Kate Ames

Host/host conversations: Analysing moral and social order in talk on commercial radio

Talk between dual (or triple) host combinations dominates breakfast and drive programs. These programs are chat based, and incorporate talk on a range of topics conducted for an overhearing audience, including talkback segments that involve callers. This article considers the features of chat-based programming, and proposes a framework for analysis into talk-in-interaction on this format. Using ethnomethodological approaches – conversation and membership category analysis – as the basis for analysis, this article argues that in addition to the influence of the ‘radio program’, there are three membership category devices that influence host/host talk. These are ‘telling stories’, ‘members of a team’ and ‘members of a community’. The ways in which hosts and callers orient to these have consequences that may lead to the overt or subtle exclusion, or otherwise, of members of the overhearing audience, and this approach encourages a systematic analysis of the type of community to which participants orient within particular program.

Two hosts and a caller: Analysing call sequences in a dual-host radio talkback setting

Investigation into the impact of the stages of a radio call on host–caller interaction has traditionally been conducted in single host scenarios, whereby one host interacts with one caller. Further, this analysis has often been done in the context of talk radio that is designed to promote a sense of conflict in order to entertain its audience. However, what of dual or multi-host scenarios, where a number of hosts are co-participants when interacting with callers? This article considers a talkback segment within a chat-based program in which two studio-based hosts are involved in conversation with callers. It considers previous research into call sequence as applied to this scenario and reveals that rather than working to challenge the caller, the hosts work together to enable the callers to challenge the hosts but in a way that orients to sociability rather than conflict.

Are you really one of us?: Exploring Ethics, Risk and Insider Research in a Private Facebook Community

Researchers have only just begun grappling with the ethical implications of social media research, since more research is conducted online in virtual communities. Ethical review boards may not have the understanding or training to advise on projects with elements of social media research. This paper is a reflexive account that explores the authors decision to undertake research in a private Facebook community, of which she was already a member. This paper details the negative response that was received from community gatekeepers, and explores the research decisions which elicited this response. This paper uses Lee-Treweek & Linkogles four-part framework for understanding researcher risk, and presents in this instance that the risk of social isolation faced by the researcher was too significant to proceed with the study. Insider research, and netnography are two complicated areas of research. This paper contributes to ongoing learning in this growing field.

Distance Education and ‘Discovery Learning’ in First-year Journalism: A Case in Subject Improvement

This article examines the implications of adopting a discovery learning education model for distance education students in a first-year undergraduate journalism subject. It reviews subject enhancement strategies against learning theory and analyzes the ways students are engaged with subject content and assessment. Results of subject redesign included increased student satisfaction, greater retention and higher grades despite the increase in overall assessment requirements. It demonstrates that discovery learning based on group work and social engagement can be adopted in a distance education environment with positive outcomes. This article maps how a subject designed initially to align with a cognitivist/behaviourist model progressed to adopting a social constructivist approach. It concludes with a discussion of the issues associated with that transition.

Book Review: Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media AgeLaceyKate, Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013, ISBN 9 7807 4566 0257, 239 pp., A

