Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Aggressive-defensive culture”

Summary Objective: To measure doctors’ and nurses’ perceptions of organisational culture and relate this to their attitudes to, and satisfaction with, a hospital-wide mandatory computerised provider order entry (CPOE) system in order to illuminate cultural compositions in CPOE use. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was employed. Data were collected by administering an organisational culture survey (Organisational Culture Inventory, OCI) along with a user-satisfaction survey to a population of 103 doctors and nurses from two clinical units in an Australian metropolitan teaching hospital. Clinicians from the hospital had used the CPOE system since 1991 to order and view clinical laboratory and radiology tests electronically for all patients. The OCI provides a measure of culture in terms of three general styles which distinguish between: constructive; passive/defensive, and aggressive/defensive cultures. The cluster which best describes the overall culture is the one that has the highest percentile score when the percentile scores of the four cultural norms included in the cluster are averaged. The user satisfaction survey asked questions relating to satisfaction with, and attitudes to, the system. Results: We found identifiable sub-cultures based on professional divisions where doctors perceived an aggressive-defensive culture (mean percentile score = 43.8) while nurses perceived a constructive culture (mean percentile score = 61.5). There were significant differences between doctors and nurses on three of the attitude variables with nurses expressing more positive views towards CPOE than doctors. Conclusion: The manifestation of sub-cultures within hospitals and the impact this has on attitudes towards clinical information systems should be recognized and addressed when planning for system implementation. Identification and management of the cultural characteristics of different groups of health professionals may facilitate the successful implementation and use of clinical information systems.

<p>Organization culture is a concept with multidimensional characteristic which consists of belief, values, and behavior pattern an assumption, that can be spread to organization, in other hand organization culture is one of element with have specific characteristic that can be improved quality and change in process management of organization performance, the research uses qualitative and qualitative design, data have been collected by observation, interview, and questionnaire. Data Analytic Technique uses factor analytic with other calculation, for other calculation, this research uses some indicator in organization culture, and it has been classified for some cluster consist of Constructive Cluster, Passive or Defensive cluster, and Aggressive cluster. The Result of research can be described some indicator of organization culture are constructive cluster consist of innovation, Information, and technology benefits, new methods, loyalty and belief, transparent and openness, in other hands passive or defensive cluster, consists of evaluation and controlling, monitoring system, opportunities for increased performance, change, and service of organization and aggressive cluster consist of opportunities for carrier development, self - improvement, empathy</p>

<p>The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational performance on the basis of 247 valid and reliable questionnaires distributed to managers at different management levels working in Jordanian manufacturing firms. The study also aimed to explore the mediating role of knowledge management as well as the moderating effect of organizational culture on the relationship between HRM practices and organizational performance. Ten HRM practices and 10 indicators of organizational performance were adopted for the purpose of this study. Knowledge management was measured by examining three processes; knowledge creation, sharing and utilization. Organizational culture was measured according to passive/defensive, aggressive/defensive and constructive cultures. The results of the study supported the presumed hypotheses. Hence, HRM practices significantly predicted organizational performance. Knowledge management mediated the relationship between HRM practices and organizational performance. Finally, it was found that organizational culture moderated the relationship between HRM practices and organizational performance as well as the relationship between HRM practices and knowledge management. Constructive cultures play a positive role in the relationship between HRM practices and organizational performance (OP), while defensive cultures negatively affect the relationship between HRM practices and knowledge management (KM). The main contribution of this study to the literature on HRM, KM and OP derives from the lack of prior studies addressing the same purposes as this study. The study informs researchers and managers that both knowledge management and organizational culture mediate and moderate the impact of HRM practices on organizational performance to a considerable extent.</p>

The Organizational Culture Inventory measures 12 sets of normative beliefs or shared behavioral expectations associated with three general types of cultures, Constructive, Passive-Defensive, and Aggressive-Defensive These cultural norms are hypothesized to influence the thinking and behavior of organizational members, their motivation and performance, and their satisfaction and stress. As components of organizational culture, behavioral expectations are considered to be shared and enduring in nature. Tests of three types of reliability—internal consistency, interrater, and test-retest—and two types of validity—construct and criterion-related—on data provided by 4,890 respondents indicate that the inventory is a dependable instrument for assessing the normative aspects of culture. Obtained alpha coefficients support the internal consistency of the scales; tests for interrater agreement show that significant variance in individuals' responses is explained by their organizational membership; and tests for differences across time show the temporal consistency of scale scores. Factor analysis results provide general support for the construct validity of the scales, most of which were related to both individual and organizational criteria as predicted.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature by exploring the perceived societal discrimination as an antecedent of perceived organizational discrimination, and investigating the impact of organizational culture (i.e. constructive, passive-defensive and aggressive-defensive culture norms) on perceptions of discrimination in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach A total of 176 American employees completed three surveys assessing perceived societal discrimination, perceived organizational discrimination and organizational culture online through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression method. Findings Results suggest individuals’ perceptions of discrimination in the workplace are influenced by both perceived discrimination in society and perceptions of behavioral norms related to organizational culture. Findings in the current study indicated individuals’ attitudes and beliefs manifested in the societal context were carried into, and reflected in, the workplace. Additionally, beliefs related to organizational discrimination were found to be amplified or minimized depending on organizational culture; specifically, organizations dominated by culture norms reflecting behaviors related to individual security needs predicted higher levels, and culture norms reflecting behaviors related to meeting employee satisfaction needs predicted lower levels of perceived organizational discrimination. Originality/value This paper tested theoretical frameworks debated in the literature by exploring beyond institutional boundaries in the study of perceived discrimination by exploring perceived societal discrimination as an antecedent to perceived organizational discrimination. This project also is the first study (to authors’ knowledge) to investigate the impact of organizational culture on perceived organizational discrimination.

ABSTRAK Setiap organisasi memiliki ciri khas yang membedakannya dengan organisasi lain, ciri khas ini menjadi identitas bagi organisasi. Budaya organisasi dapat membantu kinerja pegawai, karena menciptakan suatu tingkat motivasi yang besar bagi pegawai untuk memberikan kemampuan terbaiknya dalam memanfaatkan kesempatan yang diberikan oleh organisasinya. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui fakta, data dan hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan permasalahan variabel budaya organisasi dan kinerja pegawai. Peneliti menggunakan jenis penelitian survey dengan pendekatan kuantitatif, yaitu penelitian yang menggunakan kata-kata atau kalimat dengan beserta angka-angka dengan memakai sampel dan menggunakan kuesioner sebagai alat pengumpulan data pokok. Adapun dalam pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan metode Observasi, Kuesioner. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa, Pengaruh budaya konstruktif (X1) terhadap kinerja pegawai (Y) sebesar 0,445 atau 44,5% dengan nilai signifikansi sebesar 0,007. Menunjukan bahwa semakin baiknya budaya konstruktif akan berdampak pada meningkatnya kinerja pegawai. Pengaruh budaya pasif-defensif (X2) terhadap kinerja pegawai (Y) sebesar 0,332 atau 33,2% dengan nilai signifikansi sebesar 0,017. Menunjukan bahwa semakin baiknya budaya pasif-defensif akan berdampak pada meningkatnya kinerja pegawai. Pengaruh budaya Agresif-defensif (X3) terhadap kinerja pegawai (Y) sebesar 0,568 atau 56,8% dengan nilai signifikansi sebesar 0,003. Menunjukan bahwa semakin baiknya budaya agresif-defensif akan berdampak pada meningkatnya kinerja pegawai. Simpulannya terdapat pengaruh budaya organisasi secara simultan dan parsial terhadap kinerja pegawai pada Kantor Camat Dungingi Kota Gorontalo Kata kunci : Budaya Organisasi; Kinerja Pegawai ABSTRACT Every organization has a characteristic that distinguishes it from other organizations, this characteristic becomes the identity of the organization. Organizational culture can help employee performance because it creates a large level of motivation for employees to provide the best ability to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the organization. The purpose of this study is to find out facts, data, and matters related to organizational culture variables and employee performance issues. Researchers used a type of survey research with a quantitative approach, namely research that uses words or sentences along with numbers using samples and using questionnaires as a primary data collection tool. The data collection is done by the method of observation, questionnaires. The results showed that, the effect of constructive culture (X1) on employee performance (Y) of 0.445 or 44.5% with a significance value of 0.007. Shows that a better constructive culture will have an impact on improving employee performance. The influence of passive-defensive culture (X2) on employee performance (Y) of 0.332 or 33.2% with a significance value of 0.017. Showing that a better passive-defensive culture will have an impact on improving employee performance. The influence of Aggressive-defensive culture (X3) on employee performance (Y) of 0.568 or 56.8% with a significance value of 0.003. It shows that the better the aggressive-defensive culture will have an impact on improving employee performance. In conclusion, there is an influence of organizational culture simultaneously and partially on the performance of employees in Gorontalo City Dungingi Sub-District Office Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employee Performance

This paper considers the contrasting and deliberate efforts to reshape the Tluvial futures of two important American cities which essentially re-wrote their riparian heritages. Chicago’s aggressive extension of its commercial reach through its artiTicial connection with the Mississippi has become embodied in its environmental, political, and literary history. Conversely, New Orleans crafted a defensive local culture in its environmental history, politics, and literature. The contrasting investments in river-altering infrastructure and urban relationships with the one river expose the signiTicance of each city’s position within a watershed and in shaping its respective cultural history and its identity.

The combination of business strategies and practices that tends to enhance sustainability of performance has been the subject of only a modest number of scholarly studies, but has been at the forefront of corporate agendas for decades. Dramatic shifts in performance and industry standing occur frequently among firms that develop technology products and services, the ‘technology innovators,’ in part because these firms operate in external business environments that tend to be turbulent. This exploratory study focuses on the integration of these five elements through case studies of three medium to large technology innovator firms operating under medium or high environmental turbulence. Interviews of 10 managers, directors and executives based on a semi-structured guide were augmented by qualitative self-assessment of leadership style, a validated instrument for assessing culture type, pre-interview surveys and secondary data. The results are: a single predominant leadership style setting an expectation of high performance was seen among managers in all three firms, a high presence of Aggressive/Defensive cultural style existed among the firms, and sustainability of performance was believed by interviewees to depend on effective integration of strong leadership style and culture, structure appropriate for innovation, and balanced emphasis on strategic positioning and operational effectiveness.

World War I, which significantly reshaped the world map, also stirred lively debates about the fate of Russia and Germany, as they were the most affected by its outcome. German cultural scientist Oswald Spengler and a group of Russian emigrants, who united to form a movement called “Eurasianism” were active participants of those debates. However, the origins of their views lay in the scientific and social thought of Germany and Russia in the second half of the nineteenth – early twentieth centuries. Spengler and the Eurasianists were united in their rejection of Eurocentrism in the study of cultures and the assignment of the West and Russia-Europe as subjects on the equal level. Spengler pointed out that the Western world was on the brink of decline and that the only nation, that could lead it against the awakening East was the German one. The strict order was seen as characteristic feature of contemporary Germany, which would enable it to withstand the nomadic and chaotic hordes coming from the East. The Eurasianists, in turn, pointed out that stability and orderliness could be named as the Eastern features in the Russian nation. Russia-Eurasia was perceived by them as the bulwark of the rest of mankind against the onslaught of the West that sought to spread its culture to other nations. Thus, the confrontation of the West, as represented by Germany and Russia, was seen by both sides as defensive struggle of order against aggressive chaos.

