Jock Given

Making media policy: looking forward, looking back

Seeking papers for the media stream at the conference and articles for this issue of Media International Australia, our aim was to examine contemporary media policy issues that benefited from some kind of historical analysis. Rather than starting with history, confident that it served up powerful and useful lessons, the idea was to begin with the current policy challenges and see whether history helped. Unsurprisingly, most authors found it did — though not always, and for different reasons.

Judiciary 1, Executive 0

The case regarding the Australian Broadcasting Authoritys (ABA) Australian Content Standard was invalid because it did not treat New Zealand programs as favourably as Australian programs is discussed. The Court has found that New Zealanders are not Australian.

Book review: Social Media and the LawGeorgePatrick, Social Media and the Law, 2nd edn. Sydney, NSW, Australia: LexisNexis Butterworths, 2016; xliii + 449 pp. ISBN: 9780409343380 (pbk) 9780409343380 (ebk), AUD

The book Madras Studios is a finely crafted narrative of the Tamil cinema industry intertwined with the social, cultural and political history of the linguistic region. The author traces the cinematographic history since the 1930s using a cultural and political background of Dravidian ideology. This book focuses on analysing the films produced, directed and processed in five major studios in Madras. The use of the phrase ‘Madras Studios’ evokes a nostalgia in the minds of film lovers as it represents the cultural and creative prosperity of the city. Eswaran Pillai delineates the growth of a powerful medium of cinema and an industry equivalent to Hollywood in terms of production as well as entertainment, though the medium itself has been ignored by academics in the state and the country. The history of Tamil cinema, rather South Indian cinema, is explored in chronological order in six chapters, with each chapter focussing on various aspects of films produced in five different studios. While significant films produced by Modern Theatres under the leadership of T.R. Sundaram are used to analyse the early years of the South Indian film industry in Chapter 2. The landmark movies of AVM and Gemini Studios are discussed in Chapter 3. This chapter further deals with the evolution of the narrative style, influence of music, social revolution in the immediate post-colonial era, the influence of Dravidian ideology along with the evolution of theatrical influence and rise of prominent actors such as ‘Sivaji’ Ganesan, which marks the influence of theatre and the Dravidian cult in South cinema. Chapter 4 deals with the significant films produced by the studios Vijaya-Vauhini and Prasad studios. This chapter gives us an insight about influence of the state reorganisation and how films produced by the studios reflect the linguistic identity. This chapter also analyses how the print media had discussed the lives of the actors and actress of the film industry that in later years have evolved as popular gossip columns. While Chapters 2–4 are about the studios, pioneers of the industry and films made, Chapter 5 traces the legacy of studio system of the Tamil film industry. Chapter 6 discusses about the contemporary utopia and dystopia of Dravidian influence and culture in the Tamil movies. This chapter also touches upon the raise new narratives and genres in Tamil film industry with the entry of film directors of the younger generation with different mindset. Eswaran Pillai is successful in taking the reader through a nostalgic journey of Tamil film industry as well as commercially successful studios which no longer hold its grandeur in the modern digital and corporatised world of film industry. Although the films analysed and discussed fall into different genres across various eras, there is a significant lack in analysis about the films made by film prodigies such as K. Balachander or Balu Mahendra. This could be because their films do not reflect the Dravidian ideology or might be outside the purview of narrative and genre explored by Eswaran Pillai. The intended omission in no way impacts the content but might be a led to certain readers who are more connected to the movies of 1980s or 1990s. The attention given to the films of early years is missing while discussing the films made from 1980. Similarly, one should not fail to notice the comparisons to the Hollywood than to Bollywood cinema. However, these are insignificant as neither the omission nor the references hinders the story weaved by Eswaran Pillai.

