tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/convergence-1786/articlesConvergence – The Conversation2022-05-20T12:13:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1817712022-05-20T12:13:52Z2022-05-20T12:13:52ZWhat makes us subconsciously mimic the accents of others in conversation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464014/original/file-20220518-17-6a6giq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5352%2C3739&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When you imitate the speech of others, there's a thin line between whether it's a social asset or faux pas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-politics-convention-chicago-by-franklin-mcmahon-news-photo/526979648?adppopup=true">Franklin McMahon/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you ever caught yourself talking a little bit differently after listening to someone with a distinctive way of speaking? </p>
<p>Perhaps you’ll pepper in a couple of y’all’s after spending the weekend with your Texan mother-in-law. Or you might drop a few R’s after binge-watching a British period drama on Netflix.</p>
<p>Linguists call this phenomenon “<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220308120147.htm">linguistic convergence</a>,” and it’s something you’ve likely done at some point, even if the shifts were so subtle you didn’t notice. </p>
<p>People tend to converge toward the language they observe around them, whether it’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)90048-5">copying word choices</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.427">mirroring sentence structures</a> or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2011.09.001">mimicking pronunciations</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GWJGP9AAAAAJ&hl=en">But as a doctoral student in linguistics</a>, I wanted to know more about how readily this behavior occurs: Would people converge based on evidence as flimsy as their own expectations of how someone might sound?</p>
<p>Three years of experimentation and an entire dissertation later, I had my answer, which was <a href="https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/Wade%20Lg%20article.pdf">just published</a> in the academic journal Language.</p>
<p>People do, in fact, converge toward speech sounds they expect to hear – even if they never actually hear them.</p>
<h2>What, exactly, is convergence?</h2>
<p>But before getting into the specifics, let’s talk about what convergence is and how it’s related to other speech adjustments like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405166256.ch13">code-switching</a>, which refers to alternating between language varieties, or <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=cTPUrGpvHs0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA235&dq=rickford+mcnair+knox+&ots=TYFzbWpMrr&sig=lT_lmKj4qKiJ6wnWFEk1uoYWF2o#v=onepage&q=rickford%20mcnair%20knox&f=false">style-shifting</a>, which happens when a person uses different linguistic features in different situations. </p>
<p>Convergence refers to the shifts people make to their speech to approximate that of those around them. This is an intentionally broad definition meant to encompass all sorts of adjustments, whether intentional or inadvertent, prominent or subtle, or toward entire dialects or particular linguistic features.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Drawing of people seated at a bar." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464025/original/file-20220518-19-w2t15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">When people chat with one another, certain sounds and word choices will converge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/americans-in-chicago-watch-richard-nixons-trip-to-china-on-news-photo/526989396?adppopup=true">Franklin McMahon/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>You could imitate aspects of speech you actually observe. Or maybe you throw in some words you think kids these days use, only to have your use of “bae” and “lit” be met with teenage eye rolls. </p>
<p>Code-switching or style-shifting can also be examples of convergence, as long as the shift is toward an interlocutor – the person you’re talking to. But people can also shift away from an interlocutor, and this is called “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269710388_The_Language_of_Intergroup_Distinctiveness">divergence</a>.”</p>
<p>Code-switching and style-shifting can occur for other reasons, too, like how you feel, what you’re talking about and how you want to be perceived. You might drop your G’s more and say things like “thinkin’” when reminiscing about a prank you played in high school – but switch to more formal speech when the conversation shifts to a new job you’re applying to.</p>
<h2>Are expectations enough to alter speech?</h2>
<p>To determine whether people converge toward particular pronunciations they expect but never actually encounter, I needed to start my investigation with a feature that people would have clear expectations about. I landed on the “I” vowel, as in “time,” which in much of the southern U.S. is pronounced more like “Tom.” This is called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2005.10416086">monophthongization</a>,” and it is a hallmark of Southern speech.</p>
<p>I wanted to know whether people would produce a more Southern-like “I” vowel when they heard someone speak with a Southern accent – and here’s the crucial part – even if they never heard how that person actually pronounced “I.”</p>
<p>So I designed an experiment, disguised as a guessing game, in which I got more than 100 participants to say a bunch of “I” words. </p>
<p>In the first part of the game, they read a series of clues on their computer screen – things like, “this U.S. coin is small, silver, and worth 10 cents.” </p>
<p>Then they named the word being described – “dime!” – and I recorded their speech. </p>
<p>In the second part of the game, I had participants listen to clues read by a noticeably Southern-accented talker and instructed them to respond in the same way. By comparing their speech before and after hearing a Southern accent, I could determine whether they converged.</p>
<p>Using <a href="https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/">acoustic analysis</a>, which gives us precise measurements of how participants’ “I” vowels sound, I observed that Southerners and non-Southerners alike did, in fact, shift their “I” vowels toward a slightly more Southern-like pronunciation when listening to the Southern-accented talker. </p>
<p>They never actually heard how the Southerner produced this vowel, since none of the clues contained the “I” vowel. This means they were anticipating how this Southerner might say “I,” and then converging toward those expectations.</p>
<p>This was pretty clear evidence that people converge not just toward speech they observe but also toward speech they expect to hear. </p>
<h2>Social asset or faux pas?</h2>
<p>What does this say about human behavior? </p>
<p>For one, it means that people perceive accents as coherent collections of different linguistic features. Hearing accent features X and Y tells people to expect accent feature Z, because they know X, Y and Z go together. </p>
<p>But it’s not just that people passively know things about others’ accents. This knowledge can even shape your own speech.</p>
<p>So why does this happen? And how do those on the receiving end perceive it?</p>
<p>First, it’s important to point out that convergence is usually very subtle – and there’s a reason. Overly exaggerated convergence – sometimes called <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Accommodation_Theory.html?id=s_jVSAAACAAJ">overaccommodation</a> – can be perceived as mocking or patronizing.</p>
<p>You’ve probably witnessed people switch to a slower, louder, simpler speech style when talking to an elderly person or a nonnative speaker. This type of over-the-top convergence is often based on assumptions about limited comprehension – and it can socially backfire. </p>
<p>“Why are they talking to me like I’m a child?” the listener might think. “I understand them just fine.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Drawing of woman speaking to elderly woman in bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464020/original/file-20220518-17-395nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Overly exaggerated convergence can be perceived as mocking or patronizing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nurse-helping-a-senior-citizen-with-breakfast-by-franklin-news-photo/526990218?adppopup=true">Franklin McMahon/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>For expectation-driven convergence – which, by definition, is not rooted in reality – such a faux pas might be even more likely. If you don’t have an actual speech target to converge toward, you might resort to inaccurate, simplistic or stereotyped ideas about how someone will speak. </p>
<p>However, subtler shifts – in what might be called the “sweet spot” of convergence – can have a number of benefits, from social approval to more efficient and successful communication. </p>
<p>Consider a toddler who calls their pacifier a “binky.” You’d probably be better off asking “where’s the binky?” and not “where’s the pacifier?” </p>
<p>Reusing the terms our interlocutors use is not just cognitively easier for us – since it takes <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-04570-010">less effort to come up with a word we just heard</a> – but it often has the added benefit of making communication easier for our partner. The same could be said for using a more familiar pronunciation.</p>
<p>If people can anticipate how someone will speak even sooner – before they utter a word – and converge toward that expectation, communication could, in theory, be even more efficient. If expectations are accurate, expectation-driven convergence could be a social asset.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that people necessarily go around consciously making these sorts of calculations. In fact, <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/PICTAM">some explanations</a> for convergence suggest that it is an unintentional, automatic consequence of speech comprehension.</p>
<p>Regardless of why convergence happens, it’s clear that even beliefs about others play a major role in shaping the way people use language – for better or for worse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lacey Wade receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>We often imitate styles of speech we hear – what’s known as ‘linguistic convergence.’ But a researcher wanted to see if we alter our speech based on the mere expectation of how someone will sound.Lacey Wade, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1593432021-04-22T04:30:39Z2021-04-22T04:30:39ZLike a jackal in wolf’s clothing: the Tasmanian tiger was no wolfish predator — it hunted small prey<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396409/original/file-20210421-17-sohn8m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=81%2C0%2C1441%2C773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The thylacine (<em>Thylacinus cynocephalus</em>), commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, is an Aussie icon. It was the largest historical marsupial predator and a powerful example of human-caused extinction. And despite being extinct <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/extinction-of-thylacine">since 1936</a>, it still gets featured in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/science/thylacines-tasmanian-tigers-sightings.html">popular media</a>.</p>
<p>Yet much is still unknown about the thylacine, as its extinction left us with almost no direct observational data. Several mysteries remain regarding its specific ecology, including the question of how wolf-like it was. </p>
<p>In a new study published in <a href="https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-021-01788-8">BMC Ecology & Evolution</a>, my colleagues and I tackle this question. We show the thylacine was indeed similar to canids, a family which includes dogs, wolves and foxes. </p>
<p>But more specifically, it was similar to those canids which evolved to hunt small animals — as opposed to the wolf (<em>Canis lupus</em>) or wild dog/dingo (<em>Canis lupus dingo</em>), which are large-prey specialists. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tasmanian-tiger-was-hunted-to-extinction-as-a-large-predator-but-it-was-only-half-as-heavy-as-we-thought-144599">The Tasmanian tiger was hunted to extinction as a 'large predator' – but it was only half as heavy as we thought</a>
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<h2>Moulded by our environments</h2>
<p>When European colonisers first saw the thylacine, they noted its wolf-like appearance and judged it based on that assumption: like the wolf, it would pose a threat to their livestock.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395987/original/file-20210420-17-4hmty5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The thylacine and its canid comparatives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thylacine photo by E.J.K. Baker and colourised by D.S. Rovinsky; wolf photo by Neil Herbert; dingo photo by Jarrod Amoore.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>This superficially wolf-like appearance has been taken to mean the thylacine is a textbook example of convergent evolution: where two unrelated animals evolve similar traits in response to similar pressures. The similarities are so striking it’s even sometimes called the “marsupial wolf”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Swordfish, extinct dolphin and ichthyosaur." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395989/original/file-20210420-23-6oajrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Although <em>Eurhinosaurus</em> (bottom) is a reptile and <em>Eurhinodelphis</em> (middle) is a mammal, both are strikingly convergent with the modern swordfish. Thus, we can infer a great deal about their ecology.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">D.S. Rovinsky</span></span>
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<p>Studying convergent evolution is a promising way for scientists to infer the behaviour and ecology of extinct animals that can’t be directly observed. Ecology is the study of how species interact with their physical surroundings. So, if an extinct animal shares a similar shape with one living today, we can assume they probably filled a similar ecological niche.</p>
<p>Since the thylacine’s ecology is uncertain, comparisons with comparable species are one of the only ways to understand it. And it’s wolf-like appearance at face value has led to the thylacine and its ecology being assumed similar to that of the grey wolf and its closest relatives, such as the dingo.</p>
<p>But what if that was wrong?</p>
<h2>Getting into the right headspace</h2>
<p>We decided to put this assumption of ecological similarity to the test. To do so we needed a wide range of ecologically meaningful animals to compare with the thylacine. After all, even though the thylacine was a marsupial (like a koala) it’s fair to say it wasn’t hanging out in trees munching on eucalyptus! </p>
<p>Using hand-held 3D scanners, we scanned hundreds of skulls from 56 different species of carnivorous mammals, with specimens obtained from more than a dozen museums around the world. This enabled us to build a skull “shapespace” to then see where the thylacine would fit among the others.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Evolutionary tree of comparative species" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395990/original/file-20210420-15-4p63dz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A broad selection of ecologically-meaningful species, shown on this wheel-shaped evolutionary tree, were selected to compare to the thylacine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">D.S. Rovinsky</span></span>
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<p>We looked for evidence of convergent evolution by observing which of the other carnivorous mammals’ skulls were shaped most like the thylacine’s. </p>
<h2>A case of mistaken identity</h2>
<p>It turns out the skull shape of the thylacine is significantly convergent with that of some canids, but not with the usual suspects. We found no meaningful level of convergence with either the grey wolf or the dingo, and only a small degree with the red fox. </p>
<p>What we did find, however, was strong support for convergent evolution between the skulls of the thylacine and another rag-tag group of canids: African jackals and South American “foxes” (which aren’t actually foxes). Ecologically, these canids are vastly different from the wolf and dingo. Also, unlike the wolf, they specialise in hunting small prey.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Skulls showing difference between wolf, thylacine and small prey-hunting dogs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395994/original/file-20210420-15-934ote.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The wolf skull on the left is more different (shown by colour) to the thylacine skull than the skull in the middle, which is the average skull shape of the significantly convergent canids. White areas are more similar to the thylacine skull, while blue and red respectively show constriction or expansion. The difference is especially strong in the facial area, where the biting happens!</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">D.S. Rovinsky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This brings us back to one of the more powerful uses of studying convergent evolution: the ability to infer the ecology of an extinct animal. Since the thylacine’s skull shape was more similar to that of the African jackals and South American “foxes” than the wolf, it likely shared a similar ecological niche with the former.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Group of delicate-faced dogs, looking like the thylacine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395995/original/file-20210420-23-uee4be.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The canids most like the thylacine are all small-prey hunters with relatively delicate faces — not robust big-biters like the wolf or dingo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">D.S. Rovinsky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Therefore, the thylacine probably also <a href="https://theconversation.com/thylacine-misrepresented-no-jaws-for-alarm-3181">preferred hunting relatively small prey</a> such as pademelons, bettongs, bandicoots and young wallabies.</p>