Strategic communication is one of the expressions of state power and represents an instrument in the political and security achievement of national interests. In the context of contemporary conflicts, it is an expression of a hybrid action in the fields of information, media, internet, and the entire spectrum of public diplomatic performances. It can have an offensive or defensive character. The main goal is to influence the public opinion and further move the focus in relation to the public towards cultural values and eventual adjustment of the political system through the ?reprogramming? of the political culture in accordance with the given objectives. Strategic communication is a planned and comprehensive activity of the organizational entity, which aims at achieving a successful and efficient interaction with the environment. Some of the elementary forms of strategic communication that support the highest national goals, even in the case of defense and security issues, are propaganda, public diplomacy, and interest communications (advocacy, lobbying, etc.). In this paper, using the analysis of the content and synthesis, a projection of strategic communication in the scope of propaganda, public diplomacy, and lobbying as determinants of strategic communication is presented. A framework for strategic propaganda planning, a strategic approach to public diplomacy, and a lobbying strategy have been developed, with a basic proposal for the modelling of every listed component of strategic communication. The paper contributes to the thesis that strategic communication aims at supporting the organization?s mission. In the field of defense and security, strategic communication has one of the vital roles in supporting the achievement of the mission of strengthening the overall identity, the international position of internal cohesion and the unity of the nation, as well as the general readiness to respond to the contemporary security challenges. Strategic communication represents a wide area of communication disciplines that combine different co-information areas, disciplines, and skills in a hybrid and inventive way. Strategically guided propaganda, public diplomacy, and lobbying are certainly areas of importance for the comprehensive construction of the ?soft? power, but also in support of the construction of the ?hard? power. The conclusion is that the planning and implementation of the strategic communication, through strategic determinants, such are propaganda, public diplomacy, and lobbying, must be meticulously studied and planned, according to scientific and practice-tested postulates. In this way, it is possible that strategic communication really strongly and significantly supports the achievement of the organization?s mission, which in the case of the state relates to its international position, resistance to contemporary, hybrid challenges of risk and threats, and readiness for the defensive, and, if necessary, offensive activity. This approach seeks to raise general defense capacities, thus turning the state into an unwanted opponent, and achieving the effect of preventing and deterring possible aggressive action.

Few historians have made a more significant contribution to our understanding of social relations in the English countryside in the early nineteenth century than Roger Wells. In a series of publications, he has consistently and persuasively argued that, in the years from 1790 to 1834, the labourers of southern England fell victim to the rise of a new aggressive agrarian capitalism which fractured and destroyed an older complex social system, replacing it with the naked power of class interest and ushering in a new class consciousness among the rural labourers which corresponded to that developing in the towns among the industrial labourers. This class consciousness was the product of an active resistance which sometimes, as in Swing, took the form of overt protest. Swing, Wells believes, marked the clear expression of class conflict in the countryside. The labourers' defeat was compounded by the New Poor Law, by which triumphant agrarian capitalism imposed its new sway. Placing ‘a priceless premium on employment’, the New Poor Law transferred power into the hands of the large capitalist farmers who speedily came to dominate the Union boards. Under its pressure, residual aspects of ‘class collaboration’ between the labourers and the superior social orders dissolved. The labourers were left to develop a defensive class culture which found echoes in Chartism but was seen more extensively in a ‘class war’ which took the form of disorder, arson, poaching, ‘rough’ behaviour or in a parodied or cynical deference. Persuasive as Wells'’ case is, however, one element of rural society is, by and large, missing from it, and indeed from many other studies of rural protest in the nineteenth century: namely the landlords and, in particular, the largest landlords. Wells sees their role from 1815 to 1830 as being essentially niggardly, continuing to demand social discipline but increasingly failing to play their old role of mediator between the poor and the rate paying classes. Their support for the New Poor Law ‘proved to be the final nail in the coffin of rural paternalism’.

Abstract Introduction The interaction between military and civilian healthcare systems has contributed to the development of medical care. Swedish innovations such as the Seldinger technique for angiography, Leksell Gamma Knife for cranial surgery, and the introduction of pacemakers and ultrasound have contributed to the global development of medicine. Several authors have described the Swedish civilian healthcare system and its development. However, the development and history of its military healthcare system and its influence on the civilian healthcare system remain untold. This review aims to describe the historical development of the Swedish military healthcare system and its path toward civilian-military collaboration and a total defense healthcare system. Material and Methods A search for all published scientific papers in Swedish and English, along with available legal documents and directives, was made. We used CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus, and Gothenburg University’s databases and search engines. The following keywords, Swedish, military, civilian, healthcare, collaboration, and development, were searched for, alone or in combination, using a PRISMA flow chart. Duplicates, abstracts, and nonscientific publications were excluded. Results Each of the four distinct periods of historical development in the Swedish military healthcare system can be characterized by the changes necessary for transforming Sweden from an aggressive to a defensive and collaborative nation, with national and international engagement. Collaboration not only encompasses readiness and willingness to share resources and information, and to adjust routines and guidelines, but also needs a culture of consensus and respect for each other’s limitations and capabilities. The definition of military medicine and the military physician’s role in Sweden is imperative for further civilian-military collaboration. Conclusions Recent global sociopolitical changes necessitate civilian-military healthcare collaboration. Although civilian-military healthcare partnerships in various medical fields have been reported earlier, the Swedish concept of total defense’s healthcare system integration and collaboration may be a more fruitful approach. The collaboration within the total defense healthcare system will result in technical achievements, innovations, and medical advancements for the benefit of the whole nation.

The Questionnaire on Moral Attitudes toward Aggression (CAMA) focuses on moral attitudes toward aggression by asking respondents to rate combinations of different aggressive actions and situations in which these actions might be shown according to their respective justifiableness. Since its first applications by Lagerspetz and Westman in 1980 [1], it has been used in numerous cross-cultural studies across four continents for more than thirty years. The purpose of the studies here presented was to evaluate its applicability in a new cultural context, assessing if CAMA’s data obtained in two different age cohorts from the German cultural context measured the same theoretical construct previously investigated across the other cultures (structural equivalence). In the present studies 117 German university students (age range 19-38) and 141 German senior citizens (age range 60-94) were asked to complete a German translation of the CAMA. The structural equivalence was assessed by evaluating the fit of German data on previous factor structures via confirmatory factor analysis. A multi-group approach was being used to ascertain CAMA’s applicability across different age groups. The structural fit was accessed by referring to factor structures that were derived from previous studies in the USA, Spain, Japan, and Hong Kong. These factor structures include separate three-factor models for types of aggressive actions and different two-factor models for situations in which these actions might be shown. The results from both age groups of German population indicate the structural equivalence for the two factor models regarding defensive vs. non-defensive situations that justify aggressive actions. The equivalence for previous three-factor models regarding types of aggressive actions could not be shown in the German samples. Hence, adaptations concerning the assessment and theoretical models of the justification of aggressive actions in the German cultural context are being discussed.

β-(1,3)-d-Glucan with β-(1,6) branches has been reported to have various pharmacological activities, such as anti-tumour and anti-infection activities, which result from its immunomodulating effects. Gastric lesions result from an imbalance between aggressive and defensive factors. In the present study, we examined the effect of β-(1,3)-d-glucan with β-(1,6) branches isolated fromAureobasidium pullulanson the gastric ulcerogenic response in mice. Oral administration of β-glucan ameliorated gastric lesions induced by ethanol (EtOH) or HCl. This administration of β-glucan also suppressed EtOH-induced inflammatory responses, such as infiltration of neutrophils and expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, chemokines and cell adhesion molecules (CAM) at the gastric mucosa. Of the various defensive factors, the levels of heat shock protein (HSP) 70 and mucin but not PGE2were increased by the administration of β-glucan. β-Glucan-dependent induction of the expression of HSP70 and mucin proteins and suppression of the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, chemokines and CAM were also observed in cultured cellsin vitro.The results of the present study suggest that β-glucan protects the gastric mucosa from the formation of irritant-induced lesions by increasing the levels of defensive factors, such as HSP70 and mucin.

In his foreign policy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has reconsidered commitments to the United States and NATO allies that limit his political ambitions. Turkey’s military power is actively involved in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the South Caucasus in an attempt to alter the existing regional orders. Offensive realism, as a branch of neorealism, asserts that states are willing to use force to advance their own interests, and that their survival in the international system requires a maximization of power. Defensive neorealism holds that aggressive expansion clashes with the interests of other states and their desire to ensure their own security. According to the balance of power theory, the expansion and maximization of power reduces the security of an offensive state by countering a coalition of balancing states. At the same time, Turkish foreign policy strongly supports the formation of an Islamist, neo-patrimonialist, populist, and security-obsessed ruling bloc representing the resentment of Turkish society of the historical injustices committed by the West. This article attempts to determine Erdoğan’s strategy, examines it from the standpoint of the offensive/defensive approach of neorealism, and evaluates its effectiveness. Erdoğan has created a multi-polar balancing structure of foreign relations in which Turkish rivals restrain each other. This structure is similar to a pentahedron with Turkey in the center and its main rivals–partners arrayed around it at each point. Ankara, by shifting closer to one or another rival–partner, can effectively bargain with others using threats.

The subject of this article’s research is the system of the notionalist’s ideas about the contemporary reality correlated with his theoretical vision of the worldwide historical process. The novelty of the work relies on the fact that the creative heritage of N.Ya. Danilevsky had been mainly studied by philosophers, whose major interest was his newly developed methodology of history. Without a comprehensive consideration of Danilevsky’s views, it is, however, impossible to grasp his theory and to liberate it from the stereotypes that had stuck to it at the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century. His theory cannot be understood without analyzing his interpretation of Russia’s historical path and its connection with the fate of the Slavs as a whole. The research performs a consistent analysis of the theory of cultural and historical types, Danilevsky’s interpretation of the history of Russia and the Eastern Question, and his project to create an All-Slavic Union. Based on the results of the study, the author of the article came to the following conclusions. Despite Danilevsky’s criticism of positivism, he could not overcome its infl uence in his theoretical constructions. Denying the existence of a single line of historical progress, he introduced the concept of a civilization “basis”, which tends to grow to become ever more complex over time. It is easy to imagine this complexity in the form of an ever upward vector. Danilevsky idealized the socio-political development of Russia, believing all problems to have been solved by the 1861 Peasant Reform. Fearing that the Germanic-Roman civilization would not allow the Slavic cultural and historical type to develop, the notionalist threaded the motive of the struggle throughout his work “Russia and Europe”. The struggle, however, would appeared to be defensive rather than aggressive and would ultimately be aimed at the creation of the Slavic federation — the All-Slavic Union, which was envisioned by Danilevsky as a union of equal members. Danilevsky’s work is still of interest to the reading public. The author of “Russia and Europe” tried to challenge the Eurocentric approach to the worldwide historical process, thereby declaring the value of each civilization. This idea is more than relevant in our time, when the problem of originality and uniqueness of diff erent cultures and civilizations is of utmost importance.

Purpose Writings on organizational culture suggest that cultural values and norms are influenced by factors at the organizational, industry, and societal levels. While the effects of societal and organizational factors have been researched extensively, those of industry factors have not received commensurate attention. This paper investigates the relative importance of industry versus organizational variables in explaining the cultural norms reported by individuals within organizations. Design/methodology/approach The effects of two industry characteristics, (growth rate and research and development intensity) and two sets of organizational factors (leadership behaviors and human resource practices) on the strength of constructive, passive/defensive, and aggressive/defensive organizational cultural norms were investigated. Findings Results of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis of survey data from 3245 respondents in 424 organizations in twelve different industries revealed significant between-organization variation but no significant between-industry variation in the three types of cultural norms measured. Furthermore, while industry-level factors were unrelated to culture, significant variance in the culture measures was explained by leadership behaviors and human resource practices (use of rewards and fairness of performance appraisal). Research limitations/implications The strength of cultural norms and expectations within an organization evolve in response to attributes specific to the organization and do not necessarily reflect industry characteristics. The results indicate that organizations using surveys to assess their cultures may learn as much (if not more) by comparing their feedback to data on organizations across a spectrum of industries as opposed to organizations exclusively in their own industry. Originality/value Most of the frameworks developed to examine and describe the cultures of organizations delineate specific dimensions or types that are assumed to be relevant to all organizations regardless of the industries within which they operate. The purpose of this paper was to explore the validity of this assumption by investigating the relative impact of industry and organizational factors on organizational culture.

Indigenous cross-cultural training has been around since the 1980s. It is often seen as a way to increase the skills and competency of staff engaged in providing service to Indigenous clients and customers, teaching Indigenous students within universities and schools, or working with Indigenous communities (Fredericks and Bargallie, “Indigenous”; “Which Way”). In this article we demonstrate how such training often exposes power, whiteness, and concepts of an Indigenous “other”. We highlight how cross-cultural training programs can potentially provide a setting in which non-Indigenous participants can develop a deeper realisation of how their understandings of the “other” are formed and enacted within a “white” social setting. Revealing whiteness as a racial construct enables people to see race, and “know what racism is, what it is not and what it does” (Bargallie, 262). Training participants can use such revelations to develop their racial literacy and anti-racist praxis (Bargallie), which when implemented have the capacity to transform inequitable power differentials in their work with Indigenous peoples and organisations.What Does the Literature Say about Cross-Cultural Training? An array of names are used for Indigenous cross-cultural training, including cultural awareness, cultural competency, cultural responsiveness, cultural safety, cultural sensitivity, cultural humility, and cultural capability. Each model takes on a different approach and goal depending on the discipline or profession to which the training is applied (Hollinsworth). Throughout this article we refer to Indigenous cross-cultural training as “cultural competence” or “cultural awareness” and discuss these in relation to their application within higher education institutions. While literature on health and human services programs in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other nation states provide clear definitions of terms such as “cultural safety”, cultural competence or cultural awareness is often lacking a concise and consistent definition.Often delivered as a half day or a one to two-day training course, it is unrealistic to think that Indigenous cultural competence can be achieved through one’s mere attendance and participation. Moreover, when courses centre on “cultural differences” and enable revelations about those differences they are in danger of presenting idealised notions of Indigeneity. Cultural competence becomes a process through which an Indigenous “other” is objectified, while very little is offered by way of translating knowledge and skills into practice when working with Indigenous peoples.What this type of learning has the capacity to do is oversimplify and reinforce racism and racist stereotypes of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous cultures. What is generally believed is that if non-Indigenous peoples know more about Indigenous peoples and cultures, relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples will somehow improve. The work of Goenpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson is vital to draw on here, when she asks, has the intellectual investment in defining our cultural differences resulted in the valuing of our knowledges? Has the academy become a more enlightened place in which to work, and, more important, in what ways have our communities benefited? (xvii)What is revealed in a range of studies – whether centring on racism and discrimination or the ongoing disparities across health, education, incarceration, employment, and more – is that despite forty plus years of training focused on understanding cultural differences, very little has changed. Indigenous knowledges continue to be devalued and overlooked. Everyday and structural racisms shape everyday experiences for Indigenous employees in Australian workplaces such as the Australian Public Service (Bargallie) and the Australian higher education sector (Fredericks and White).As the literature demonstrates, the racial division of labour in such institutions often leaves Indigenous employees languishing on the lower rungs of the employment ladder (Bargallie). The findings of an Australian university case study, discussed below, highlights how power, whiteness, and concepts of “otherness” are exposed and play out in cultural competency training. Through their exposure, we argue that better understandings about Indigenous Australians, which are not based on culture difference but personal reflexivity, may be gained. Revealing What Was Needed in the Course’s Foundation and ImplementationThis case study is centred within a regional Australian university across numerous campuses. In 2012, the university council approved an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander strategy, which included a range of initiatives, including the provision of cross-cultural training for staff. In developing the training, a team explored the evidence as it related to university settings (Anning; Asmar; Butler and Young; Fredericks; Fredericks and Thompson; Kinnane, Wilks, Wilson, Hughes and Thomas; McLaughlin and Whatman). This investigation included what had been undertaken in other Australian universities (Anderson; University of Sydney) and drew on the recommendations from earlier research (Behrendt, Larkin, Griew and Kelly; Bradley, Noonan, Nugent and Scales; Universities Australia). Additional consultation took place with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders.While some literature on cross-cultural training centred on the need to understand cultural differences, others exposed the problems of focusing entirely on difference (Brach and Fraser; Campinha-Bacote; Fredericks; Spencer and Archer; Young). The courses that challenged the centrality of cultural difference explained why race needed to be at the core of its training, highlighting its role in enabling discussions of racism, bias, discrimination and how these may be used as means to facilitate potential individual and organisational change. This approach also addressed stereotypes and Eurocentric understandings of what and who is an Indigenous Australian (Carlson; Gorringe, Ross and Forde; Hollinsworth; Moreton-Robinson). It is from this basis that we worked and grew our own training program. Working on this foundational premise, we began to separate content that showcased the fluidity and diversity of Indigenous peoples and refrained from situating us within romantic notions of culture or presenting us as an exotic “other”. In other words, we embraced work that responded to non-Indigenous people’s objectified understandings and expectations of us. For example, the expectation that Indigenous peoples will offer a Welcome to Country, performance, share a story, sing, dance, or disseminate Indigenous knowledges. While we recognise that some of these cultural elements may offer enjoyment and insight to non-Indigenous people, they do not challenge behaviours or the nature of the relationships that non-Indigenous people have with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Bargallie; Fredericks; Hollinsworth; Westwood and Westwood; Young).The other content which needed separating were the methods that enabled participants to understand and own their standpoints. This included the use of critical Indigenous studies as a form of analysis (Moreton-Robinson). Critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic) was also used as a means for participants to interrogate their own cultural positionings and understand the pervasive nature of race and racism in Australian society and institutions (McLaughlin and Whatman). This offered all participants, both non-Indigenous and Indigenous, the opportunity to learn how institutional racism operates, and maintains discrimination, neglect, abuse, denial, and violence, inclusive of the continued subjugation that exists within higher education settings and broader society.We knew that the course needed to be available online as well as face-to-face. This would increase accessibility to staff across the university community. We sought to embed critical thinking as we began to map out the course, including the theory in the sections that covered colonisation and the history of Indigenous dispossession, trauma and pain, along with the ongoing effects of federal and state policies and legislations that locates racism at the core of Australian politics. In addition to documenting the ongoing effects of racism, we sought to ensure that Indigenous resistance, agency, and activism was highlighted, showing how this continues, thus linking the past to the contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples.Drawing on the work of Bargallie we wanted to demonstrate how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience racism through systems and structures in their everyday work with colleagues in large organisations, such as universities. Participants were asked to self-reflect on how race impacts their day-to-day lives (McIntosh). The final session of the training focused on the university’s commitment to “Closing the Gap” and its Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). The associated activity involved participants working individually and in small groups to discuss and consider what they could contribute to the RAP activities and enact within their work environments. Throughout the training, participants were asked to reflect on their personal positioning, and in the final session they were asked to draw from these reflections and discuss how they would discuss race, racism and reconciliation activities with the governance of their university (Westwood and Westwood; Young).Revelations in the Facilitators, Observers, and Participants’ Discussions? This section draws on data collected from the first course offered within the university’s pilot program. During the delivery of the in-person training sessions, two observers wrote notes while the facilitators also noted their feelings and thoughts. After the training, the facilitators and observers debriefed and discussed the delivery of the course along with the feedback received during the sessions.What was noticed by the team was the defensive body language of participants and the types of questions they asked. Team members observed how there were clear differences between the interest non-Indigenous participants displayed when talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and a clear discomfort when they were asked to reflect on their own position in relation to Indigenous people. We noted that during these occasions some participants crossed their arms, two wrote notes to each other across the table, and many participants showed discomfort. When the lead facilitator raised this to participants during the sessions, some expressed their dislike and discomfort at having to talk about themselves. A couple were clearly unhappy and upset. We found this interesting as we were asking participants to reflect and talk about how they interpret and understand themselves in relation to Indigenous people and race, privilege, and power.This supports the work of DiAngelo who explains that facilitators can spend a lot of time trying to manage the behaviour of participants. Similarly, Castagno identifies that sometimes facilitators of training might overly focus on keeping participants happy, and in doing so, derail the hard conversations needed. We did not do either. Instead, we worked to manage the behaviours expressed and draw out what was happening to break the attempts to silence racial discussions. We reiterated and worked hard to reassure participants that we were in a “safe space” and that while such discussions may be difficult, they were worth working through on an individual and collective level.During the workshop, numerous emotions surfaced, people laughed at Indigenous humour and cried at what they witnessed as losses. They also expressed anger, defensiveness, and denial. Some participants revelled in hearing answers to questions that they had long wondered about; some openly discussed how they thought they had discovered a distant Aboriginal relative. Many questions surfaced, such as why hadn’t they ever been told this version of Australian history? Why were we focusing on them and not Aboriginal people? How could they be racist when they had an Aboriginal friend or an Aboriginal relative?Some said they felt “guilty” about what had happened in the past. Others said they were not personally responsible or responsible for the actions of their ancestors, questioning why they needed to go over such history in the first place? Inter-woven within participants’ revelations were issues of racism, power, whiteness, and white privilege. Many participants took a defensive stance to protect their white privilege (DiAngelo). As we worked through these issues, several participants started to see their own positionality and shared this with the group. Clearly, the revelation of whiteness as a racial construct was a turning point for some. The language in the group also changed for some participants as revelations emerged through the interrogation and unpacking of stories of racism. Bargallie’s work exploring racism in the workplace, explains that “racism”, as both a word and theme, is primarily absent in conversations