Time is running out for media people and academics wanting to tell their innovative story or present research at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference in July.

Organisers say the deadline is fast approaching for registration in less than two weeks.

Many major key challenges and core problems facing Pacific media are up for discussion at the conference in Suva, Fiji, on July 4-6 hosted by The University of the South Pacific (USP).

“Interest in the conference is very encouraging, both from our partners and from presenters — who are academics, professional practitioners and others who work in the fields of media and society,” conference chair Associate Professor Shailendra Singh of USP told Asia Pacific Report.

“Some very interesting abstracts have been received, and we’re looking forward to more in the coming days and weeks.”

The USP is partnered for the conference by the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

“There’s a lot to discuss — not only is this the first Pacific media conference of its kind in 20 years, there has been a lot of changes in the Pacific media sector, just as in the media sectors of just about every country in the world.

Media sector shaken
“Our region hasn’t escaped the calamitous impacts of the two biggest events that have shaken the media sector — digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic.”

Both events had posed major challenges for the news media organisations and journalists — “to the point of even being an existential threat to the news media industry as we know it”.

“This isn’t very well known or understood outside the news media industry,” Dr Singh said.

The trends needed to be examined in order to “respond appropriately”.

“That is one of the main purposes of this conference — to generate research, discussion and debate on Pacific media, and understand the problems better.”

Dr Singh said the conference was planning a stimulating line-up of guest speakers from the Asia-Pacific region.

Chief guest
Chief guest is Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica, who is also Communications and Technology Minister.

The abstracts deadline is April 5, panel proposals are due by May 5, and July 4 is the date for final full papers.

Key themes include:

• Media, Democracy, Human Rights and Governance
• Media and Geopolitics
• Digital Disruption and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Media Law and Ethics
• Media, Climate Change and Environmental Journalism
• Indigenous and Vernacular Media
• Social Cohesion, Peace-building and Conflict-prevention
• Covid-19 Pandemic and Health Reporting
• Media Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

Email abstracts to the conference chair: Dr Shailendra Singh

Full details at the conference website: www.usp.ac.fj/2024-pacific-media-conference/

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Jock Cheetham, senior lecturer in news and media in the Charles Sturt School of Information and Communication Studies in Bathurst, said recent “news” of the demise of the journalism course was greatly exaggerated.

Cheetham said he was surprised to wake up and read a media report in late July suggesting journalism was not being taught separately at Charles Sturt University.

“That day I spent six hours teaching news and media, also known as ‘journalism’,” he said.

“Actually, on that Tuesday we had ABC veteran Trevor Watson visit us on campus to give a guest talk on journalism, specifically news writing, which was also streamed to online students.

“Before that talk, I spent two hours with a class analysing media coverage of The Voice to Parliament Referendum campaigns. After Trevor’s talk, I held a news writing tutorial doing practice exercises on the hard news style of reporting.”

‘Pretty journalistic day’
He said it was a “pretty journalistic” day.

“We’re still teaching journalism, with practical opportunities to work in newsrooms, such as National Radio News,” he said.

Cheetham emphasised that quality journalism had never been more important, and Charles Sturt had an enviable reputation for producing some of the world’s best, most-renowned journalists.

As the original ABC article noted, over the past five decades, the university has nurtured some of the nation’s most high-profile communicators, including Andrew Denton, Melissa Doyle, Samantha Armytage, Hamish Macdonald, Chris Bath, and current ABC News Europe correspondent Nick Dole.

“Charles Sturt University will continue to educate and train journalists for the evolving media landscape,” Cheetham said.

“At the University campus in Bathurst we continue to have cutting-edge facilities, such as a TV studio, a community broadcasting radio station, and editing suites, for our students to gain skills and insights into working in their chosen fields.

“We’re also investing substantial funds in the communications hub that will provide new facilities for our future students.”

For example, graduates from 2021 include 7News (Central West) journalist Reuben Spargo who won the 2021 JERAA Ossie Award for ‘national student journalist of the year’.

“Charles Sturt threw practical skills at me and helped grow my confidence as a communicator,” Spargo said.

“The connections I made and the experiences I shared allowed me to hit the ground running within the industry.”

Keeping pace
Cheetham said to keep pace with the ever-changing media industry and digital advancements, Charles Sturt had launched a new communication course with its first intake last year, 2022.

“The new Bachelor of Communication offers specialisations in strategic communication, news and media — journalism, which I teach — and design and content creation,” he said.

“Teaching the critical role of journalism is still very much a priority at Charles Sturt. The changes represent a transition from one version of the journalism degree, which we have offered for more than 50 years, into a new degree program.

“The philosophy behind the new course remains the same — we’re aiming to produce people who are good storytellers. We have retained a lot of the strongest elements of the old course bringing them into the new course.”