<p>Interestingly, however, one of the most striking findings was that the thylacine did not actually overlap with any of the other predators, canid or otherwise. While it was <em>similar</em> to some canids, it was not identical. This highlights that even our more precise analysis may paint the thylacine with too broad a brush.</p>
<h2>Judged by appearance</h2>
<p>The thylacine was hunted to extinction for its wolf-like appearance. This reaction, like most based on first glance, was devastatingly wrong. Although the thylacine turns out to not be very wolf-like, it’s still a wonderful example of convergent evolution. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-the-tasmanian-tiger-go-extinct-11324">Why did the Tasmanian tiger go extinct?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Then again, it truly was different enough from other carnivorous mammals that we still can’t say we precisely understand its ecological niche. When we lost the thylacine, we lost something truly unique for its time. </p>
<p>Our understanding of the thylacine is, even now, that of a faded and blurry snapshot. Perhaps, with more research in the coming years, we can make it a little more clear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alistair Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and is an Honorary Research Affiliate with Museums Victoria.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin W. Adams receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and is an Honorary Research Affiliate with Museums Victoria.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglass S Rovinsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Tasmanian tiger’s superficial appearance was so similar to a wolf’s that European colonisers assumed it was a threat and hunted it to extinction.Douglass S Rovinsky, Associate research scientist, Monash UniversityAlistair Evans, Associate Professor, Monash UniversityJustin W. Adams, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1247062019-10-18T11:39:50Z2019-10-18T11:39:50ZEvolution tells us we might be the only intelligent life in the universe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297458/original/file-20191017-98657-n2hbrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2434.html">NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are we alone in the universe? It comes down to whether intelligence is a probable outcome of natural selection, or an improbable fluke. By definition, probable events occur frequently, improbable events occur rarely – or once. Our evolutionary history shows that many key adaptations – not just intelligence, but complex animals, complex cells, photosynthesis, and life itself – were unique, one-off events, and therefore highly improbable. Our evolution may have been like winning the lottery … only far less likely. </p>
<p>The universe is astonishingly vast. The Milky Way has <a href="https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/07/22/how-many-stars-in-the-milky-way/">more than 100 billion</a> stars, and there are <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/83">over a trillion galaxies</a> in the visible universe, the tiny fraction of the universe we can see. Even if habitable worlds are rare, their sheer number – there are <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10684">as many planets as stars</a>, maybe more – suggests lots of life is out there. So where is everyone? This is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-we-alone-the-question-is-worthy-of-serious-scientific-study-98843">Fermi paradox</a>. The universe is large, and old, with time and room for intelligence to evolve, but there’s no evidence of it. </p>
<p>Could intelligence simply be unlikely to evolve? Unfortunately, we can’t study extraterrestrial life to answer this question. But we can study some 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history, looking at where evolution repeats itself, or doesn’t. </p>
<p>Evolution sometimes repeats, with different species independently converging on <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-standing-on-the-first-butterfly-really-change-the-history-of-evolution-93517">similar outcomes</a>. If evolution frequently repeats itself, then our evolution might be <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifes-Solution-Inevitable-Humans-Universe/dp/0521603250">probable, even inevitable</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295630/original/file-20191004-118200-48ws36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The wolf-like thylacine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And striking examples of convergent evolution do exist. Australia’s extinct, marsupial <a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-09-evolution-tasmanian-tiger-wolf.html">thylacine</a> had a kangaroo-like pouch but otherwise looked like a wolf, despite evolving from a different mammal lineage. There are also marsupial moles, marsupial anteaters and marsupial flying squirrels. Remarkably, Australia’s entire evolutionary history, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-life-on-earth-recovers-after-a-devastating-mass-extinction-43719">mammals diversifying</a> after the dinosaur extinction, parallels other continents. </p>
<p>Other striking cases of convergence include dolphins and extinct ichthyosaurs, which evolved similar shapes to glide through the water, and birds, bats and pterosaurs, which convergently evolved flight. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295632/original/file-20191004-118222-1cp5a9g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Squid eye.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PLoS Biology</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We also see convergence in individual organs. Eyes evolved not just in vertebrates, but in arthropods, octopi, worms and jellyfish. Vertebrates, arthropods, octopi and worms independently invented jaws. Legs evolved convergently in the arthropods, octopi and four kinds of fish (tetrapods, frogfish, skates, mudskippers).</p>
<p>Here’s the catch. All this convergence happened within one lineage, the Eumetazoa. Eumetazoans are complex animals with symmetry, mouths, guts, muscles, a nervous system. Different eumetazoans evolved similar solutions to similar problems, but the complex body plan that made it all possible is unique. Complex animals <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2019.0831">evolved once</a> in life’s history, suggesting they’re improbable.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, many critical events in our evolutionary history are unique and, probably, improbable. One is the bony skeleton of vertebrates, which let large animals move onto land. The complex, eukaryotic cells that all animals and plants are built from, containing nuclei and mitochondria, evolved only once. Sex evolved just once. Photosynthesis, which increased the energy available to life and produced oxygen, is <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-arplant-042110-103811?casa_token=9GcIM5-NL-oAAAAA%3AAoZ68M0lDsmmwMKD0bp58GFOjhlS2gWev1w55YuuVSBgjQmDmCZVfXsiAxtNmfymmG6Fwwl_8uoo">a one-off</a>. For that matter, so is human-level intelligence. There are marsupial wolves and moles, but no marsupial humans. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295635/original/file-20191004-118260-1svkzwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vertebrate skeleton is unique.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are places where evolution repeats, and places where it doesn’t. If we only look for convergence, it creates confirmation bias. Convergence seems to be the rule, and our evolution looks probable. But when you look for non-convergence, it’s everywhere, and critical, complex adaptations seem to be the least repeatable, and therefore improbable.</p>
<p>What’s more, these events depended on one another. Humans couldn’t evolve until fish evolved bones that let them crawl onto land. Bones couldn’t evolve until complex animals appeared. Complex animals needed complex cells, and complex cells needed oxygen, made by photosynthesis. None of this happens without the evolution of life, a singular event among singular events. All organisms come from a single ancestor; as far as we can tell, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol2016116">life only happened once</a>.</p>
<p>Curiously, all this takes a surprisingly long time. Photosynthesis evolved <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/995.short">1.5 billion years after</a> the Earth’s formation, complex cells after <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2006.1843">2.7 billion years</a>, complex animals after <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/42242">4 billion years</a>, and human intelligence <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/652">4.5 billion years</a> after the Earth formed. That these innovations are so useful but took so long to evolve implies that they’re exceedingly improbable.</p>
<h2>An unlikely series of events</h2>
<p>These one-off innovations, critical flukes, may create a chain of evolutionary bottlenecks or <a href="http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Erhanson/greatfilter.html">filters</a>. If so, our evolution wasn’t like winning the lottery. It was like winning the lottery again, and again, and again. On other worlds, these critical adaptations might have evolved too late for intelligence to emerge before their suns went nova, or not at all. </p>
<p>Imagine that intelligence depends on a chain of seven unlikely innovations – the origin of life, photosynthesis, complex cells, sex, complex animals, skeletons and intelligence itself – each with a 10% chance of evolving. The odds of evolving intelligence become one in 10 million.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295637/original/file-20191004-118213-15ynolq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photosynthesis, another unique adaptation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Longrich</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But complex adaptations might be even less likely. Photosynthesis required a series of adaptations in proteins, pigments and membranes. Eumetazoan animals required multiple anatomical innovations (nerves, muscles, mouths and so on). So maybe each of these seven key innovations evolve just 1% of the time. If so, intelligence will evolve on just 1 in 100 trillion habitable worlds. If habitable worlds are rare, then we might be the only intelligent life in the galaxy, or even the visible universe.</p>
<p>And yet, we’re here. That must count for something, right? If evolution gets lucky one in 100 trillion times, what are the odds we happen to be on a planet where it happened? Actually, the odds of being on that improbable world are 100%, because we couldn’t have this conversation on a world where photosynthesis, complex cells, or animals didn’t evolve. That’s the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-2220-0_25">anthropic principle</a>: Earth’s history must have allowed intelligent life to evolve, or we wouldn’t be here to ponder it.</p>
<p>Intelligence seems to depend on a chain of improbable events. But given the vast number of planets, then like an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15060310">infinite number of monkeys</a> pounding on an infinite number of typewriters to write Hamlet, it’s bound to evolve somewhere. The improbable result was us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas R. Longrich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Humans evolved through a series of highly unlikely events – so finding another intelligence like us would be like winning the lottery many times over.Nicholas R. Longrich, Senior Lecturer, Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/426792015-06-14T20:22:31Z2015-06-14T20:22:31ZThis is why you will lose your argument<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84317/original/image-20150609-13934-1r4f3cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's so easy to get sidetracked during an argument if you don't remember just one thing. So what is it?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielavladimirova/4140111216/">Flickr/Daniela Vladimirova</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>So the Great Barrier Reef has not been listed as <a href="https://theconversation.com/unesco-recommends-great-barrier-reef-should-not-be-classed-as-in-danger-42564">endangered</a> by UNESCO. And same-sex marriage is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-09/former-finance-minister-calls-for-plebiscite-on-gay-marriage/6531526">high on the national agenda</a>. Care to argue the case? Careful, there’s a minefield ahead.</p>
<p>There is one thing that is poorly understood about arguing in the public arena. It is the reason that a strong case will often lose its momentum and that an obvious logical conclusion will be missed. It is one of the reasons our political leaders fail utterly to have a reasoned conversation with the population and with each other. And it’s why <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/science-denial">denialists</a> on just about any issue can sidestep rational debate.</p>
<p>It’s called the “point at issue” and describes what the argument is <em>actually</em> about. If you move away from this simple idea, the argument will be lost in a fog of related but unnecessary issues. </p>
<h2>Finding the point</h2>
<p>Before we can argue, we must actually agree on something: what we are arguing about. If we can’t do this, and then stick to it, there will be no progress.</p>
<p>Let’s consider the Great Barrier Reef as an example. Some <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/editorial-the-green-movements-role-in-the-sorry-reef-debacle-exposes-them-as-frauds/story-fnihsr9v-1227376088954">media commentary</a> would have us believe that the fact the reef was not listed means any concerns about its well-being are entirely misplaced. </p>
<p>This misses the point completely. As many <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-barrier-reef-is-not-listed-as-in-danger-but-the-threats-remain-42548">articles</a> have pointed out, that the reef has not been listed does not mean any environmental concerns are unjustified. </p>
<p>The point at issue is whether the reef meets the UNESCO criteria for listing as endangered. It is another point entirely to say the reef is not at risk. Conflating the two muddies the waters.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fXGWy-xsBmE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Not officially endangered and not at risk are two different points.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As another example, imagine someone comments that locking up refugees is psychologically damaging to them. Another person says that the policy is much better under the current government than it was under the last. </p>
<p>The argument has shifted from whether the processes is damaging to who manages the process best. It is not the same thing. If that is not noticed, the argument usually degenerates and we are no closer to finding the truth of the original claim.</p>
<p>For a third example, the federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, recently had to <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/treasurer-joe-hockey-faces-grilling-on-qa-over-this-years-budget/story-e6frfmyi-1227369005759">defend spending his accommodation entitlements</a> when he is in Canberra on a house owned by his wife. He tried to argue the necessity of politicians to be able to claim expenses as they move into the capital for parliamentary business. But these are two different points. Arguing the second does not progress the first. </p>
<p>Deniers of climate science engage in shifting the point at issue as a standard part of their argument technique. One example involves moving from the fact that there is a rapid shift in global temperature to that climate has always changed. </p>
<p>Another example is moving from <a href="http://riaus.org.au/articles/consilience-in-science/">consilience</a> and consensus in climate science as indicators of the degree of confidence within the scientific community to trying to make the debate that consensus is not proof. In both cases the latter point is true, but it’s not the point under discussion.</p>
<p>Changing the point at issue often flags an attempt to move the argument onto more favourable ground rather than engage with it on the offered terms.</p>
<h2>Focusing our thinking is not easy</h2>
<p>This type of intellectual sidestepping is the root of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/straw-man-science-keeping-climate-simple-10782">straw man argument</a>. It is the source of the common phrase “beside the point”, indicating that it is not directly relevant.</p>
<p>If we follow this path, the original argument remains unaddressed and we have only the illusion of progress.</p>
<p>The trick is to recognise when the point at issue shifts, but to do this you need to be very clear at the start about what the original argument is. If you are not clear, you are vulnerable to defeat, losing to an argument that was not your point in the first place. Recognising this shift is a surprisingly difficult thing to do.</p>
<p>One of the reasons we do not focus well on the point at issue, and are sometimes very bad at defining it, is that our minds range across related topics very well. We see connections, implications and perspectives on many issues. This is a useful tendency, but one that needs to be curbed to develop a sharp argumentative focus.</p>