No. 150 — February 2014 uncertainty of where its conceptual boundaries begin and end. For example, the chapters deliberately shift between critical reflections on moral panics vis-à-vis moral panics. So too, the definition of media texts recognised by each of the contributors is far-reaching in scope, including less obvious objects of analysis, such as protest signs and car window stickers, alongside more conventional media texts, such as films, television programs, news reports, video games and online communications. This is one of the strengths of the collection, which readily acknowledges and embraces these conceptual tensions as part of its overarching narrative. Researchers seeking a more nuanced approach to the relationship between the media’s role in the construction and dissemination of moral panics discourse and real-world effects may be disappointed, however, by some of the unreflective commentary scattered throughout the collection, which aligns itself with predetermined media dynamics and the saturation model of media effects. Thankfully, these are minor departures, suitably balanced by Krinsky’s introduction and his acknowledgement of more progressive studies by Angela McRobbie and Sarah L. Thornton, Kenneth Thompson and Sheldon Ungar, who historically have been vocal advocates for the need to rethink and reframe classical moral panics theory, particularly in the context of a changing mediascape and a multi-mediated social environment. Messenger Davies’ chapter, ‘Moral Panics and the Young: The James Bulger Murder, 1993’, is a notable highlight in this respect, with its attempts to navigate the delicate space between the ‘indignant denial’ of copycat behaviour as a result of ‘exposure to media representations of violence’ and public pressure for policy response and reform in the context of the real possibility of harmful effects as a consequence of ‘young people’s relationships with the media’ (pp. 242−5). Similarly, the concluding chapters of the anthology – written by some of the more established scholars in the field, including Chas Critcher, Kenneth Thompson, Amanda Rohloff and Glenn W. Muschert – cleverly extend the classical concept by questioning whether the concept of ‘moral panics’ has the ability to stand alone as an applied theoretical model without the assistance of other relevant concepts and theories, such as cultural trauma, social psychology, risk amplification and the social construction of deviance. These questions are explored through the lens of a number of topics, ranging from 9/11 to fear of crime, climate change and asylum seekers. Read as a whole, the book has a tendency towards repetition in its references to Cohen and Young’s seminal studies and their definitions of ‘moral panics’ and ‘folk devils’. However, this may not be an issue for researchers and educators interested in engagement with specific sections and/or individual chapters within the collection, a preference recognised by Krinsky’s useful inclusion of an appendix designed to facilitate alternative ways to use the collection’s content, according to different themes. These well-considered features of the book ensure that it fulfils its promise to provide a ‘comprehensive survey of a concept that is increasingly influential in a number of disciplines as well as in popular culture’ (book blurb). As a research companion, the collection offers both students and scholars a solid grounding in the theoretical origins and critiques of what is clearly still an evolving concept.

105.00. Distributor: Wiley.

Media International Australia Albury, Kath, Crawford, Kate, Byron, Paul and Mathews, Ben, Young People and Sexting in Australia: Ethics, Representation and the Law, ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation/Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales, 2013, ISBN 9 7807 3343 2804, iv+33 pp. Available free from http:// jmrc.arts.unsw.edu.au/media/File/Young_ People_And_Sexting_Final.pdf. This report addresses a serious gap in the Australian literature on sexting by giving voice to young people – no easy task, given that: ‘Current Australian laws prevent researchers from asking people under 18 years about their personal sexting practices.’ (p. 22) By sexting, the authors refer to the production and sharing of naked or semi-naked photos by phone or social media. Their particular concern is young people aged 16–17 years who are above the legal age of consent in Australia but under the age of 18, and therefore subject to child pornography laws when sexting. These laws, they contend, were never intended to apply to the consensual sharing of images between adolescents involved in intimate relationships. The report aims to ‘inform Australian legal, educational and policy responses to sexting’ (p. 3), and discusses the outcomes of three focus groups involving sixteen young people from Sydney and a workshop attended by stakeholders from a range of government bodies, universities and NGOs. The focus groups found that young people did not use the term ‘sexting’ and saw it as imposed by media and educators. Similarly, the risk assumption of educational material was seen as largely irrelevant to a practice that they themselves thought about in terms of trust and relationships. Consequently, there was little understanding of the legal repercussions of sexting. Young people viewed the production of images in terms of body self-confidence and autonomy rather than risk and shaming. However, they were cognisant of the ethical issues around consent and the sharing of images, and highly aware of both the gendered nature of risk approaches and the inconsistency of laws applying to age of consent in relation to different sexual activities. They felt that non-consensual sharing of photos should be penalised as breaches of privacy rather than treated as child pornography. The majority of workshop participants expressed the need for an ethical approach to sexting that accounted for the varied contexts in which images were produced, and advocated a harm-reduction rather than an abstinence approach. Many adults, too, were unclear about the legal situation and their responsibilities under the law, and felt that both adults and young people were ‘under-resourced by current education and policy responses to texting’ (p. 16). On the basis of the focus group and workshop discussions, and their review of academic literature and popular media, the authors present nine recommendations covering strategies and new approaches to understanding sexting. The report is concise, well written and tightly focused. It also includes an executive summary and extensive appendices. My feeling, though, is that it would have been helpful to incorporate the literature review (Appendix 7.1) and descriptions of the educational resources shown to the focus groups and workshop participants (Appendix 7.4) into the main body of the report. An underpinning assumption is that risk and shame approaches are harmful to young people and the minimal evidence of contrary opinion from the workshop submissions is summarily dismissed. A slight expansion of Section 7.1.1 may have helped to justify this dismissal. — Lisa Gunders, English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland