CCI News

CCI’s 2012 Winter School offers selected doctoral students and early career researchers a week-long program of interdisciplinary study, collaboration and social interaction in the broad area of creative industries and innovation research, drawing on the Centre’s expertise in media, cultural and communication studies, economics, education, policy and law, in relation to the creative economy.

Australian Research Council funding for Discovery and Linkage research projects was announced recently and CCI researchers were awarded $1,167,000.

CCI's cohort of research higher degree students have set up an online space to share their blogs covering their latest findings, issues, controversies and general musings on all things creative industries.

It’s been an exciting first few months of the year!

TERRY FLEW Centre Chief Investigator Terry Flew has been appointed as chair of a comprehensive review for the Federal Government into the classification of television, film, music, online content, video games and advertising. The Review of the National Classification Standards is the first review of its kind since 1991. Terry’s appointment was announced just before Easter by Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland, and the Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O'Connor.

Guest-edited by two emerging scholars, and featuring work from several continents, a special issue of the Cultural Science Journal is (Vol 3.2) now published, presenting important experimental explorations in a nascent, fast-changing and potentially vast field of study.

The issue showcases work by Early Career Researchers (ECRs) as well as established figures, and includes work from The Netherlands, Australia, Taiwan, Bulgaria and the USA. It was co-edited by doctoral students Thomas Petzold and Henry Siling Li – while both were in the throes of final write-up and submission of their own PhD theses.

In its second stage, CCI has reshaped an ambitious research agenda and organised around four overlapping themes: • Conceptual Modelling • Digital Innovations • Policy and Macro-Trends • Skills and Creative Capital.

The annual report gives a terrific overview of the many exciting and innovative projects underway and a full list of publications, conference papers, and other output from centre staff.

How should policy support the creative industries? Few question the importance of traditional supply-side measures: low corporate tax rates, an intellectual property regime that strikes a balance between competition and innovation, and an education system that produces talent with the right mix of technical, cognitive and soft skills. It is common to see public investment in infrastructure, such as next generation broadband. But should policy go beyond this? Can the state play an active role in supporting the creative industries? This is a subject I am tackling in a new paper I am writing with my fellow ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) economists Alan Freeman and Jason Potts.

In the wake of the landmark iiNet appeal decision, the Internet Industry Association today announced it would immediately start work on an industry code of practice for internet intermediaries, including ISPs, search, hosting and social media providers.

We have finalised the dates for our next CCI Symposium, to be held in Brisbane at QUT on 27-29 July 2011.

Further details on the program will be announced soon. For now, please can we ask that you save the dates!

Australia’s Arts and Entertainment Sector underpins cultural and social innovation, improves the quality of community life, is essential to maintaining our cities as world class attractors of talent and investment, and helps create ‘Brand Australia’ in the global marketplace of ideas (QUT Creative Industries Faculty 2010). The sector makes a significant contribution to the Australian economy. So what is the size and nature of this contribution?

The creative China plan six years on | Michael Keane | Australian Policy Online

While many in China are embracing the notion of creativity, planning and managing it is another issue writes Michael Keane for APO

http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/creative-china-plan-six-years

This latest issue of Media International Australia is edited by Mark Ryan and features numerous QUT authors including: Mark Ryan, Terry Flew, Stuart Cunningham, Greg Hearn, and Axel Bruns.

Click here to view abstracts and purchase.

Five new projects will be undertaken as a result of CCI researchers being awarded Australian Research Council funding. The results were announced this week and the successful projects are listed below. More information on these ventures will be on CCI in due course or contact the researchers listed.

Creative Economy Research Newsletter 21 October 2010 out now! Click here to read it online. To subscribe click here.

Australia’s first foray into people powered journalism, funded by a philanthropic Foundation, says early success means its attention is now turned to long term funding.

The Public Interest Journalism Foundation (PIJ Foundation) was founded in 2009 to promote and enable innovation in public interest journalism and its first project, YouCommNews, had a successful launch at the recent New News Conference 2010 in Melbourne.

This week's Creative Economy newsletter has just gone out but if you're not a subscriber you can still catch up on the latest research publications by reading the newsletter online at http://eepurl.com/6gc2

Its a bumper issue this week and lots of great reading. If you'd like to subscribe simply click here - its free and comes out weekly. Brought to you by CCI.

