CCI in the Media

Dr. Mark Ryan, QUT film and television Lecturer, joined “The Drum” on ABC 1 last night (31st January) to talk about the future of the Australian film industry and the challenges it faces on the eve of the inaugural ACCTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards. He argues that Australia should move away from just funding cultural films towards entertainment value and commercial returns.

The segment is available at 24:24 to 34:18 mins into the clip.

As they play with their digital devices and online games, children may unknowingly be making up the kind of democracy we will have tomorrow.

That’s one of the challenging perspectives on how the digital age is changing society put forward by John Hartley, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) in his new book “Digital Futures for Cultural and Media Studies”.

While most Australians would assume that adult citizens who vote and pay taxes do most of the shaping of a modern democracy, Prof. Hartley contends that children, as they engage with one another and the wider society online, are exerting a largely unseen, but growing influence.

Australian content should receive a boost in an increasingly convergent media world, if the findings of the Federal Government’s interim report – released today – are carried into policy.

Dr Ben Goldsmith of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Swinburne University says that the findings of the Convergence Review Committee are a useful step towards consistent treatment of all forms of media in Australia.

“There are a number of important questions still unanswered and many details still to be clarified, but broadly, we welcome these findings to date. It is pleasing to see that some of the ideas we supported have been taken up in the Interim report, specifically the Public Interest Test, the Innovation Fund, and the extension of support for new forms of Australian content including games and apps,” he says.

STUART CUNNINGHAM From: The Australian November 23, 2011 12:00AM

IT'S that time of the year, when a graduating student's thoughts turn to a future career. In the humanities, the old joke "Do you want fries with that?" just won't die.

JULIE HARE From: The Australian November 23, 2011 12:00AM

THERE is a widespread perception that an arts degree leads only to the dole queue or, at best, a job doling out fast food.

But a survey has revealed that despite taking longer to find their feet than peers from other disciplines, arts graduates are highly employable in jobs that match their undergraduate skills.

New research conducted by Stuart Cunningham and Ruth Bridgstock from Queensland University of Technology has found 80 per cent of survey participants are employed full-time, 70 per cent are employed in a job that requires a degree and 60 per cent are employed in a field directly related to their undergraduate degree.

TREVOR BARR From: The Australian November 21, 2011 12:00AM

REED Hastings, from Boston in the US, a one-time teacher of mathematics in Swaziland, co-founded internet movie download company Netflix in 1998.

Hastings patented a hard drive in 2003 that could download movies but cost consumers $300 to install, and it took eight hours to download a two-hour film because of poor network capacity.

Late last year, the company began its "watch instantly" streaming content service delivered to PCs, but with the added capability of delivery to set-top boxes for television.

New media have become the most important news source for Australian media consumers, according to a new study from researchers at CCI's Swinburne Institute node.

A submission to the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) presents findings from three surveys of the online habits of 1000 Australians. Online Media Use in Australia 2007-2011 reports that four in ten respondents nominate the internet as a very important source of news – three times more than nominate radio or newspapers and four times more than nominate TV.

Australian children are among the youngest and prolific users of the internet in the world, according to a new study that compared the experience of Australian children aged 9-16 to those of their European counterparts.

The study, AU Kids Online, was authored by Professor Lelia Green, Professor John Hartley and Professor Catharine Lumby from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI). It was carried out in parallel with a 25 nation survey in the Europe.

Scott Ewing had an op-ed piece published in the Australian Financial Review (20 October 2011, p83)on online shopping arguing that a lack of comprehensive data is undermining decision-making in this realm. For subscribers to the AFR the link is here.

Earlier this month, The Swinburne Institute released its submission to the Productivity Commission's inquiry into the economic structure and performance of the Australian retail industry.

Scott Ewing, the author of the report and a researcher on the World Internet Project at CCI, has recently been interviewed about the report in local and national newspapers, and on television and radio. Links to each interview and article are below.

Newspapers:

Scott Ewing talks to Ros Childs on ABC TV's Midday Report on Wednesday 21 September about online retail and men's and women's shopping patterns online.

Scott Ewing talking to David Oldfield about David's recent renovation-related purchases and online retail more generally on 2UE Sydney's Morning Show 13/09/11.