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In this addition to Palgrave Macmillan’s Key Concerns in Media Studies series, Gerard Goggin provides a considered, succinct and state-of-the-art analysis of critical questions facing broadcasting and journalism in a maturing web environment. Particular attention is given to the complex negotiations unfolding between digital platforms and commercial content models in a context where both are evolving rapidly. These issues are book-ended by a useful summary of the development trajectory of the internet and a critical juxtaposition of the roles being played by consumers and professionals in the contemporary media environment. The over-arching aim of the book in conceptual terms is to deploy an ‘integrated media and cultural studies approach’ that allows for the correlation of technical affordances, popular tastes and institutional forms. This integrated approach is embedded in a wideranging narrative that is not over-burdened by the exposition, or primacy, of any particular theoretical model. Rather, the reader is constantly reminded of the need to be sceptical in the face of new media hyperbole, including that which has come from within cultural studies itself. In that respect, this book eschews narrow didacticism in favour of inculcating a truly critical readership through an objective analysis. This approach probably makes the book more useful for conveying the broader context of key debates than it is for demonstrating particular models of social communication. The standout chapter is ‘Broadcast Media and the Social Turn’, which provides a very useful summary of the development of digital television, does some conscientious myth-busting and culminates in a fruitful discussion of the central idea of television in the twenty-first century. In crossing this terrain, the author brings in well-considered examples of commercial motives, audience behaviours, interactive affordances and programming formats. The contemporary framing of the treatment makes this section highly suitable for ready inclusion in any substantial television studies course. The useful technical history at the outset of the book could perhaps do more to ground students in some of the foundational debates on the sociology of technology, and thereby illustrate why information technologies in particular are invested with social power in the present epoch. Instead, the framing provided here concentrates upon the immediate significance of digitisation for media institutions and their consumers, although those concerns are certainly expansive enough to pack the pages. There is some pertinent advice given to students in the Conclusion that highlights the pressing need to maintain a critical awareness of the various factors that shape deployments of new technologies. The format of the book makes it accessible to undergraduate students. The fluency with which a broad range of contemporary research and argument is incorporated within the narrative will also make the work useful to those students beginning graduate studies. The substantive chapters on broadcasting, news and media professions provide a natural correlation with programs in journalism and communications. In that sense, it is worth noting that the breadth of the title does not indicate one of those encyclopedic handbook approaches to the topic. Rather, this book is much more closely targeted, and likely to be all the more effective for it. − Adrian Athique, Arts, University of Waikato, New Zealand

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Media International Australia Stressing the limitations of non-scientific language to describe biometric failures, Magnet uses many examples to effectively question the objectivity of the technology. Most intriguing is how the three case studies point out the irony of privatisation of security and the over-reliance of these very same biometric companies on state governments for their profitability. The absurdity of biometric scientists’ assumptions about the permanence of ableness and good health struck me early (p. 5). Magnet shows that biometric technologies are premised on acquired discriminatory patterns of identification and flawed classifications of bodily identity, and as such, inherently deem the uncategorisable individual ‘guilty until proven innocent’. In tracing the origins of biometric technologies, and the history of its development and expansion, Magnet asserts how biometrics are strongly linked to the policing of a society. She exposes how the arrogant marketability of these ‘security’ systems is based on the flawed assumptions of a ‘truthful, static biological body’, and a technology that inevitably has inherited and embodied stereotypical perceptions of ‘the preferred dominant’ and ‘the othered’. She reveals, too, how these biometric technologies have become mere systemic extensions of human insecurities and the prejudices of their creators and clients. It is notable that the examples of biometric failures are not necessarily only related to issues of gender, race, sexuality and able-ness/disability, but class-neutral issues of bodily security. Readers beware: fingerprint scanners will still work with a cut-off finger (p. 6). At times, the examples become a little repetitive in making or reinforcing the same arguments. They are, however, no less interesting in bringing to the surface a persistent pattern of failure in the encroachment of privacy and presumptions of guilt, while promoting what Magnet terms ‘surveillant scopophilia’. In Chapter 3, ‘Criminalizing Poverty: Adding Biometrics to Welfare’, Magnet could have problematised the concept and understanding of ‘fraud’ better, and linked this more strongly to a broader contextual understanding of incidents of fraud in the four US states discussed (California, Texas, Illinois and New York) – particularly since Maryland and North Carolina abandoned biometric identification programs for welfare recipients. I was left asking the question, ‘Why was there a difference in decision-making when the costs excessively outweighed the benefits in all of these states?’ When Biometrics Fail challenges the reader to rethink what biometric technologies in effect sell – that is, an extension of a capitalist-driven prison system that unproblematically includes all those less than ‘powerful citizens’. However, one critical layer of the problem was insufficiently questioned: the very notion of security and whether indeed security is only best secured by curtailing the mobility of suspect, racialised bodies. – Angela Marianne Kuga Thas, Queensland University of Technology

Book Review: From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on VideoGreenbergJoshua M., From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008, ISBN 9 7802 6207 2908, ix+214 pp., US

Since its beginnings in the 1960s, the internet has grown steadily, metamorphosised in many surprising ways, and now is central to Australian society and media. As a relatively new medium, we still know little about its histories. This article discusses the emerging field of internet histories, which as yet has surprisingly few connections with the relatively well-established enterprise of media histories. We review the development of the internet in Australia, discuss international scholarly work on internet histories and, in the context of this special issue, consider the research agenda that lies ahead.

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Media International Australia the second summarises debates around social inequalities, politics and privacy within an ‘information age’; and the third examines cultural notions of identity, community and the body. Miller moves quickly through topics such as postindustrialism, globalisation, information society, produsage, digital surveillance, public sphere and online spaces, digital divide, cyber warfare, virtual communities, ne tworked ind iv idua l i sm, pha t i c communication and posthumanism. The most successful aspect of Miller’s approach is that these topics are presented as fluid, dynamic points of contention between welldefined theoretical positions. Crucially, he provides a convincing context for the ways in which various theorists have approached digital phenomena. Miller manages to give clear explanations of each position while still making it obvious where his own theoretical stance lies and why. There are many excellent discussions here: the teasing apart of notions of convergence in Chapter 3, the discussion of mobile phones and their potential within the developing world in Chapter 4, a useful summary of privacy arguments in Chapter 5, and a discussion of identity in relation to online worlds, including positioning Sherry Turkle’s seminal work within a critical timeline of technological developments, in Chapter 6. Miller demonstrates a convincing knowledge of the subject at hand, and has the confidence to paraphrase large debates in a concise fashion, generating a commentary that is both comprehensive and accessible. This volume is targeted particularly at undergraduates grappling with the challenges of studying digital media and culture, but the scope of material being covered here, and this volume’s focus on the social-political implications of recent media technologies, mean that it is a useful primer for many other disciplines within the social sciences and humanities.

Book Review: Greening the MediaMaxwellRichard and MillerToby, Greening the Media, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, ISBN 9 7801 9532 5201, ix+246 pp., A

Media International Australia the rigidity of Bourdieu’s structured view of society in favour of Nikolas Rose’s focus on the contemporary role of the media in guiding the self-regulation of the political subject. Bonner works through this idea with particular reference to presenters who emphasise ethical consumption: ‘there are television programmes and presenters to help provide the guiding expertise, and, since by and large the “actuality of life” does “fail to live up to its image”, they will be back again next week to help out’. In her acknowledgements, Bonner writes of the challenge of ‘fighting the data into shape’, and this is certainly a book underpinned by wide-ranging and detailed research. Alongside its admirable diversity of programs and presenters, Bonner’s book also provides an insightful and detailed consideration of recent and classic academic writing dealing with the intersection between television, its viewers and everyday life. – Susan Bye, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Associate La Trobe University

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No. 139 — May 2011 in a post-global world. He also displays a salient understanding of the history of the Christian tradition in the Indian context. The structure of the book reflects this logical flow from the global to the specific, while being attuned to India’s inevitable socio-political fragments that hinder any simple conclusion about the future of televangelism within its bounds. However, James’ belief that secular channels will increasingly pay more attention to religion and religious television appears to be justified adequately by his research. Perhaps the author also needs to consider the history of television in India, and not merely that of Christianity and its impact on Hinduism and other religious traditions in the nation. This is because Indian media scholars such as Keval J. Kumar and Shanti Kumar have demonstrated that the popularity of broadcast television in India since the 1960s is inextricably linked to the telecast of Hindu mythological epics adhering to a dharmic (or practice-based) rather than a theological view of religion. While James makes note of this aspect of Hindu culture, and hence its resistance to a belief-centred Charismatic televangelism, there is some scope for tracing this back to the origins of Indian television. The author’s most significant contribution, then, is to the field of cross-cultural religious studies rather than television studies. His ethnographic methodological approach (including content analysis and reception studies, as well as interviews with Hindu and Christian leaders) is thorough, the use of tables and figures is effective, and the application as well as appropriation of global cultural terminology such as ‘McDonaldisation’ and ‘McGospel’ is appropriate. James’ study of televangelism can also provide a useful model for examining the televisual presence of other non-Hindu faiths in India, and for considering how they interact with both the local Hindu mainstream and their global and diasporic arms. – Sukhmani Khorana, Media, University of Adelaide John, Richard R., Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010, ISBN 9 7806 7402 4298, xiii+520 pp., US

Australian internet histories: it's time

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