Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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FRONTLINE: Place-makers of the mind: Symbolic reconstruction of an inner city park
No full textIn 2016, a specialist unit of study that teaches university journalism students how to report in partnership with Indigenous community organisations extended its story range to an exclusive news feature produced in collaboration with members of the wider Nyoongar community of Perth, Western Australia. The story asked and answered the question of what happened to a stalled proposal to co-badge a major inner city park with a Nyoongar name. In conceiving the story, and producing it with assistance from our students, we intervened to achieve clarity on a local government decision where due process had not been followed. With the help of Nyoongar sources, we sought to explain the cultural importance of the park, and raise awareness of the decolonising potential of Indigenous place names. The story is appended after an exegesis that melds sense of place theory with Bourdieusian field theory to situate the story and its producers in social space
REVIEW: Can democracy and citizenship be reclaimed?
No full textCitizenship. Etienne Balibar. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2015. ISBN-13:978-0-7456-821-9 (pb)IN LIGHT of recent world events, Pacific Island democracy issues and various articles exploring the concept that democracy is under threat, leading philosopher Étienne Balibar’s book Citizenship is a timely publication. The book is a collection of seven lectures, many printed as individual essays, first published as a collection in the original 2012 Italian edition
REVIEW: Decimation of a Tongan island by slaver’s trickery
No full textThe Stolen Island: Searching for 'Ata, by Scott Hamilton. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016. 112pp. ISBN 978-0-947518-11-0.LOCATED even further south than temperate Noumea, Tonga’s tiny island of ‘Ata might have become the jewel of the kingdom’s burgeoning tourist industry. Imagine a Tongan resort that would not only be mild in winter, but pleasant in summer
Review: Merdeka: Media and the case for Papuan civil resistance
Get PDFFive years ago the Pacific Media Centre and Pacific Media Watch published a ‘state of media freedom report’—the first such documentation in the Pacific region—and the most devastating section was about West Papua (Perrottet & Robie, 2011, 2012). The harrowing account of human rights violations and abuses of freedom of speech by the Indonesian military and security forces eclipsed comparable reports from the Pacific, including Fiji which was at the time a cause célèbre for free press champions. The theme of this report echoed many articles I have written over the years highlighting the ‘black’ or ‘blind spot’ demonstrated by New Zealand media neglect of covering West Papua and the self-determination cause (see Robie, 2011). Since then much has changed
The end of hypocrisy: Online activism and ethno-political conflicts
Get PDFIn the past twenty years, democratic participation through activism and civil disobedience has been increasingly expanded with the evolution of information and communication technology. It is assumed that the role of traditional media is not as influential as it once was due to the growing presence of self-made war journalists, hacktivists and whistleblowers, facilitated through the potential of the internet. The use of the latter as a tool from which information is disseminated rapidly, is fast influencing societal understanding and exposure to issues as they develop. Social media demonstrates precisely this phenomenon, in which people are able to accrue information and act upon it through mass communication and mobilisation. This article will therefore endeavor to analyse the evolution of media in conjunction with activism, from traditional media ethno-political conflict reporting, to today’s whistleblowers and hacktivists that use the internet as their main platform. By factoring in these different aspects, this article is able to present a detailed account of the advantages and drawbacks of the latest developments in internet and technology, with special emphasis being placed on the role of online activism
The Len Brown Affair: The roles of new and old media in a New Zealand political sex scandal
Get PDFThe power of online media to influence New Zealand local government politics was made clear in 2013 when a blogger revealed that Len Brown, the popular mayor of Auckland, had conducted a two-year, extramarital affair. The mainstream media picked up the story, Brown’s popularity collapsed and in late 2015 he announced he would not stand again for mayor. This media scandal was, in part, driven by the fact that Brown was a celebrity. Unlike several high-profile sex scandals involving politicians overseas, Brown’s career did not survive the controversy, perhaps because the public came to regard him as a practised liar. The media itself engaged in self-serving scandalous activity during the controversy. Today’s shock bloggers are similar to the proto-journalists of the 17th century. Members of new and old media researching the scandal treated their secret sources very differently. The existence of the internet means such scandals can now exist in perpetuity. If the Len Brown Affair was an example of the media fulfilling its watchdog role - by exposing a lying politician - it was also an example of journalists furthering their own ends - political and commercial - by appealing to their audiences’ purient interests
REVIEW: Noted: Becoming a journalist in Nordic countries
No full textBecoming a Journalist, by Jan Fredrik Hovden, Gunnar Nygren and Henrika Zilliascus-Tikkanen (eds.). Goteburg: Nordicom, University of Goteborg.2016. 334pp. ISBN 978-1-91-87957-34-5PUBLISHED through the Nordicom centre in Göteborg (Gothenburg), this study of journalism education in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland provides a comprehensive analysis of how future journalists are trained in Scandinavian universitie
Detention attention: Framing a Manus Island riot
Get PDFThis article reports on a research project that investigated the framing of asylum seekers in the Australian news publicationsThe Australian and The Guardian Australia Edition, during their coverage of a riot that occurred in an asylum seeker processing centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, in February 2014. Analysis found themes of asylum seekers represented as threats to national identity, State sovereignty, and as victims. The research discusses the potential impacts framing may have on the way asylum seekers are perceived by readers of these publications. Its findings showed that the process of framing in news reports can both privilege and exclude aspects of an event being reported
FOI scholarship reflects a return to secrecy
Get PDFWhen Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto launched the third summit of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in October 2015, protesters disputed his highly scripted account of his government’s transparency. The OGP may be growing but increasingly scholars and journalists are reporting a degradation of freedom of information (FOI), even in comparatively open societies like Aotearoa/New Zealand. Stemming from a doctoral review of FOI scholarship, this article traces FOI’s origins and role in democratic governance and finds scholarssituate access to state-held information as a fundamental human right. However, it describes scepticism among journalism practitioners and researchers alike about the realpolitik success of FOI regimes. Researchers have recorded tendencies back to state secrecy since the declaration of the so-called war on terror and document various other FOI failures, from blatant disregard for the law to an ever-growing structural pluralism that is casting shadows over state expenditure. This article also considers literature on Aotearoa-New Zealand’s FOI regime, work largely produced by legal-studies and policy-studies scholars. It outlines what research does exist within journalism studies but contends a lack of more significant contributions has restricted our understanding of the regime
The ghost of Felix Culpa: Adventures in the journalism education trade
Get PDFWhat is the most effective way to teach the realities of journalism to students? This article argues that the most effective model is the community newspaper, which provides students with the opportunity to learn how to write for their own community, but also to learn the fundamentals of running a news outlet, from selling advertising to liaising with printers. It also argues that the same lessons can be applied in the digital age to online news sites and to students who need to know how to keep themselves afloat as independent journalists. Drawing on 20 years’ of experience teaching journalism in different countries, including Australia, Fiji and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the article looks at what worked, what did not and what lessons can be learned for the future.