Scott Ewing talking to Richard (Margo) Margetson about online retail on the afternoon show on ABC Darwin on Monday 12th September.

Article in The Australian online edition based on CCi/Swinburne Institute submission to the Productivity Commission's Retail Inquiry.

Sydney Morning Herald article based on CCi/Swinburne Institute submission to the Productivity Commission's Retail Inquiry

Article in Herald Sun, Tuesday 13 September based on CCi/Swinburne Institute submission to the Productivity Commission's Retail Inquiry

Scott Ewing talks about online retail with Deborah Cameron on ABC 702 Sydney morning show on 3 August 2011

Dr Mark Ryan discuss how the Queensland University of Technology has just bought one of the nation's largest collections of ozploitation and art house films -- the titles were amongst 20,000 videos and DVDs put on the market after the closure of a cult film rental shop in Brisbane.

As businesses and government shift more and more services to the web, older Australians risk being excluded, a leading media researcher says.

The increasing reliance on the Internet for commerce and services is leaving older Australians with low web skills unable to conduct business transactions, access services, find out about community events or use it to communicate with friends and family, says Dr Sandra Haukka from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Queensland University of Technology.

A bright future awaits the nation’s computer and online games industry, as Aussies line up to splurge $5.8 billion on games over the next four years, a leading media researcher says.

A new study on the nation’s digital games industry shows that a strong focus on gaining highly-skilled staff, developing more online and mobile games and catering to the needs of new audiences can help the industry gain a bigger share of a fast-growing market.

IN the fractious debate over the economics, engineering and technologies that may or may not help the National Broadband Network come to pass, a key piece of the puzzle seems to have been missed.

The Gillard government is in power today because two regional independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, signed up to redress regional inequality and were promised fast broadband infrastructure.

Published: May 3, 2011
When Obama gets Osama, the world turns to Twitter

Axel Bruns
Associate Professor, Creative Industries at Queensland University of Technology

Confirmation of bin Laden’s death came before Obama took to the podium. Where were you when you heard about Osama bin Laden’s death?

Increasingly, the answer to this and similar questions may be, “I was on Twitter.”

Leading British and Australian researchers have called for a fundamental change in the way western governments encourage innovation.

In a controversial new report they argue that, while innovation policy is a major preoccupation of governments in the UK, Australia and the west generally, it does not work as well as it should because it fails to address the biggest hurdles faced by innovators.

Do-it-yourself bloggers, video diarists (vloggers), artists with their pixel-palettes of innumerable hues, sounds and images – the explosion of online content creation is one of the contemporary wonders of the world.

User-generated content (UGC) and their applications are by far the largest type of online content, both now and in any foreseeable future.

Dr. Mark Ryan, QUT Lecturer in Film and Television, appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise program with Koshie this morning (Friday 8 April 2011) to discuss the new controversial Australian movie Snowtown. A thriller Based on the horrific true crime events known as the Snowtown Bodies in Barrels Murders in the 1990s, Mark was invited onto the programme to discuss accusations that the movie glamorises crime.

ABC TV News Qld story about the floods at the Crisis Communication symposium, with Dr Jean Burgess + Associate Professor Axel Bruns.

Click here to view at the ABC News website

Source: 7pm TV News QLD
Published: Monday, April 4, 2011 7:11 AEST
Expires: Sunday, July 3, 2011 7:11 AEST

So-called social media, often used for chatter and flirtation, prove their worth as carriers of valuable information in disaster situations, with authorities working out how to use them better.

Australia is the fifth top spender per capita on entertainment and media behind the US, Japan, UK and Germany.

In 2009, each Australian aged 15 years & over spent an average of $756 on entertainment and media. Together, Australians spent $17 billion in 2009.
These are findings of a new report, ‘A data picture of Australia’s arts and entertainment sector’ by Dr Sandra Haukka from the ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at the Queensland University of Technology.

Learning from the successes and failures of Facebook and Twitter during the Queensland floods, government, research and media organisations are joining forces to better prepare Australia for future crises.

At the symposium “Social media in times of crisis”, emergency services, media managers, producers, journalists and researchers will share their knowledge and experiences of social media’s role in crisis communication, and discuss how we can achieve better integration of existing strategies across key agencies.