<p>If the point at issue is that smoking is bad for you, don’t start talking about the individual liberty to smoke. If it’s that biodiversity in forests is important, don’t make it about logging jobs. If it’s about how well a political party is doing a job, don’t turn it into a comparison with the other mob.</p>
<p>Stick to the point, sort it out properly, and then move on to the next one.</p>
<h2>How we frame an issue can define the argument</h2>
<p>Finding the point at issue is also a matter of framing the issue correctly.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83788/original/image-20150603-10669-usdyu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How a debate is framed can change the point at issue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rishi S/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Realise, for example, that the point of not teaching Intelligent Design in science classes is one of quality control, not of academic freedom. Or that teaching about religion in schools is not the same thing as instruction in specific religions. Or that same-sex marriage is about equality of rights, not degrading them.</p>
<p>As Christopher Hitchens so <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB107827627378044934">succinctly put it</a> when considering the issue of homosexual marriage more than a decade ago:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is an argument about the socialisation of homosexuality, not the homosexualisation of society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Politicians are masters at changing frames and the point at issue. Witness the use of phrases like “what the public really wants to know” or “what’s really important here” to avoid addressing the issue raised in an interview.</p>
<p>Journalists are often very lax about this, allowing the point at issue to change without bringing it back and pressing for an answer to the original question.</p>
<p>One of the skills of advanced argumentation – and of good journalism – is knowing how to keep things on track. This includes the ability to recognise when the argument shifts and to say “that’s not what we are talking about”. </p>
<p>It also includes knowing how to go on and explain to people that their argument may be relevant to the topic in general but it’s not relevant to the specific point at issue.</p>
<p>You might like to argue that many of the topics I’ve mentioned should be explored in full. That we should talk about biodiversity and jobs when discussing forests, for example. But if you think that, you missed the point at issue of this article. </p>
<p>There’s no reason not to pursue other arguments and other points at issue, but let’s take them one at a time for the sake of clarity and improvement. This is what will improve public debate and better hold politicians to account. </p>
<p>That’s what I’m talking about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ellerton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s so easy to get side-tracked in any discussion and once that happens you’re doomed. So what do you need to know to win your argument?Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/419562015-05-19T02:43:45Z2015-05-19T02:43:45ZConvergence theory explains the lack of choice in Australian politics<p>Economists disappointed by last week’s desultory federal budget and Bill Shorten’s “me too” reply may get some satisfaction by talking to their political science colleagues. For one of the most venerable scholarly theories of Australian politics appears to be making a comeback.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=DU2no--UszAC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=convergence+in+australian+politics&source=bl&ots=jRKBzVr4ZJ&sig=80VKfLVji73W4vLk_NonhmyERDM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=G9JaVZe2O9Di8AXlxYGQAg&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=convergence%20in%20australian%20politics&f=false">convergence thesis</a>” – which holds that the main Australian political parties will, over time, converge upon near-identical policy positions on most issues – was on full display last week. </p>
<p>The Coalition government did a convincing job of producing a Labor budget, with some sops to small business, while the opposition did its best to promise more of the same, unfunded. Credible plans for a balanced budget and the much more demanding task of intergenerational equity were studiously ignored by both sides.</p>
<p>Media commentators often see this as the failings of our “political class” to step up to the challenges of leadership, and there is definitely some truth to that.</p>
<p>But there are underlying systemic pressures towards convergence that are particularly strong in Australia.</p>
<h2>Vote 1 for the same ideas</h2>
<p>Start with the presumption that politicians are fundamentally “office-seeking” in their behaviour. In other words, their prime motivation is to attain and hold on to power, not necessarily to do anything with it. Think Kevin Rudd and, it appears, Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>To achieve office (that is, a role in government, not just a seat in parliament) politicians need “catch all” parties, such as the modern Liberal and Labor machines. These parties are fundamentally electoralist in nature: their key purpose is to win elections, not to mobilise social groups or bring about social change.</p>
<p>Winning elections requires a focus on the “median voter” – the voter who sits at the exact centre of the political and policy spectrum, and thus offers the best target for election campaigning.</p>
<p>Median voters are assumed to be self-interested, short-sighted and conservative, but also rational, family-focused and personally aspirational. This is common to many developed democracies. </p>
<h2>The power of preferences and compulsory voting</h2>
<p>In Australia, two additional and near-unique electoral institutions – compulsory voting and a preferential ballot – make pressures for convergence even more powerful.</p>
<p>Compulsory voting drags to the polls the 30% or so of the electorate who couldn’t care less about politics. They would not choose to vote unless they had to.</p>
<p>This group essentially decides election outcomes, making it much harder for parties to adopt longer-term reforms that could alienate what political professionals call “low-information voters”.</p>
<p>In the polling booth, compulsory preference marking catches the votes of these and other groups – including highly engaged voters – who support minor parties. These votes are then funnelled back to the two major parties, assuming that they can still gain sufficient first-preference support, in a process that encourages policy aggregation rather than differentiation.</p>
<h2>Reform is possible – with bipartisanship</h2>
<p>Centralist politics does not necessarily mean that the status quo prevails. With bipartisan parliamentary support, such a system can enable serious reform to occur, as was the case for the Hawke-Keating years.</p>
<p>Our current lack of bipartisanship, which owes a lot to the way Abbott conducted himself as opposition leader, makes a repeat of this period much harder.</p>
<p>Parties do maintain a few talismanic distinctions to retain the distinctiveness of their brands. Attitudes towards industrial relations and immigration remain politically salient for voters, for instance, and hence are likely to be the focus of efforts to <a href="http://monuni.academia.edu/ShaunRatcliff">distinguish themselves</a> by the parties too.</p>
<p>Other issues that were previously a model of convergence, such as Israel-Palestine, are becoming less so, in part due to demographic changes in marginal seats in Western Sydney.</p>
<p>However, longer-term challenges such as government debt, intergenerational equity and climate change are increasingly being placed in the too-hard basket by both parties.</p>
<h2>A simple step to deliver greater choice</h2>
<p>Convergence is not necessarily bad. It helps Australian politics avoid the extremes seen in the United States, for instance, and forces the parties to keep a constant watch on bread-and-butter issues. But it also makes serious policy debate extremely difficult, as both parties seek to avoid or neutralise issues that do not resonate with the median voter.</p>
<p>To the extent that convergence is a problem – which will only become clear when the next exogenous shock hits Australia, such as another Global Financial Crisis or El Niño drought – we should consider some modest institutional reforms to encourage more genuine political competition.</p>
<p>A simple one would be to switch to an optional preferential voting system for the House of Representatives, as has been proposed but not yet legislated for Senate elections. Voters in <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-tight-nsw-election-optional-preferences-could-win-the-day-38298">New South Wales</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-queenslanders-in-danger-of-wasting-their-votes-35919">Queensland</a> state elections already have the option to exercise as many, or as few, of their preferences as they choose.</p>
<p>The consequences of this federally would be significant. Both major parties would have to fight much harder for preferences if these were optional and they had to differentiate themselves from their competitors rather than imitating them.</p>
<p>A switch to optional preferential voting would also address the growing problem of informal voting – almost 6% of all votes at the last federal election, most due to numbering errors. </p>
<p>But it would also open the question of why, if we don’t need to compel voters to express preferences that they do not in fact have, we should compel them to vote at all. </p>
<p>While some Liberals have intermittently expressed interest in <a href="http://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/papers/html/volume15/v15chap8.html">ending compulsory voting</a>, this is not a conversation either of the major parties wants. It would require political courage, something in very short supply at the moment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Reilly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Convergence theory – which holds that the main Australian political parties will, over time, converge upon near-identical policy positions on most issues – was on full display during budget week.Benjamin Reilly, Dean, Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/262652014-05-06T05:18:29Z2014-05-06T05:18:29ZHumans and squid evolved same eyes using same genes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47660/original/cvwx3dzm-1399040861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I see how you see.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/actor212/7841841370">actor212</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eyes and wings are among the most stunning innovations evolution has created. Remarkably these features have evolved multiple times in different lineages of animals. For instance, the avian ancestors of birds and the mammalian ancestors of bats both evolved wings independently, in an example of convergent evolution. The same happened for the eyes of squid and humans. Exactly how such convergent evolution arises is not always clear.</p>
<p>In a new study, published in <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140305/srep04256/full/srep04256.html?WT.ec_id=SREP-20140311">Nature Scientific Reports</a>, researchers have found that, despite belonging to completely different lineages, humans and squid evolved through tweaks to the same gene.</p>
<h2>Eyes are the prize</h2>
<p>Like all organs, the eye is the product of many genes working together. The majority of those genes provide information about how to make part of the eye. For example, one gene provides information to construct a light-sensitive pigment. Another gene provides information to make a lens.</p>
<p>Most of the genes involved in making the eye read like a parts list – this gene makes this, and that gene makes that. But some genes orchestrate the construction of the eye. Rather than providing instructions to make an eye part, these genes provide information about where and when parts need to be constructed and assembled. In keeping with their role in controlling the process of eye formation, these genes are called “master control genes”.</p>
<p>The most important of master control genes implicated in making eyes is called <em>Pax6</em>. The ancestral <em>Pax6</em> gene probably orchestrated the formation of a very simple eye – merely a collection of light-sensing cells working together to inform a primitive organism of when it was out in the open versus in the dark, or in the shade.</p>
<p>Today the legacy of that early <em>Pax6</em> gene lives on in an incredible diversity of organisms, from birds and bees, to shellfish and whales, from squid to you and me. This means the <em>Pax6</em> gene predates the evolutionary diversification of these lineages – during the Cambrian period, some 500m years ago.</p>
<p>The <em>Pax6</em> gene now directs the formation of an amazing diversity of eye types. Beyond the simple eye, it is responsible for insects’ compound eye, which uses a group of many light-sensing parts to construct a full image. It is also responsible for the type of eye we share with our vertebrate kin: camera eye, an enclosed structure with its iris and lens, liquid interior, and image-sensing retina.</p>
<p>In order to create such an elaborate structure, the activities <em>Pax6</em> controlled became more complex. To accommodate this, evolution increased the number of instructions that arose from a single <em>Pax6</em> gene.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47662/original/v6xztx3w-1399041006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Complex beauty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pacificklaus/8751081489">pacificklaus</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making the cut</h2>
<p>Like all genes, the <em>Pax6</em> gene is an instruction written in DNA code. In order for the code to work, the DNA needs to be read and then copied into a different kind of code. The other code is called RNA.</p>
<p>RNA code is interesting in that it can be edited. One kind of editing, called splicing, removes a piece from the middle of the code, and stitches the two ends together. The marvel of splicing is that it can be used to produce two different kinds of instructions from the same piece of RNA code. RNA made from the <em>Pax6</em> can be spliced in just such a manner. As a consequence, two different kinds of instructions can be generated from the same <em>Pax6</em> RNA.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140305/srep04256/full/srep04256.html?WT.ec_id=SREP-20140311">new study</a>, Atsushi Ogura at the Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology and colleagues found that <em>Pax6</em> RNA splicing has been used to create a camera eye in a surprising lineage. It occurs in the lineage that includes squid, cuttlefish, and octopus – the cephalopods. </p>
<p>Cephalopods have a camera eye with the same features as the vertebrate camera eye. Importantly, the cephalopod camera eye arose completely independently from ours. The last common ancestor of cephalopods and vertebrates existed more than 500m years ago. </p>
<p><em>Pax6</em> RNA splicing in cepahlopods is a wonderful demonstration of how evolution fashions equivalent solutions via entirely different routes. Using analogous structures, evolution can provide remarkable innovations. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malcolm Campbell receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and from Genome Canada.</span></em></p>Eyes and wings are among the most stunning innovations evolution has created. Remarkably these features have evolved multiple times in different lineages of animals. For instance, the avian ancestors of…Malcolm Campbell, Professor & Vice-Principal Research, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192072013-10-23T01:21:29Z2013-10-23T01:21:29ZTwo Souls, one body: the rise of convergence entertainment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33442/original/9tfhx65g-1382415141.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beyond: Two Souls – not a film, not a game, but definitely entertaining.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://beyond.eu.playstation.com/en_AU/home">Beyond: Two Souls</a> isn’t a film. It isn’t a game. </p>
<p>The interactive adventure game, released by French developers Quantic Dream for Sony’s Playstation 3, is a melding of the two. Using sophisticated motion-capture technology, actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe are pitted against a backdrop of seemingly endless storylines. It’s the player who determines the direction of the narrative. </p>
<p>Welcome to the age of convergence entertainment. </p>
<p>But just what do we mean by “convergence entertainment”? It involves bringing together two or more media forms, styles, systems and platforms to produce entertainment we can all enjoy - and that is economically viable. </p>
<p>We see this convergence in most of our treasured media forms: television now outperforms cinema at its own game, providing the intellectual, emotional, even visceral experiences usually reserved for big-screen cinema; can there be anything more “cinematic” than the final season of <a href="http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad">AMC’s Breaking Bad</a>?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33452/original/vm9kf4hb-1382417635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Breaking Bad – Adventure Time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B.Zedan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Convergence is nothing new as media logic. But gaming opens up a brave and potentially disconcerting new world of aesthetic and economic convergences.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to detect the influence of gaming on cinema. The entire output of a filmmaker as popular as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000881/">Michael Bay</a> liberally borrows from a gaming sensibility, with its heightened spectacles, formulaic stories and reassuringly familiar character arcs.</p>