Mark Ryan has written a horror chapter for the ‘Intellect Directory of Australian and New Zealand Cinema’, which is currently available for download, FREE for a limited time HERE.

With sessions on implementing gov 2.0, cultural analysis, the creative workforce and engagement with Asia, this CCI annual mid-year symposium will be a fascinating tour through current thinking on the issues facing the creative industries.

The final program is now available to download with full details on the emerging scholar program on Monday 5 July and the symposium proper on Tuesday 6 July.

Also on Monday is a public discussion on how Australian society will be changed by fast broadband - AUSTRALIA’S BROADBAND FUTURE. The panel event at 4 pm will be followed by the launch of three new books on knowledge, creativity and the internet. Full details here: book launch at 6pm.

A great series of events for anyone interested in Australia's future and the ideas and research happening at CCI.

A number of key findings about Australians' internet use have been announced as part of the latest installment of the Digital Futures Report, Australia's contribution to the World Internet Project.

The Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology is currently seeking people to take up scholarships to undertake postgraduate research in their Communication and Creativity Research Flagship

The Irmgard Coninx Foundation has given an honourable mention to CCI PhD student Thomas Petzold in their 'Cultural Pluralism Revisited: Religious and Linguistic Freedoms' essay competition held in April.

The competition, held from 7 to 11 April, 2010, in Berlin involved roundtable workshops attended by all entrants. The winning essays were from Abraham Rubin (Comparative Literature, City University of New York, USA) and Iryna Ulasiuk (Law, European University Institute, Florence, Italy).

M/C - Media and Culture is proud to present issue two in volume thirteen of

M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

'ambient' - Edited by Luke Jaaniste

Ambience is all around us. Wherever we are. Conditioned as we are as being-in-the-world, we are always surrounded. A surrounding that affords meaningful pathways and places of action and thought, that is intelligently geared up with us. The fundamental surroundings might be the earth itself, upon which multiple worlds, spaces, zones, nets, webs, districts, precincts and the like occupy our lives, as we occupy them.

M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/
is calling for contributors to the 'waste' issue of

M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. Founded in 1998, M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal.

QUT Urban Informatics iPhone app DispoMaps version 2 by Jan Seeburger now available

http://bit.ly/cR2YN3

DispoMaps enables you to share your current location on an online map with anyone. The map is constantly updated as you go, using your iPhone’s GPS.

The lastest issue of CCI's weekly coverage of creative industry news, research, events, calls and other items of interest has just been published. Read it online at
http://eepurl.com/sBSt

To subscribe go to http://cci.edu.au/subscribe

Congratulations to Mark Ryan for winning a Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Creative Industries Career Fund grant to attend the 2010 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Los Angeles CA, March 17-21.

The CCI annual report for 2009 is now available to download as a PDF.

If you would like to receive a hard copy, please email infocci@qut.edu.au to request a copy.

From July to December 2009 Australian Policy Online - which includes the CCI sponsored Creative Economy portal - ranked No. 9 based on market share of visits among all Australian websites in the Hitwise category of Lifestyle - Politics industry. Thank you to all our readers from the Creative industries for this confirmation of APO and Creative Economy's value to Australian social and cultural policy research.

Edited by Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner

A fully revised edition of the leading Australian introductory text on media studies, incorporating extensive analysis of the impact of communications.

M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/
is calling for contributors to the 'ambient' issue of

M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. Founded in 1998, M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. Our Website at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ provides open access to all past issues.

Media International Australia December issue: 'The Globalisation of Advertising in Asia' has just been published. The issue includes feature articles by CCI's Director Stuart Cunningham, and Terry Flew on the history of SBS, and researcher Mark Ryan on horror films and cultural policy, as well as a special section looking at advertising in Asia.

Access to this issue is subscription only - details available at Media International Australia

Brisbane based producer/director Cathy Henkel has been awarded the 2009 SPAA Independent Documentary Producer of the Year.

Five CCI researchers were successful in the latest round of Australian Research Council grants announced last week.

Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess (along with Thomas Nicolai and Laars. Kirchoff) were awarded a three year Discovery grant for their project "New media and public communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks". Total funding for the project is $401,000. More information on the project is available at Axel's blog

A linkage grant was awarded to Marcus Foth, Greg Hearn, Jaz Choi (+ Prof Eli Blevis, Prof Younghui Kim, Dr Tad Hirsch) for the project "Eat, cook, grow: Ubiquitous technology for sustainable food culture in the city". The total funding for this project is $320,553.

CCI congratulates all involved and we look forward to bringing you news of their work over the next few years.

Mark David Ryan is guest editing the horror movies section of the Intellect Directory of Australian and New Zealand Cinema edited by Ben Goldsmith and Geoff Lealand.

Research Higher Degree Project Opportunities
September 2009 Scholarship Round

Download PDF

If you are considering applying for a scholarship in the current September round to
pursue postgraduate research studies you may wish to consider connecting with
projects we have in development here at the Centre (CCI) and pursue your studies
with us at QUT.

Mark David Ryan is currently editing 'Australasian Horror' a special issue of the Intellect journal Studies in Australasian Cinema.

The successful applicant will participate in overseeing and coordinating the activities of the Pool user community, and examine practices and dynamics within the community. (More information on Pool and its future development are available in a recent ACID report.)

Australia's most successful YouTuber, Natalie Tran, is not a stripper, a file sharing pirate or a cyber bully as popular wisdom about the nature of YouTube might have you think.

YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, by Jean Burgess and Joshua Green analyses the most successful videos with some surprising results. This analysis of the most popular, most viewed, and most discussed YouTube clips found that it’s not just videos about cyber-bullying or bizarre accidents that top the charts.

The results of the CCI RHD Jam and Mainstreaming Jam are in. View or download the 2009 Mainstreaming Jam summary results or the Research higher degree student summary results.

CCI would like to thank everyone who participated for your time and valued comments. Each idea is being addressed seriously over the coming months.

Youdecide2007, an experiment in collaborative, citizen journalism run during the 2007 election, has been selected as a case study in a major new report.

Australia’s digital economy: future directions discusses the key initiatives being undertaken by government, industry and the community to develop the digital economy along with case studies of successful individuals and industries engaged in the area.

The case study is based on an interview with CCI researcher, Professor Terry Flew, about the Youdecide2007 website which ran during the 2007 Australian Federal election campaign, from early September 2007 up to and shortly after the November 23, 2007 election date. It is one of only 12 studies selected for inclusion in the report.

Congratulations to John Hartley, Distinguished Professor at QUT and Research Director at CCI, for his recent Member of the Order of Australia (AM) award announced last Monday in the Queens Birthday honours list.

Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake has recently approved the award for the title of Distinguished Professor to Professor Stuart Cunningham in recognition of his outstanding achievements as a leading researcher and his contribution to humanities both nationally and internationally.

The announcement also notes the award also recognises his eminence in leading both the successful bid and a subsequent re-bid, for Australia's only ARC Centre of Excellence in the Humanities arena.

Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, has called for written submissions on proposed reforms to Australia's intellectual property (IP) system. CCI encourages all interested stakeholders to contribute to the discussion.

The CCI annual report for 2008 is now available to download as a PDF. Or if you would like to receive a print copy please email infocci@qut.edu.au to request a copy.

PLATFORM Journal of Media & Communication is an international peer review journal featuring postgraduate work in the field of Media and

Communication. PLATFORM is an online journal available at

http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/platform/index.html

As part of our efforts to promote the work of promising emerging scholars in the field, we would like to invite you to nominate your postgraduate students as guest author for our inaugural issue, to be published in June 2009.

The first CCI Symposium of the year will be held in conjunction with the Ideas Festival which runs from 24 - 29 March 2009, based at the State Library of Queensland. The symposium will take place as part of the last day of the Festival and then, on 30 March, it will move to the Glasshouse at QUT, Kelvin Grove Campus, Brisbane. More information is available HERE.

Applications are now open for the OII Summer Doctoral Programme 2009, to be hosted this year by CCI and the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.