Australia is using its creative impulse to ride its way out of the global financial crisis.

The latest Creative Economy Report Card from the ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) shows continued overall growth in a sector of the economy that employs almost half a million people and generates more than $30 billion a year.

However some of its emerging segments have displayed strong growth rates at a time when much of the world economy was stagnant.

Fines and tougher laws are likely to have little impact on the worldwide growth in piracy of movies, music, books and software, copyright experts have warned.

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, the world’s first study on piracy from a developing-world perspective, shows that the ‘recipe’ for global media piracy is high prices for media goods, low incomes of consumers, and cheap digital technology that enables easy copying to occur.

Australian broadcasters are finding new ways to attract global and larger local audiences thanks to the internet.

According to a leading media analyst, having an active online presence has allowed media companies like SBS to expand their audience reach and news sources internationally while catering to a wider Australian audience from different cultures.
“In the past, Australia’s existing broadcasters failed to respond to the needs of an increasing culturally diverse population,” says Professor Terry Flew of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation and Queensland University of Technology. “SBS has been the broadcaster primarily responsible for tracking how Australia has been progressing into a multicultural nation.

What's the point in getting excited about the Academy Awards if you already know the outcomes? That question must have been on the mind of many Australian movie aficionados, if the level of Oscar discussion on Twitter is any guide, according to QUT social media expert Axel Bruns.

Nature's forces - floods, cyclones, fires and this week the earthquake in Christchurch - won't stop, yet we still live on flood plains, in the bush, on the beach and in earthquake zones. Rescue services struggle. Communications fail. Insurance companies spread the cost. It comes back to educating the people.

Reporter Ian Townsend.

If you are between 18 and 35 years old, care about the environment and want to star in a ground-breaking 3D-action movie, film-maker and recent QUT PhD graduate Cathy Henkel wants to hear from you. Best known for her award-winning documentary, The Burning Season, she is now producing and directing Project Borneo - the biggest, most ambitious documentary ever conceived in the southern hemisphere.

The 2011 Academy Award nominations for Best Picture include a number of mainstream movies, continuing a recent trend of recognising popular fare, according to Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Oscars commentator Dr Mark Ryan.

The National Broadband Network has the potential to help restructure Australia’s health care system, making it more affordable and efficient, an information technology expert says.

According to Dr Terry Cutler, chairman of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) and principal of Cutler & Company, a nationwide e-health platform could help overcome looming staff shortages and rising costs in the healthcare sector.

Australia should seek new and original ways to bring together the arts, popular culture and the creative industries without stifling or confining them, according to a major new report.

In “Arts and creative industries” Professor Justin O’Connor of the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology argues there is no dividing line between publicly-funded arts, popular culture and the blossoming businesses of the creative sector – and national policy should reflect this.

Associate Professor Axel Bruns on ABC News

Social media have emerged as a vital element in warning and bringing relief to Queenslanders affected by the floods, according to new research from the ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI).

With ‘tweeting peaks’ often coinciding with flood peaks, Queensland’s emergency services and the population at large took full advantage of the versatility and robustness of social media to prepare for and combat disaster, says Associate Professor Axel Bruns of CCI and the Queensland University of Technology.

Australia’s future economic growth will be built on the resources of human creativity and innovation as much as on the mineral resources which underpin national progress today.

This is the driving concept behind Growing Future Innovators, a pioneering arts and innovation project based in Western Australia, whose three year Pilot Program will be delivered by the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) for primary and secondary schools from January 2011.

Deb Anderson
The Age, November 23, 2010

GETTING young people excited about learning can be tough, but it's a critical part of the challenge for Youthworx. With its range of media courses (from short courses in radio, film and music to full-time TAFE training), the Brunswick-based training studio wants to give homeless, marginalised and disadvantaged youth a fresh start in life by helping them reconnect with society. But does it work?

A court decision to award damages against the Australian rock group ‘Men at Work’ for infringement of copyright in their song “Land Down Under” was a bad decision from an economic perspective, a leading intellectual property researcher says.

Dr Paul Jensen of The University of Melbourne argues the decision distorts the economic rationale for the IP system – and could create major obstacles to artists and musicians in creating new works.

