John Tebbutt

The object of listening

Listening is often figured as most valuable for assisting comprehension and understanding. This article raises questions with the way in which this analysis has developed and the role it plays in defining particular kinds of subjects in what the author describes as ‘civic spaces’. In particular, the idea of an essentialized listening deployed in strategies to develop ‘good listeners’ is critiqued. The article uses various examples including films and public sound installations to address the ways in which attention and distraction can be engaged to think differently about the object of listening.

Towards a history of listening and surveillance

This essay seeks to contribute to debates surrounding surveillance, media, and security cultures by exploring the intersection of surveillance and listening. Throughout the essay, examples from the United States and Australia illustrate the overlap between popular media, policy, and surveillance. It argues that popular media can show us how secret listening is socialized. It uses the series ‘eavesdropping – tapping – bugging – interception’ as a framework to identify continuities and discontinuities in how surveillance has engaged listening.

A decade on: New approaches to media and security

This collection of essays was born from a concern we shared regarding the rise of cultures of security and insecurity, the politics that underpinned them, and the ways in which the media contributed to and explored them. Nearly ten years after the 9/11 attacks, it is an opportune moment to take stock of the prevailing security cultures and their relationship to the media. With this in mind, scholars were invited to attend a Symposium on Media and Security Cultures in Melbourne, Australia, in May 2010. This was the impetus for a number of papers in this collection. The Symposium also heard from film-makers and security analysts as we looked to develop ideas on just how the changes in security since 9/11 had impacted on media. The essays in this collection explore audiences, representations, and relevant legislative frameworks as media grapple with the complexities of cultures preoccupied with security at international, local, and personal levels. They track audience reactions to media representations (McClean) and policy discourses (O’Loughlin et al.), as well as how security cultures play in television popular drama (Andrejevic, Stockwell, Wilken, and Nikolaidas) and film comedy (Seja). Apart from visual media culture, the internet (Harindranath) as a site of research on media discourse and the genealogy of listening media (Tebbutt) are also explored within the context of contemporary security cultures. More generally within the collection, differing views (Bossio and McGarrity) debate the way that media in Australia has coped with unprecedented change in legislation and policy frameworks. Further, the way legislative definitions of information have become vital to the expansion of security cultures is discussed with reference to Australia (Rix) and the United States (Davies and Albert). Specifically, the work collected here offers new perspectives on how media and security cultures interact. Based on original data from a study in the UK and France, O’Loughlin et al. provide a multi-methodological analysis of ordinary language to examine the disjuncture between audiences’ conceptions of radicalization and official discourses. The disconnect they discover, the authors argue, has profound implications for public debate on the legitimacy of policies on security. McClean’s essay draws from a larger study of audience responses to and understandings of the TV drama series EastWest 101, a cop show with a self-proclaimed ‘wog squad’, in which a significant proportion of the dramatic tension arises from apparent cultural differences and attitudes between the police who are its main characters. McClean is interested in tracking the viewers’ evaluation of and attitudes to the series for insights into how racial politics can be negotiated in post-9/11 multicultural Australia.

The travel writer as foreign correspondent: Frank Clune and the ABC

Abstract This article charts the early stages of the Australian Broadcasting Commissions engagement with reporting from Asia. It argues that, in the absence of regular reports from foreign correspondents, something that did not start to occur until the late 1950s, the ABC took reports from an enterprising travel writer, Frank Clune. While Clunes ‘on-the-spot’ reports were presented as scripts once he returned and his reportage was compromised by the commercial arrangements he undertook as part of his ‘assignments’, he nonetheless established an audience for international reportage on the ABC. Clunes popular style and commercial aspirations eventually led to an end to his ABC broadcasts. However, the tensions that arose tell us as much about the development of the ABCs cultural mission as they do about Frank Clunes enterprise.

Conversations from the South Report on the RadioPlus Seminar, 2005

The international conference ‘Radio 2005: the second transnational forum’, held in Melbourne in July 2005, provided an excellent opportunity to bring together radio producers and activists from ‘the South’ to discuss ‘convergence’ as it related to radio and development. Under the banner of ‘RadioPlus: evaluating hybrid forms for development’ participants with experience of radio and development came from South Asia, Africa, the Pacific and Australia. The forum was supported by La Trobe University’s School of Communication and Critical Enquiry and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. South Asian participants were funded under AusAID’s International Seminar Support Scheme. This report outlines key themes and concerns raised by participants.