amongst non-Indigenous colleagues. Despite its entrenchment in the dialogue, it is rarely, if ever addressed. In fact, for many non-Indigenous people, the fear of being accused of racism is worse than the act of racism itself (Ahmed; Bargallie). We have seen this play out within the media, sport, news bulletins, and more. Lentin describes the act of denying racism despite its existence in full sight as “not racism”, arguing that its very denial is “a form of racist violence” (406).Through enhancing racial literacy, Bargallie asserts that people gain a better understanding of “what racism is, what racism is not and how race works” (258). Such revelations can work towards dismantling racism in workplaces. Individual and structural racism go hand-in-glove and must be examined and addressed together. This is what we wanted to work towards within the cultural competency course. Through the use of critical Indigenous studies and critical race theory we situated race, and not cultural difference, as central, providing participants with a racial literacy that could be used as a tool to challenge and dismantle racism in the workplace.Revelations in the Participant Evaluations?The evaluations revealed that our intention to disrupt the status quo in cultural competency training was achieved. Some of the discussions were difficult and this was reflected in the feedback. It was valuable to learn that numerous participants wanted to do more through group work, conversations, and problem resolution, along with having extra reading materials. This prompted our decision to include extra links to resource learning materials through the course’s online site. We also opted to provide all participants with a copy of the book Indigenous Australia for Dummies (Behrendt). The cost of the book was built into the course and future participants were thankful for this combination of resources.One unexpected concern raised by participants was that the course should not be “that hard”, and that we should “dumb down” the course. We were astounded considering that many participants were academics and we were confident that facilitators of other mandatory workplace training, for example, staff Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Fire Safety, Risk Management, Occupational Health and Safety, Discrimination and more, weren’t asked to “dumb down” their content. We explained to the participants what content we had been asked to deliver and knew their responses demonstrated white fragility. We were not prepared to adjust the course and dumb it down for white understandings and comfortabilities (Leonardo and Porter).Comments that were expected included that the facilitators were “passionate”, “articulate”, demonstrated “knowledge” and effectively “dealt with issues”. A couple of the participants wrote that the facilitators were “aggressive” or “angry”. This however is not new for us, or new to other Aboriginal women. We know Aboriginal women are often seen as “aggressive” and “angry”, when non-Indigenous women might be described as “passionate” or “assertive” for saying exactly the same thing. The work of Aileen Moreton-Robinson in Australia, and the works of numerous other Aboriginal women provide evidence of this form of racism (Fredericks and White; Bargallie; Bond). Internationally, other Indigenous women and women of colour document the same experiences (Lorde). Participants’ assessment of the facilitators is consistent with the racism expressed through racial microaggression outside of the university, and in other organisations. This is despite working in the higher education sector, which is normally perceived as a more knowledgeable and informed environment. Needless to say, we did not take on these comments.The evaluations did offer us the opportunity to adjust the course and make it stronger before it was offered across the university where we received further evaluation of its success. Despite this, the university decided to withdraw and reallocate the money to the development of a diversity training course that would cover all equity groups. This meant that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be covered along with sexual diversity, gender, disability, and people from non-English speaking backgrounds. The content focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples was reduced to one hour of the total course. Including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this way is not based on evidence and works to minimise Indigenous Australians and their inherent rights and sovereignty to just another “equity group”. Conclusion We set out to develop and deliver a cross-cultural course that was based on evidence and a foundation of 40 plus years’ experience in delivering such training. In addition, we sought a program that would align with the university’s Reconciliation Action Plan and the directions being undertaken in the sector and by Universities Australia. Through engaging participants in a process of critical thinking centring on race, we developed a training program that successfully fostered self-reflection and brought about revelations of whiteness.Focusing on cultural differences has proven ineffective to the work needed to improve the lives of Indigenous Australian peoples. Recognising this, our discussions with participants directly challenged racist and negative stereotypes, individual and structural racism, prejudices, and white privilege. By centring race over cultural difference in cultural competency training, we worked to foster self-revelation within participants to transform inequitable power differentials in their work with Indigenous peoples and organisations. The institution’s disbandment and defunding of the program however is a telling revelation in and of itself, highlighting the continuing struggle and importance of placing additional pressure on persons, institutions, and organisations to implement meaningful structural change. ReferencesAhmed, Sara. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press, 2012.Anderson, Ian. “Advancing Indigenous Health through Medical Education”. 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Investigative journalist Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart of The Daily Show: MOYERS: I do not know whether you are practicing an old form of parody and satire…or a new form of journalism. STEWART: Well then that either speaks to the sad state of comedy or the sad state of news. I can’t figure out which one. I think, honestly, we’re practicing a new form of desperation…. July 2003 (Bill Moyers Interview of Jon Stewart, on Public Broadcasting Service) Transmission, while always fraught and ever-changing, is particularly so at a moment when coincidentally the exponential increase in access to new media communication is paired with the propagandized and state-dominated moment of war, in this case the U.S. preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003. U.S. fighter planes drop paper propaganda along with bombs. Leaked into mainstream media by virtue of new media technologies, the violations of Abu-Ghraib represent the challenge of conducting war in a digital era. Transmissions are highly controlled and yet the proliferation of access poses a new challenge – explicitly named by Rumsfeld in December 2005 on the Jim Lehrer news hour: DONALD RUMSFELD: No, I think what is happening – and this is the first war that has ever been conducted in the 21st century when you had talk radio, the Internet, e-mails, bloggers, 24-hour news, digital cameras, video cameras, instant access to everything, and we haven’t accommodated to that yet. … And what’s happening is the transmission belt that receives it spreads all these things. … Rumsfeld’s comments about the convergence of new media with a time of war highlights what those of us studying cultural communication see as a crucial site of study: the access and use of new media to transmit dissenting political commentary is arguably a sign of new counter-public spaces that coincide with increased mainstream media control and erosion of civil liberties surrounding free speech. In this particular instance, the strategic use of media by U.S. political administration to sell a morally questionable war to the public through deceptions and propaganda raises new questions about the transmission and phenomenon of truth claims in a digital age. In this essay I examine three sites through which satire is used to express political commentary in the convergent moment of repression combines with increased affordances. The examples I offer have been chosen because they illustrate what I recognize as a cultural shift, an emotional sea change even for staunch postmodernists: replacing Jameson’s characterization of the “waning of affect,” there has emerged renewed desire for truthfulness and accountability. What’s unique is that this insistence on the possibility of truthfulness is held in simultaneous contradiction with cynical distrust. The result is a paradoxical affective sentiment shared by many: the simultaneous belief that all truths are rhetorically constructed along with the shared certainty that we have been lied to, that this is wrong, and that there is a truthfulness that should be delivered. This demand is directed at the corrupted synergy created between media and politicians. The arguments used to counter the dominant content (and form) of transmission are made using new digital media. The sea-change in transmission is its multidirectionality, its frequency, and its own rapidly-changing modes of transmission. In short, communication and the political role of media has become exponentially complex in the simultaneous demand for truthfulness alongside the simultaneous awareness that all truth is constructed. Visual satire offers an ideal form to transmit the post-9/11 contradictions because irony turns on the unsaid; it uses the dominant forms of logic to express what is otherwise silenced as dissenting didacticism; it expresses horrors in forms that are palatable; it creates a sense of shared meaning and community by using the unsaid to create a recognition of the dominant culture as misrepresentation. While irony has been used for centuries as a political tool, what is unique about the digitally produced and disseminated cultures created through visual ironies after 9/11 is that these expressions explicitly reference again and again a desire for accountability. Much could be said about the history of political satire, and if space permitted I would develop here my discussion of affect and parody, best excavated beginning with a history of political satire moving up to current “fair use legislation” which legally protects those who perform parody, one subset of satire. A more general comment on the relation of humor to politics helps set a context for the relationship of satire to contemporary political transmissions I address. Humor … helps one only to bear somewhat better the unalterable; sometimes it reminds both the mighty and the weak that they are not to be taken seriously. …One’s understanding of political jokes obviously depends on one’s understanding of politics. At one level, politics is always a struggle for power. Along with persuasion and lies, advice and flattery, tokens of esteem and bribery, banishment and violence, obedience and treachery, the joke belongs to the rich treasury of the instruments of politics. We often hear that the political joke is an offensive weapon with which an aggressive, politically engaged person makes the arrangements or precautions of an opponent seem ridiculous. But even when political jokes serve defensive purposes, they are nonetheless weapons (Speier and Jackall 1998, 1352). The productions I am studying I define as digital dissent: the use of new media to engage in tactical media, culture jamming, or online civic participation that interrupts mainstream media narratives. The sites I am studying include multimedia memes, blogs, and mirrored streaming of cable-channel Comedy Central’s highly popular news satire. These three examples illustrate a key tension embedded in the activity of transmission: in their form (satirical) and content (U.S. mainstream media and U.S. politicians and mistakes) they critique prevailing (dominant) transmissions of mainstream media, and perform this transmission using mainstream media as the transmitter. The use of the existing forms to critique those same forms helpfully defines “tactical media,” so that, ironically, the transmission of mainstream news is satirized through content and form while in turn being transmitted via corporate-owned news show. The following illustrations of digital dissent employ irony and satire to transmit the contradictory emotional sensibilities: on the one hand, the awareness that all truth claims are constructed and on the other, a longing for truthful accountability from politicians and media. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart The Daily Show (TDS) with Jon Stewart is a highly-popular news satire. “The most trusted name in fake news” is transmitted four nights a week in the U.S. and Canada on cable television and often on another local network channel. TDS format uses “real” news clips from mainstream media – generally about Washington D.C. politics – and offers satirical and ironic commentary about the media representations as well as about the actions and speech of the politicians represented. Aired in Europe through CNN as well througha half-hour once weekly version, TDS is also streamed online both through Comedy Central’s official site as well as on mirrored independent streaming. The Daily Show has been airing for 6 years, has 1.7 million television viewers, a wide audience who view TDS online, and a larger segment of age 18-31 viewers than any other U.S. nightly news show (Friend 28). Jon Stewart has become an icon of a cross-partisan North American critique of George W. Bush in particular (though Stewart claims himself as non-partisan). Particularly since his appearance on CNN news debate show Crossfire and now poised to host the Academy Awards (two days until Oscar broadcast as I write), Jon Stewart emblematizes a faith in democracy, and demand for media accountability to standards of civic discourse seen as central to democracy. (In a March 2, 2006 blog-letter to Jon Stewart, Ariana Huffington warns him against losing his current political legitimacy by blowing it at the Oscars: “Interjecting too much political commentary – no matter how trenchant or hilarious – is like interrupting the eulogy at a funeral to make a political point … . At the same time, there is no denying the fact, Jon, that you are going to have the rapt attention of some 40 million Americans. Or that political satire – done right – can alter people’s perceptions (there’s a reason emperors have always banned court jesters in times of crisis). Or that a heaping dose of your perception-altering mockery would do the American body politic a load of good.”) “Stop hurting America” Stewart pleads with two mainstream news show hosts on the now-infamous Crossfire appearance, (an 11 minute clip easily found online or through ifilm.com). Stewart’s public shaming of mainstream media as partisan hackery theatre, “helping corporations and leaving all of us alone to mow our lawns,” became the top-cited media event in the blogosphere in 2004. The satirical form of The Daily Show illustrates how the unsaid functions as truth. Within the range of roles classically defined within the history of humor and satire, Jon Stewart represents the court jester (Jones). First, the unsaid often occurs literally through Stewart’s responses to material: the camera often shows simply his facial expression and speechlessness, which “says it all.” The unsaid also occurs visually through the ironic adoption of the familiar visuals of a news show: for example, situating the anchor person (Stewart) behind his obscenely large news desk. Part of this unsaid is an implicit questioning of the performed legitimacy of a news report. For viewers, The Daily Show displaces a dominant and enforced hegemonic cultural pastime: individuals in isolated living rooms tuned in to (and alienated by) the 11 o’clock dose of media spin about politicians’ and military versions of reality have been replaced by a new virtual solidarity of 1.2 million living rooms who share a recognition of deception. Ironically, as Bill Moyers expresses to Jon Stewart, “but when I report the news on this broadcast, people say I’m making it up. When you make it up, they say you’re telling the truth” (“Transcript”). The unsaid also functions by using actual existing logics, discourses, and even various familiar reiterated truth claims (the location of WMD; claims made by Hans Blix, etc.) and shifting the locutionary context of these slightly in order to create irony – putting “real” words into displaced contexts in a way that reveals the constructed-ness of the “real” and thereby creates an unsaid, shared commentary about the experience of feeling deceived by the media and by the Pentagon. Through its use of both “real” news footage combined with ironic “false” commentary, The Daily Show allows viewers to occupy the simultaneous space of cynicism and desire for truth: pleasure and satisfaction followed by a moment of panic or horror. Bush in 30 Seconds The Bushin30seconds campaign was begun by the organization MoveOn, who solicited entries from the public and received over 500 which were streamed as QuickTime videos on their Website. The guidelines were to use the form of a campaign ad, and the popularly-selected winner would be aired on major network television during the 2004 Superbowl. The majority of the Bushin30Seconds ads include content that directly addresses Bush’s deception and make pleas for truth, many explicitly addressing the demand for truth, the immorality of lies, and the problems that political deception pose for democracy (along with a research team, I am currently working on a three year project analyzing all of these in terms of their content, rhetorical form, and discursive strategies and will be surveying and interviewing the producers of the Bushin30Seconds. Our other two sites of study include political blogs about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and online networks sparked by The Daily Show). The demand for truthfulness is well exemplified in the ad called “Polygraph” (see also #27 A Big Puzzle). This ad invokes a simulated polygraph – the polygraph being a classic instrument of rational positivism and surveillance – which measures for the viewer the “truth” quotient of Bush’s own “real” words. Of course, the polygraph is not actually connected to Bush’s body, and hence offers a visual symbolic “stand in” for the viewer’s own internal or collectively shared sensibility or truth meter. Illustrating my central argument about the expressed desire for truthfulness, the ad concludes with the phrase “Americans are dying for the truth.” Having examined 150 ads, it is remarkable how many of these – albeit via different cultural forms ranging from hip hop to animation to drama to pseudo-advertisement for a toy action figure – make a plea for accountability, not only on behalf of one’s own desire but often out of altruistic concern for others. The Yes Men I offer one final example to illustrate transmissions that disrupt dominant discourses. The Yes Men began their work when they created a website which “mirrored” the World Trade Organization site. Assumed to represent the WTO, they were subsequently offered invitations to give keynotes at various international conferences and press meetings of CEOs and business people. (Their work is documented in an hour-long film titled The Yes Men available at many video outlets and through their web site.) The main yes man, Bichlbaum, arrives to these large international meetings with careful attire and speech, and offers a straight-faced keynote with subversive content. For example, at a textile conference he suggests that slavery had been a very profitable form of labor and might be reintroduced as alternative to unionized labor. At another conference, he announced that the WTO had decided to disband because it has realized it is only causing harm to international trade and economy. In December 2004, the Yes Men struck again when they were invited by the BBC as representatives of DOW chemical on the 20th anniversary of the Union Carbide Bhopal accident in India. Those who watched the BBC news and Channel 4 and the hundreds of thousands who viewed these clips afterwards are made aware of the anniversary of the worst chemical accident in history; are apprised of the ongoing effects on the people of Bhopal; and hear an unusual primetime soundbyte lambasting the utter absence of social responsibility of corporations such as Dow Chemical. The Yes Men illustrate what some might call tactical media, some might call media terrorism, and what some aspire to in their own activism. “They compare their work to that of a “funhouse mirror” – exaggerating hideous features. ‘We do that kind of exaggeration operation, but with ideas. We agree with people – turning up the volume on their ideas as we talk, until they can see their ideas distorted in our funhouse mirror. Or that’s what we try to do anyhow. As it turns out, the image always seems to look normal to them,’ Bichlbaum said” (Marchlewski). Another article describes their goal as follows: When newspapers and television stations out their acts, it’s not just the Yes Men who get attention, but also the issues they address … . The impersonations, which the two call identity corrections, are intended to show, in a colorful and humorous way, what they say are errors of corporate and government ways. (Marchlewski 2005) In conclusion, these three examples illustrate the new media terrain of access and distribution which enables transmissions that arguably construct significant new public spheres constructed around a desire for truthfulness and accountability. While some may prefer “civil society,” I find the concept of a public useful because its connotations imply less regimentation. If the public sphere is in part constructed through the reflexive circulation of discourse, the imaginary relation with strangers, and with affect as a social glue (my addition to Michael Warner’s six features of a public), we have described some of the ways in which counterpublics are produced (Warner 2002; Boler, forthcoming). If address (the circulation and reception of a cultural production under consideration) in part constructs a public, how does one imagine the interactivity between the listener/bystander/participant and the broadcast or image? To what extent do the kinds of transmission I have discussed here invite new kinds of multi-directional interactivity, and to what extent do they replicate problematic forms of broadcast? Which kind of subject is assumed or produced by different “mediated” publics? What is the relationship of discourse and propaganda to action and materiality? These are some of the eternally difficult questions raised when one analyzes ideology and culture in relation to social change. It is indeed very difficult to trace what action follows from any particular discursive construction of publics. One can think of the endings of the 150 Finalists in the Bush in30 Seconds campaign, each with an explicit or implicit imperative: “think!” or “act!” What subject is hailed and invoked, and what relationship might exist between the invocation or imagining of that listener and that listener’s actual reception and translation of any transmission? The construction of a public through address is a key feature of the politics of representation and visions of social change through cultural production. Each of the three sites of productions I have analyzed illustrate a renewed call for faith in media as an institution which owes a civic responsibility to democracy. The iterations of calls for truthful accounts from media and politicians stand in tension with the simultaneous recognition of the complex social construction of any and all truth claims. The uncertainty about whether such transmissions constitute “an old form of parody and satire…or a new form of journalism” reflects the ongoing paradox of what Jon Stewart describes as a “new form of desperation.” For those who live in Western democracies, I suggest that the study of political transmission is best understood within this moment of convergence and paradox when we are haunted by paradoxical desires for truths. References “American Daily.” 7 Nov. 2003 http://www.americandaily.com/article/5951>. Boler, Megan. “Mediated Publics and the Crises of Democracy.” Philosophical Studies in Education 37 (2006, forthcoming), eds. Justen Infinito and Cris Mayo. Colebrook, Claire. Irony. London: Routledge, 2004. Jameson, Frederic. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Anti-Aesthetic. Ed. H. Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983. Jones, Jeffrey. Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Fletcher, M.D. Contemporary Political Satire. New York: University Press of America, 1987. Friend, Tad. “Is It Funny Yet? Jon Stewart and the Comedy of Crisis”. The New Yorker 77.47 (11 Feb. 2002): 28(7). Huffington, Ariana. “Memo to Jon Stewart: Tread Lightly and Carry a Big Schtick.” 2 March 2006. 4 March 2006 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/memo-to-jon-stewart-trea_b_16642.html>. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004). http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html>. Marchlewski, Kathie. “Hoaxsters Target Dow, Midland Daily News.” 20 May 2005 http://www.theyesmen.org/articles/dowagmmidlanddailynews.html>. Speier, Hans, & Robert Jackall. “Wit and Politics: An Essay on Laughter and Power.” The American Journal of Sociology 103.5 (1998): 1352. “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.” 8 Dec. 2005. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/fedagencies/july-dec05/rumsfeld_12-08.html>. “Transcript – Bill Moyers Inverviews Jon Stewart.” 7 Nov. 2003 . Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 49-90. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Boler, Megan. "The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”?." M/C Journal 9.1 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/11-boler.php>. APA Style Boler, M. (Mar. 2006) "The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”?," M/C Journal, 9(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/11-boler.php>.