<p>And is it so radical to suggest that a movie such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/">Inception (2010)</a> takes a lot of its dramatic punch from the humble platform game? After all, we enter the virtual dream-space with Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), complete a prescribed set of tasks (goals) and graduate to the next level. </p>
<p>As the release of Beyond: Two Souls shows, however, the future of convergence entertainment promises even more complex integration of media genres and platforms.</p>
<p>Companies such as Sony and Disney are increasingly invested across the entertainment media spectrum, channelling resources into cinema, television, music, merchandising – and the gaming industry. </p>
<p>These multi-faceted entertainment industries are no longer separated by production streams. Rather, they take a bit here, or a bit there, successfully converging revenue sources. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33454/original/rpzqb8r8-1382418387.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">GTA V.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ATOMIC Hot Links.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the same year, Sony will own both <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/">Elysium (2013)</a>, Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to the landmark <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/">District 9 (2009</a>), and the PS4, launching next month; a science fiction film, and a gaming console.</p>
<p>Rock Star’s <a href="http://www.rockstargames.com/V/">Grand Theft Auto V</a> (GTA V), released recently, recouped more than a billion dollars in its first three days, a time-frame roughly equivalent to the opening weekend measure of the studio tent-pole film. </p>
<p>Tent-pole releases refer to the films that will buffer a studio against the monetary losses from smaller, often niche-market releases. But not even 20th Century Fox’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/">Avatar (2009)</a> or Disney’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Avengers (2012)</a> came close to the monetary performance of GTA V last month.</p>
<p>Faced with such a strong economic performance in an increasingly globalised entertainment marketplace, the film industry is facing a hard truth: gaming has outstripped films as a revenue source, even in their myriad distribution streams – theatre screening, Blu-ray, DVD and home entertainment providers. </p>
<p>The once humble console game has metamorphosed into a potentially more lucrative art form and commodity than any other in the history of entertainment media. And rather than being a pastime for adolescents and the maladjusted (a <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-gamers-kill-cinema-box-office-suspects-young-old-male-female-1711">common perception of the ordinary gamer</a> “out there”), gaming has the potential to reach the widest audience demographic, to speak to the widest set of personal and collective fantasies.</p>
<p>Of course, game designers have strategically used a convergence media ethos to diversify target markets. It only makes sense for an entertainment product to converge with other entertainment products, speaking to a range of interests. It benefits a complexly diversified company such as Sony to attract its cinema consumers to the gaming interface, drawing down double the revenue on a Sony product.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33444/original/5ct4b4yh-1382415226.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beyond: Two Souls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I was on a panel recently with the visionary head of <a href="http://www.quanticdream.com/">Quantic Dream</a>, David Cage, the man and the company behind Beyond: Two Souls. It’s an extraordinarily ambitious game which offers a densely layered narrative experience. The high-wattage personas of the stars, Elaine Page and Willem Dafoe, dominate the publicity posters. The promotional material looks much like any other set of film posters put out by Hollywood studios.</p>
<p>Talking at some length with Cage, I discovered the uniqueness of his vision was based essentially on his search for, and commitment to, a complex, sophisticated convergence of gaming and cinema aesthetics. Cage welcomed the description of Beyond: Two Souls as “cinematic gaming”. </p>
<p>There was something almost reverential in his description of cinema and its long century of evolution; by comparison, gaming is an infant in its early stages of development. Cage openly engages gaming as a new media form without limits.</p>
<p>But as a film academic, I have some strong reservations about how far this convergence can be taken. I welcome media experimentation, and mass media has thrived on precisely this process of transformation. </p>
<p>My concern is that the potential of aesthetic convergence will be constrained by the economic realities of the global entertainment industry. GTA V is a billion-dollar affirmation of one kind of gaming experience; and a billion-dollar economic return has the power to exclude other kinds of experiences. </p>
<p>How many games are out there rubbing against the grain of GTA V’s (or any other mass produced game) aesthetic and economic norm?</p>
<p>I asked Cage: do you think gaming could produce Kubrick’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)</a> or Coppola’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Apocalypse Now (1979)</a> as a mass cultural experience? Cage’s reply? Not for some time.</p>
<p>How can we possibly fathom what gaming will become, or what in the next couple of decades will constitute a gaming experience? All contemporary mass media forms – even, and perhaps especially, gaming – are shaped by the markets within which they are produced.</p>
<p>This is not to value one game over another, to exalt Cage’s “complex emotional experience” of Beyond: Two Souls over GTA V’s visceral game-play. But it <em>is</em> to project the notion of the gaming experience as open-ended, as having the capacity to reflect the whole gamut of intellectual, emotional and visceral experience. </p>
<p>Which is, in a sense, what cinema has attempted to do, with varying results, for more than a century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Beyond: Two Souls isn’t a film. It isn’t a game. The interactive adventure game, released by French developers Quantic Dream for Sony’s Playstation 3, is a melding of the two. Using sophisticated motion-capture…Bruce Isaacs, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78182012-06-21T01:16:47Z2012-06-21T01:16:47ZNews Limited reveals its convergent future, but will its pay walls pay off?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11977/original/3tn5gzk4-1340236710.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">News Limited CEO Kim William's plans for cross-media consolidation will have significant ramifications for Australia's media landscape.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A week is a long time in the media. Yesterday Kim Williams, the CEO of News Limited, announced a series of reforms to his company. This follows the slash-and-burn announcements by Fairfax Media earlier this week. While the same factors are driving change in both of these media companies, the approach could not be more different.</p>
<p>Fairfax seems to be facing the future with fear and loathing. It is shrinking. In contrast, News Limited is expanding. It is grasping new technology with both hands and bonding traditional and alternative news outlets together. Williams announced that News Limited wants to buy Consolidated Media, which includes 25% of Foxtel (giving News Limited a 50% share) and half of Fox Sports (giving News Limited 100% ownership, including significant sports broadcasting rights). News Limited is also buying the online publication <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/">Business Spectator</a> and the associated <a href="http://www.eurekareport.com.au/">Eureka Report</a>. </p>
<p>Importantly, News Limited is rationalising its production of news. Put simply, the product will be “the news”, regardless of the specific medium that is used to communicate the product to the customers. Internet, television, and traditional newspaper content will have a centralised structure within News Limited.</p>
<p>What does this mean for the future of Australian news, sports and information? First, Williams seems to believe in the survival of paper-based news. Unlike the Fairfax announcement, which seemed to be a eulogy to paper-based news, Williams stated to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-20/live-blog3a-news-limited/4080756?WT.svl=news0">ABC radio</a> that the death of the newspaper has been exaggerated.
“In 2020 I’m very confident that we’ll be producing very fine newspapers and they will be being consumed very actively across the length and breadth of Australia.”</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if this prediction is wishful thinking or media spin. The purchase of the Business Spectator signals Williams’ belief the future of news delivery is via the Internet and will involve written, spoken, and video presentations. Paper-based newspapers can only do one of these.</p>
<p>Second, it appears that News Limited’s future is subscription-based news, sport and information. This is clearly the case for pay-TV. However, Alan Kohler, when speaking about his sale of the Business Spectator on <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-20/live-blog3a-news-limited/4080756?WT.svl=news0">the ABC</a>, noted that a paywall would be rising around this currently-free business news outlet.</p>
<p>Despite Kohler’s optimism, using paywalls to make a profit out of internet news delivery is still in its infancy. Professor Joshua Gans, from the University of Toronto, <a href="http://economics.com.au/?p=8982">recently made a case</a> against paywalls.</p>
<p>“The newspaper owners of today suffer from the misconception that they are still a unique platform for communities because they are blinded by a "content is king” mentality. That is why they do not fear putting up paywalls — even metered ones.“</p>
<p>Third, News Limited’s announcement trumpets the death of any notion of separate and independent media channels for the delivery of news, sport and information. While convergence has long been a buzzword in the media industry, News Limited’s actions make it a fact.</p>
<p>News Limited’s acquisitions will create a challenge for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In 2006, the ACCC released a <a href="http://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=758231&nodeId=31c94e1cd2afd19e3bc321c1a9d880c8&fn=223_Media%20Mergers_2011_FA.pdf">paper on media mergers</a> outlining how it would deal with cross-media acquisitions.</p>
<p>As the ACCC noted: "Media outlets have traditionally been characterised by their modes of delivery. Thus, FTA television, pay-TV, radio and print media have generally been considered to be in separate markets” (paragraph 73).
In contrast, convergence means that, for merger analysis:
“[t]he product dimension of one market involves news, information and current affairs over a variety of modes of delivery including newspapers, radio, and online media …” (paragraph 159).</p>
<p>In other words, there is one news, information and current affairs product that can be delivered over a variety of modes. News Limited’s acquisitions, by consolidating modes, may reduce competition.</p>
<p>The News Limited acquisitions will be the first significant cross-media test for the ACCC. Since 2006 there have been a variety of acquisitions in the media, but they have often involved only one mode of delivery. The acquisition of Austar by Foxtel is the most recent example. It involved one pay-TV supplier acquiring another pay-TV supplier. In contrast the News Limited acquisitions are clearly cross media. Indeed, Kim Williams’ plan is all about cross-media consolidation.</p>
<p>The ACCC will probably look at three cross-media markets for News Limited’s acquisitions - the supply of advertising opportunities to advertisers; the supply of content to consumers; and the acquisition of content from content providers. News Limited’s acquisitions clearly cover two of these three – Fox Sport’s AFL and NRL rights and the provision of content via newspapers, Foxtel and Business Spectator. The ACCC’s views will have a significant influence on the future of news delivery in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen King was Mergers Commissioner with the ACCC during the drafting of the ACCC's paper on Media Mergers</span></em></p>A week is a long time in the media. Yesterday Kim Williams, the CEO of News Limited, announced a series of reforms to his company. This follows the slash-and-burn announcements by Fairfax Media earlier…Stephen King, Professor, Department of Economics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77452012-06-19T20:16:54Z2012-06-19T20:16:54ZBasically, the fight around Fairfax is about who we should trust<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11902/original/t6vb5zvr-1340086191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C23%2C1913%2C1308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trust in the media is at the heart of issues around Gina Rinehart, Fairfax and editorial independence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid indications that Fairfax is going into the corporate death spiral – ongoing disinvestment resulting in smaller market share - we’re asking the wrong questions about the future of the Australian media. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, we’re getting the wrong answers. After the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-finkelstein-inquiry-into-media-regulation-experts-respond-5675">Finkelstein</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/convergence-review-media-business-as-usual-6758">Convergence</a> reports – and talk of mechanisms such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-from-sinister-privacy-laws-might-mean-media-does-its-job-better-3326">privacy tort</a> – it’s time to be brave. Time to confront the elephants under the media bed … and at the media board tables.</p>
<p>One elephant is trust in the media.</p>
<p>One reason that the commercial media are in crisis is that they’re in hock to skittish private equity and thus subject to the tyranny of the quarterly return. Another reason is that print and broadcast groups have abused consumer trust. </p>
<p>That abuse involves a decade of cuts that have slashed journalism in favour of infotainment: why read the SMH or The Age if they’re increasingly indistinguishable from tabloids? The same malaise is evident in broadcasting, where there is a dearth of original and engaging programming. </p>
<p>Producer Gerald Stone once asked: <a href="http://shop.abc.net.au/products/who-killed-channel-9-the-death-of-kerry-packers-mighty-dream-machine">Who Killed Channel Nine?</a> The answer is the accountants, investors and merchant bankers, not the iPad and Pirate Bay. If we’re not watching free to air TV it’s because broadcasting is simply boring rather than because we’ve been hypnotised by the web. </p>
<p>If we’re not reading broadsheets such as the Canberra Times is because they’re increasingly provincial, clones of weekly giveaways. Slashing jobs, and then slashing again, won’t change consumer disenchantment. In the absence of investment we can expect to see increasing reliance by elites on non-traditional sources such as The Conversation and a shift to the blinkered micro-audiences – the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Me">market of one</a> rather than of many – that is antithetical to the conversations that are a foundation of a civil society.</p>
<p>Another elephant is the presence at media board tables of individuals whose interest in the media appears to centre on exerting influence. Those people, in contrast to families such as the Grahams (<em>Washington Post</em>) and Sulzbergers (<em>New York Times</em>), are unlikely to regard their investment as akin to a trusteeship on behalf of the community rather than a cash register or hotline to The Lodge. </p>
<p>Can we trust such proprietors, given the uncertain restraint provided by private equity representatives whose only interest is in an above-market return on investment and who respond to the jingle “information wants to be free” with the quip that “money just wants to be free-er, so be nice or we’ll take it away”? </p>
<p>Eighty years ago UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin warned of proprietors aiming at “power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”. We might ask whether that warning is relevant. Is there value for the consumer in daily infotorial from Citizen Rinehart or Lord Palmer?</p>
<p>Neither the ALP nor the Coalition at the national and state levels have been willing to be seen to stand up to figures such as Kerry Packer or Gina Rinehart. Regulators have taken a similarly laissez-faire stance in dealing with <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_310230">recurrent</a> infractions by Alan Jones. As a society we are accordingly getting the media (and the politicians) that we deserve, the bland or blinkered talking at the blind.</p>
<p>If we want to engender trust in the media, the trust that would allow the organisations to retain their commercial advantage in the “age of citizen journalism”, we need on occasion to look under the bed. We also need to ask whether some people should be sitting at the table and underpin that questioning through effective anti-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation">SLAPP</a> legislation that is founded on a national Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>It is of concern that Australia’s richest woman, a person whose wealth is attributable to the vagaries of inheritance and mining licences rather than exemplary innovation, appears headed to <a href="https://theconversation.com/rinehart-takes-18-of-fairfax-in-irresistible-tilt-at-the-board-7712">control</a> of one of the nation’s two dominant newspaper groups. She has a substantial stake in a broadcasting group. </p>