A huge new media power is arising, offering a perceived threat to established media but also opening up new ways for society to exchange ideas, opinions, news, cultural and creative products.

Around the world, vast quantities of media now circulate in unregulated and unmeasured channels, out of sight of governments and mainstream industries, says Professor Julian Thomas of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Swinburne University.

Australia’s current media content laws are out of date in the online and social media age, a leading journalism commentator says.

“The regulation schemes for all kinds of media – books, TV, cinema and radio – are inherited from the 19th and 20th century when these media were separated and were easier to govern with a command-and-control approach,” says Professor Catharine Lumby from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) and the University of New South Wales’ Journalism and Media Research Centre.

Homeless and disadvantaged young people are getting a fresh start in life, new skills and avoiding trouble with the law and drugs, through a far-sighted digital media training program in Melbourne.

by Cara Nash | September 22, 2010 15:18 | Edited September 22, 2010 15:21

A new wave of filmmakers are making and distributing content in a world with very different rules.

Having grown up in the world of digital media, the emerging generation of filmmakers and artists understand content differently and are breaking down the traditional boundaries of how films are made, distributed and consumed.

By Liz Tay on Sep 21, 2010, IT NEWS

Government 2.0 Taskforce member Bryan Fitzgerald today credited the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for setting the stage for an open government.

In an overcrowded room at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Fitzgerald described Australian efforts to license public sector data under the Creative Commons license.

He highlighted OECD recommendations that public sector data be made public in a raw and reusable form, licensed under standard open content licenses and priced "as close as possible to zero".

With the emergence of ‘next generation’ cinema, consumers can not only watch movies on their mobile and other electronic devices, they will also exert a direct influence on the success of the film by sharing it with their friends.

A serious shortage of skilled employees is a major factor contributing to a $2 billion trade deficit in Australia’s digital content industry, a leading researcher has claimed.

The digital industry, estimated to be worth $19 billion, includes software, computer games, digital videos, websites and animation – and is suffering from a shortage of graduates with sufficient work and creative business skills.

Australia needs a national strategy to overcome the fears and uncertainty of older Australians about going online, if broadband is to deliver its full value to the nation.

Dr Sandra Haukka, a Senior Research Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Queensland University of Technology, says that despite the Australian Government’s $43 billion national broadband network and $15 million Broadband for Seniors initiative, they need to do more to encourage older Australians to use the internet.

It is vital for Australia to offer strong support for artists as individuals, as well as for large artistic institutions, Professor Stuart Cunningham, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology said today.

Australia’s economy is powered by innovation – but our formal education system is not yet fully geared to deliver the innovators we need.

The nation’s innovators and entrepreneurs often achieve success in spite of their education, rather than because of it, says Dr Ruth Bridgstock of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Queensland University of Technology.

Australia has a superlative opportunity to generate new jobs, exports and cultural richness if it can tap the creative powers of all its citizens.

This is the view of Prof. John Hartley AM, research director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at the Queensland University of Technology, who has just completed a ground-breaking five-year ARC Federation Fellowship investigating the new opportunities opening up with the digital age.

Stuart Cunningham | From The Courier-Mail | August 04, 2010

WHATEVER else defines contemporary Queensland, the attractiveness it holds for the rest of eastern Australia must rank highly.

By Emma Tom | The Australian | Saturday, July 10, 2010

CHICKEN Little responses to the online revolution have a familiar, if not hollow, ring.

OPPONENTS of Australia's proposed super-fast broadband must be spitting silicon chips over the latest news from Finland.

The home of sauteed reindeer and more than 40 different words for snow has just made broadband a legal right. Thus the right to vote, the right to equality before the law and the right to party like it's yhdeksantoista yhdeksankymmenta yhdeksikko (1999) are now joined by the right to access dodgy online translators.

By Fiona Mackrell ArtsHub | Monday, July 19, 2010

Australia has a rare opportunity to deepen its democracy, achieve more open government and improve public policymaking – using the best of the new tools on the internet.

Dr Nicholas Gruen, Chair of the Commonwealth Government’s ‘Government 2.0’ Task Force, says the internet can open a new era for Australian democracy and good governance if we take full advantage of the tools for communication, discussion, and collaboration it has to offer.

Fast broadband should herald a revolution in health, education and environmental care for the whole of Australia.

But the national focus needs to shift from building the network to delivering the huge public good benefits it should deliver, says Terry Cutler, Principal of Cutler & Company, and chair of the 2008 Review of the National Innovation System.

The Australian Financial Review published this article on Wednesday 19th May outlining some of the main findings from CCI Digital Futures 2010.

Date: 21 April 2010

Dr Mark Ryan was awarded a prestigious Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Creative Industries Career Fund grant to attend the 2010 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference (SCMS) held in Los Angeles, March 17 to 21.

Dr Mark Ryan says SCMS is one of the pre-eminent annual screen studies conferences, bringing together leading film scholars from around the globe.

"The award was granted to present the paper, Independent from Everyone! Producing Australian Horror Movies for Global Markets, which continues my ongoing research into the horror movies industry.

This paper by Jason Wilson and myself has been published in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Vol. 11 no. 2, April 2010. The abstract is below:

The creative industries are now accepted internationally as a key feature of the post-industrial world, accounting for between 3 and 6 per cent of most nations’ economic activity and employing millions of people globally.

This is among the findings of a new review of the creative industries by Australian academics Professor Terry Flew and Professor Stuart Cunningham of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI).

The Australian arts should be funded to carry out research and to innovate in exactly the same ways as the technological sciences.

This will enable them to deliver even greater value to the public, innovate more, collaborate more widely and engage more deeply with business, a new investigation released by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) finds.

Anna Daniels article in Online Opinion: Monday, 22 February 2010

Late night violence near CBD entertainment venues in Melbourne has apparently escalated over recent months. For a variety of reasons the CBD is increasingly perceived as a late night danger zone, with escalations in glassings, alcohol fuelled attacks and gang bashings.

The campaign against internet piracy suffered a major setback in the iiNet
case last week, but the copyright wars are more than just a matter for the
courts. JULIAN THOMAS and RAMON LOBATO write...

The Perth-based internet service provider
iiNet, which won a remarkable victory against Hollywood in the Federal Court last week, used to advertise its various broadband plans on commercial

Mark Ryan
February 03, 2010 11:00pm

THE Australian film industry is evolving. The days when government film agencies handed out millions of taxpayers' dollars for filmmakers to produce "Australian stories" with little regard to commercial returns are limited.

Arts Minister Peter Garrett and Ruth Harley, the chief executive of film development agency Screen Australia, are championing a new era for Australian film – an era in which Australian movies must attract audiences and be financially viable.

The highly influential editorsweblog picked up the story from Crikey.

The lead item on Crikey on the 13th January 2010 was Margaret Simon's piece based on her analysis of Australian World Internet Project data. Read it here

Dr John Banks, was interviewed on December 17 for Radio National's 'Life Matters', discussing regulation and censorship of video games and the internet filtering debate.

A link with audio of the interview can be found here:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2773953.htm

Mark Ryan talks horror movies on ABC Radio National's Australia talks program today.

Australia's Interactive Games and Entertainment (iGEA) Association and the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) in the United States are promoting the Creative Workforce Program's Games Industry Skills Project.

iGEA is an industry association representing Australian and New Zealand companies in the computer and video game industry.IGDA is the largest non-profit membership organisation serving individuals that create video games in the United States.

People's Daily Online, October 28, 2009

"In recent years, "design" has been a buzzword in Beijing and across the country, signifying a transformation shift from both the government and Chinese people from a low-efficiency "made in China" manufacturing economy to an innovative "created in China" brand, according to Michael Keane, principal research fellow at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation."

In her blog for Crikey, journalist Margaret Simons reports on the lecture by Jeffrey Cole, one of the key instigators of the World Internet Project - a CCI project.

PETER CAVE: The Federal Government is reviewing patent law, in an attempt to boost innovation and bring in new technology.

Patent laws are supposed to encourage innovation by guaranteeing inventors the exclusive right to exploit their inventions.

But for many years there's been criticism that patents are handed out far too readily, and that this holds back important research and development.

Now the Government's patents body appears to agree with this diagnosis, and has proposed a series of changes to the law.

Oscar McLaren reports.