Economics of Cute There are many ways to study cute: for example, neuro-biology (cute as adaptation); anthropology (cute in culture); political economy (cute industries, how cute exploits consumers); cultural studies (social construction of cute); media theory and politics (representation and identity of cute), and so on. What about economics? At first sight, this might point to a money-capitalism nexus (“the cute economy”), but I want to argue here that the economics of cute actually works through choice interacting with fixed costs and what economists call ”the substitution effect”. Cute, in conjunction with the Internet, affects the trade-offs involved in choices people make. Let me put that more starkly: cute shapes the economy. This can be illustrated with internet animals, which at the time of writing means Grumpy Cat. I want to explain how that mechanism works – but to do so I will need some abstraction. This is not difficult – a simple application of a well-known economics model, namely the Allen-Alchian theorem, or the “third law of demand”. But I am going to take some liberties in order to represent that model clearly in this short paper. Specifically, I will model just two extremes of quality (“opera” and “cat videos”) to represent end-points of a spectrum. I will also assume that the entire effect of the internet is to lower the cost of cat videos. Now obviously these are just simplifying assumptions “for the purpose of the model”. And the purpose of the model is to illuminate a further aspect of how we might understand cute, by using an economic model of choice and its consequences. This is a standard technique in economics, but not so in cultural studies, so I will endeavour to explain these moments as we go, so as to avoid any confusion about analytic intent. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way that a simple economic model might be applied to augment the cultural study of cute by seeking to unpack its economic aspect. This can be elucidated by considering the rise of internet animals as a media-cultural force, as epitomized by “cat videos”. We can explain this through an application of price theory and the theory of demand that was first proposed by Armen Alchian and William Allen. They showed how an equal fixed cost that was imposed to both high-quality and low-quality goods alike caused a shift in consumption toward the higher-quality good, because it is now relatively cheaper. Alchian and Allen had in mind something like transport costs on agricultural goods (such as apples). But it is also true that the same effect works in reverse (Cowen), and the purpose of this paper is to develop that logic to contribute to explaining how certain structural shifts in production and consumption in digital media, particularly the rise of blog formats such as Tumblr, a primary supplier of kittens on the Internet, can be in part understood as a consequence of this economic mechanism. There are three key assumptions to build this argument. The first is that the cost of the internet is independent of what it carries. This is certainly true at the level of machine code, and largely true at higher levels. What might be judged aesthetically high quality or low quality content – say of a Bach cantata or a funny cat video – are treated the same way if they both have the same file size. This is a physical and computational aspect of net-neutrality. The internet – or digitization – functions as a fixed cost imposed regardless of what cultural quality is moving across it. Second, while there are costs to using the internet (for example, in hardware or concerning digital literacy) these costs are lower than previous analog forms of information and cultural production and dissemination. This is not an empirical claim, but a logical one (revealed preference): if it were not so, people would not have chosen it. The first two points – net neutrality and lowered cost – I want to take as working assumptions, although they can obviously be debated. But that is not the purpose of the paper, which is instead the third point – the “Alchian-Allen theorem”, or the third fundamental law of demand. The Alchian-Allen Theorem The Alchian-Allen theorem is an extension of the law of demand (Razzolini et al) to consider how the distribution of high quality and low quality substitutes of the same good (such as apples) is affected by the imposition of a fixed cost (such as transportation). It is also known as the “shipping the good apples out” theorem, after Borcherding and Silberberg explained why places that produce a lot of apples – such as Seattle in the US – often also have low supplies of high quality apples compared to places that do not produce apples, such as New York. The puzzle of “why can’t you get good apples in Seattle?” is a simple but clever application of price theory. When a place produces high quality and low quality items, it will be rational for those in faraway places to consume the high quality items, and it will be rational for the producers to ship them, leaving only the low quality items locally.Why? Assume preferences and incomes are the same everywhere and that transport cost is the same regardless of whether the item shipped is high or low quality. Both high quality and low quality apples are more expensive in New York compared to Seattle, but because the fixed transport cost applies to both the high quality apples are relatively less expensive. Rational consumers in New York will consume more high quality apples. This makes fewer available in Seattle.Figure 1: Change in consumption ratio after the imposition of a fixed cost to all apples Another example: Australians drink higher quality Californian wine than Californians, and vice versa, because it is only worth shipping the high quality wine out. A counter-argument is that learning effects dominate: with high quality local product, local consumers learn to appreciate quality, and have different preferences (Cowen and Tabarrok).The Alchian-Allen theorem applies to any fixed cost that applies generally. For example, consider illegal drugs (such as alcohol during the US prohibition, or marijuana or cocaine presently) and the implication of a fixed penalty – such as a fine, or prison sentence, which is like a cost – applied to trafficking or consumption. Alchian-Allen predicts a shift toward higher quality (or stronger) drugs, because with a fixed penalty and probability of getting caught, the relatively stronger substance is now relatively cheaper. Empirical work finds that this effect did occur during alcohol prohibition, and is currently occurring in narcotics (Thornton Economics of Prohibition, "Potency of illegal drugs").Another application proposed by Steven Cuellar uses Alchian-Allen to explain a well-known statistical phenomenon why women taking the contraceptive pill on average prefer “more masculine” men. This is once again a shift toward quality predicted on falling relative price based on a common ‘fixed price’ (taking the pill) of sexual activity. Jean Eid et al show that the result also applies to racehorses (the good horses get shipped out), and Staten and Umbeck show it applies to students – the good students go to faraway universities, and the good student in those places do the same. So that’s apples, drugs, sex and racehorses. What about the Internet and kittens?Allen-Alchian Explains Why the Internet Is Made of CatsIn analog days, before digitization and Internet, the transactions costs involved with various consumption items, whether commodities or media, meant that the Alchian-Allen effect pushed in the direction of higher quality, bundled product. Any additional fixed costs, such as higher transport costs, or taxes or duties, or transactions costs associated with search and coordination and payment, i.e. costs that affected all substitutes in the same way, would tend to make the higher quality item relatively less expensive, increasing its consumption.But digitisation and the Internet reverse the direction of these transactions costs. Rather than adding a fixed cost, such as transport costs, the various aspects of the digital revolution are equivalent to a fall in fixed costs, particularly access.These factors are not just one thing, but a suite of changes that add up to lowered transaction costs in the production, distribution and consumption of media, culture and games. These include: The internet and world-wide-web, and its unencumbered operation The growth and increasing efficacy of search technology Growth of universal broadband for fast, wide band-width access Growth of mobile access (through smartphones and other appliances) Growth of social media networks (Facebook, Twitter; Metcalfe’s law) Growth of developer and distribution platforms (iPhone, android, iTunes) Globally falling hardware and network access costs (Moore’s law) Growth of e-commerce (Ebay, Amazon, Etsy) and e-payments (paypal, bitcoin) Expansions of digital literacy and competence Creative commons These effects do not simply shift us down a demand curve for each given consumption item. This effect alone simply predicts that we consume more. But the Alchian-Allen effect makes a different prediction, namely that we consume not just more, but also different.These effects function to reduce the overall fixed costs or transactions costs associated with any consumption, sharing, or production of media, culture or games over the internet (or in digital form). With this overall fixed cost component now reduced, it represents a relatively larger decline in cost at the lower-quality, more bite-sized or unbundled end of the media goods spectrum. As such, this predicts a change in the composition of the overall consumption basket to reflect the changed relative prices that these above effects give rise to. See Figure 2 below (based on a blog post by James Oswald). The key to the economics of cute, in consequence of digitisation, is to follow through the qualitative change that, because of the Alchian-Allen effect, moves away from the high-quality, highly-bundled, high-value end of the media goods spectrum. The “pattern prediction” here is toward more, different, and lower quality: toward five minutes of “Internet animals”, rather than a full day at the zoo. Figure 2: Reducing transaction costs lowers the relative price of cat videos Consider five dimensions in which this more and different tendency plays out. Consumption These effects make digital and Internet-based consumption cheaper, shifting us down a demand curve, so we consume more. That’s the first law of demand in action: i.e. demand curves slope downwards. But a further effect – brilliantly set out in Cowen – is that we also consume lower-quality media. This is not a value judgment. These lower-quality media may well have much higher aesthetic value. They may be funnier, or more tragic and sublime; or faster, or not. This is not about absolute value; only about relative value. Digitization operating through Allen-Alchian skews consumption toward the lower quality ends in some dimensions: whether this is time, as in shorter – or cost, as in cheaper – or size, as in smaller – or transmission quality, as in gifs. This can also be seen as a form of unbundling, of dropping of dimensions that are not valued to create a simplified product.So we consume different, with higher variance. We sample more than we used to. This means that we explore a larger information world. Consumption is bite-sized and assorted. This tendency is evident in the rise of apps and in the proliferation of media forms and devices and the value of interoperability.ProductionAs consumption shifts (lower quality, greater variety), so must production. The production process has two phases: (1) figuring out what to do, or development; and (2) doing it, or making. The world of trade and globalization describes the latter part: namely efficient production. The main challenge is the world of innovation: the entrepreneurial and experimental world of figuring out what to do, and how. It is this second world that is radically transformed by implications of lowered transaction costs.One implication is growth of user-communities based around collaborative media projects (such as open source software) and community-based platforms or common pool resources for sharing knowledge, such as the “Maker movement” (Anderson 2012). This phenomenon of user-co-creation, or produsers, has been widely recognized as an important new phenomenon in the innovation and production process, particularly those processes associated with new digital technologies. There are numerous explanations for this, particularly around preferences for cooperation, community-building, social learning and reputational capital, and entrepreneurial expectations (Quiggin and Potts, Banks and Potts). Business Models The Alchian-Allen effect on consumption and production follows through to business models. A business model is a way of extracting value that represents some strategic equilibrium between market forms, organizational structures, technological possibilities and institutional framework and environmental conditions that manifests in entrepreneurial patterns of business strategy and particular patterns of investment and organization. The discovery of effective business models is a key process of market capitalist development and competition. The Alchian-Allen effect impacts on the space of effective viable business models. Business models that used to work will work less well, or not at all. And new business models will be required. It is a significant challenge to develop these “economic technologies”. Perhaps no less so than development of the physical technologies, new business models are produced through experimental trial and error. They cannot be known in advance or planned. But business models will change, which will affect not only the constellation of existing companies and the value propositions that underlie them, but also the broader specializations based on these in terms of skill sets held and developed by people, locations of businesses and people, and so on. New business models will emerge from a process of Schumpeterian creative destruction as it unfolds (Beinhocker). The large production, high development cost, proprietary intellectual property and systems based business model is not likely to survive, other than as niche areas. More experimental, discovery-focused, fast-development-then-scale-up based business models are more likely to fit the new ecology. Social Network Markets & Novelty Bundling MarketsThe growth of variety and diversity of choice that comes with this change in the way media is consumed to reflect a reallocation of consumption toward smaller more bite-sized, lower valued chunks (the Alchian-Allen effect) presents consumers with a problem, namely that they have to make more choices over novelty. Choice over novelty is difficult for consumers because it is experimental and potentially costly due to risk of mistakes (Earl), but it also presents entrepreneurs with an opportunity to seek to help solve that problem. The problem is a simple consequence of bounded rationality and time scarcity. It is equivalent to saying that the cost of choice rises monotonically with the number of choices, and that because there is no way to make a complete rational choice, agents will use decision or choice heuristics. These heuristics can be developed independently by the agents themselves through experience, or they can be copied or adopted from others (Earl and Potts). What Potts et al call “social network markets” and what Potts calls “novelty bundling markets” are both instances of the latter process of copying and adoption of decision rules. Social network markets occur when agents use a “copy the most common” or “copy the highest rank” meta-level decision rule (Bentley et al) to deal with uncertainty. Social network markets can be efficient aggregators of distributed information, but they can also be path-dependent, and usually lead to winner-take all situations and dynamics. These can result in huge pay-offs differentials between first and second or fifth place, even when the initial quality differentials are slight or random. Diversity, rapid experimentation, and “fast-failure” are likely to be effective strategies. It also points to the role of trust and reputation in using adopted decision rules and the information economics that underlies that: namely that specialization and trade applies to the production and consumption of information as well as commodities. Novelty bundling markets are an entrepreneurial response to this problem, and observable in a range of new media and creative industries contexts. These include arts, music or food festivals or fairs where entertainment and sociality is combined with low opportunity cost situations in which to try bundles of novelty and connect with experts. These are by agents who developed expert preferences through investment and experience in consumption of the particular segment or domain. They are expert consumers and are selling their “decision rules” and not just the product. The more production and consumption of media and digital information goods and services experiences the Alchian-Allen effect, the greater the importance of novelty bundling markets. Intellectual Property & Regulation A further implication is that rent-seeking solutions may also emerge. This can be seen in two dimensions; pursuit of intellectual property (Boldrin and Levine); and demand for regulations (Stigler). The Alchian-Allen induced shift will affect markets and business models (and firms), and because this will induce strategic defensive and aggressive responses from different organizations. Some organizations will seek to fight and adapt to this new world through innovative competition. Other firms will fight through political connections. Most incumbent firms will have substantial investments in IP or in the business model it supports. Yet the intellectual property model is optimized for high-quality large volume centralized production and global sales of undifferentiated product. Much industrial and labour regulation is built on that model. How governments support such industries is predicated on the stability of this model. The Alchian-Allen effect threatens to upset that model. Political pushback will invariably take the form of opposing most new business models and the new entrants they carry. Conclusion I have presented here a lesser-known but important theorem in applied microeconomics – the Alchian-Allen effect – and explain why its inverse is central to understanding the evolution of new media industries, and also why cute animals proliferate on the Internet. The theorem states that when a fixed cost is added to substitute goods, consumers will shift to the higher quality item (now relatively less expensive). The theorem also holds in reverse, when a fixed cost is removed from substitute items we expect a shift to lower quality consumption. The Internet has dramatically lowered fixed costs of access to media consumption, and various development platforms have similarly lowered the costs of production. Alchian-Allen predicts a shift to lower-quality, ”bittier” cuter consumption (Cowen). References Alchian, Arman, and William Allen. Exchange and Production. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1967. Anderson, Chris. Makers. New York: Crown Business, 2012. Banks, John, and Jason Potts. "Consumer Co-Creation in Online Games." New Media and Society 12.2 (2010): 253-70. Beinhocker, Eric. Origin of Wealth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Bentley, R., et al. "Regular Rates of Popular Culture Change Reflect Random Copying." Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007): 151-158. Borcherding, Thomas, and Eugene Silberberg. "Shipping the Good Apples Out: The Alchian and Allen Theorem Reconsidered." Journal of Political Economy 86.1 (1978): 131-6. Cowen, Tyler. Create Your Own Economy. New York: Dutton, 2009. (Also published as The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy. Penguin, 2010.) Cowen, Tyler, and Alexander Tabarrok. "Good Grapes and Bad Lobsters: The Alchian and Allen Theorem Revisited." Journal of Economic Inquiry 33.2 (1995): 253-6. Cuellar, Steven. "Sex, Drugs and the Alchian-Allen Theorem." Unpublished paper, 2005. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.sonoma.edu/users/c/cuellar/research/Sex-Drugs.pdf›.Earl, Peter. The Economic Imagination. Cheltenham: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986. Earl, Peter, and Jason Potts. "The Market for Preferences." Cambridge Journal of Economics 28 (2004): 619–33. Eid, Jean, Travis Ng, and Terence Tai-Leung Chong. "Shipping the Good Horses Out." Wworking paper, 2012. http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ngkaho/Research/shippinghorses.pdf Potts, Jason, et al. "Social Network Markets: A New Definition of Creative Industries." Journal of Cultural Economics 32.3 (2008): 166-185. Quiggin, John, and Jason Potts. "Economics of Non-Market Innovation & Digital Literacy." Media International Australia 128 (2008): 144-50. Razzolini, Laura, William Shughart, and Robert Tollison. "On the Third Law of Demand." Economic Inquiry 41.2 (2003): 292–298. Staten, Michael, and John Umbeck. “Shipping the Good Students Out: The Effect of a Fixed Charge on Student Enrollments.” Journal of Economic Education 20.2 (1989): 165-171. Stigler, George. "The Theory of Economic Regulation." Bell Journal of Economics 2.1 (1971): 3-22. Thornton, Mark. The Economics of Prohibition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991.Thornton, Mark. "The Potency of Illegal Drugs." Journal of Drug Issues 28.3 (1998): 525-40.