<p>She is <a href="https://theconversation.com/forget-the-personality-sideshow-serious-legal-issues-are-at-the-heart-of-rinehart-family-feud-5813">embroiled</a> in a venomous family dispute about a trust fund. That dispute raises questions about governance and about scrutiny of claims – which it is important to note have not been tested in court – of serious misbehaviour. Is it time to go beyond Finkelstein and bravely consider expectations about stewardship?</p>
<p>Paul Keating sought to encourage better behaviour among Australian media magnates and managers through a demarcation between print and broadcast. Convergence means that demarcation becomes less viable by the day. What we should insist on as a liberal democratic state is that major media organisations aspire to best practice in corporate governance and in responsible reporting. </p>
<p>The decision by Seven West Media to walk away from the Australian Press Council and blithely <a href="https://theconversation.com/self-regulation-and-a-media-we-can-trust-6466">regulate itself</a> raises questions about whether we can trust the entrepreneurs and their executives. </p>
<p>If lawyers are expected to be of good fame and character, what about the people in the board rooms and executive suites? Given the flimsiness of past <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/mps-rinehart-should-sign-charter-20120618-20kco.html">charters</a> of editorial independence – recall Murdoch’s disregard of that at the <em>Times</em> on the basis of ‘commercial necessity’, a necessity that won’t disappear just by installing a paywall – can we trust nervous <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/text-of-fairfax-journalists-letter-to-rinehart-20120619-20lgc.html">journalists</a> and even more nervous managers to rigorously examine the people at the top? If we don’t trust them, the death spiral will continue and we’ll all be poorer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Baer Arnold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Amid indications that Fairfax is going into the corporate death spiral – ongoing disinvestment resulting in smaller market share - we’re asking the wrong questions about the future of the Australian media…Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75612012-06-14T20:09:22Z2012-06-14T20:09:22ZChallenge 6: Switching on to the politics of the digital era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11547/original/ywk9m3b6-1339116757.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Access to the internet is becoming less of a problem - but does society have the structures to support free exchange of information?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Howard Stateman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In part six of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jake Wallis argues that the infrastructure of global communication networks is inherently political and calls for a switched-on populace.</p>
<hr>
<h2><a href="http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/Global_Challenges/chall-06.html">Global challenge 6</a>: How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?</h2>
<p>Challenge 6 of the Millenium Project’s Global Challenges Facing Humanity is a tricky one. How can the convergence of information and communications technologies (ICTs) work for everyone?</p>
<p>The problem, as cyberpunk author William Gibson <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1067220">famously said</a>, is that “the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”</p>
<p>Some organisations have modelled online (ironically) the disparities in infrastructure and use of global information and communications networks. They use visualisation techniques to represent digital data. StatSilk uses data from the International Telecommunications Union (the United Nations’ specialist agency for information and communications technologies) to model the global distribution of broadband per 100 inhabitants: you can see it <a href="http://www.statsilk.com/maps/world-stats-open-data?l=broadband%20subscribers%20per%20100%20inhabitants">here</a>. The interactive model lets you watch as broadband spreads across the globe over the decade 1999-2009. You don’t need to be William Gibson to see that broadband is not very evenly distributed.</p>
<p>The global community must discuss how pervasive networks can best serve social well-being. The problem is that the inequalities inherent in existing global structures - distribution of food, clean water, health care and so on - are already reflected across our global networks.</p>
<p>Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, originally envisaged the internet as a universal communications medium beyond the constraints of proprietary software and computing hardware. The <a href="http://www.w3.org/">World Wide Web Consortium</a> (W3C), which Berners-Lee directs, has an unashamedly <a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission">universal mission</a>:</p>
<p><em>The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C’s primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.</em> </p>
<p>But W3C is just one stakeholder in the web’s development. Some of the others get more attention. The chief executive of Google, Sergey Brin, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin">recently lamented</a> the shift towards “walled gardens” on the web. Brin’s use of the term is interesting. In the context of the web, a “walled garden” is the term commonly used to describe online systems and data which are closed off in an environment designed to be inherently open. Brin was, of course, talking about Google’s primary competitors in the digital economy: Facebook and Apple. In fact, he may simply be talking about environments that can’t be indexed by Google.</p>
<p>Now that the infrastructure of the web is in place and extending, Berners-Lee has <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html">turned his attention</a> to the potential of the vast quantities of data that reside online. His idea is that the more accessible the data is, the greater its creative application. Data can be re-used [for disaster relief](<a href="http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/">http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/</a> or <a href="http://www.theyworkforyou.com/">public accountability</a> or even the <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">maintenance of public spaces</a>.</p>
<p>During the debate around the <a href="http://www.nbn.gov.au/">National Broadband Network</a> (NBN), there has been significant confusion about the things improved networked infrastructure might offer Australian society. The government did not articulate the potential social benefits of public investment in broadband particularly clearly. It was clear throughout the debate that many of Australia’s elected representatives didn’t “get” the idea of the information society and digital economy - politicians asked why public money should be used to fund faster movie downloads for teenagers. The information society and digital economy are presented as models for development not just by the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/what_is_the_digital_economy">Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy</a> but also by international organisations like the <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/towards-knowledge-societies-unesco-world-report/">United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization</a>.</p>
<p>The shape of the global economy is changing. For a highly educated and highly skilled nation like Australia, the future is in doing smart things with smart technology. Manufacturing could get a competitve advantage, for example, by producing customised on-demand products rather than getting involved in mass production (which the global economy has essentially outsourced to cheaper labour <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/manufactured-crisis-20120428-1xro9.html">in industrialising economies</a> anyway).</p>
<p>The Gillard government initially presented an economic rationale for the NBN. However, the debate has shifted into areas of broader social benefit as potential applications in health and education develop. For a nation dominated by the tyranny of distance, the collapsing of time and space enabled by broadband networks offers much.</p>
<p>The danger in facing this particular challenge in its global context is that our thinking becomes technologically deterministic: we begin to equate technology with progress in an uncritical way.</p>
<p>The potential of the social web as a platform for popular activism was apparent during the Arab Spring. But the events that we see unfolding in Syria demonstrate that without the structures of civil society, the intense political mobilisation afforded by the web goes nowhere. Technology does not bring democracy; in fact, it can be an incredibly effective tool of state surveillance and control. Since the Arab Spring, the United States (US) Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has increasingly intertwined internet freedom within the [thread of US foreign policy](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full).</p>
<p>As economic and citizenship practices shift into networked spaces, we need to think about how those practices can be absorbed into wider civil society and political institutions, regional economies and public services. Iceland, for example, has managed to incorporate new media into the democratic process in a meaningful way. Whilst recovering from the collapse of its banking system the Nordic island nation recently used a combination of social media environments to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing">crowdsource</a> the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/09/iceland-crowdsourcing-constitution-facebook">re-drafting of its constitution</a>. Technology can provide a platform for social change. What happens next depends on what society, collectively, chooses to do with it.</p>
<p>How do we promote international consensus around the development of communications technologies? One forum tries to respond to this specific question: the United Nations sanctioned annual <a href="http://groups.itu.int/wsis-forum2012/Information/WSISOverview.aspx">World Summit on the Information Society</a>. The 2012 summit, which met last month, identified areas that are crucially important to maximise the potential of networked ICT for global humanity. They drew attention to:</p>
<ul>
<li>equitable governance of cyberspace by all stakeholders</li>
<li>environmental sustainability of ICT usage</li>
<li>access to ICT by women</li>
<li>the role of ICT in post-conflict resolution.</li>
</ul>
<p>The infrastructure of our global networks is inherently political. Technology doesn’t create the future; the complex interaction of political structures and human agency does.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jake Wallis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In part six of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jake Wallis argues that the infrastructure of global communication networks is inherently political and calls for a switched-on populace…Jake Wallis, Lecturer in the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67582012-05-01T04:17:33Z2012-05-01T04:17:33ZConvergence Review: media business as usual<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10180/original/vygj26dy-1335843648.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C38%2C1898%2C1323&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dull grey tone: media organisations are "Content service enterprises", according to the Convergence Review.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">Convergence Review’s final report</a> is remarkable for its blandness and predictability.</p>
<p>Despite the cries of fear and loathing from the Murdoch stable that the cold hand of government intervention was upon us, the review has explicitly rejected <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Ray Finkelstein’s suggestion</a> that a statutory News Media Council should be established by legislation.</p>
<p>What we have in this report is an attempt to play regulation catch up with digital convergence, while preserving flexibility to adapt quickly to further change. It is a difficult balance and the report fails to meet the challenge.</p>
<p>The Convergence Review has opted to suggest a set of principles, rather than prescription in order for any new regulatory regime to remain nimble and effective. Unfortunately, the recommendations are weak and in some cases almost totally unworkable.</p>
<h2>Two tier regulation</h2>
<p>There will be two types of regulation in the system proposed by Glen Boreham and his fellow reviewers. The first will be a much trimmer version of the <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME">Australian Communication and Media Authority</a> that will apply a very light touch regulation of ownership issues and spectrum allocation and it will incorporate a revised classifications process for media content (except news and current affairs). New regulations will be applied to media companies according to their size and reach. If companies outside the limit grow, they will then be included.</p>
<p>To establish the second arm of self-regulation, the review has politely invited the nation’s top 15 news content providers to join what would essentially be a souped-up <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>. These top 15 providers are measured by audience reach and revenues with the cut-off for regulation being revenue of around $50 million a year and/or audience reach of about 500,000 per month.</p>
<p>In a line straight out of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister">“Yes, Minister”</a>, the report has coined a new term that continues the dull grey tone of the text. Media organisations – whether in print, broadcast or online, will be henceforth deemed to be “content service enterprises”. </p>
<p>This bureaucratic mouthful sits alongside other gems of government prose such as “uniform content scheme” and “television-like services”. The new self-regulation body will only apply to the major “content service enterprises” whose business is the provision of news and commentary and membership is voluntary.</p>
<p>In what appears to a rejection of the Finkelstein proposal to bring bloggers and social media into the regulation net, the size and service provisions, and what the report describes as the publishing or broadcast of ‘professional news and commentary’, means that amateur and citizen journalism is not subject to regulation. But Telstra and Google too would be outside the framework, according to the Review’s figures. This has naturally upset some of the other media players.</p>
<h2>Clayton’s reform</h2>
<p>This report and its recommendations is the sort of Clayton’s reform we have come to expect from expensive government inquiries; fiddle with the terminology, shuffle the paper, look busy for a while, collect the cheque and quietly slip out the backdoor. </p>
<p>The report is very business friendly – there’s nothing in here to frighten the market and nothing to excite or enthuse anyone campaigning for real and meaningful change.
The only substantial achievement in this review is a recognition that convergence in media technologies and platforms means that there must be some sort of change. However, only mild change has been proposed; really it’s no more than tinkering.</p>
<h2>Spectrum Fees</h2>
<p>The broadcast licence fee will be replaced with a spectrum fee, so this alteration to the status quo – while appearing significant – is only semantics. Media organisations will still pay for the right to broadcast free-to-air TV, but the spectrum can be bought and sold or traded on the open market.</p>
<h2>Local Content</h2>
<p>The report recommends that the ABC and the SBS be brought into the new Australian content rules through designated quotas and levies on the commercial networks. The “converged content production fund” will be used to produce content, but whether or not it will go past “New Same, with added MORE” is yet to be decided.</p>
<h2>Industry-approved regulation of news and commentary</h2>
<p>The key recommendation about news and current affairs is the “industry-led” body that will oversight “journalistic standards” across all platforms. This is a Press Council on steroids.</p>
<p>The self-regulatory body for news and commentary – the Press Council supersized – would administer codes around fairness, accuracy and transparency; hear complaints and make determinations and regulate “journalistic standards”. Platform neutrality is a key determining factor emphasised in this report, which argues there is no longer any justification for separate self-regulation given the platform cross-over between publishing, broadcasting and online delivery.</p>
<p>However, getting the various industry groups and media companies to agree to this structure may be difficult. Current arrangements for the Press Council and for commercial radio and commercial television providers are purely voluntary, but the Review sees this as a “structural weakness” and argues that the largest content service enterprises should be pushed to join: “The structural weakness of this purely self-regulatory model is addressed under the Review’s approach, which will ensure that all content service enterprises are subject to standards and sanctions set by the news standards body.” </p>
<p>The government’s “stick” to ensure compliance with this approach would be that current exemptions to privacy or competition law enjoyed by news providers would be conditional on membership of the new self-regulation body.
