My responses to the Consultation questions are provided below. I am responding as a researcher in Communication and Media Studies (Field of Research 2001 in the ARC codes) based at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Thanks to Alan McKee, Marcus Foth, Ellen Thompson and Stuart Cunningham for feedback on an earlier draft.

ARC OPEN DATA CONSULTATION QUESTIONS

1. What are the current practices of Open Access within your Discipline?

In the Field of Research 2001 Communication and Media Studies, there are a number of significant open access journals, and open access publications are generally well regarded. A notable example internationally is the International Journal of Communication, established at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication in 2007, which is “an online, multi-media, academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world”. Its Editorial board consists of many of the world’s leading scholars in the field, including Manuel Castells.

2. What is the current understanding of Open Data within your Discipline?

Awareness of Open Data issues is at present limited across the discipline. Practices may vary across universities.

3. Are Open Data practices common in your discipline, and if so, how do these practices operate?

No.

4. When research is published within your Discipline and therefore is within the public domain, is there an expectation that the underlying data will also be made publicly available?

No.

5. Is the practice of making data publicly available considered to be relevant within your Discipline?

Yes.
6. For Open Data to be relevant within your Discipline:
- What type of data would need to be made available?
- How should it be made available (taking into account both digital and non-digital data)?
- How long would it need to be available for?

It would be particularly valuable to have interview transcripts available, as well as survey data. There are also growing projects making use of large-scale online data, such as the Mapping Online Publics project being conducted through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and innovation (http://mappingonlinepublics.net/).

There are also issues around the inability to negotiate suitable copyright arrangements for the use of audiovisual material such as films and television programs for illustrative purposes in books and scholarly research papers.

7. In addition, when should data be made available (eg. in relation to the conclusion of a grant and/or the date on which the associated research was published)?

Ideally, data should be available at the point in which research is published, and online scholarly publishing should enable this to a greater degree.

8. What are the costs associated with making data publicly accessible in your Discipline?

There may be risks associated with anonymising data, and questions about the capacity of individual universities to house large data repositories may arise.

9. What support mechanisms are provided within your institution to assist in making data publicly available in your Discipline?

At my own institution (Queensland University of Technology) there is a long history of support for open access to research through digital repositories. QUT ePrints was established in 2002, and the 2012 QUT Technology, Information and Learning Services Annual Report describes it in this way:

In 2012, QUT’s repository of research outputs (QUT ePrints) continued to rank prominently in the Ranking Web of Repositories (by January 2013 QUT ePrints was ranked as the top repository in Australia). More than 20000 full-text research articles have been deposited, and there have been in excess of eight million downloads of these articles from QUT ePrints. On average each month, 200000 papers are downloaded from QUT ePrints.

10. Are there research areas within your Discipline which generate exceptionally large data sets at significant expense which might underlie research projects and publications over extended periods of time? How should these be handled in terms of open data policy?

Internet and digital media research (FoR 200102) generates the largest data sets, and open data strategies for this research should be considered alongside those evolving for the sciences and computing/IT sectors.

11. What impact might research collaborators or partners, in particular those in the private sector, have on the ability to make data publicly available in your Discipline?

A major issue is access to proprietary social media data i.e. activities that occur through online social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Changing corporate approaches to what data is public domain and available without cost change regularly, affecting research projects mid-stream.

12. What other specific reasons might there be to restrict access to data in your Discipline?

Anonymity of sources and privacy concerns are significant issues.

13. What other practical impediments might there be to the implementation of Open Data in your discipline?

14. Do you have any other matters or concerns in relation to the development of open data policy that you wish to raise with the ARC?

My thanks to the conference organisers Dr. Vijaya Sankar, Ms. Josephine Tan, Dr. Antoon de Rycker and the Taylor’s School of Communication for their generosity in inviting me to this event.

Aaron Bady in The New Inquiry

Nathan Heller on Laptop U in The New Yorker

Andrew McGettigan on the scope for MOOCs in UK higher education, in The Guardian

Stephen Caddick, Vice-Provost for Enterprise at of UCL, on MOOCs in the UK

Presentation by Sir John Daniel (first head of the UK Open University) to Korean National Open University.

I will be keeping this link open and periodically adding new material.

Much of the commentary i will be developing will be in Chapter 10, ‘Transforming Higher Education’ in the 4th Edition of New Media: An Introduction, to be published in early 2014.

UC Berkeley is #1, University of Texas at Austin is #2, and Columbia is #3. Five Australian universities feature in the Top 50: Melbourne (#14), Sydney (#16), University of Queensland (#20), Monash (#21), QUT (#26), and UNSW (#39).

