We identify some tensions between formal education and informal learning in the uses of popular literacy since the nineteenth century, in order to argue for a ‘demand-led’ model of education in digital literacy.

This issue of Media International Australia is based on several of the papers presented at the Digital Literacy and Creative Innovation in a Knowledge Economy symposium held by CCI and the ARC Cultural Research Network in March 2007. Guest edited by CCI researchers Kelly McWilliam and John Hartley, along with Mark Gibson, the articles in this issue consider how the rapid development of digital technologies has changed the production and consumption of media content, altering the very nature of the relationship between 'producers' and 'consumers'.

YouTube: home port for lip-syncers, karaoke singers, trainspotters, birdwatchers, skateboarders, hip-hoppers, small-time wrestling federations, educators, third-wave feminists, churches, proud parents, poetry slammers, gamers, human rights activists, hobbyists. It gets 10 hours of new content every minute. Where did all that come from ask Henry Jenkins and John Hartley.

After 50 years, what are the implications of Uses of Literacy for educational modernisation, in the light of subsequent changes from 'read only' literacy to 'read-write' uses of multimedia?

For analysts interested in social change the creative industries are a bellwether for the ‘open future’ predicted by Richard E Lee. Current directions in the study of the continuing encounters among culture, economy and politics do not focus so much on struggle, subject-positioning or structure, as on change, disequilibrium, and growth. It does seem to many that the current period is one of indeterminacy between two relatively stable ‘long centuries’ – the existing ‘American’ one and the coming ‘Chinese’ one (Shenkar 2004; Fishman 2004; Rees-Mogg 2005).

The production of knowledge has become central to economic life. Competitiveness in the 21st century market place is now characterized by the ability to translate scientific and technological knowledge into innovation. But does this render cultural and social knowledge unimportant?

Television Truths considers what we know about TV, whether we love it or hate it, where TV is going, and whether viewers should bother going along for the ride.

Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy was published 50 years ago in 1957. It was an intellectual response to the challenge of mass media and it was also a popular bestseller in its own right. It set the agenda for educational and disciplinary reform that lasted a generation.

Georgina Born is Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge University, and was Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

In the early 1990s a new image of British national identity emerged on the pages of The Face, Dazed and Confused and Vogue. Fashion and style photography created an aesthetic out of the lives of young Londoners and the places they lived in, including second-hand markets, the rave scene and shared flats.

2006 marks the fiftieth anniversary of broadcast television in Australia. It was launched in Sydney and Melbourne in 1956, just in time for the Melbourne Olympic Games.

After 50 years, what are the implications of the Uses of Literacy for educational modernisation, in the light of subsequent changes from 'read only' literacy to 'read-write' uses of multimedia? This article argues that a broad extension of popular literacy via consumer-generated content offers not only emancipationist potential in line with Hoggart’s own project, but also economic benefits via the dynamics of creative innovation.

The International Journal of Cultural Studies (IJCS) marks its tenth year of publication with this special issue on ‘The Uses of Richard Hoggart,’ co-edited by Sue Owen and John Hartley.

‘Politicotainment’: The very form of Kristina Riegert’s neologism says something about how the realms of politics and entertainment have crash-merged. The term itself is not a pretty sight, perhaps because it describes an unlikely amalgam; two opposing worlds whose 'heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together,' as Dr Johnson would have put it. The resulting idea is counter-intuitive, since it seems to betray the essence of both of the originating terms. Surely entertainment is characterized by escapism; while politics ought not to be confused with private pleasure consumption?

The TV50 exhibition catalogue is a fascinating A-Z guide to fifty years of television in Australia.