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The Quoroom
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Is the Australian community served well by its media? |
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Written by sozzled™
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Sunday, 13 November 2011 08:18 |
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The independent inquiry into the Australian media is looking at a range of issues affecting how the media operates in this country. Australian Labor politicians' complaints about the Murdoch-owned media are, of course, a constant source of news. They are, perhaps too, an expression of fears regarding the disproportionate influence of News Limited (owned by Rupert Murdoch) in how news and information are presented to the Australian public via its newspapers and other media holdings.
Whatever your view, we should question the sincerity of the media in presenting information to the public and whether opinions expressed by journalists are an abuse of the power of the press and actually constitute an attack on Australian democracy.
This is a huge subject, and I will only touch on a few aspects of it, but I hope to show that there are clear indications of undue influence by the Australian media on the way we think and how we exercise our democratic rights. I've addressed this topic in the outline below:
- A comparison between the media in Australia and overseas
- Is Australia truly a democracy? What are the threats to Australia remaining a free, enlightened democracy?
- The War on Democracy
- Freedom of the press vs "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
- Is socialism bad? Is conservatism good? What's all the kerfuffle about anyway?
On the whole I think Australia's media is of a better quality than what we've seen first-hand elsewhere but I'm concerned that, unless we keep an eye on our media, Australia could find itself in as bad a situation as what we're seeing elsewhere around the world.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 19 November 2011 22:41 |
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The Quoroom reborn/relaunched |
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Written by sozzled™
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Tuesday, 08 November 2011 06:55 |
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It has been nearly three years since this site was created and a lot has happened in that time. It was always my original intention to get the site up-and-running quickly and, sometime later, concentrate on what worked and to eliminate things that got in the way. The one constant in life is that everything changes; priorities change and people's needs also change. The intention, however, is the same: the site should exist where like-minded people could meet, with the idea of cultivating a multinational mix of thinkers and "'bloggers"; a bit of something for everyone with uncluttered, searchable and easy-to-navigate message boards, help for first-timers to old-timers, and where opinions could be shared and and real discussions would take place.
In the past few years we've witnessed a social revolution as a consequence of the emergence of web-based successes like Facebook, Twitter ... as well as disasters like My Spaces and Google Plus. It's become established fact that these things are now interwoven into the very fabric of everyday life. But, even though Facebook may have become the agent of change that affects how millions of people, businesses and organisations around the world today operate with one another it does not fulfill the need for people to express themselves in more rich, meaningful or relevant ways.
What does this say about The Quoroom and the role it might be able to play in how people, separated by time and distance, can interact with one another? For me - and in some ways it's my dissatisfaction with Facebook because I don't find it comes close to a fair description of "deep and meaningful" - I need something else. As I wrote earlier, with the passing of time, our needs change and evolve.
But, even though I like to spent hours at the computer, pondering questions about "life, the universe, everything", or keeping my technical skills up-to-date through my web-related hobbies, I have the same basic human need as everyone else. My skills and hobbies notwithstanding, I seek to find ways of reaching out and interacting with the community without the constraints of technology, age group or mind set. It's with this objective that I have some hopes to achieve some measure of success with The Quoroom an interactive and interacting community.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 19 November 2011 21:13 |
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