The radio and television industry lobby groups have not yet responded to the Convergence Review report, but it is hard to imagine them giving up their independence without inducements or coercion.</p>
<p>At best this suggested change amounts to a new set of dentures for the existing publisher’s poodle. It will be able to accept sanitised government funding in ways that will not upset the old-guard in the newspaper industry who see Armageddon in every attempt at regulation by government. There is no indication in this 170+ page report that there is any real problem or issue with media accountability and standards in Australia. This is a whitewash of the highest standard.</p>
<h2>A public interest test for ownership</h2>
<p>The report pays lip service to the idea – long argued by critics of the mainstream – that market forces can lead to oligopoly and monopoly and that this is bad for media “diversity”. A public interest test will be introduced that will examine ownership issues from a broader perspective than simple market economics and the test would be invoked when a “content service enterprise” changes ownership. However, no one contemplating becoming a media mogul should be too concerned, despite howls of protest that this change somehow “politicises” the review process. The Review argues that the onus of proof should be on the regulator to prove that a proposed sale is not in the public interest.</p>
<p>The previous market-share ownership rules will be replaced, but the new system sounds remarkably like the old one. The new rule will be known as the “minimum number of owners” clause. The often cumbersome rules regarding television, radio and print media will be removed, but the networks and newspapers have not had their ambitions of no ownership rules at all realized. The effect of the public interest test will not be known until it is tested in use, but the Australian media market is already heavily controlled by a few companies and this is likely to remain the case. There is no positive suggestion that existing near-monopolies be dismantled. Under “minimum number of owners”, hybrids such as NineMSN and Yahoo will also be caught up in the regulatory net for the first time.</p>
<p>The report says these rules should be complementary to the ACCC and other competition regulation, not duplicate them; so it is hard to see that there will be teeth in the public interest test. Just in case though, there is an out clause that allows the public interest to be over-ridden if there is a greater public interest in allowing concentration of ownership. Sir Humphrey’s fingerprints are all over this report.</p>
<h2>Security for public and community broadcasting</h2>
<p>The report recommends that community television be given some certainty about its future and argues that the abolition of licence fees in favour of permanently allocated spectrum should benefit community broadcasters. It has long been a scandal that community television has been operating (for more than 20 years) on ‘temporary’ licences and the low threshold for sponsorship for community broadcasting limits its potential to increase revenue.</p>
<p>The report also recommends a review of the ABC and SBC charters to reflect convergence. This seems straightforward, but lurking behind the curtain is a move by the commercial operators to quarantine their activities from competition from publicly-funded broadcasters. This push has been led in the UK and Australia by Rupert and James Murdoch who have argued for years that the BBC and ABC are taking food from their mouths.</p>
<p>This is a self-serving argument and we will have to be vigilant to ensure that the ABC and the SBS are not hamstrung by any changes.</p>
<h2>The political reality</h2>
<p>The report has been released and the process is now in the political sphere for action. However, with an election due by October next year and the parliamentary landscape littered with bodies at the moment, it is highly unlikely that the Communications Minister will move quickly to implement any of the review’s recommendations.</p>
<p>The report suggests a staged approach to development and implementation of its recommendations, but stage 1—stand-alone changes that can be achieved in the short term, including the public interest test, requires that the new regulator be established first. I doubt Stephen Conroy will be in any hurry to move on this given the likely hostile response he would get from the Opposition and from some quarters of the media.</p>
<p>Overall this is a fairly mediocre piece of work – it does not attempt to do anything innovative or radical in relation to convergence, regulation or standards. The supersized Press Council (Mark II) may or may not get off the ground, but why would the broadcasters give up their own self-regulation systems in the first place?</p>
<p>This review, like many others, will gather dust. The words “fiddling”, “Rome” and “burning” come to mind.</p>
<h2>News media regulation at a glance</h2>
<p>The key features of the Convergence Review’s approach include:</p>
<ul>
<li>major media organisations should be required to participate in any scheme regardless of platform and not be able to “opt out”</li>
<li>any scheme should have adequate funding, a majority of which should come from the industry</li>
<li>sanctions for failure to meet standards should be meaningful and credible</li>
<li>regulation should not impinge on free speech and an independent press.</li>
<li>The Review says that government-backed regulation of news content should only be a “last resort”.</li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, the new self-managed body would, the report says, have the following characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li>the appointment of a board of directors, a majority of whom would be independent from the members</li>
<li>adequate funding and resourcing of the body and its operations</li>
<li>the establishment of standards for the production of news and commentary, including specific requirements for fairness and accuracy</li>
<li>the maintenance of an efficient and effective complaints-based scheme</li>
<li>a flexible range of remedies and credible sanctions, including the power to order members to prominently and appropriately publish its findings on the relevant media platform.</li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hirst is a member of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance and the Journalism Education Association of Australia.
He is director of the 2012 JEAA annual conference to be held in Melbourne from 2 to 5 December.</span></em></p>The Convergence Review’s final report is remarkable for its blandness and predictability. Despite the cries of fear and loathing from the Murdoch stable that the cold hand of government intervention was…Martin Hirst, Associate Professor Journalism & Media, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67532012-05-01T01:47:13Z2012-05-01T01:47:13ZConvergence Review: tame cat Press Council gets playmate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10158/original/jzh54nrd-1335832206.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The line between traditional and new media has now blurred into indistinguishability.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">flickr/francescominciotti</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It should be easy for the Gillard Government to accept the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review#report">recommendations</a> of the Convergence Review. </p>
<p>On the surface it seems all very sensible: a converged <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Press Council</a> and <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME">Australian Communications and Media Authority</a> (ACMA) to keep news organisations honest, easy to understand rules regarding media ownership, extra television channels, more Australian audio visual content, more local content, and a technology-neutral and flexible approach to media content standards. </p>
<p>(Listen to Glen Boreham from the Convergence Review team on Radio National this morning <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/report-recommends-media-changes-glen-boreham/3982056">here</a>.)</p>
<p>Some of the recommendations will be warmly welcomed – who wouldn’t support more locally made kids programs, dramas and documentaries? Who wouldn’t support more Australian music? (Even if it won’t be on the digital airways).</p>
<p>The key recommendation for journalists, to beef up the current Press Council (and rename it to a news standards body), appears sensible.</p>
<h2>Tinkering around the edges?</h2>
<p>Many in the Australian media have long argued the need for a one-stop shop for news standards which adjudicates on complaints and provides timely remedies. </p>
<p>Putting the Australian Press Council and ACMA together recognises the reality of today’s media. As the report states, “In a converged world it is no longer viable to argue that news and commentary in print media should be treated differently from news and commentary in television, radio and online. The new industry-led body should cover all platforms—print and online, television and radio.” </p>
<p>For the punters, it has always been difficult to figure out exactly where to complain or seek redress when legal action has been financially out of reach. </p>
<p>There are some strong recommendations which deserve to be applauded, but the bottom line is, the recommendations of the Convergence Review will likely do little to <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?q=phone+hacking">solve the problems that prompted public concern</a> in the United Kingdom and in Australia about news organisations their culture, ethics and practices.</p>
<h2>Culture and ethics: can they change?</h2>
<p>Unless forced, I doubt the new standards body will be able to agree to enforce a common media code aimed at promoting fairness, accuracy and transparency. Aggrieved parties have had difficulty getting action from the current Press Council, and with the addition of other content providers such as the ABC and free-to-air TV, getting agreement on action will likely be that much harder. </p>
<p>Similarly, it is unlikely that the members will agree on credible sanctions and the enforced prominent publication of its findings. While the ABC might be happy to run a full program correcting the record, I can’t imagine ever seeing a front page correction from the major broadsheets or at a fully replaced program on the tabloid current affairs programs. </p>
<p>It’s all about culture and ethics, and every news organisation has a different one, just ask those who work at NewsCorp, Fairfax, Crikey, the ABC, the Global Mail and Mammamia.com. </p>
<p>Further, the Review had not included social media and user generated content. While being defamed on a butterfly collectors blog may seem a small deal to those outside the group, it is potentially devastating, even if only 400 people have read it.</p>
<h2>News suppliers</h2>
<p>Like the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finklestein Inquiry</a>, the Convergence Review ignores the power of the suppliers of “news”. In this regard <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/business/on-balance-its-a-pr-plague-20090303-8nex.html">Michael West is right</a> when he says that the PR plague is out of hand. </p>
<p>The PR industry is like an arms dealer supplying the fighters in a third world guerrilla war, while the journos are child soldiers unwillingly conscripted to the other side. One of the most startling pieces of evidence at the <a href="http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leeveson inquiry</a> was Rupert Murdoch finally admitting that all the salacious “news” in the Sun came from PR. </p>
<p>The Convergence Review notes that it is in the public interest for the body to be appropriately resourced, and to this end suggests government contributions limited to specific purposes. However, this keeps the government (or as I’d like to say the public) out of the main debate. </p>
<p>This kind of tokenistic funding can’t help provide a much needed cultural change and will instead be like water in milk, immediately diluted.</p>
<h2>Who pays the piper</h2>
<p>The review says the majority of funding for the journalism body should come from its members. This would continue to give the existing news organisations the same power they currently have with the Press Council – the power to do little. </p>
<p>Not only that, the owners of our established but struggling news organisations are already finding it difficult to maintain or grow revenue. Current members are unlikely to want to sign up to more funding, and new members may have financial difficulties contributing. </p>
<p>Even yesterday the major television stations pleaded poverty over the proposed requirements to increase Australian content.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Convergence Review ill not deal with the kind of cultura; issues like phone hacking that are worrying many Western citizens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I applaud the idea that the news standards body will refer to the new communications regulator instances where there have been persistent or serious breaches of the media code, although I’m not sure how satisfactory this can be. </p>
<p>That leads to my most serious concern - the recommendation to give the regulator the legislated power to “write-its-own-rules”. While I do not fear government funding, I certainly fear any regulator being able to make up its own rules on the run, even with a dynamic media environment. </p>
<p>Certainly the policy framework should take a technology-neutral approach that can adapt to new services, platforms and technologies, but this should not be the expense of allowing a regulator that “can apply, amend or remove regulatory measures as circumstances require” without any referral to the government (read again the Australian people).</p>
<h2>Capital ideas</h2>
<p>There are a couple of other recommendations which are significant for anyone working in Australian journalism which I won’t dwell on. However, media ownership is a big issue Australia’s capital cities, but it is an even bigger issue in regional Australia. </p>
<p>Although the proposed “minimum number of owners” rule and a public interest test isn’t perfect, it’s a good step towards helping ensure a diversity of voices (and importantly jobs in the media for young Australians). </p>
<p>Also, it is important to keep the charters of both the ABC and the SBS up to date to expressly reflect the range of existing services, including online activities. No government funded organisation should work outside its charter. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Wake works as a freelance broadcaster, often with Radio Australia (Australian's international radio and online broadcaster). Alex previously worked with Professor Matthew Ricketson, one of the authors of the Finklestein Report. Ten years ago she worked as a senior media advisor to a state government minister. Alex is completing a PhD on journalism education in emerging democracies.
