as a country of large-scale immigration. Since 1942 it has been a loyal ally of the United States and has demonstrated this loyalty by contributing troops to the war in Vietnam and by being part of the “coalition of the willing” in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in operations in Afghanistan. In recent years, it has also been more willing to promote peace and democracy in its Pacific and Asian neighbors. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Australia covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Australia.
From selfies and memes to hashtags and parodies, social media are used for mundane and personal expressions of political commentary, engagement, and participation. The coverage of politics reflects the social mediation of everyday life, where individual experiences and thoughts are documented and shared online. In Social Media and Everyday Politics, Tim Highfield examines political talk as everyday occurrences on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Tumblr, Instagram, and more. He considers the personal and the political, the serious and the silly, and the everyday within the extraordinary, as politics arises from seemingly banal and irreverent topics. The analysis features international examples and evolving practices, from French blogs to Vines from Australia, via the Arab Spring, Occupy, #jesuischarlie, Eurovision, #blacklivesmatter, Everyday Sexism, and #illridewithyou. This timely book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in media and communications, internet studies, and political science, as well as general readers keen to understand our contemporary media and political contexts
Re-Inventing the Media provides a highly original re-thinking of media studies for the contemporary post-broadcast, post-analogue, and post-mass media era. While media and cultural studies has made much of the changes to the media landscape that have come from digital technologies, these constitute only part of the transformations that have taken place in what amounts of a reinvention of the media over the last two decades. Graeme Turner takes on the task of re-thinking how media studies approaches the whole of the contemporary media-scape by focusing on three large, cross-platform, and transnational themes: the decline of the mass media paradigm, the ongoing restructuring of the relations between the media and the state, and the structural and social consequences of celebrity culture. By addressing the fact that the reinvention of the media is not simply a matter of globalising markets or the take-up of technological change, Turner is able to explore the more fundamental movements and widespread trends that have significantly influenced the character of what the contemporary media have become, how it is structured, and how it is used. Re-Inventing the Media is a must-read for both students and scholars of media, culture and communication studies.