Citizen Journalism paper at CCI Conference

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation has now completed its conference Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons. It was a very successful event, with over 180 delegates enjoying three days of lovely Brisbane winter sunshine and a very strong range of keynote presentations, papers and panels. If you want a blow by blow, panel by panel conference description, check out Axel Bruns' fabulous blog.

The paper that I presented was co-authored with Jason Wilson, and was titled "Citizen Journalism and Political Participation: The Youdecide project and the 2007 Australian Federal Election". It reported on the youdecide2007.org project, and the full paper can be found at the QUT ePrints site.

A summary of our main points in evaluating this project against the objectives set for it is:

1. Promoting citizen participation in Australian politics

• Good range of contributions, site visits (about 12-16,000 a week) across 50 electorates
• Biggest story was 'crate gate affair' concerning MP for Herbert, Peter Lindsay
• 40% of registrants were from Queensland
• Didn't get participants from some key electorates (e.g. Wentworth and Bennelong)
• Localism is a key issue to consider as Queensland Decides site attracted as much participation in early 2008
  

2. Promoting citizen engagement in the policy process

• Not really - it was more a news site than a deliberative site
• Context of a Federal election may have been a factor here
• Uneven buy-in from political organisations (Liberals did not get involved at all)
• Site design issues may have been a factor
  

3. Building top-down/bottom-up links between mainstream and online independent media

• Good range of references in mainstream media, both to stories and to project itself
• You Decide TV program on Briz 31 attracted about 16,000 viewers on a Friday night (can still be viewed on YouTube)
  
• Club Bloggery site established on ABC Online on back of collaborative Gatewatching site
  
• Didn't make link with SBS as project partner
  

4. Broadening base of political participation beyond the 'political junkies'

• Didn't happen - very much a site for the already politically engaged

Forthcoming events

I have now returned to U. Indiana - Bloomington after the International Communications Association conference in Montreal.

Forthcoming events that I will be attending include:

• Creating Value- Between Commerce and Commons - 25-27 June 2008, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Brisbane, Australia. This conference is being hosted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.
• Power and Place, the Australia and New Zealand Communications Association Conference - 9-11 July 2008, being held at the Duxton Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand, and being hosted by Massey University.
  

For those planning ahead for 2009, a series of important event will be happening in Australia in July. I will be organising the 2009 ANZCA Conference in Brisbane, which provisionally has the dates of 8-11 July and will be at the Creative Industries Precinct, QUT Kelvin Grove. The working title is "Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship".

This will coincide with:

• 2009 Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program to be held at QUT in Brisbane from 5-18 July. The contact for OII 2009 (which will be in Winter rather than summer in the Southern Hemisphere) is Dr. Marcus Foth.
  
• 2009 ICA Regional Conference to be held in Melbourne from July 16-17. The conference will be titled Journalism in the 21st Century: Between Globalization and National Identity, and the contact is Professor Ingrid Volkmer. A call for abstracts will be issued shortly.
  

The combination of events should lead to an attractive group of speakers coming from outside of Australia and New Zealand in July of next year.