</span></em></p>It should be easy for the Gillard Government to accept the recommendations of the Convergence Review. On the surface it seems all very sensible: a converged Press Council and Australian Communications…Alexandra Wake, Lecturer, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67482012-04-30T04:30:35Z2012-04-30T04:30:35ZConvergence Review: the call for regulation will be unpopular with established media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10089/original/8mp77t5f-1335758003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Communication Minister Stephen Conroy will oversee the government's response to the Convergence Review.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’m looking forward to the next few days.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/147733/Convergence_Review_Final_Report.pdf">Convergence Review’s key recommendation</a> to introduce a new body to “regulate” the activities of our major 15 media operators – including newspapers – is significant.</p>
<p>I expect the major media ownership groups, particularly those primarily invested in newspapers, will vehemently oppose this move given newspapers have been the one part of the media landscape that has, to date, operated with only the self-regulatory “toothless tiger” of the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a> to monitor their quality.</p>
<p>To a large extent this recommendation is an expected outcome given the changing nature of the media industry and the convergence that has occurred. We are overdue for a body that can regulate all news media, not just broadcast as the Australian Communications and Media Authority has done. </p>
<p>And as the review correctly points out, despite the great deal of hype about the diversity that new technology offers, in fact it is just the media through which the information is received that is changing, not the source or content. </p>
<p>The review report notes: “News and commentary consumed by Australians across all platforms is still overwhelmingly provided by the news outlets long familiar to Australians. What has changed most dramatically is how Australians access their news — the source largely remains the same. For example, someone may read a news story on Facebook, but the originator of the article is a newspaper publisher.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10087/original/9424bk8w-1335757984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protestors in the UK where the phone hacking scandal has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News International operations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Andy Rain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another issue which will also feed the controversy stands out. The recommendation to introduce a “public interest test” for any future media acquisitions and mergers.</p>
<p>The issue will further raise the ire (and indeed already has) of major media ownership groups. This recommendation was alluded to in the Review Committee’s interim report released in December so has already attracted some comment.</p>
<p>Media owners have always, in response to inquiry recommendations, run campaigns against any suggestion that their right to carry out their business as and how they see fit should be tampered with. </p>
<p>Their key complaint this time, suggested in <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/146283/News_Limited.pdf">News Ltd’s submission to the Convergence Review</a>, is that the application of a public interest “test” may be difficult to immediately define – in News Ltd’s words, the proposed public interest test is “flawed, entirely subjective, impossibly imprecise, vague and lacking in objective rigour”.</p>
<p>Too often, news media companies use the “public interest” claim when it suits them – when they discover an MP leaving a brothel late at night for example; or when they get wind that an ex-footballer might be having an extra-marital affair. Exposing such information is, apparently, “in the public interest”. It is also, of course, in their own commercial interests.</p>
<p>News Ltd stands by its coverage in recent years, for example, of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_Clark#Criticism_of_his_work">Brisbane Courier-Mail’s infamous pursuit of historian Manning Clark</a> as a communist; and also of the <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/hanson-photo-fraud/story-e6frf7kx-1225692406741">organisation’s publication of photographs of Pauline Hanson</a> which have since been proven (and it was obvious at the time), to be false.</p>
<p>These were great commercial decisions, as they spiked News Ltd’s newspaper sales – but terribly flawed, entirely subjective, impossibly imprecise, and certainly lacking in objective rigour. </p>
<p>These incidents raised significant questions about news media standards, but also about the public interest and what it comprises. The introduction of a public interest test on mergers will trigger significant discussion about this very issue. </p>
<p>The related debate about the establishment of a large regulator to cover all media platforms will also give rise to a more careful consideration of this most crucial democratic issue – and will be well worth the cost of the Convergence Review. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10091/original/mjfgmxts-1335758510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Convergence Review reflects the fact that people now consume news in very different ways to in the past.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Julian Stratenschulte</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a final point, the Review identifies another key point that focuses on the desperate need for more local content and “community” voices, something delivered increasingly by not-for-profit community and public broadcasters.</p>
<p>If we need one reminder of the need for a strong not-for-profit media sector which prioritises local information and strong journalism over business concerns, the abandonment of rural and regional communities by commercial radio over the past 10-15 years is evidence enough. </p>
<p>As expected, the Convergence Review doesn’t go far enough. It does not recommend measures which would see a strong independent media emerge and take an important place in our mediascape. </p>
<p>It softly recommends community broadcasting have “access to funding to drive innovation” in delivery of radio and television on digital platforms but offers no substantial policy recommendations to properly support more concrete development of these important local media.</p>
<p>This should be the next step in reviving Australia’s public sphere.</p>
<p>The growth of the internet and the “convergence” of media forms may make cross-media ownership regulation less of a priority now, but it does not remove the need for our news media to provide the public with informed, rigorous, responsible, quality news and current affairs.</p>
<p>This can only be achieved with a broad-ranging and diverse news media sector which has an overriding responsibility to serve the public interest.</p>
<p>The Convergence Review’s suggestion for a new regulator encompassing all media, and the introduction of a public interest test, will go some way towards achieving this provided the legislation developed properly reflects the reality and aims of these recommendations.</p>
<p>We now have months to wait to see the government’s response to this important document which will shape Australian media structures and content into the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Forde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I’m looking forward to the next few days. The Convergence Review’s key recommendation to introduce a new body to “regulate” the activities of our major 15 media operators – including newspapers – is significant…Susan Forde, Associate Professor of Journalism, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/64662012-04-17T00:37:34Z2012-04-17T00:37:34ZSelf-regulation and a media we can trust?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9657/original/bddms6n4-1334557372.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C11%2C1907%2C1248&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seven West Media's decision to withdraw from the Australian Press Council raises questions about the Australian commercial media’s commitment to corporate social responsibility and best practice.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the report of the Independent Inquiry into the media and media regulation, aka <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finkelstein inquiry</a>, was released some time ago, it was <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_rise_of_the_totalitarians/">denounced as sinister</a> and – like the <a href="http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a> in the UK – as a totalitarian assault on freedom of speech. </p>
<p>Some critics were quick to construe freedom of speech as freedom of the press, a sacred freedom that has been traditionally enjoyed by investors who own a press and have the money to hire a QC or two.</p>
<p>Finkelstein highlighted concerns regarding the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>, an industry body that has no statutory basis or powers, is poorly resourced, does not cover the electronic media and historically has been loath to bite the corporate hands that feed it. </p>
<p>Those hands of course belong to a few commercial media organisations, consistent with the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2809848.html">high level of media concentration</a> in Australia. A realist might be forgiven for concluding that the most effective watchdog of journalistic behaviour – and managerial tolerance of misbehaviour – is the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/">ABC’s Mediawatch</a> program rather than the Council or <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME">Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)</a> that emphasises “light touch” self-regulation and has thus only ever imposed derisory penalties on errant commercial broadcasters. </p>
<p>Finkelstein (and associate Matthew Ricketson of the University of Canberra) was criticised for proposing a government-funded but independent national News Media Council, an entity with appropriate resourcing and power. Consistent with the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">“convergence”</a> of media technologies and formats, the new body would be concerned with all media rather than in the words of former Prime Minister Paul Keating being restricted to the “princes of print”. </p>
<p>Critics indicated that regulation was best left to those who know what they are doing, that is, the managers and investors who control the media groups.</p>
<p>We might be forgiven - on reading the <a href="http://www.sevenwestmedia.com.au/docs/business-unit-news/statement-from-seven-west-media.pdf">terse announcement</a> from Seven West Media (the WA-based magazines and television network conglomerate) that it is abandoning the Press Council and going it alone to “guarantee accountability of all the group’s publications” – for asking whether moving house is a demonstration of improved accountability. </p>
<p>Seven West reportedly plans to set up an Independent Media Council headed by <a href="http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/13408733/former-judge-to-lead-media-council/">former judge, Christopher Steytler</a>, a body which West Australian Newspapers group editor-in-chief Bob Cronin has said will be independent of the company and governments.</p>
<p>But this still raises questions about the Australian commercial media’s commitment to corporate social responsibility and best practice. </p>
<p>Will each media group set up its own Independent Media Council, each with a distinguished person at the head and each with no power? Can we trust the managers and investors to police themselves (a problematical notion given the global financial crisis) and respond effectively when concerns are raised? </p>
<p>Meanwhile the remaining members of the Press Council, apparently unfussed by Seven West’s secession, are proposing to <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/document-search/strengthening-press-council-mr-5-april-2012/?LocatorGroupID=662&LocatorFormID=677&FromSearch=1">double their funding</a> of the Council. That’s admirable … and a small price to pay in avoiding establishment of a body that has sharp teeth. </p>
<p>Trust is a fundamental issue in an environment where billionaires such as <a href="http://theconversation.com/forget-the-personality-sideshow-serious-legal-issues-are-at-the-heart-of-rinehart-family-feud-5813">Gina Rinehart</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/lew-tries-to-gag-media-in-fight-for-trust-fund-millions-20120411-1ws5z.html#ixzz1rliIWCym">Solomon Lew</a> reach for suppression orders to privatise justice, where <a href="http://theconversation.com/tax-avoidance-or-tax-evasion-a-haven-for-misunderstanding-2405">some corporations and some colourful entrepreneurs</a> have quite legally arranged their affairs to pay derisory amounts of tax (perhaps we need to adopt <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4318382.stm">Norway’s</a> publication of tax returns) and the dominant parties are reluctant to “speak truth to power”. </p>
<p>In an “information economy” power resides in the hands of people who control mines, broadcasters and newspapers and can afford the best QCs in town in litigation that keeps personal information out of the public domain. If we are to protect the Rineharts and Lews, what about the accident victims whose pain, as noted by Finkelsten, was exposed by by the broadcasters? What of figures such as <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/nsw-mp-apologises-seven-stands-by-story-20100521-w1y7.html">David Campbell</a>, “outed” by Seven Network staff and bereft of the comfort provided by a team of QCs queuing in the NSW Supreme Court for suppression orders?</p>
<p>From a regulatory perspective Seven West’s secession from the Press Council is disappointing - and possibly counterproductive to its aims. </p>
<p>A perceived flight from accountability is likely to reinforce calls for a national, whole-of-industry body that has teeth and is trusted. Trust is a foundation for courts heeding calls by the media not to privilege disputes involving the powerful through comprehensive suppression orders.</p>
<p>As Australia’s Chief Justice commented in a decision on the Rinehart dispute, “the proper conduct of trustees is a matter which warrants close public scrutiny”. That scrutiny is appropriate and imperative whether there is $500 million at stake, or $50. There are times when we should embrace notions of a freedom of the press that overrides concerns regarding privacy and confidentiality. Those notions however should not be taken as a given. They are founded on accountability.</p>
<p>In damning proposals for statutory protection against serious invasions of privacy (proposals recommended by law reform commissions in three Australian governments and thus presumably having some substance) the <a href="http://www.ruleoflawaustralia.com.au/Downloads/Freedom_of_the_Press_and_Freedom_of_Speech_in_Australia.pdf">Rule of Law Institute last year proclaimed</a> that:</p>
<p><em>Today, nearly 200 years after the first publication of the Australian newspaper, freedom of speech and freedom of the press remain under attack. This time the battle is the proposal of the Australian Government to pass a new law to make it illegal to talk or write the truth about another person where it “invades” that person’s privacy. …</em></p>
<p><em>… freedom of speech and freedom on the press are not limited to informing the public about matters of public concern. The Bill displays a fundamental misunderstanding of those freedoms and a desire to marginalise them.</em></p>
<p>Media groups that signal a disregard for accountability by becoming judge and jury arguably do as much to marginalise freedoms as any new statute. It’s time to embrace the Finkelstein Report.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Baer Arnold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the report of the Independent Inquiry into the media and media regulation, aka Finkelstein inquiry, was released some time ago, it was denounced as sinister and – like the Leveson Inquiry in the UK…Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/47782011-12-16T03:44:51Z2011-12-16T03:44:51ZConvergence Review heralds a dramatic shift in Australian media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6506/original/4rs4w32s-1324005996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C61%2C990%2C733&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New platforms and services will face the same requirements for content as traditional media.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Light on detail and raising many more questions than it answers, yesterday’s <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">Convergence Review</a> interim report is still bold and far-reaching, driven by a fundamentally optimistic view of the future for Australian culture, content and communication.</p>
<p>For the first time, new platforms and services – including those operating outside Australia – will be meeting the same regulatory requirements for Australian content as free-to-air and subscription television. </p>
<p>The broadcast services bands will be opened up, and a new market-based pricing system for spectrum will be instituted. Australian games companies, app developers and interactive content producers will have access to a tax offset previously only available to feature film and television drama producers. </p>
<p>The cross-media ownership rules, a focus of passionate debate in years gone by, will be scrapped, along with the limit on the reach of commercial free to air networks. A new public interest test will be introduced for media mergers and takeovers, to be administered by a new convergent regulator.</p>
<p>This last proposal for a new regulator, which was the draft report’s main headline, is also one of the most curious. While the other proposed changes will require substantial overhaul (and, the report claims, trimming down) of existing legislation, it is not immediately clear why the roles and responsibilities proposed for the new authority could not be performed by the Australian Communications Media Authority (ACMA).</p>
<p>The proposed changes to Australian content regulation are enterprising and oriented to an as-yet unclear future media environment. In line with the review’s consistent emphasis on “regulatory parity”, the report proposes that all “Content Service Enterprises” be required to commit a percentage of total production expenditure to specified Australian content, along the lines of that currently operating for select subscription television channels. </p>