NINETEENTH-century thinkers and writers, from Charles Darwin to Thomas Hardy, would be awestruck if they could look forward to our times, in the developed world at least.

Once they had overcome the initial shock, they might be struck by four principal developments from their own times: mass education, general adult literacy, globalisation and digitisation, the last particularly embodied in the internet.

Digital media guru John Hartley believes the online domain is changing the ways in which we interact, though not everyone is up to speed. Phil Brown interviews John Hartley for Brisbane News.

SOCIAL networking sites are now more popular than personal email with Australians spending one in every 10 minutes online, research shows.

And it was not just young internet users who were behind the trend on sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

The biggest surge in social networking was among 35 to 49-year-olds, while almost a quarter of Facebook users were over the age of 50.

Nielsen Online's Global Faces and Networked Places report, released yesterday, found the use of social networking and blogging sites in Australia jumped 4.9 per cent last year.

By Mark David Ryan

Are the Academy Awards heading towards an identity crisis? This year's Academy Awards have been characterised by a major disconnect between the most popular films at the box office and socially important films deemed the 'best pictures' by the Academy.

Moreover, television audiences for the awards have generally been in decline since the early 2000s - though this year's audience improved upon last year's figure - and it's no secret that audiences increase when the most successful box office films are nominated for major awards.

MEDIA RELEASE

Research into our Creative Economy Gets a Boost

Australian Research Council (ARC) Chief Executive Officer, Professor Margaret Sheil, yesterday announced that the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) will receive almost $6 million in further funding. The announcement confirms CCI’s status as Australia’s premier research centre into the impact on the broader economy of the emerging creative sector.

Some interesting research in this report by Scott Ewing, Julian Thomas and from Julianne Schiessl from ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology.

An international workshop on ‘IP aspects of Free Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific Region’ is being held today (25 November) and tomorrow at UOW’s Centre for Comparative Law and Development Studies in Asia and the Pacific (CLDSAP).

The workshop has been organised in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) and the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich (MPI).

IN naming his much-hyped $180 million film Australia, director Baz Luhrmann has confidently taken ownership of a brand name so grand, so mighty, that if it bombs it will do so in spectacular fashion.

And if it soars, it will soar like the blackest of eagles against the bluest of Australian skies.

You've heard of 'fair trade' coffee. Well what about 'fair trade' media. Is it possible to develop a labelling system that would give people confidence in the ethical values of the sites they view?

Ellie Rennie spoke to Radio National’s Antony Funnell about the Quality/Control symposium and Open Spectrum Australia's community media labelling scheme. The interview was broadcast on The Media Report on Thursday November 6, 2008.

CANNIBALS, vampires, zombies, serial killers and man-eating crocodiles walk among us in a local revival of the horror movie genre.

They are stalking Australian cinema screens and DVD shelves in unprecedented numbers as the local horror film industry experiences a stunning revival.

Today brings us one of the latest home-grown horror entries, Dying Breed, starring Leigh Whannell, one of the stars and co-creators of the hit film franchise Saw.

Dying Breed melds two Australian legends, the Tasmanian tiger and an escaped convict who turned to cannibalism to survive.

While the rest of the Australian film industry is languishing, horror movies are alive and thriving and reaping in the big bucks according to a Queensland University of Technology researcher.

PhD student Mark David Ryan is undertaking the first in-depth study into the re-emergence of horror films and the reasons why horror hungry fans can't get enough of our Aussie schlock.

Mr Ryan said while the rest of the Australian film industry had experienced a contraction in the sales of films to overseas markets, the demand for Aussie horror films had never been stronger.

Australian horror movies are refusing to die, going against the grain of the languishing Australian film industry, says a university researcher.

Queensland University of Technology PhD student Mark David Ryan is undertaking the first in-depth study into the re-emergence of horror films and the reasons why worldwide horror fans are hungry for productions from Aussie brains.

Mr Ryan said while the rest of the Australian film industry had experienced a contraction in overseas sales, Australian horror movie production had trebled to 60 titles in the past eight years.

Queensland University of Technology PhD student Mark David Ryan is undertaking the first in-depth study into the re-emergence of horror films and the reasons why worldwide horror fans are hungry for productions from Aussie brains.

