Janet Fulton

This paper explores the perception of social currency as a distinct value within local news consumption among audiences. Social currency refers to the value individuals derive from engaging with and sharing news content within their social networks, allowing them to connect, express identity and signal awareness. Drawing on a large-scale mixed-methods study of local news audiences in Australia (survey: n = 7919; interviews and focus groups: n = 84), this study operationalised key dimensions of social currency using factor analysis. The findings confirm that social currency is a separate and measurable construct, distinct from traditional news motivations. It is significantly higher among younger people, men, urban residents and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, reflecting how news consumption intersects with social interaction, identity expression and symbolic practices of everyday life.

News consumers are increasingly disengaging from the mainstream news media (Park et al., 2024; Villi et al., 2022) with interest in news declining globally, and the proportion of people who say the...

Australia is increasingly affected by extreme climate events, and how these events are reported on by the media is constantly evolving. Using the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires in 2019–20 as a case study, this article examines how media practitioners at ABC Canberra navigate the challenges of emergency communication, with a particular emphasis on social media. Through qualitative interviews with thirteen staff from ABC Canberra, the research investigates how social media strategies, including real-time updates, audience engagement and direct communication with emergency services, enable these practitioners to broadcast during catastrophic emergencies. While the ABC still uses radio as a primary communication plank during an emergency, audiences are turning to a multitude of sources, and the ABC is increasingly including social media in its portfolio of emergency communication strategies. This article is focusing on how emergency broadcasting practitioners perceive the changes in emergency communication technologies and strategies, using a disaster communication ecology framework. The findings underscore the importance of an integrated communication approach that incorporates diverse sources and platforms to effectively inform and support communities during climate disasters. What we did find, as well, is that despite these technological changes, journalistic principles such as verification and ethical reporting remain key, as does familiar formatting, which provides reassurance in times of extreme climate events.

Extreme climate events in Australia are increasing. Since 2019, fires and floods have devastated all states and territories in Australia, leading to a reckoning via several government inquiries, including a Royal Commission, on how governments, emergency services, communities, and individuals prepare for, respond to, and recover from such catastrophic events. It also raises the question of how the media reports and reacts to these events; in Australia, the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has taken on the role of emergency broadcaster. This paper employs a cross-sectional design to examine how media practitioners from ABC Canberra navigate their role as emergency broadcasters, how they prepare for and respond to emergencies, and how they interact with the community during those events. This examination includes reflections and memories from a series of interviews we conducted with these practitioners about the catastrophic bushfires in 2019/2020 in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) region. Using this design and a Bourdieusian lens, the study examined the practices of media practitioners during a catastrophic emergency and their perceptions of preparedness for future disasters. We examined how training (cultural capital), networks (social capital), online expertise (digital capital), and experience (habitus) contribute to preparedness in emergency broadcasting. The study has both a theoretical and practical contribution: theoretically, it expands Bourdieu’s cultural production model by applying it to a form of broadcasting that has not been examined in this way; practically, it contributes to our understanding of media practitioners and how they practice during emergency broadcasting.

Despite growing recognition of the importance of understanding trust in news, few studies have focused specifically on local news. To address this gap, we investigated the reasons underlying trust in local news from an audience perspective. We analysed 5395 open-text responses from an online survey of Australian adults. Using content analysis, we identified eight factors influencing trust in local news. In line with existing news media trust research, factors of journalistic standards and quality, less bias, less agenda-driven, reputation of the news organisation, and relevance at a personal level were considered important. We uncovered factors unique to local news, including local relevance and accountability, local verifiability, and benevolence for the community. These factors were especially important to older audiences and those living in regional areas. Findings highlight the importance of relational trust – trust built on emotional and social bonds between news providers and audiences – in the local news context.

In a choice-rich media environment, audience perceptions of what is and is not news are not static. However, most of the scholarship about news definitions has been from the perspective of the practitioner. This article takes an audience-centric approach. Based on thematic analysis of 60 semi-structured interviews with Australians, it finds traditional understandings of news persist for many, but broader definitions outside of traditional conceptions of news are more likely to be embraced by under-35 and non-news consuming audiences. Using an adaptation of Gieryn’s boundary framework and its dimensions of expansion, expulsion, and protection, the analysis revealed strong sentiments about the quality of mainstream news from traditional news adherents, those who perceive expanded news boundaries, and those who reject legacy news. The evidence provided, and the new conceptual framework can assist news organisations, policymakers and scholars in their understanding of low and non-news users’ engagement with and perception of news.

Using a creative ecosystems approach, this paper demonstrates that journalism is deeply embedded in the interconnected ecosystem of publishing and, at a higher level, the creative industries. Analysis of data from seven regional areas in New South Wales and Victoria revealed that newsrooms and journalists are vertically integrated with national and international journalistic practices and economic imperatives and also horizontally integrated with other sectors in the creative industries. The analysis revealed a scalable yet integrated ecosystem at work with complex and interconnected journalistic practices on display. This view moves beyond the usual normative approach to studying journalism. We are not asserting that journalists should be doing certain things, as important as that is, but drawing attention to the fact that using this lens allows us a different and useful perspective on what they are actually doing.

This article reports on a pilot study that examined representational and content diversity in Australian media through semi-structured interviews with experts in the field and secondary documentary analysis of available public reports, news articles and websites. Of the eleven axes of diversity explored in the wider project, this article focuses on ability, ethnicity, religion and class, based on the experience and expertise of the interview participants. The analysis revealed four common themes: (1) the media’s tendency to narrowly and predictably portray diverse groups; (2) the lack of diversity in newsrooms and management, and its impact on content and representation; (3) commercial imperatives and (4) the value and impact (or not) of policies. While there are some areas of the media that are seen to be doing a better job, the overwhelming consensus among the participants supported community advocacy and academic literature that finds Australian news media can do better when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

This chapter pinpoints a dangerous gap in official policy responses to recent fire and flood emergencies in Australia. The gap is twofold: a relative lack of focus on preparedness and an almost complete lack of focus on the role that arts, culture, and creativity can play in dealing with climate emergencies. A thematic analysis of recommendations in six major bushfire and flood inquiries commissioned between 2020 and 2022 reveals that preparedness is less a focus than resilience, recovery, and response. When preparedness was noted, it was mainly focused on government and government bodies rather than on individuals’ or communities’ preparedness. Several arts and culture organisations’ submissions to these inquiries had virtually no representation in the recommendations. These bodies, though, tend to focus on resilience and recovery. There is an emerging academic literature supporting the preparedness perspective, but to achieve a step change in preparedness to address the accelerating climate crisis, we need coordinated use cases of fused arts and advanced technology presented elsewhere in this book. Without the ability to imaginatively preview what near-future climate shocks could look and feel like, it is almost impossible to believe their likelihood, let alone prepare, especially in frontline communities.