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How advertising fuels fake news
No full textIn this second post in our blog series on \u27fake news\u27, Damian Tambini illustrates the underlying structures of the online advertising industry that make fake news lucrative.
One of the questions in the UK Parliament’s inquiry into \u27fake news\u27 asks: “Have changes in the selling and placing of advertising encouraged the growth of fake news, for example by making it profitable to use fake news to attract more hits to websites, and thus more income from advertisers?”
This question is arguably the most important the committee asks, because it invites an analysis of the economic structures that support fake news. It enables us to cut through philosophical questions about ‘what is truth’ and the political uses of the idea (e.g. by Trump) and ask whether something has changed in the media system which would explain the apparent proliferation of “fake news”.
The graphic below summarises the money-go-round that incentivises distribution of any content that is \u27shareable\u27 and resonant, in contrast to the previous ad model that tended to support news that goes through an (expensive) process of verification or meets a quality standard.
Continued via link
Timor-Leste: an uncertain future and an unsettled boundary
No full textSummary
Timor-Leste is the fourth-youngest country in the world, having achieved formal independence on 20 May 2002. The transition to independence was not smooth, as Indonesia claimed the territory for itself while suppressing the independence movement after colonial power Portugal withdrew in 1975. Since independence, the country has come a long way, creating an environment for successful development and achieving lower-middle income status in 2011. GDP has grown strongly since 2006 from 1.88 billion in 2015, averaging an annual growth rate of 13.5 per cent. Despite that strong growth, the country suffers from high poverty rates, poor infrastructure and fragile food security. With billions of dollars’ worth of natural gas and oil on its doorstep, Timor-Leste needs to successfully utilise those resources and invest in sustainable economic growth if it is to continue development in the medium- to long-term future.
Key points
The economy of Timor-Leste is dependent on revenues from oil and gas reserves, which are beginning to run out.
The government will continue to over-withdraw from its petroleum revenues fund to pay for the infrastructure that is needed to grow the non-oil sector, meaning that the fund could be virtually empty by 2027.
The Greater Sunrise area contains oil and natural gas deposits, the income from which will be essential to funding infrastructure needs of Timor-Leste, but there are concerns that the money will be wasted on unsustainable projects.
The termination of the Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea agreement means that Timor-Leste and Australia will have to negotiate a maritime boundary and, possibly, negotiate a new revenue split for the Greater Sunrise area.
From a realist perspective, it is in Australia’s economic interests to secure as much of the Greater Sunrise area as possible in future negotiations, but there are other important strategic factors that must also be taken into consideration
Media Sauce: global report shows we don’t trust elites or institutions
No full textA global trust survey released this week revealed the unsurprising result that our trust in politicians, business leaders, NGOs and the media is still falling. The one bright spot is that online journals like \u27Independent Australia\u27 are gaining readers\u27 trust, whilst the MSM continues to fail.
Read the full article via link
Newspapers get a reprieve as Fairfax Media spins off Domain real estate website
No full textAfter much speculation, Fairfax Media has finally confirmed it\u27s bidding farewell its digital rivers of gold.
The publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review is planning to list its lucrative real estate website Domain on the stock exchange by the end of this year.
So what does this mean for the newspapers, which have been on the chopping block for the last several years
Composition of Australian parliaments by party and gender: a quick guide - February 2017 update
No full textThis quick guide contains the most recent tables showing the composition of Australian parliaments by party and gender. It takes into account changes to the Commonwealth Parliament and the parliaments of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia since the last update was published on 19 December 2016
New Zealand’s refugee report card (spoiler: history won’t be kind)
No full textPrime Minister Bill English was roundly criticised last week for mumbling into his sleeve when asked if President Trump’s new Muslim ban was racist. But his response wasn’t far off from the hands-off, it’s-not-our-problem approach he inherited.
Indeed, what was the most notable thing about New Zealand’s response to the greatest refugee crisis since WWII this past year?
We simply shrugged.
History won’t be kind either. Our actions toward refugees on the world stage aren’t the problem. What will define us in years to come was our quiet, unshakable inaction.
What is New Zealand’s stance on Australian abuses of asylum seekers in our region on Nauru and Manus Island?
Silence, now entering its fourth year.
Australia continues to infect our region with some of the harshest laws against asylum seekers in the Western World. The Guardian exposed extensive sexual abuse, mental illness, endemic suicide attempts, self-harm and child abuse in ‘The Nauru Files’, bringing Australia’s offshore imprisonment of families—even children—renewed international condemnation.
Australia’s offshore detention continues to be a handbook on how to construct a prison system designed to engender enough psychological trauma and hopelessness that broken asylum seekers will eventually chose to return to war as a ‘better’ option.
“I’ve never come across refugees this broken,” reported an Australian photojournalist who travelled to Manus Island. Having covered the world photographing some of the world’s most desperate refugees since 1995, Ashley Gilbertson reported in The New York Times, “Yet in all that time, I have not seen the level of cruelty toward these vulnerable people that the Australian government is perpetrating against the refugees on Manus Island.”
New Zealand’s response: We have chosen to say nothing. The New Zealand government has remained notably mute, as some detainees now enter their fourth year of imprisonment
Incidence of insulin-treated diabetes in Australia, 2015
No full textOverview
This fact sheet provides the latest available national data on new cases of insulin-treated diabetes in Australia. It shows that in 2015 there were 28,775 people who began using insulin to treat their diabetes in Australia—63% had type 2 diabetes, 26% had gestational diabetes, 9% had type 1 diabetes and 2% had other forms of diabetes or their diabetes status was unknown. The fact sheet is accompanied by a dynamic data display, which provides data on insulin-treated diabetes by age at first insulin use, Indigenous status, remoteness, SEIFA and state/territory
Regional housing affordability crisis
No full textSome towns and areas in regional Australia are facing price rises and property shortages that are making them unaffordable for the people what want to live there. Joining us to discuss this matter is Professor Andrew Beer is Dean of Research and Innovation at the University of South Australia Business School.
Guests
Professor Andrew Beer, Dean of Research and Innovation at the University of South Australia Business School
Credits
Presenter: Amanda Vanston
Household energy costs in Australia 2006 to 2016
No full textThis research note summarises the methods and results of an analysis of household energy costs for Australia. Energy costs have increased sharply in recent years placing an increasing burden on household living costs. This paper does not attempt to explain the industry drivers of cost increases.
This modelling here is based on a relatively simple analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Household Expenditure Survey from 2009-10. This data is now quite out of date and the estimates have been updated to 2016 (December) levels. For comparison purposes we have also back-casted to 2006 using the same methodology
Economic resilience of regions: a longitudinal study of the Australian economy from 1986 to 2011
No full textResilience is about addressing vulnerability, not only by surviving a shock to the system, but also thriving in an economic environment of change and uncertainty. A robust conceptual framework is required to navigate through underlining elements of vulnerability. An evolutionary model of regional adaptive cycles around four sequential phases in economic activity – reorganisation, exploitation, conservation and release – is adopted in this study as the framework for recognising such phase patterns. A data mining clustering method which utilises a k-means algorithm evaluates the impact of major shocks, notably economic recessions and drought, on four functional groups of regions (metropolitan, periphery, regional and rural). Applying this clustering method to the adaptive cycle model using census data from 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011, the paper identifies patterns of economic resilience in regions by industry categories. Preliminary results show different resilience patterns and varied stability to this resilience for industry/functional regions ranging from non-resilient to very resilient regions.
This paper won the ANZRSAI 2016 Award for best conference paper