<p>The category of Content Service Enterprises is a broad and as yet ill-defined class of entities providing programs and other content to Australian audiences on any delivery platform. </p>
<p>It appears likely to cover large and small Australian players such as the existing free to air and subscription television companies, Bigpond and <a href="http://www.fetchtv.com.au/">FetchTV</a>, as well as international services that supply content to Australians including, presumably, Facebook, YouTube, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio">BBC iPlayer</a>. </p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/peak-bodies-warn-of-crippling-regulations/story-e6frg996-1226223403729">commentators</a> are already suggesting that the imposition of this requirement on international services will discourage them from operating in Australia and potentially lead some Australian services to relocate offshore. And there are many questions about how these enterprises will be identified and monitored. But in theory at least, this is a bold attempt to spread the responsibility for supporting Australian content production to all services operating here. </p>
<p>The report also prioritises the encouragement of innovation through proposals to reduce the administrative and regulatory burden in some areas (though it remains to be seen whether cost savings will flow through to research and development), and through the extension of the Producer Offset to games and interactive content producers. Changes to spectrum allocation and use could also conceivably promote the development of innovative content and services. </p>
<p>While the report contains scant detail about either the nuts and bolts of the proposals, or how particular recommendations were reached, the report represents a dramatic shift in thinking about the future of Australian media. </p>
<p>Presumably the fine points will be revealed in the final report to the government, due in March. Submissions are invited by February 10. In the meantime, we can look forward to robust debate on the merits of these proposals as the major players and vested interests digest what promises to be the most extensive and comprehensive set of changes to media policy and industry settings ever seen in this country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Goldsmith has worked on three submissions to the Convergence Review on behalf of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.</span></em></p>Light on detail and raising many more questions than it answers, yesterday’s Convergence Review interim report is still bold and far-reaching, driven by a fundamentally optimistic view of the future for…Ben Goldsmith, Senior Research Fellow , Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/47552011-12-15T04:03:13Z2011-12-15T04:03:13ZMedia convergence review is light on detail – and on regulation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6465/original/3m8rb6vq-1323919160.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C14%2C925%2C625&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia's media landscape may face another shakeup with the release of the Federal Government's convergence review.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Federal Government’s Convergence Review has released its <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/143836/Convergence-Review-Interim-Report-web.pdf">interim report</a>, recommending the scrapping of existing cross-media ownership rules and that commercial operators be given “certainty” around the activities of the ABC and SBS. </p>
<p>The report, which says new digital media operators should face the same regulatory framework as traditional media outlets, suggests introducing a new “super-regulator”, local content quotas, and the use of a “public interest test” for media company takeovers.</p>
<p>Deakin University Associate Professor in Journalism Martin Hirst examines what the recommendations could mean for Australia’s rapidly changing media industry.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Do you think the report adequately responds to the challenges arising from media convergence?</h2>
<p>I think it’s quite empty of content, to be perfectly honest. The headline in it for me is that it’s an attempt to come to terms with what I call the “techno-legal time gap” – the dissonance between what technology can do and how it is regulated.</p>
<p>It’s an effort to bring the regulatory regime up to speed with the technological advances in the media industry.</p>
<p>This is why the report emphasises platform neutrality, which is the idea that we should treat all communications technology pretty much the same way. There is no real argument anymore for maintaining any difference in the way that we regulate print and broadcast. </p>
<p>Convergence means the overlap between different types of media is huge, particularly online. We now see television and radio networks producing blogs and other forms of written copy. You can go to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/">ABC News</a> website and read transcripts of stories from ABC radio current affairs program AM, and you can go onto a newspaper’s website and watch video content that they have made.</p>
<p>This is one of the key things the review was set up to look at.</p>
<h2>Some of the proposals, such as setting up a new regulator, will take a lot of work. Is the political climate right for these changes?</h2>
<p>The devil is really in the detail, and it’s difficult to tell just from this interim report where exactly the entire review will head.</p>
<p>One of the most crucial issues seems to be the time frame. We are now probably 18 months out from the next federal election, and it’s going to take much longer to get that sorted out. So it looks like the review has created a political football to be kicked around until the election comes.</p>
<p>The issue of setting up a replacement for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is quite complicated. Where does this leave the proposal put forward by head of the federal media inquiry, Ray Finkelstein QC to give more powers and money to the Press Council? </p>
<p>If you have one super-regulator that is at arm’s length from the government and deals with consumer complaints, then you don’t need a Press Council to deal specifically with print.</p>
<p>ACMA has done a good job in the past few years, particularly in reining in the worst excesses of the shock jocks. But the report is putting forward a light-touch approach to regulation here, and that is definitely what the industry wants.</p>
<h2>The report talks about clarifying the charters of the ABC and SBS around their digital expansion. What are the implications of this? </h2>
<p>There is a very important line in the report which is going to come back to haunt the ABC and SBS, but it is something that the Murdoch camp has been pushing for globally for some time. It says that the government must “give commercial operators certainty about the boundaries of public broadcaster activities”. </p>
<p>Over the past three or four years that have been various people in News Corporation, including Col Allan, John Hartigan, James Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch, attacking the ABC and BBC, saying that they’re getting in the way of commercial networks expanding. </p>
<p>If there is a move to put strong boundaries around the ABC and SBS, that will certainly work in favour of the commercial operators.</p>
<h2>The review calls for a “public interest test” for media takeovers and mergers. Would this work in practice?</h2>
<p>This relies on a flawed idea of how the market operates. If you look at the public interest test as it currently exists in the ACMA legislation, the Broadcast Services Act and at the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, it is all about the invisible hand of the market.</p>
<p>What this does is set up people as consumers rather than citizens. It says that as long as we are satisfied as consumers – rather than as citizens – the public interest is being met.</p>
<p>The report acknowledges the concept of public interest is not very well defined.</p>
<h2>Could the loosening of ownership rules lead to a wave of consolidation, or change the make-up of the media industry? </h2>
<p>The elephant in the room here is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-07/channel-9-battles-debt-problems/3718784">what is happening to the Nine Network</a>. No amount of tinkering with the diversity and ownership rules is going to deal with the fact that Nine is on its last legs.</p>
<p>In the next two to three months, it will fall into the hands of the banks or the receivers. That is the biggest problem with this review – it cannot address issues of market failure.</p>
<p>Five years ago Nine was competing with the ABC to be known as Australia’s national broadcaster. Now it’s a basketcase.</p>
<p>The reason why Nine is in such mess is partly due to <a href="http://www.law.uts.edu.au/comslaw/factsheets/media-ownership.html">previous deregulation</a>. The only thing that could be done to keep Nine going would be to nationalise it, and that’s not going to happen. </p>
<p>When all its debt comes due in February, I’d be surprised if it has anything in place to keep it afloat. The banks don’t want it – it’s toxic debt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hirst does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Federal Government’s Convergence Review has released its interim report, recommending the scrapping of existing cross-media ownership rules and that commercial operators be given “certainty” around…Martin Hirst, Associate Professor Journalism & Media, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41002011-11-02T19:47:04Z2011-11-02T19:47:04ZThe online test for media inquiries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5063/original/Media_ownership.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Media ownership is much more concentrated in Australia than in the UK, where it is under scrutiny.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A profound shift is underway in the global news media industries. As the extensive <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14067935">police investigation</a> and <a href="http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">judicial inquiry</a> into the <a href="http://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-scandal-reverberates-beyond-the-murdoch-empire-2256">News of the World phone hacking scandal</a> continue in the UK, <a href="http://www.newscorp.com/">News Corporation</a> is under threat of a boardroom revolt in its New York HQ. Independent shareholders see a need for regime change to ward off serious brand damage. </p>
<p>But the bigger questions raised by this scandal centre on media accountability in the age of internetworking - where companies like News Corporation can further extend their influence across multiple platforms and global information networks.</p>
<p>In Australia, two inquiries are addressing these issues. One is the broad ranging <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">Convergence Review</a> and the <a href="http://theconversation.com/broad-terms-for-media-inquiry-but-what-about-ownership-3369">Media Inquiry</a> is looking primarily into news print media activities in this country. Both are grappling with the regulatory implications of evolving media industries. </p>
<h2>Media and democracy</h2>
<p>The stakes could not be higher. Democratic societies must shape the accountability of powerful media corporations that, in turn, hold the ability to determine the fate of political parties, and individuals.</p>
<p>To maintain a democracy we need to sustain credible news media, regardless of the publication platform. And for that we need regulatory frameworks that recognise the increasing influence of online media, and the long-term consequences of not taking appropriate corrective measures in cross-media ownership policy.</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review/submissions_received_on_draft_terms_of_reference_for_convergence_review/convergence_review_terms_of_reference_structured_submission?submissionid=106">submissions</a> to the Convergence Review have argued that the online dominance of established media groups means that the government should now be recalibrating the existing cross-media ownership rules.</p>
<p><a href="http://engage.acma.gov.au/digital-australians/">Recent research</a> by the ACMA, shows that consumption of news via apps, mobile devices, tablet computers and e readers is increasing. Access to online news content is now the second-highest media activity overall after watching broadcast television.</p>
<p>Tellingly, it also indicates that audiences expect accuracy, fairness and transparency in their news and current affairs, irrespective of the platform or device on which they access it. </p>
<p>This isn’t surprising given that the highest single category of complaints about news and information, across platforms, concerns fairness and accuracy. </p>
<h2>Media in the UK</h2>
<p>In the UK a flag was raised by the media regulator <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/">Ofcom</a> when News Corporation <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11691728">bid to control</a> 61% of <a href="http://corporate.sky.com/">British Sky Broadcasting</a> (BSkyB) before the News of the World scandal. It was shaping up as a litmus test for ownership and cross media regulation. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14142307">If approved</a> News would have owned around 37% of the newspaper sector, and three of the top ten most trafficked news websites as well as 35% of the TV market. </p>
<p>Ofcom’s 2010 public “<a href="http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2010/11/05/invitation-to-comment-public-interest-test-proposed-acquisition-of-bskyb-by-news-corporation/">invitation to comment</a>” noted the “need for sufficient media plurality in the functioning of a healthy and informed democratic society” and sought feedback about the impact of the acquisition on content types; audiences; media platforms; control of media enterprises; and developments in the media landscape. </p>
<p>Importantly Ofcom signaled it would “consider how future market developments, including the convergence of broadcast, print and internet media may affect consumers consumption of relevant media and the current levels of media plurality”. </p>
<p>The government minister in charge <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8113991/Ofcom-calls-for-publics-views-on-NewsCorps-bid-for-BSkyB.html">asked</a> it to further investigate its idea of a test to assess: “how the proposed acquisition may affect the level of plurality of persons with control of the media enterprises serving the relevant audiences” across all platforms. </p>
<p>Ofcom has <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/public-interest-test-nov2010/statement/public-interest-test-report.pdf">formed the view</a> that “online news tends to extend the reach of established news providers as opposed to favouring the use of new outlets that are not already present on traditional media.” </p>
<h2>Who owns what?</h2>
<p>The Australian government should also be developing a test capable of taking into account concentration and convergence across all platforms. This test needs to examine the influence of online news delivered over broadband networks. </p>
<p>It won’t be without challenges. The production of online media, including mobile and tablet devices, is complexly interconnected with old analogue media, and ownership consolidation.</p>
<p>News media are evolving through a fluid interplay of business restructuring, content sharing and audience interactivity. </p>
<p>This means policy discussions about media influence cannot be reduced to glib slogans about “maximising choice” in user access to diverse content. They need to be empirically assessed, recognising that the way we consume news is in transition. </p>
<h2>Advertising media</h2>
<p>Although there is an ongoing global debate about the most effective way of measuring the online audience, the <a href="http://www.iabaustralia.com.au/">Interactive Advertising Bureau</a> (IAB) here and overseas has accepted the <a href="http://au.nielsen.com/site/index.shtml">Nielsen Online Ratings</a> standard. There is arguably sufficient agreement to support a rapidly emerging online advertising industry.</p>
<p>So the government must engage the major parties to these debates - including the measurement companies like the IAB, the <a href="http://www.auditbureau.org.au/">Circulations Audit Board</a> and <a href="http://www.auditbureau.org.au/">Audit Bureau of Circulations</a> – to determine and adopt standards that are appropriate and effective in the Australian context.</p>
<h2>Influential media</h2>
<p>If the government doesn’t broaden the scope of the existing cross-media rules to apply to major online news it will be neglecting its duty to make public policy. </p>
<p>Given Australians’ increasing use of web and mobile news sites, these should be included in the existing “influential” media platforms of television, radio and hard copy newspapers. </p>
<p>The decision as to which online news sites to include should be made on the basis of a specified threshold of traffic to popular sites. An independent body should disallow media mergers that are found to be against the public interest on concentration of ownership (influence) criteria.</p>
<h2>A transforming market</h2>
<p>The emergence of apps culture and the expansion of social media, alongside the extension of mobile media services show the scale of the transformation taking place. </p>
<p>Yet the sources of news draw from a surprisingly limited pool with much content recycling and re-circulation.</p>
<p>Australia’s media market is even more concentrated than the UK’s, and yet the government there has begun a serious process of updating its regulation in the public interest.</p>
<p>Our government needs to catch up and develop a test on media convergence and concentration that includes all platforms including the internet. Without a robust, accountable media, there is no democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4100/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Dwyer receives funding from the Australian Press Council for a project on convergence and online news.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Martin has received funding from the Australian Press Council for research on convergence and online news.</span></em></p>A profound shift is underway in the global news media industries. As the extensive police investigation and judicial inquiry into the News of the World phone hacking scandal continue in the UK, News Corporation…Tim Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communications, University of SydneyFiona R Martin, Senior Lecturer in Convergent and Online Media, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.