Big spending on the small screen: Televised party political advertising and the 1980 campaign

Over the last decade television advertising has become a central feature of the campaign strategy of the major Australian political parties. The 1980 federal campaign affords a glimpse of this. During the campaign details of the advertising schedule initially prepared by the Masius agency for the Liberals in Victoria were leaked to the press. These, set alongside similar details of the ALP's Victorian campaign, provide a profile of the place of electronic media‐based marketing in contemporary Australian politics. As details of the purchase of time on commercial radio and television for political advertising provided to the Senate by the Minister for Communications confirm, Liberal advertising in 1980 was far more extensive and expensive.     

Migration,myth and magic in Papua New Guinea

The author examines some of the assumptions, classifications, and techniques that affect the study of migration in specific countries. Using migration in Papua New Guinea as an example, he critically reviews the conventional approaches to the study of migration     

Rich,Wrinkly and Rowdy politicians: Is this how teenagers ‘read’ television news?

Australian legislators have expressed concern about the indifference shown by young Australians toward government (SSCEET 1988, 1991). Those educators who have taken up their call for programmes in ‘active citizenship’ must look closely at what adolescents take from TV news. TV has sometimes been blamed for popular disenchantment with politics. Such arguments have been rejected because TV news shows no anti‐institutional bias, but instead underlines the importance of government However, like any text, the meaning of TV news is polysemic and not fixed by its producers. The interviews on which this article is based show that fifteen and sixteen year olds will decode TV news in ways quite unintended by its authors. They can see suits in which male politicians are shown as signifying their affluence and distance from their own lives, or read into the ages of politicians that politics concerns old people and not them.     

Down by the sea: visual arts,artists and coastal regeneration

This paper takes a critical approach to the arts-led regeneration of Margate, south east England. It argues that regeneration policy has effectively utilised local characteristics to recreate Margate as an artful space, and has stimulated a local milieu of artistic and cultural activity. However, though the work of local artists is vital in producing Margate as a creative place, local artists are marginalised by policy interventions focussed on attracting new consumers and investors. Thus, this paper argues that a misplaced policy emphasis is failing to support the labour and social relations on which the interpretation of places as ‘creative’ is built, and arguably undermines the sustainability of an arts-based regeneration. This has implications for culture-led policy, calling for greater attention to be paid to the specific locations in which it is deployed, and to the networks of producers whose labour is critical to its success.     

Reception of the Easter Rising in British and American little magazines

This article examines the reactions of writers and readers to the Easter Rising in five British and American little magazines. The New Age, The Egoist, The Little Review, The Masses and The Phoenix have been chosen due to their links with Irish writers and culture, and because they were established periodicals that published over several years. Little magazines have been described as counterpublic spheres, in which oppositional opinions could be given voice against the conventional narratives of the mainstream. Though the politics of these journals was extremely divergent, collectively they operated as discursive spaces for a range of alternative voices. The reactions published in these journals give us a sense of the interaction between modernism and the Easter Rising in its immediate aftermath.