The programme aims to stretch the thinking of all students on a range of issues, to provide valuable advice and support for students' thesis research, and to establish a peer network of excellent young researchers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thematic focus this year will be on 'Creativity, Innovation and the Internet': our partners on the SDP since 2003, CCI and the Creative Industries Faculty are at the forefront of pioneering international research initiatives in creative industries policy, applied creative industries research, digital media design, and the creative and performing arts.

CCI has recently launched a node at City University in London where Lucy Montgomery and Jason Potts are currently based. The City node is the hub of an emerging European network of researchers including Carsten Herrmann-Pillath (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management), Paul Ormerod (Volterra Consulting), Kate Morrison (Think Play Do), Alex Bentley and Stephen Shennan (AHRC Centre for Evolution of Cultural Diversity), Emma Bentley (Archaeology), and collaborations with colleagues at Birkbeck, Imperial, Oxford OII, Manchester, Leeds and Cardiff. The staff at the node focus on cultural science, evolutionary theory, convergence of economic and cultural values, China's media industries and reforming copyright.

A new book, edited by Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Professor Fuping Gao, Mr Damien O’Brien and Mr Sampsung Xiaoxiang Shi, focuses geographically on the Asia-Pacific, and particularly on China and Australia, but addresses universal themes about the law of copyright and its adaptation to the Internet in the 21st century said the Hon Justice Douglas at the launch in Brisbane yesterday.

Researchers at CCI were recently awarded an ARC Linkage grant to begin a major new research project into youth wellbeing and participatory media. Led by Professor Stuart Cunningham, the researchers working on the project will include Dr RJ King, Associate professor JC Drennan, Dr K McWilliam, Dr JM Burns and Mr C Kuddell. The title of the project is "Promoting youth wellbeing through participatory digital media: A multidisciplinary assessment of the mental health outcomes of cyber‑participation".

World renowned brain scientist Baroness Greenfield will present a public lecture on Creating Creative Brains as part of the Creating Value conference presented by CCI, to be held at 9 am, Wednesday 24 June. The creative process encompasses factors that must be common to diverse activities, ranging from painting, music and literature, through to scientific insights. At the same time this all encompassing phenomenon must be distinguished from ‘ordinary’ thinking! Download the brochure for more information.

The program for CCI's upcoming international conference is now available including full details of all the panel sessions. The conference features six panel sessions running contiguously over most of the three days, along with keynote presentations from an impressive line up of international guests. Full details on the Creating Value conference page. Register today - Creating value is great value!

Creative Commons au is pleased to announce that details for its 2008 national conference, Building an Australasian Creative Commons, have now been finalised. Building an Australasian Commons will be held on 24 June 2008 at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The event provides an opportunity for those interested in the free internet to come together to exchange ideas, information and inspiration. The event is free but registration is required.

A new book has been launched by current and former researchers from QUT’s Intellectual Property: Knowledge Culture Economy program led by Professor Brian Fitzgerald. Copyright law, digital content and the Internet in the Asia-Pacific, edited by Brian Fitzgerald, Fuping Gao, Damien O'Brien and Sampsung Xiaoxiang Shi, provides a unique insight into the key issues facing copyright law and digital content policy in a networked information world.

A number of keynote speakers at the Creating Value conference being hosted by CCI in June this year have been confirmed. The list of eminent intellectuals and journalists includes:
Henry Jenkins, an international authority on the cultural implications of technological convergence, the digital economy and user-generated creativity;
Mark Deuze, advocate for citizen journalism and public communication, and theorist of creative and cultural labour;

2020's focus on traditional arts funding came at the expense of our creative growth sectors, writes Creative Australia delegate Stuart Cunningham. The Australia 2020 Summit brought people from the heights and the streets together to meet and exchange ideas. It was an exciting concept that produced many valuable ideas.

Stuart Cunningham, director of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation will be attending the Australia 2020 summit. Stuart will be participating in the 'Towards a creative Australia' session.

In this, the third CCI annual report, the centre's director, Stuart Cunningham introduces the report with an outline of the achievements of the centre over the last year while John Hartley discusses the implications of current policy for creative industries research in Australia.

Welcome to the new look CCI website. Using current information architecture concepts and Drupal, an open source content management system, the site has been designed to provide easy access to all the latest news, publications, projects and events of the CCI.