Graeme Turner

The album examined in this book transformed the singer John Farnham from a faded teen pop star into the most popular solo rock performer in Australia, in a career that has lasted for more than 30 years. Whispering Jack remains the top-selling album by an Australian artist in Australia, and constitutes the turning point in Farnham's bid to achieve credibility as an adult contemporary musician. The first single from the album, 'You're the Voice,' has achieved such iconic status that it is routinely referred to as Australia's unofficial national anthem. The book examines the album, its context and that history in order to recover a crucial conjuncture in the development of Australian rock and popular music, one that has previously been ignored in Australian popular music studies.

John Farnham's Whispering Jack

Stuart Cunningham

A completely revised and updated edition of the leading Australian introduction to the media.

The Media and Communications in Australia

The second edition of Australia's leading media studies textbook, fully updated and revised..

Industries, Texts, Audiences

The Media in Australia

Turner provides a clear introduction to major theoretical issues in the history of film production and film studies, examining the function of film as a national cultural industry, and its place in our popular culture.

Film as Social Practice

Jinna Tay

This book presents an analysis of television histories across India, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia and Bhutan. It offers a set of standard data on the history of television's cultural, industrial and political structures in each specific national context, allowing for cross-regional comparative analysis. Each chapter presents a case study on a salient aspect of contemporary television culture of the nation in question, such as analyses of ideology in television content in Japan and Singapore, and transformations of industry structure vis-à-vis state versus market control in China and Taiwan. The book provides a comprehensive overview of TV histories in Asia as well as a survey of current issues and concerns in Asian television cultures and their social and political impact.

Issues and Contexts

Television Histories in Asia

P. David Marshall

Frances Bonner

Chair Department of Communication Studies P David Marshall, PhD

The areas of publicity, public relations and promotions have been considered to be on the periphery of the media. Yet this revealing new book demonstrates that they form a fundamental component of the media industries, with the decline of hard news being accompanied by the rise of gossip and celebrity. In addition to making a substantial contribution to our understanding of the cultural function of celebrity, Fame Games outlines how the promotion industry has developed and how celebrity is produced, promoted, and traded within the Australian media. While their analysis will inform academic debates on media practice internationally, the authors have taken the unique step of investigating the workings of the Australian promotion industry from within. Interviews with over 20 publicists, promoters, agents, managers, and magazine editors have provided a wealth of information about the processes through which celebrity in Australia is produced.

The Production of Celebrity in Australia

Fame Games

The 'demotic turn' is a term coined by Graeme Turner to describe the increasing visibility of the 'ordinary person' in the media today. In this dynamic and insightful book he explores the 'whys' and 'hows' of the 'everyday' individual's willingness to turn themselves into media content through: · Celebrity culture, · Reality TV, · DIY websites, · Talk radio, · User-generated materials online. Initially proposed in order to analyse the pervasiveness of celebrity culture, this book further develops the idea of the demotic turn as a means of examining the common elements in a range of 'hot spots' in debates within media and cultural studies today. Refuting the proposition that the demotic turn necessarily carries with it a democratising politics, this book examines the political and cultural function of the demotic turn in media production and consumption across the fields of reality TV, print and electronic news and current affairs journalism, citizen and online journalism, talk radio, and user-generated content online. It examines these fields in order to outline a structural shift in what the western media has been doing lately, and to suggest that these media activities represent something much more fundamental than contemporary media fashion.

The Demotic Turn

Ordinary People and the Media

Liping Jiang

Xiaokai Li

Water scarcity is increasingly becoming a threat to water security in different countries or areas of East Asia, driven by water over-withdrawal and pollution, and aggravated by climate change and variability. The ‘Green Water Defense in East Asia' study, as part of the driver for green growth in the water sector of East Asia region, seeks to find a sustainable solution to this challenge. The concept of Green Water Defense (GWD) is developed building on such principles as ‘live and build with nature', ‘green adaptation', ‘produce more with less' and ‘low impact development', etc. It is defined by the authors as ‘Green Water Defense (GWD) is an adaptive management philosophy and approach which seeks to spatially integrate natural forces and artificial interventions, and to balance incentive-based and supply-driven measures, with minimum footprints and externalities in providing water services and managing related climate risk.' This report provides a brief account of the water resources and climate trend in the region, puts forward a conceptual framework of GWD based on a model of three spatial layers, namely, ecological base layer, an occupation (or land and water use) layer and an infrastructure (network) layer in the middle. The GWD serves as the media to integrate the interactions among three layers such that the water resources development and management are sustained. Based on the GWD concept framework, a menu list of GWD measures are formulated, and a set of emerging best practices for adaptive water scarcity management are identified through case studies (Australia, Israel, Spain and China). In an effort to apply the GWD concept and approach in East Asia, the report depicts a roadmap, with a general process, focus for different spatial scales and a practical example to illustrate where to start and how to apply these best practice approach and GWD measures in addressing water scarcity management issue in a client country.

