Peter B. White

Media and bushfires: A community perspective of the media during the Grampians Fires 2006

Abstract This paper examines the ways residents in the Grampians area in the Australian state of Victoria used their local and their state and national based media before, during and after the 2006 bushfires (wildfires). The researchers were particularly concerned to understand how residents evaluated media sources as trustworthy and credible in relation to bushfire warnings and information about the fires delivered in the media. Analysis of data derived from two separate focus group sessions conducted by the researchers reveals four main themes. (1) The media are perceived as part of a broader information gathering process. (2) Local knowledge is the most important aspect in broadcast information. (3) Members of small communities can feel disenfranchised and resentful of the media when media coverage focuses on larger towns, and (4) the effects of media reporting, including specific warnings, are both immediate and long lasting. The paper explores some of the tensions that result from the ways rural residents use and distinguish between local/regional and metropolitan and out-of-state bushfire information; and it encourages better use of the local/regional media to increase community safety and awareness in relation to bushfire mitigation, preparedness and crisis management issues before, during and after the fires. It is suggested that risk communications professionals need to understand that when mediated risk-related communications are provided, a key evaluative criterion is whether or not those media and the messages represent and reflect local knowledge.

A DOMSAT for Australia: Communications planning under strain

The events leading up to the announcements of a domestic communication satellite for Australia are outlined. The implications of the satellite decision are discussed in relation to planning for the communications infrastructure as a whole. It is suggested that the communication satellite debate has revealed weaknesses in the existing policy planning process and that these will be exacerbated by the satellite decision unless appropriate strategies are developed.

Booknote: Computers as TheatreLaurelBrenda, Computers as Theatre, Addison-Wesley, New York, 1991. ISBN 0201 51048 0. pp xxv plus 210, npa.

required reading for those who call themselves historians. This is no exception. Hobsbawm thinks that the Owl of Minerva is now circling nations and nationalism. One trusts that he is right and that the owl makes a special visit to central and eastern Europe. but the conclusion is just what one would expect from the historian who said that people can Iive without justice and often must! but that they cannot live without hope. George Parsons

Vietnamese refugees in Australia: press definitions of reality

AbstractWhile a great deal of mass media research has been concerned with the media’s effects on their audiences, there is now a growing trend to also look at the processes by which media select and organise information for dissemination. This article, by Naomi and Peter White, is based on research following the latter tradition and shed more light on the agenda-setting and stereotyping functions of the press.