Scheduled Time: Sun Jun 16 2013, 08:45 to 17:30
Building/Room: U of Westminster, Regent Street Campus Board Room

There has been much discussion as to whether forces associated with globalization (economic, political, cultural) weaken the capacity of nation-states to regulate media institutions and media content. These debates intersect with the shift towards convergent digital media, with the associated rise of user-created content, multi-platform content distribution, and moves from the mass communications paradigm that dominated 20th century media policy. At the same time, arguments have been made that the scalar shift towards media globalization has been overstated, and national governments remain key players in shaping the media environment, with media corporations responding to the legal and policy frameworks they deal with at a national level.

This one-day pre-conference event will consider the relationship between global communications and national policies from a multidisciplinary perspective, incorporating global media studies, political economy, technology studies, and law and policy studies.

This proposed pre-conference event themes to be considered include:

• Nation-states and global media: does media globalization weaken the power of nation-states, or do nation-states actively foster the engagement of ‘national champions’ in the global communications economy?
• Transformations in national laws and policies in light of media globalization: is there a “return of the state” in managing the consequences of media convergence, in areas such as ownership and content policies, and copyright and intellectual property laws?
• Public media and globalization: how is the role of public media being reconfigured in the context of global media convergence (e.g. soft power and cultural diplomacy, cross-platform operations, public value tests)?
• Legal globalization: what pressures are there to harmonize national laws and regulations across national boundaries, and what distinctive elements can communications research bring to bear upon such questions? How are civil society organizations and NGOs engaging with such questions?
• Internet governance, global media platforms and nation-states: are Google and Apple now global media companies? How are communication scholars and policy-makers engaging with such questions?

This proposed pre-conference event is sponsored by the Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. It is co-sponsored by the Global Communications & Social Change Division, the Communications Law & Policy Division, and the Communications & Technology Division of the ICA.

ICA Preconference Program
Global Communications and National Policies: The Return of the State

8.45-9.15 Registration

9.15-9.20 Welcome –Peter Goodwin and Jeanette Steemers, University of Westminster

Opening Session: 9.20 – 11am
Chair – Terry Flew (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

The Re-emergence of the Regulatory State – Petros Iosifidis (City University, UK)
Legal Globalization and Communication Law – Sandra Braman (U. Wisconsin – Milwaukee, USA)
Media Policies under Populism and the Blindspots of Media Globalization – Silvio Waisbord (George Washington University, USA)
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Media, States and the Global Dimension – Colin Sparks (Hong Kong Baptist University, China)
Return of the State @ the Heart of the “New Internet-centric Media Order” – Dwayne Winseck (Carleton University, Canada)
Global Communications and National Policies: The View from the EU – Maria Michalis (University of Westminster, UK)

11-11.30am Coffee Break

11.30am – 1pm Parallel Session 1a: The Emergence of New Global Online “Media” Companies
Chair – Jeanette Steemers (University of Westminster, UK)

State Control, Media Hierarchies and Globalization: The Case of Xinhua News Agency – Xin Xin (University of Westminster, UK)
Public Broadcasters meet Google: National Cultural Policy vs. Global Competition – Hallvard Moe (University of Bergen, Norway)
Between Google and Godliness: Government Regulation of Blasphemy – Cherian George (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
From “Foreign Propaganda” to “Cultural Soft Power’: Reading the National Regulations on Global Media in China Min Tang – (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)

11.30am – 1pm Parallel Session 1b: National Regulation and Global Tensions (Part 1)
Chair – Graeme Turner (University of Queensland, Australia)

Cultural Policy, Chinese National Identities and Globalization – Anthony Fung (Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
The Implications of Transnational TV for Broadcasting Regulation in Small States – Manuel Puppis and Matthias Künzler (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
Challenges for Media Regulation given the Context of Convergence and Global/regional Media in the East African Community – Nassanga Goretti & Nakiwala Sembatya (Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda)

1.00-2.00pm Lunch

2.00-3.30pm Parallel Session 2a: National Regulation and Global Tensions (Part 2)
Chair – Sandra Braman (U. Wisconsin – Milwaukee)

The Nation-State and Media Globalization: Has the state returned – or did it never leave? – Graeme Turner (University of Queensland, Australia)
Enforcement of National Legislation on Global Social Networks: Mission Impossible? – Eva Lievens (Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT, K.U.Leuven – ICRI – iMinds, Leuven, Belgium)
Media and Citizenship – Christina Slade (Bath Spa University, UK)
The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Era of Globalization – Ole Mjos, Hallvard Moe (University of Bergen, Norway), Gun Enli & Trine Syvertsen (University of Oslo, Norway)

2.00-3.30pm Parallel Session 2b: Rights, Regulation and the State
Chair – Dwayne Winseck, (Carleton University, Canada)

The Return of Speech: Concepts of Free Speech in Changed Media Regimes – Andrew Kenyon (University of Melbourne, Australia)
The Emergence of New Players in the Southern Europe Media Markets – Nelson Ribiero & Rita Figueiras (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal)
Global E-commerce and National and EU Policies: The Case of Value Added Tax on Ebooks in Europe – Terje Colbjornsen (University of Oslo, Norway)
Need for a Helping Hand? Media Policy Paradigm Shifts in Times of Crisis – Corinna Wenzel, Stefan Gadringer & Josef Trappel (University of Salzburg, Austria)

3.30-4.00pm Coffee Break

4.00-5.15pm Parallel Session 3a: Economic Perspectives and Commercialisation
Chair – Peter Goodwin (University of Westminster, UK)

Building a Regional Film Space through National Policies? Analysis of Film Policies of Mercosur Countries aimed at Regional Integration – Daniele Canedo (iMinds-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil)
A Dwarf Fighting Giants: Flemish Media Policies in an Age of Globalization – Karen Donders (Vrijie U., Brussels) & Hilde Van den Bulck (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Between Economic Objectives and Public Remit: Positive and Negative Integration in European Media Policy – Eva Nowak (Jade University, Germany)

4.00-5.15pm Parallel Session 3b: Media Policy Transformations and Disruptions
Chair – Maria Michalis (U. Westminster, UK)

Global Social Media and the Challenges to European Audiovisual Regulatory Frameworks – Ole Mjos (University of Bergen, Norway)
Power Behind the Scene: State-Aided Media Concentration in Transitional Taiwan – Chen Ya-Chi (Chinese Culture University, Taiwan)
Narrating Neoliberalism via Financial Media: Comparing China’s Accession into WTO in Economist and Caijing – Amy Piao (University of Westminster, CAMRI, UK)

5.15-5.30 Concluding Comments

Convergence Review is unlikely to revive
BY:MICHAEL BODEY From: The Australian April 22, 2013

AFTER more than two years of work, discussion and politicking, the federal government’s Convergence Review appears all but dead.

After Communication Minister Stephen Conroy’s suicide bombing of his media reform package last month, Media understands the Coalition is unlikely to adopt any of the review’s recommendations as policy platforms before the September 14 election or if in government.

While the Coalition is unwilling to dismiss the review into the changing media landscape and emerging technologies as there would be no “upside” in doing so, it is understood there is a belief the Convergence Review and Finkelstein are “functionally of no use”.

After two years of deliberation, including terms of reference, framing paper, drafting paper, interim report and copious industry consultation and submissions, the Convergence Review committee released its final report in April 2012. Just under a year later, Senator Conroy delivered a “take it or leave it” ultimatum of a week for his legislative response to the recommendations of the inquiries.

Only two of six bills proposed were passed, including minor changes to the ABC and SBS charters, a TV licence fee rebate for the free-to-air networks, worth tens of millions to each network, and diminished local content responsibilities.

Two parliamentary committees are due to report in June, one on the abolition of the controversial “75 per cent reach rule” for media organisations.

Nothing is expected to come of that report as it will be due in the last two sitting weeks before the election.

Media academics believe there is still a place for the work and findings of the Convergence Review, even if they don’t agree on its findings.

“There was difficulty for the Convergence Review as soon as the Finkelstein review (Independent Media Inquiry) was announced,” said Terry Flew, professor of media and communication at Queensland University of Technology.

“The Finkelstein review was always seen more explicitly in political terms and as having an agenda to rein in the press, which was never the remit of the Convergence Review, whose remit was to reduce the amount of regulation on media and increase harmony across platforms.

“Finkelstein completely overtook the agenda and came to dominate what people then thought media reform would be,” he said, adding that Conroy’s focus was primarily the Public Interest Media Advocate “rather than about what changes should be made to ownership, content and standards laws. It was a lot of misplaced energy.”

Outsiders agree that a converged media landscape demands attention. “It’s a missed opportunity if nothing comes of it at all but beyond that I actually think it’s unlikely that nothing will happen,” said Ben Goldmsith, senior research fellow at QUT’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

This work is related to the Australian Research Council Linkage-Project grant Social Media in Times of Crisis: Learning from Recent Natural Disasters to Improve Future Strategies, involving Axel Bruns, A/Prof. Jean Burgess, Dr. Kate Crawford (Microsoft Research) and myself, with industry partners the Queensland Department of Community Safety and the EIDOS Institute.

As I was unable to travel to Sydney, I prepared a statement for the Farewell Dinner, which is below.

_________________________________

I would like to congratulate Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell on his many achievements as a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. As an undergraduate doing the Political Economy major at the University in the 1980s, I recall Frank being the lecturer who had the greatest impact on me. This was partly about his analysis, and how way of aligning questions of theory to political issues of the day, but also because of how he presented material as a teacher.

To this day, I continue to make use of presentational insights from Frank’s lectures, such as the one-hour lecture being based around one main topic with four sub-topics. An exemplar of the teacher/researcher nexus, Frank’s skills in knowing the right amount of material to convey for different levels of student also carried across to his approach to writing.

The Accord and Beyond was by far the most lucid and reader-friendly account of issues facing the Australian left and the trade union movement during the Hawke-Keating years. His Political Economy: The Contest of Economic Ideas is a book that I routinely go to when needing explication of a key political economy question, such as how power is approached in different economic theories. *

The experience of doing political economy at the University of Sydney in the 1980s was of course a politically charged one. It involved occupying clock towers and tearooms, and generally being politically engaged, with the likes of Anthony Albanese and Greg Combet. It is interesting to see both figures now playing key roles in areas such as urban and regional policy, decisions about transport infrastructure, the economic geography of industry development, and how to incorporate externalities into pricing and investment decisions. All of these topics were ones that were introduced to me by Frank Stilwell when I was an undergraduate in political economy.

The other point about Frank’s work is that he has stuck to his guns politically and intellectually, and identified strands of thought that were not fashionable in the climate of the time, but which are very influential now. Honours preparation in urban and regional political economy involved an intensive reading of the works of Manuel Castells and David Harvey at lunch-time (thanks Frank for ruining my digestion with such hard-to-digest writing!).

But I would now suggest, from the vantage point of the Humanities and Creative Arts sector in Australian higher education, that David Harvey and Manuel Castells are the two most cited social theorists among arts and humanities scholars.

Similarly, the contemporary influence of Joseph Schumpeter as a thinker about the creative/digital economy, or Thorstein Veblen on consumption and status, was something that few neoclassical theorists were discussing at the time, but Frank’s work always gave a central place to the institutionalist tradition, as represented by the likes of Veblen, Schumpeter, and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Not all of Frank’s ideas were great ones. I recall when Frank received a computer as an Associate Professor – in the days when the operating manual was chained to a desk – and in a grand gesture of “gift economy” giving, had the machine placed on wheels so that it could be shared among the Political Economy staff. That moment was not to last long.

But as a teacher, a researcher, a scholar, a comrade, and a friend and colleague, Frank has always been someone with much to give, and much to learn from. All the very best for the future, Frank.

* In case you question my assessment, here is the “five star” review of Political Economy: The Contest of Economic Ideas to be found on the GoodReads site from someone who I – and probably also Frank – have never met:

abatage’s review Dec 24, 10
5 of 5 stars
bookshelves: non-fiction
Read from March 26 to December 24, 2010

Five stars for a text-book?! Holy crap!

Stilwell deserves it.

This wasn’t a core text for my political economy course, but I read a chapter in the library and had to order it. Stilwell has it all set out in very short chapters that are simple and very easy to digest. Each concept is discussed plainly and there is barely any jargon used throughout the whole book. The layout is perfect for me (big margins and no gigantic blocks of tiny font text) and the order of chapters is logical and sensible.

In short, this book made political economy interesting, which is a damn good accomplishment!

Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology

In the public policy literature, a distinction is sometimes made between the protective state and the enabling state (Flew 2007: 174-81). In media policy, the protective state is concerned in some instances with protection of morals, children, social harmony, the integrity of news etc., through various means of controlling and classifying the flows of media content.

The protective state has also had a cultural dimension, seeking to maintain and nurture a national audiovisual media culture in the face of global flows of media content and the perceived threats of a homogenized global mass culture. It has engaged in what Philip Schlesinger (1997) terms communicative boundary maintenance, using taxes, subsidies, quotas and other policy instruments to support and grow local media industries against lower-cost imports, typically from the United States and what Toby Miller and his colleagues termed “Global Hollywood” (Miller et. al. 2005).