Having industry and alumni co-design the course with academic staff offers students a unique combination of academic, discipline-specific specialisations with a sound understanding of the industry through the networking and industry connections embedded within the course.

The format of the new degree combines first-hand industry knowledge and advice, and to have industry professionals sharing knowledge, expertise and daily experiences will be a real game changer for the students.

Republished from CSU News with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Sri Krishnamurthi

Global technology and business leader Dr Anita Sands has warned against allowing digital technology to take over democracy on the eve of the first anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre last year.

Dr Sands, who hails from Ireland but is based in Silicon Valley, California, served or serves on the board of several software and cloud companies.

“Democracy depends on communication and deliberation, free press and countervailing forces to hold the powerful accountable,” she said in her keynote address “Digital Disruption and the New Democracy” this week organised by Project Connect at Auckland University of Technology.

READ MORE: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

“In a couple of weeks’ time we will commemorate the first anniversary of the Christchurch tragedy and a day of immeasurable sorrow when the world finally gained an appreciation for the very darkest implications of technology and how it can serve as a breeding ground for extremists and an outlet for their putrid beliefs,’’ she said.

On March 15 last year, a gunman attacked Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton and the Linwood Islamic Centre, killing 51 people. The first attack was streamed live on Facebook and other social media.

Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant faces 51 charges of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one under the Terrorism Suppression Act. The trial is due to begin in June.

“In the case of traditional media, we’ve put guardrails around what is appropriate in certain contexts – ratings on movies, warnings before clips are shown on television, censorship of inappropriate content but no such provision exists on the internet until the tragic events of Christchurch last year,” Dr Sands said.

Christchurch Call tackles terrorism
The “Christchurch Call” was the first attempt, after the mosque attack, to bring together countries and tech companies to end the ability to use social media to organise and promote terrorism and violent extremism.

World leaders from 48 countries and technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, pledged to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online at the Paris summit.

“In one of the most vocal and effective calls for action by your prime minister, [Jacinda Ardern] challenged the international community and the technology industry to devise a 21 st century response to this atrocious event.

“As a result of the Christchurch Call, a broad coalition of countries and companies have come together and made meaningful progress on curtailing and reacting to extremist content and hate speech.

“They’ve agreed to standards and crisis protocols, they’ve committed to investing in technology to combat this evolving issue, as well as funding research into how terrorist groups actually behave and use technology,” she said.

“Terrorism and extremism are one corner where humanity unquestionably has to draw a line in the sand and fight back, and defending democracy is another,” said Dr Sands, who earned her PhD on atomic and molecular physics from Queens University, Belfast and has a masters degree in public policy and management from Carnegie and Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she was a Fulbright scholar.

The onus was clearly on every person as an individual to be wary of the sound bites in online platforms, the former all-Ireland speaking champion said.

‘Playing our part’
“As individuals we also have to play our part in committing to critical thought and more vigilant around how and where we get the news,” Dr Sands said.

“Countries like New Zealand are better off than others that are already suffering the effects of an information environment that is so polluted that nobody knows what to believe anymore.

“New Zealand is fortunate that your mainstream media has not yet deteriorated to where in itself it is a polarising bubble. You still have a highly respected free press and public broadcaster which is as much a representation of your commitment to independent thought as a source of your news, and because of them a proper and civilised debate still exists here,” she said.

However, she warned: “Democracy in the digital age isn’t just a whole new playing field, it is a whole new game and we have to catch up quickly on how it is being played.

“Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff has written extensively about this evolving paradigm which she calls surveillance capitalism and to the capitalists their most precious asset is our most precious asset —our attention, the currency of this new capitalism is our behaviour, every facet which is translated into data and then sold.

“We aren’t customers, we are merely the raw materials that are fed to the real customers, the advertisers.

“As individuals we freely share every facet of our lives without realising it, as we deposit more of attention, they withdraw more of our autonomy without realising we are a society in shackles,” she said before drawing on a witty analogy.

Customers as ‘users’
“It has always struck me as interesting that there are only two industries who refer to their customers as ‘users’ – drug dealers and software developers, and both are in the addiction game.

“In this age of surveillance capitalism, online platforms are in a race to capture our attention which means they have to get us addicted to using their technology.

“As the Netflix CEO once very famously said when he was asked ‘who do you compete with?’ he said, ‘we compete with sleep’.”

Be aware of what the public has to deal with in the digital age, Dr Sands said.

“They [tech companies] do that by unleashing these powerful algorithms that can predict with astonishing accuracy what will keep you there,” she said.

“We end up in what we call filter bubbles, seeing a newsfeed that is entirely unique to each one of us, designed to appeal to your most primal and powerful emotions.

“Humanity has created a puppet that now knows how to pull on the strings of its master.”

This timely warning comes as New Zealand heads to the polls on September 19.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz