Democracy, Participation and Convergent Media: Case Studies in Contemporary Online News Journalism in Australia
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Queensland University of Technology ePrints Archive 1 Democracy, Participation and Convergent Media: Case Studies in Contemporary Online News Journalism in Australia Terry Flew Media and Communication, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Paper presented to Communications Policy Research Forum 2009 (CPRF09), University of Technology, Sydney, November 19-20, 2009. ABSTRACT The shift from 20th century mass communications media towards convergent media and Web 2.0 has raised the possibility of a renaissance of the public sphere, based around citizen journalism and participatory media culture. This paper will evaluate such claims both conceptually and empirically. At a conceptual level, it is noted that the question of whether media democratization is occurring depends in part upon how democracy is understood, with some critical differences in understandings of democracy, the public sphere and media citizenship. The empirical work in this paper draws upon various case studies of new developments in Australian media, including online-only newspapers, developments in public service media, and the rise of commercially based online alternative media. It is argued that participatory media culture is being expanded if understood in terms of media pluralism, but that implications for the public sphere depend in part upon how media democratization is defined. KEYWORDS Media, citizenship, participation, public
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