This issue of M/C Journal asks what’s your vote worth? And what does citizenship mean now? These questions are pressing, not only for the authors and editors of this special issue, but for anyone who contends with the challenges and opportunities presented by the relationship of the individual to the modern state, the difficulty and necessity of effecting change in our polities, and the needs of individuals and communities within frameworks of unequally representative democracies. And we think that’s pretty well all of us. Talk of voting and citizenship also raise further questions about the relationship of macro-level power politics to the mundane sphere of our everyday lives. Voting is a decision that is decidedly personal, requiring the seclusion of the ballot-box, and in Australia at least, a personal inscription of one’s choice on the ballot paper. It’s an important externalisation of our private thoughts and concerns, and it links us, through our nominated representative, to the machinery of State. Citizenship is a matter of rights and duties, and describes all that we are able or expected to do in our relationship with the State and in our membership of communities, however these defined. Our level of activity as citizens is an expression of our affective relationship with State and community – the political volunteerism of small donations and envelope-stuffing, the assertions of protest, membership in unions, parties or community groups are all ways in which our mundane lives link up with tectonic shifts in national, even global governance. Ever since the debacle of the 2000 US presidential election, there has been intensified debate about the effects of apathy, spin and outright corruption on electoral politics. And since the events of the following September, citizens’ rights have been diminished and duties put on something of a war footing in Western democracies, as States militarise in the face of ‘terror’. (“Be alert, not alarmed”). Branches of cultural theory and political science have redoubled their critique of liberal democracy, and the communicative frameworks that are supposed to sustain it, with some scholars presenting voting as a false choice, political communication as lies, and discourses of citizenship as a disciplinary straightjacket. But recent events have made the editors, at least, a little more optimistic. During the time in which we were taking submissions for this special, double issue of M/C Journal, the citizens of Australia voted to change their Federal Government. After 11 years the John Howard-led Liberal Government came to an end on 23 November, swept aside in an election that cost the former PM his own seat. Within a few weeks the new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had, on behalf of the nation, ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, apologised to the indigenous ‘stolen generation’ who had been taken from their parents as part of a tragically misconceived project of assimilation, and was preparing to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. Australia’s long-delayed Kyoto decision was being tipped at the time of writing as an additional pressure the next US president could not possibly ignore. If the Americans sign up, pressure might in turn build on other big emitters like China to find new solutions to their energy needs. Pulling out of Iraq also left the US looking more isolated still in that seemingly interminable occupation. And the apology, though not enough on its own to overcome the terrible disadvantage of Aboriginal people, made front pages around the world, and will no doubt encourage indigenous peoples in their separate, but related struggles. After so many years of divisive intransigence on these and many other issues, after a decade in which the outgoing Government made the country a linchpin of an aggressive, US-led geopolitics of conflict, change was brought about by a succession of little things. Things like the effect on individuals’ relationships and happiness of a new, unfavourable balance in their workplace. Things like a person’s decision to renounce long-standing fears and reassurances. Things like the choices made by people holding stubby pencils in cardboard ballot boxes. These things cascaded, multiplied, and added up to some things that may become bigger than they already are. It was hard to spot these changes in the mundanity of Australia’s electoral rituals – the queue outside the local primary school, the eye-searing welter of bunting and how-to-vote cards, the floppy-hatted volunteers, and the customary fund-raising sausage-sizzle by the exit door. But they were there; they took place; and they matter. The Prime Minister before Howard, Paul Keating, had famously warned the voters off his successor during his losing campaign in 1996 by saying, at the last gasp, that ‘If you change the Prime Minister, you change the country’. For Keating, the choice embodied in a vote had consequences not just for the future of the Nation, but for its character, its being. Keating, famously, was to his bones a creature of electoral politics – he would say this, one might think, and there are many objections to be made to the claim that anything can change the country, any country, so quickly or decisively. Critical voices will say that liberal democracy really only grafts an illusion of choice onto what’s really a late-capitalist consensus – the apparent changes brought about by elections, and even the very idea of popular or national sovereignties are precisely ideological. Others will argue that democratic elections don’t qualify as a choice because there is evidence that the voters are irrational, making decisions on the basis of slender, or incorrect information, and as a result they often choose leaders that do not serve their interests. Others – like Judith Brett in her latest Quarterly Essay, “Exit Right” – argue that any talk of election results signifying a change in ‘national mood’ belies the fact that changes of government usually reflect quite small overall changes in the vote. In 2007, for example, over 46% of the Australian electorate voted for another Howard term, and only a little over 5% of us changed our minds. There is something to all of these arguments, but not enough to diminish the acts of engaged, mundane citizenship that underpinned Australia’s recent transformation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, which started in 2006, was a grassroots effort to build awareness about the import of the Howard Government’s neoliberal industrial relations reform. As well as bringing down the Government, this may have given Australia’s labour movement a new, independent lease of life. Organisations like GetUp also mobilised progressive grassroots activism in key electorates. Former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, the high profile Labor challenger in Howard’s seat of Bennelong, was assisted by an army of volunteer workers. They letterboxed, doorknocked and answered phones for weeks and were rewarded with the unseating of the Prime Minister. Perhaps what Keating should have said is, ‘by the time you change the Prime Minister, the country already has’. By the time the community at large starts flexing its muscles of citizenship, the big decisions have already been collectively made. In the media sphere too, there was heartening evidence of new forms of engagement. In the old media camp, Murdoch’s The Australian tried to fight a rear-guard campaign to maintain the mainstream media as the sole legitimate forum for public discussion. But its commentaries and editorials looked more than ever anachronistic, as Australia’s increasingly mature blogosphere carried debate and alternative forms of reporting on the election right throughout the year leading up to the long campaign. Politicians too made efforts to engage with participatory culture, with smart uses of Facebook, MySpace and blogs by some leading figures — and a much-derided intervention on YouTube by John Howard, whose video clip misguidedly beginning with the words ‘Good morning’ served as an emblem for a government whose moment had passed. There is evidence this year that America is changing, too, and even though the current rise of Barack Obama as a presidential contender may not result in victory, or even in his nomination, his early successes give more grounds for hope in citizenship. Although the enthusiastic reception for the speeches of this great political orator are described by cynics as ‘creepy’ or ‘cultish’, there are other ways of reading it. We could say that this is evidence of a euphoric affective reinvestment in the possibility of citizenship, and of voting as an agent for change — ‘Yes we can’ is his signature line. The enthusiasm for Obama could also simply be the relief of being able to throw off the defensive versions of citizenship that have prevailed in recent years. It could be that the greatest ‘hope’ Obama is offering is of democratic (and Democratic) renewal, a return to electoral politics, and citizenship, being conducted as if they mean something. The mechanics of Obama’s campaign suggest, too, that ordinary acts of citizenship can make a difference when it comes to institutions of great power, such as the US Presidency. Like Howard Dean before him, Obama’s campaign resourcing is powered by myriad, online gifts from small donors – ordinary men and women have ensured that Obama has more money than the Democrat-establishment Clinton campaign. If nothing else, this suggests that the ‘supply-chain’ of politics is reorienting itself to citizen engagement. Not all of the papers in this issue of M/C Journal are as optimistic as this introduction. Some of them talk about citizenship as a means of exclusion – as a way of defining ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, as a locus of paranoia. Some see citizenship as heterogenous, and that unequal access to its benefits is a deficit in our democracy. The limits to citizenship, and to the forms of choice that liberal democracy allows need to be acknowledged. But we also need to see these mundane acts of participation as a locus of possibility, and a fulcrum for change. Everyday acts of democracy may not change the country, but they can change the framework in which our conversations about it take place. Indeed, democracy is both more popular and less popular than ever. In our feature article, Brian McNair explores the ‘democratic paradox’ that, on the one hand, democracy spread to 120 countries in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, voter participation in the more established democracies is falling. While rightly cautioning against drawing too neat an equivalence between X Factor and a general election, McNair considers the popularity of voting in participatory TV shows, noting that people will indeed vote when they are motivated enough. He asks whether the evident popularity of voting for play purposes can be harnessed into active citizenship. Melissa Bellanta questions the use of rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in relation to participatory media forms, such as voting in reality TV competitions or in online polls. Bellanta shows how audience interaction was central to late-nineteenth century popular theatre and draws provocative parallels between the ‘voting’ practices of Victorian theatre audiences and contemporary viewer-voting. She argues that the attendant rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in such interactions can divert our attention from the real characteristics of such behaviour. Digital artist xtine explores a ‘crisis of democracy’ created by tensions between participation and control. She draws upon, on the one hand, Guattari’s analysis of strategies for social change and, on the other, polemical discussions of culture jamming by Naomi Klein, and by Adbusters’ founder Kalle Lasn. Her paper introduces a number of Web projects which aim to enable new forms of local consumption and interaction. Kimberley Mullins surveys the shifting relationships between concepts of ‘public’ and ‘audience’. She discuses how these different perspectives blur and intertwine in contemporary political communication, with voters sometimes invoked as citizens and sometimes presented with entertainment spectacles in political discourse. Mark Hayward looks at the development of global television in Italy, specifically the public broadcaster RAI International, in light of the changing nature of political institutions. He links changes in the nature of the State broadcaster, RAI, with changes in national institutions made under the Berlusconi government. Hayward sees these changes as linked to a narrowing conception of citizenship used as a tool for increasingly ethno-centric forms of exclusion. Panizza Allmark considers one response to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London – the “We’re not afraid” Website, where Londoners posted images of life going on “as normal” in the face of the Tube attacks. As Allmark puts it, these photographs “promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defense against the anxiety of terror.” Paradoxically, these “domestic snapshots” work to “arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence”, only ambiguously resolving the impact of the 7 July events. This piece adds to the small but important literature on the relationship between photography, blogging and everyday life. James Arvanitakis’s piece, “The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average” opens out from a consideration of Australia’s Citizenship Test, introduced by the former government, into a typology of citizenship that allows for different versions of citizenship, and understandings of it “as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary”. His typology seeks to open up new spaces for understanding citizenship as a practice, and as a relation to others, communities and the State. Anne Aly and Lelia Green’s piece, “Moderate Islam: Defining the Good Citizen”, thinks through the dilemmas Australian Muslims face in engaging with the broader community, and the heavy mediation of the state in defining the “good”, moderate Muslim identity in the age of terror. Their research is a result of a major project investigating Australian Muslim identity and citizenship, and finds that they are dealt with in media and political discourse through the lens of the “clash” between East and West embodied on the “war on terror”. For them, “religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship.” Alex Burns offers a critical assessment of claims made, and theories advanced about citizen media. He is skeptical about the definitions of citizenship and journalism that underpin optimistic new media theory. He notes the need for future research the reevaluates citizen journalism, and suggests an approach that builds on rich descriptions of journalistic experience, and “practice-based” approaches. Derek Barry’s “Wilde’s Evenings” offers a brief overview of the relationships between citizen journalism, the mainstream media and citizenship, through the lens of recent developments in Australia, and the 2007 Federal election, mentioned earlier in this introduction. As a practitioner and observer, Derek’s focus is on the status of citizen journalism as political activism, and whether the aim of citizen journalism, going forward, should be “payment or empowerment”. Finally, our cover image, by Drew, author of the successful Webcomic toothpastefordinner.com, offers a more sardonic take on the processes of voting and citizenship than we have in our introduction. The Web has not only provided a space for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also for a plethora of brilliant independent comic artists, who not only offer economical, mordant political commentary, but in some ways point the way towards sustainable practices in online independent media. Toothpastefordinner.com is not exclusively focused on political content, but it is flourishing on the basis of giving core content away, and subsisting largely on self-generated merchandise. This is one area for future research in online citizen media to explore. The tension between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of voting, citizenship, and the other apparatuses of liberal democracy will not be going anywhere soon, and nor will the need to “change the country” once in awhile. Meanwhile, the authors and editors of this special edition of M/C Journal hope to have explored these issues in a way that has provoked some further thought and debate among you, as voters, citizens and readers. References Brett, Judith. “Exit Right.” Quarterly Essay 28 (2008). Citation reference for this article MLA Style Meikle, Graham, Jason A. Wilson, and Barry Saunders. "Vote / Citizen." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Meikle, G., J. Wilson, and B. Saunders. (Apr. 2008) "Vote / Citizen," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/00-editorial.php>.