Mr Ryan said while the rest of the Australian film industry had experienced a contraction in overseas sales, Australian horror movie production had trebled to 60 titles in the past eight years.

"Like the undead from beyond the grave, Australian horror films are alive and well," Mr Ryan said.

What do the movies Saw and Wolf Creek have in common?

If you said they were both Australian horror movies, give yourself a star. But you get a bonus point if you managed to say they were the most profitable Australian horror films ever made.

At a cost of just $1.4 million, Wolf Creek - described by one British magazine as "the nastiest horror film since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" - was sold to a division of Miramax Films for $7.5 million before its world premiere at Sundance, the highest sum a US distributor has paid for an Australian film.

Australian horror movies are refusing to die, going against the grain of the languishing Australian film industry, says a university researcher.

Queensland University of Technology PhD student Mark David Ryan is undertaking the first in-depth study into the re-emergence of horror films and the reasons why worldwide horror fans are hungry for productions from Aussie brains.

Mr Ryan said while the rest of the Australian film industry had experienced a contraction in overseas sales, Australian horror movie production had trebled to 60 titles in the past eight years.

The Media Report on the ABC's Radio National Investigates new research on Australians and their use of the internet. The first comes from the latest Sensis e-Business Report and the second from the Australian Arm of the World Internet Project and it honed in on the use and availability of broadband.

If you are reading this, the popularity of YouTube won't be news, but there is more than one way to measure popularity writes Matthew Ricketson in his blog on The Age website. Ricketson discusses new research into Youtube being conducted by CCI's Jean Burgess and Joshua Green for the Uses of Multimedia project.

INTERNET use is now deeply embedded in Australian culture, with most people seeing it as a prime source of information, an increasingly appealing source of entertainment and the place to turn for breaking news. This is the picture emerging from a major new study of Australians' internet use conducted by the ARC Centre for Creative Innovation at Swinburne University that will be published this month writes Matthew Ricketson in The Age.

Three noted thinkers on the changing nature of media and its consumers. ABC Radio National's Media Report program interviews MIT's Henry Jenkins, Mark Deuze from Leiden University in the Netherlands and Australia´s John Hartley, Research Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation. Listen to the podcast or read the transcript.

ABC television chief Kim Dalton has called on the federal Government to extend Australia's TV content standards to web-based video, a move that would greatly increase government regulation of the internet.

Andrew Field reviews Internet and e-commerce law in the February 2008 issue of the Law Institute Journal.

On the ABC's Radio National Media Report program Anthony Funnell interviews three academics who've been closely studying areas of the Chinese media.

McWilliam, E. ‘Fresh Solutions with stigma’. Higher Education. The Australian. 31 October 2007.

McWilliam, E. ‘Learning in the 21st Century’. Curriculum Matters, Vol 6 (4), October 2007, pp.31-34.

Haukka, S. and Muirhead, B. Investing in ourselves. Online opinion. Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate. 19 September 2007. Available at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6379

McWilliam, E. ‘Creative Futures for a Conceptual Age’. Asian Business Leaders Magazine (Beijing). August 2007.

Tensions generated by the rapid development of intellectual property law and the various interests that define its further role in the economic and legal development processes of Southeast Asian countries was the focus of the latest presentation in UOW's Professorial Lecture Series.

Professor Antons told a lunchtime audience that Southeast Asian developing countries have long had a reputation for copyright piracy and the unauthorised use of trade marks and other forms of intellectual property.

CHASS today (Monday) welcomed the announcement of a new Advisory Council for the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Senator Kim Carr has appointed six researchers to provide strategic and policy advice to CEO Professor Margaret Sheil.

Toss Gascoigne, Executive Director of CHASS (the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) said that the appointments will strengthen the ARC.

"The ARC lost some of its independence and a little of its international credibility when the Board was abolished in 2005," he said.

22 January 2008

Professor Stuart Cunningham, CHASS president welcomed the announcement of a review of Australia's national innovation system.

Professor Stuart Cunningham, President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, said that CHASS sees this as an important step to enable Australia to move beyond an old 1960's smokestack view of innovation.

"Modern innovation depends on bringing people together to work on a problem, making the best use of the available talent," he said.