Also in association with Swinburne University,
the University of Wollongong, Australian National University,
Charles Darwin University, Edith Cowan University, ACID and AFTRS
Program leader: John Hartley
Cultural institutions and community activism both need to respond to the challenge of changed relations between production and consumption, expert and amateur, citizen and consumer. The Citizen Consumer Program focuses on redefining consumption from behaviour to action, and on the interconnected domains of consumption (private) and citizenship (public) in contemporary commercial democracies. The program investigates the shift towards the consumer in the content value-chain, and examines longer-term opportunities arising from the wider uptake of digital television and broadband. It also aims to devise prototype models of innovative content co-creation by citizen-consumers.
These fundamental trends are the subject of two large-scale projects. Youthworx engages with the Salvation Army and the youth-run community radio licensee, SYN, on creative media for at-risk youth, bringing together the values of community media, consumer-generated content and third-sector social enterprise. New Literacy, New Audiences investigates the modernisation of the relationship between cultural institutions (museums, state libraries, galleries) and their users via consumer-generated content.
Along with these major projects, the program has close links with John Hartley’s Federation Fellowship project The uses of multimedia, which focuses on the role of multimedia literacy and consumer-creativity in the evolution of knowledge and the expansion of digital content industries. Considered together, these three activities constitute a considerable research-based investment in innovative content prototyping, generation and distribution.
Projects at CCI