This issue of M/C Journal asks what’s your vote worth? And what does citizenship mean now? These questions are pressing, not only for the authors and editors of this special issue, but for anyone who contends with the challenges and opportunities presented by the relationship of the individual to the modern state, the difficulty and necessity of effecting change in our polities, and the needs of individuals and communities within frameworks of unequally representative democracies. And we think that’s pretty well all of us. Talk of voting and citizenship also raise further questions about the relationship of macro-level power politics to the mundane sphere of our everyday lives. Voting is a decision that is decidedly personal, requiring the seclusion of the ballot-box, and in Australia at least, a personal inscription of one’s choice on the ballot paper. It’s an important externalisation of our private thoughts and concerns, and it links us, through our nominated representative, to the machinery of State. Citizenship is a matter of rights and duties, and describes all that we are able or expected to do in our relationship with the State and in our membership of communities, however these defined. Our level of activity as citizens is an expression of our affective relationship with State and community – the political volunteerism of small donations and envelope-stuffing, the assertions of protest, membership in unions, parties or community groups are all ways in which our mundane lives link up with tectonic shifts in national, even global governance. Ever since the debacle of the 2000 US presidential election, there has been intensified debate about the effects of apathy, spin and outright corruption on electoral politics. And since the events of the following September, citizens’ rights have been diminished and duties put on something of a war footing in Western democracies, as States militarise in the face of ‘terror’. (“Be alert, not alarmed”). Branches of cultural theory and political science have redoubled their critique of liberal democracy, and the communicative frameworks that are supposed to sustain it, with some scholars presenting voting as a false choice, political communication as lies, and discourses of citizenship as a disciplinary straightjacket. But recent events have made the editors, at least, a little more optimistic. During the time in which we were taking submissions for this special, double issue of M/C Journal, the citizens of Australia voted to change their Federal Government. After 11 years the John Howard-led Liberal Government came to an end on 23 November, swept aside in an election that cost the former PM his own seat. Within a few weeks the new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had, on behalf of the nation, ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, apologised to the indigenous ‘stolen generation’ who had been taken from their parents as part of a tragically misconceived project of assimilation, and was preparing to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. Australia’s long-delayed Kyoto decision was being tipped at the time of writing as an additional pressure the next US president could not possibly ignore. If the Americans sign up, pressure might in turn build on other big emitters like China to find new solutions to their energy needs. Pulling out of Iraq also left the US looking more isolated still in that seemingly interminable occupation. And the apology, though not enough on its own to overcome the terrible disadvantage of Aboriginal people, made front pages around the world, and will no doubt encourage indigenous peoples in their separate, but related struggles. After so many years of divisive intransigence on these and many other issues, after a decade in which the outgoing Government made the country a linchpin of an aggressive, US-led geopolitics of conflict, change was brought about by a succession of little things. Things like the effect on individuals’ relationships and happiness of a new, unfavourable balance in their workplace. Things like a person’s decision to renounce long-standing fears and reassurances. Things like the choices made by people holding stubby pencils in cardboard ballot boxes. These things cascaded, multiplied, and added up to some things that may become bigger than they already are. It was hard to spot these changes in the mundanity of Australia’s electoral rituals – the queue outside the local primary school, the eye-searing welter of bunting and how-to-vote cards, the floppy-hatted volunteers, and the customary fund-raising sausage-sizzle by the exit door. But they were there; they took place; and they matter. The Prime Minister before Howard, Paul Keating, had famously warned the voters off his successor during his losing campaign in 1996 by saying, at the last gasp, that ‘If you change the Prime Minister, you change the country’. For Keating, the choice embodied in a vote had consequences not just for the future of the Nation, but for its character, its being. Keating, famously, was to his bones a creature of electoral politics – he would say this, one might think, and there are many objections to be made to the claim that anything can change the country, any country, so quickly or decisively. Critical voices will say that liberal democracy really only grafts an illusion of choice onto what’s really a late-capitalist consensus – the apparent changes brought about by elections, and even the very idea of popular or national sovereignties are precisely ideological. Others will argue that democratic elections don’t qualify as a choice because there is evidence that the voters are irrational, making decisions on the basis of slender, or incorrect information, and as a result they often choose leaders that do not serve their interests. Others – like Judith Brett in her latest Quarterly Essay, “Exit Right” – argue that any talk of election results signifying a change in ‘national mood’ belies the fact that changes of government usually reflect quite small overall changes in the vote. In 2007, for example, over 46% of the Australian electorate voted for another Howard term, and only a little over 5% of us changed our minds. There is something to all of these arguments, but not enough to diminish the acts of engaged, mundane citizenship that underpinned Australia’s recent transformation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, which started in 2006, was a grassroots effort to build awareness about the import of the Howard Government’s neoliberal industrial relations reform. As well as bringing down the Government, this may have given Australia’s labour movement a new, independent lease of life. Organisations like GetUp also mobilised progressive grassroots activism in key electorates. Former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, the high profile Labor challenger in Howard’s seat of Bennelong, was assisted by an army of volunteer workers. They letterboxed, doorknocked and answered phones for weeks and were rewarded with the unseating of the Prime Minister. Perhaps what Keating should have said is, ‘by the time you change the Prime Minister, the country already has’. By the time the community at large starts flexing its muscles of citizenship, the big decisions have already been collectively made. In the media sphere too, there was heartening evidence of new forms of engagement. In the old media camp, Murdoch’s The Australian tried to fight a rear-guard campaign to maintain the mainstream media as the sole legitimate forum for public discussion. But its commentaries and editorials looked more than ever anachronistic, as Australia’s increasingly mature blogosphere carried debate and alternative forms of reporting on the election right throughout the year leading up to the long campaign. Politicians too made efforts to engage with participatory culture, with smart uses of Facebook, MySpace and blogs by some leading figures — and a much-derided intervention on YouTube by John Howard, whose video clip misguidedly beginning with the words ‘Good morning’ served as an emblem for a government whose moment had passed. There is evidence this year that America is changing, too, and even though the current rise of Barack Obama as a presidential contender may not result in victory, or even in his nomination, his early successes give more grounds for hope in citizenship. Although the enthusiastic reception for the speeches of this great political orator are described by cynics as ‘creepy’ or ‘cultish’, there are other ways of reading it. We could say that this is evidence of a euphoric affective reinvestment in the possibility of citizenship, and of voting as an agent for change — ‘Yes we can’ is his signature line. The enthusiasm for Obama could also simply be the relief of being able to throw off the defensive versions of citizenship that have prevailed in recent years. It could be that the greatest ‘hope’ Obama is offering is of democratic (and Democratic) renewal, a return to electoral politics, and citizenship, being conducted as if they mean something. The mechanics of Obama’s campaign suggest, too, that ordinary acts of citizenship can make a difference when it comes to institutions of great power, such as the US Presidency. Like Howard Dean before him, Obama’s campaign resourcing is powered by myriad, online gifts from small donors – ordinary men and women have ensured that Obama has more money than the Democrat-establishment Clinton campaign. If nothing else, this suggests that the ‘supply-chain’ of politics is reorienting itself to citizen engagement. Not all of the papers in this issue of M/C Journal are as optimistic as this introduction. Some of them talk about citizenship as a means of exclusion – as a way of defining ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, as a locus of paranoia. Some see citizenship as heterogenous, and that unequal access to its benefits is a deficit in our democracy. The limits to citizenship, and to the forms of choice that liberal democracy allows need to be acknowledged. But we also need to see these mundane acts of participation as a locus of possibility, and a fulcrum for change. Everyday acts of democracy may not change the country, but they can change the framework in which our conversations about it take place. Indeed, democracy is both more popular and less popular than ever. In our feature article, Brian McNair explores the ‘democratic paradox’ that, on the one hand, democracy spread to 120 countries in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, voter participation in the more established democracies is falling. While rightly cautioning against drawing too neat an equivalence between X Factor and a general election, McNair considers the popularity of voting in participatory TV shows, noting that people will indeed vote when they are motivated enough. He asks whether the evident popularity of voting for play purposes can be harnessed into active citizenship. Melissa Bellanta questions the use of rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in relation to participatory media forms, such as voting in reality TV competitions or in online polls. Bellanta shows how audience interaction was central to late-nineteenth century popular theatre and draws provocative parallels between the ‘voting’ practices of Victorian theatre audiences and contemporary viewer-voting. She argues that the attendant rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in such interactions can divert our attention from the real characteristics of such behaviour. Digital artist xtine explores a ‘crisis of democracy’ created by tensions between participation and control. She draws upon, on the one hand, Guattari’s analysis of strategies for social change and, on the other, polemical discussions of culture jamming by Naomi Klein, and by Adbusters’ founder Kalle Lasn. Her paper introduces a number of Web projects which aim to enable new forms of local consumption and interaction. Kimberley Mullins surveys the shifting relationships between concepts of ‘public’ and ‘audience’. She discuses how these different perspectives blur and intertwine in contemporary political communication, with voters sometimes invoked as citizens and sometimes presented with entertainment spectacles in political discourse. Mark Hayward looks at the development of global television in Italy, specifically the public broadcaster RAI International, in light of the changing nature of political institutions. He links changes in the nature of the State broadcaster, RAI, with changes in national institutions made under the Berlusconi government. Hayward sees these changes as linked to a narrowing conception of citizenship used as a tool for increasingly ethno-centric forms of exclusion. Panizza Allmark considers one response to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London – the “We’re not afraid” Website, where Londoners posted images of life going on “as normal” in the face of the Tube attacks. As Allmark puts it, these photographs “promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defense against the anxiety of terror.” Paradoxically, these “domestic snapshots” work to “arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence”, only ambiguously resolving the impact of the 7 July events. This piece adds to the small but important literature on the relationship between photography, blogging and everyday life. James Arvanitakis’s piece, “The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average” opens out from a consideration of Australia’s Citizenship Test, introduced by the former government, into a typology of citizenship that allows for different versions of citizenship, and understandings of it “as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary”. His typology seeks to open up new spaces for understanding citizenship as a practice, and as a relation to others, communities and the State. Anne Aly and Lelia Green’s piece, “Moderate Islam: Defining the Good Citizen”, thinks through the dilemmas Australian Muslims face in engaging with the broader community, and the heavy mediation of the state in defining the “good”, moderate Muslim identity in the age of terror. Their research is a result of a major project investigating Australian Muslim identity and citizenship, and finds that they are dealt with in media and political discourse through the lens of the “clash” between East and West embodied on the “war on terror”. For them, “religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship.” Alex Burns offers a critical assessment of claims made, and theories advanced about citizen media. He is skeptical about the definitions of citizenship and journalism that underpin optimistic new media theory. He notes the need for future research the reevaluates citizen journalism, and suggests an approach that builds on rich descriptions of journalistic experience, and “practice-based” approaches. Derek Barry’s “Wilde’s Evenings” offers a brief overview of the relationships between citizen journalism, the mainstream media and citizenship, through the lens of recent developments in Australia, and the 2007 Federal election, mentioned earlier in this introduction. As a practitioner and observer, Derek’s focus is on the status of citizen journalism as political activism, and whether the aim of citizen journalism, going forward, should be “payment or empowerment”. Finally, our cover image, by Drew, author of the successful Webcomic toothpastefordinner.com, offers a more sardonic take on the processes of voting and citizenship than we have in our introduction. The Web has not only provided a space for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also for a plethora of brilliant independent comic artists, who not only offer economical, mordant political commentary, but in some ways point the way towards sustainable practices in online independent media. Toothpastefordinner.com is not exclusively focused on political content, but it is flourishing on the basis of giving core content away, and subsisting largely on self-generated merchandise. This is one area for future research in online citizen media to explore.The tension between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of voting, citizenship, and the other apparatuses of liberal democracy will not be going anywhere soon, and nor will the need to “change the country” once in awhile. Meanwhile, the authors and editors of this special edition of M/C Journal hope to have explored these issues in a way that has provoked some further thought and debate among you, as voters, citizens and readers. ReferencesBrett, Judith. “Exit Right.” Quarterly Essay 28 (2008).