But the protective state approach is not in itself sufficient, and its capacity to be effective in its policy objectives declines as: (1) media outlets proliferate; (2) more and more media content is accessed in digital form; (3) more households acquire fast broadband Internet connections; and (4) as national populations become increasingly multicultural and hence less tied to a singular historically-based national culture.

There has therefore long been a need to think in terms of an enabling state in relation to national media and cultural policies. I would argue that one of the reasons why creative industries policy discourses took off in East Asia in the 2000s is that the ‘dot.com crash’ of 2001, occurring as it did on top of the financial crisis of 1997-98, revealed the limits of thinking about ICT policies in isolation from media, communications and cultural policies. It was not enough to be thinking about technological hardware; policies for the development of cultural software were also required.

There are lots of examples of such policies in the Asia-Pacific region. Michael Keane’s work has documented such developments comprehensively for China. In South Korea, the Korean Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) aims to make Korea one of the world’s five leading nations in digital cultural and creative content, and to respond proactively to the convergent media content environment. Taiwan has a ‘Technology and Innovation-Driven’ Industrial Development Policy that includes the ‘Two Trillion and Twin Star’ program to develop the mobile and digital content industries alongside its strength in electronic hardware production.

The Australian Government’s recently launched Creative Australia national cultural policy statement aims to articulate developments in Australia’s arts and creative industries to the Asia-Pacific region, along the lines outlined in the Government’s Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, launched in October 2012:

Australia’s increased focus on our engagement with nations in Asia provides unprecedented opportunities to grow our creative economy. Creative products and services are in high demand in Asia, and Australia already has a strong reputation for expertise and vision in architecture, design, visual and performing arts. Creative Australia provides a strong basis to build on these early successes and for our creative companies to become leading providers in significant Asian markets (Creative Australia 2013: 92).

At the same time, there continues to be a problem with articulating media policy as we have traditionally understood it to creative industries and creative economy strategies that focus on the digital content sectors. In the Australian case, the Creative Australia cultural policy statement and the media policy reforms announced the previous day do not articulate onto one another, despite the extensive discussion of what media convergence meant for traditional content initiatives such as Australian and local content requirements found in the Convergence Review whose final report was released in April 2012.

An interesting case study in the challenges of adapting policy to media convergence can be found with the recent Media Convergence Review undertaken by the Media Development Authority in Singapore. This Review had three guiding principles:

a) Parity – regulation should be applied in a consistent, even-handed and fair manner to provide a level playing field for industry players;
b) Pragmatic application – a flexible approach should be adopted to allow industry players to meet desired policy outcomes without the Government being overly prescriptive in how compliance would be achieved; and
c) Partnerships – with the burgeoning volume of content available in the converged media landscape, it is not feasible for the Government to directly regulate all content; partnerships with the private and people sectors must be forged and strengthened.

These were to be informed by the underlying values of:

a) Reflecting societal values and community standards;
b) Strengthening national identity;
c) Balancing commercial and public interests.

Its recommendations aimed to:

a) Update the framework for regulating content to encourage industry development, empower consumers and safeguard interests of society;
b) Enhance the vibrancy of local content to build shared experiences and strengthen communities;
c) Develop policy and regulatory response to copyright and digital piracy challenges;
d) Update licensing frameworks to provide greater clarity and consistency in a converged media environment.

As with many of these exercises, the policy recommendations of the Singapore MDA look inwards more than they do outwards. While there is discussion of new initiatives to support local production, such as a Convergent Content Production Fund – also recommended in the Australian Convergence Review – the focus remains one of seeking to adapt the existing national media regulations to the converging media environment. This means trying to figure out how to get foreign broadcasters to agree to local licencing arrangements, or ‘deeming’ international content regulation standards to apply in the Singaporean market.

The wider challenge for Singapore, as a small nation in a booming East Asian media content market, of how to produce compelling content with a regional appeal, is not being addressed through the Media Convergence Review proposals. Moreover, the demographic challenge that Singapore faces, where the community of non-citizens now accounts for almost 30 per cent of the population (as compared to 10 per cent in 1990), and this community feels little stake in the forms of local content fostered through television broadcasting quotas and other traditional instruments of media content policies. The transformation of media policies in East Asia will be reflective of many such twists and turns, and underlying tensions.

References Cited

Flew, Terry (2007) Understanding Global Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Miller, Toby, Govil, Nitin, McMurria, John, and Maxwell, Richard (2005) Global Hollywood. London: BFI Publishing, 2nd edition.

Schlesinger, Philip (1997) From Cultural Defence to Political Culture: Media, Politics and Collective Identity in the European Union. Media, Culture and Society 19(3), pp. 369-391.