ISSN: 1329-878X

The Uses of the Internet No 107 May 2003 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Graham Meikle: We are all boat people: A case study in internet activism

This paper uses a detailed case study in order to exemplify some key trends and characteristics of activist uses of the internet. It focuses on the We Are All Boat People campaign in support of asylum seekers, discussing this in relation to three main areas. First, it considers the campaign's media strategies in the context of what Scalmer has called 'the dilemmas of the activist' (2002: 41). It then discusses the campaign in the context of tactical media and its key methodology of detournement. Finally, the project is discussed as an example of what Tim Berners-Lee has termed 'intercreativity' (1999: 182-83).

Juan Francisco Salazar: Articulating an activist imaginary: Internet as counter public sphere in the Mapuche movement, 1997/2002

The article analyses the role of the internet in informing and shaping indigenous knowledge and offers a critical examination of the uses of internet by Mapuche indigenous activists in Chile. It describes the ways in which the internet has been appropriated as an efficient political tool to rearticulate a renewed Mapuche cultural imaginary, constructed in the realm of the virtual but grounded in the materiality of the everyday struggle for cultural survival and ethnic recognition. Through a critical reading of several Mapuche websites hosted in Chile and Europe, the paper analyses how and why new media have been embraced as a fertile field of symbolic and political struggle. It is argued that internet has been constructed, promoted and used as an incipient counter public sphere to the state, the national imaginary and corporate interests becoming an important mediator for the articulation of a Mapuche 'activist imaginary'. It is demonstrated how the World Wide Web has been a key tactic in the Mapuche responses to the mainstream media's distorted construction of a Mapuche conflict to refer to the current Mapuche uprising started on December 1997.

Axel Bruns: Gatewatching, not gatekeeping: Collaborative online news

This article introduces a new form of collaborative web-based editing which has become increasingly popular in recent years. It involves web users as reporters and co-producers for specialist news sites by allowing them to submit their own news reports and pointers to relevant articles elsewhere on the web, and sometimes even hands over editorial control to the online community altogether. Websites of this type move on from traditional journalistic gatekeeping approaches, where editors publish only what they regard as 'fit to print', to what is here termed gatewatching, where almost all incoming material is publicised, but with varying degrees of emphasis. Gatewatching sites frequently become major repositories of specialist information, turning into resource centre sites for their interest community, and are particularly common on the fringes of the open source software development movement. Some of these sites can be seen to directly apply open source ideals (direct involvement of the community, open access to all aspects of the development process) to the reporting of news, in effect making news itself an open source.

Sherman Young: Sharing control: Contesting distributed computing

This paper examines distributed computing projects in which users allow their unused computing resources to be used by third parties. As well as being the latest manifestation of an internet gift economy, these projects represent technological prototypes for resource sharing over the internet - ideas that are being pursued by capital for different reasons. The resultant tension between gift and commodity has led to competing claims for control over spare processing power. This paper examines examples of distributed computing and conflicts that have arisen over its control.

J. Patrick Williams: The straightedge subculture on the Internet: a case study of style-display online

This article discusses one way in which cultural studies theories can be applied to current research of subcultures on the internet. Starting from Clarke's and Hebdige's theories of subcultural style and Frith's theory of music and identity, a case study of an online subcultural website is used to highlight the ways in which resistance is displayed by members of the 'straightedge' music subculture. In particular, usernames and signature files are analysed to demonstrate how style is constructed to communicate subcultural values and beliefs. At the same time, a critique of semiotic analyses of subcultural style is raised. It is argued that ethnographic methods are better suited to interpreting social psychological and cultural meanings attributed to subcultural activities in cyberspace.

Terence Lee: Internet use in Singapore: Politics and policy implications

As one of the most networked societies in the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore commands a high degree of attention in the information and communication (infocomm) sector. However, internet use, along with the politics of internet regulation, in the high-tech city-state has not been sufficiently critiqued. This paper aims to address this 'lack' by examining the politics and policy implications of internet regulatory practices in Singapore. It begins by looking at some development in Singapore's infocomm sector, highlighting political responses to key occurrences over the past decade. Taking on board the discourse of auto-regulation - that regulating the internet and new media in Singapore is mostly about ensuring an automatic functioning of power for political expedience and longevity - advanced by this author (Lee, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; Lee and Birch, 2000), this paper offers updates and new insights into the normalisation of internet auto-regulation in Singapore. The final section of the paper looks at the fast-developing application of electronic government (e-government) services in Singapore via the national 'e-citizen' website. I argue how online extensions of government are really about providing internet users with degrees of structured freedom, while tightening the more permanent and potent strictures of political control.

Scott Smith: The spectrum auctions: Mismanagement, lost opportunities and the undermining of a critical communications conduit

The welfare of wireless communications systems in Australia depend on the recognition of the electromagnetic spectrum as a unique and crucial cultural 'resource' of an information society. This article suggests that the elusive nature of 'spectrum' has resulted in mismanagement and lost opportunities, and that now the rights of local communities to our 'airwaves' are under threat, an assertion explored through an analysis of spectrum management in the 2000/01 financial year. I will further demonstrate that the new orthodoxy of 'spectrum auctions' reflects our political and economic milieu: the prominence of short-term decision-making and 'budget politics', the lack of concern with concentration of media/telecommunications ownership, and, moreover, the undermining of cultural and ecological aspects of the Australian communications system. This article argues for the provision of unlicensed 'spectrum' for local communities (or bioregions) - a 'commons' - to nurture the world of non-commercial communications and the distribution of localised ecological information, both scientific and cultural.

Belinda Smaill: Commissioning difference?: The case of SBS Independent and documentary

SBS Independent (SBSI) is the arm of SBS Television responsible for commissioning new work. Since 1994, SBSI has been working in conjunction with other screen funding bodies to commission feature film, short drama, animation and documentary. The charter that dictates the practices of SBS Television also provides guidelines for SBSI, which is consequently required to focus on work that is innovative and concerned with Indigenous issues and cultural diversity. This article focuses on the case of documentary in Australia and the impact of SBSI on a filmmaking community and contemporary documentary culture with particular reference to the Australia by Numbers and Hybrid Life series of half-hour programs. The focus on diversity, and the fact that this is the first Australian television institution to adopt an out-sourcing model for almost all production, means that SBSI has formed a unique relationship with independent documentary. Here I examine the specificity and efficacy of this relationship.

Frances Bonner and Susan McKay: Magazine features and infotainment values

The determinants which privilege selection of articles for mass market women's magazines have been little investigated. Conventionally, the articles are seen to convey information didactically in the service sections and entertain through the feature stories. Many feature stories combine information and human interest to produce a hybrid form of article. This paper appropriates the term 'infotainment' to describe them. This paper draws on health articles to develop an argument about infotainment values as they operate in mass market Australian magazines. It identifies nine determining characteristics and suggests that they can be found more widely.

Janine Mikosza: In search of the 'mysterious' Australian male: Editorial practices in men's lifestyle magazines

The men's lifestyle magazines FHM (For Him Magazine) and Ralph are a significant presence in the Australian market, and both target a specific readership of young, heterosexual men. My central research question concerns how desired audiences are constructed or imagined at the 'front end' of magazine production. One of the major tasks of the editors and publishers of these magazines is to access, and compete for, an audience. This paper aims to examine the contradictions apparent in the editorial practices of defining or envisioning an audience for Ralph and FHM. To understand the process of how they produce the magazines, I examine the editorial staffs' conceptions of the 'audience'; the ways in which it is created and for what purposes, as well as the terms used to describe this integral part of the industry. How the audience is defined and constructed highlights how contradictions, creativity and constraint operate in defining the audience.