Sustaining East Asia's Water Resources Management Through Green Water Defense

Grow in Concert with Nature

This book presents an analysis of television histories across India, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia and Bhutan. It offers a set of standard data on the history of television’s cultural, industrial and political structures in each specific national context, allowing for cross-regional comparative analysis. Each chapter presents a case study on a salient aspect of contemporary television culture of the nation in question, such as analyses of ideology in television content in Japan and Singapore, and transformations of industry structure vis-à-vis state versus market control in China and Taiwan. The book provides a comprehensive overview of TV histories in Asia as well as a survey of current issues and concerns in Asian television cultures and their social and political impact.

The Film Cultures Reader brings together key writings on contemporary cinema. It focuses on film as a social and cultural practice, and on the relationship between cinema and popular culture.

The Film Cultures Reader

Nation, Culture, Text: Australian Cultural and Media Studies is the first collection of cultural studies from Australia, selected and introduced for an international readership. Participating in the `de-centring' of cultural studies - considering what perspectives other than the European and the American have to offer - the contributors raise important issues about the role of a national tradition of critical theory, and about the cultural specificity of theory itself. A key theme is the place of the postcolonial nation within contemporary cultural theory - particularly those aspects of contemporary theory which see the category of contemporary theory which see the category of the nation as either outdated or suspect. The writers tackle subjects ranging from the televising of the Bicentennial to the role of policy in film, television and the heritage industry, from the use of video technologies with remote Aboriginal communities to the role of ethnography in cultural studies.

Australian Cultural and Media Studies

Nation, Culture, Text

Television is the most pervasive mass medium of the industrialised world. It is blamed for creating alienation and violence in society, yet at the same time regarded as trivial and unworthy of serious attention. It is the main purveyor of global popular culture, yet also intensely local. The Australian TV Book paints the big picture of the small screen in Australia. It examines industry dynamics in a rapidly changing environment, the impact of new technology, recent changes in programming, and the ways in which the television industry targets its audiences. The authors highlight what is distinctive about television in Australia, and how it is affected by international developments. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Australian television today. Stuart Cunningham is Professor of Media and Journalism at Queensland University of Technology. Graeme Turner is director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. They are editors of the leading textbook The Media in Australia and authors of many other works on the media.

The Australian TV Book

is a comprehensive introduction to the British tradition of cultural studies. Turner offers an accessible overview of the central themes that have informed British cultural studies: language, semiotics, Marxism and ideology, individualism, subjectivity and discourse. Beginning with a history of cultural studies, Turner discusses the work of such pioneers as Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, E. P.Thompson, Stuart Hall and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. He then explores the central theorists and categories of British cultural studies: texts and contexts; audience; everyday life; ideology; politics, gender and race. The third edition of this successful text has been fully revised and updated to include: * How to apply the principles of cultural studies and how to read a text * An overview of recent ethnographic studies * Discussion of anthropological theories of consumption * Questions of identity and new ethnicities * How to do cultural studies, and an evaluation of recent research methodologies * A fully updated and comprehensive bibliography

British Cultural Studies

Television studies must now address a complex environment where change has been vigorous but uneven, and where local and national conditions vary significantly. Globalizing media industries, deregulatory policy regimes, the multiplication, convergence and trade in media formats, the emergence of new content production industries outside the US/UK umbrella, and the fragmentation of media audiences are all changing the nature of television today: its content, its industrial structure and how it is consumed. Television Studies after TV leads the way in developing new ways of understanding television in the post-broadcast era. With contributions from leading international scholars, it considers the full range of convergent media now implicated in understanding television, and also focuses on large non-Anglophone markets – such as Asia and Latin America — in order to accurately reflect the wide variety of structures, forms and content which now organise television around the world.

Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era

Television Studies After TV

"Ending the Affair is a critical account of the state of current affairs television in Australia today. It questions its future, draws lessons from the past and shows why television current affairs matters."--BOOK JACKET.

The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia

Ending the Affair

The "demotic turn" is a term coined by Graeme Turner to describe the increasing visibility of the "ordinary person" in the media today. In this dynamic and insightful book he explores the "whys" and "hows" of the "everyday" individual’s willingness to turn themselves into media content through celebrity culture, reality TV, DIY websites, talk radio, and user-generated materials online. Analyzing the pervasiveness of celebrity culture, this book further develops the idea of the demotic turn as a means of examining the common elements in a range of ‘hot spots’ within media and cultural studies today.

Graeme Turner

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