• Kate Crawford, Catharine Lumby
• The Journalism and Media Research Centre (JMRC)

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Image: Andrei Z / flickr

09 May 2011The purpose of this report is to consider the following questions:

• How can Australia position itself to cope with the risks and opportunities presented by our current media environment?
• What principles would guarantee a flexible and balanced 21st century system of media content regulation in an evolving media ecology?
• What challenges lie ahead in adapting existing regulatory approaches to media ‘silos’ - vertically defined media regulation for television, film, newspapers, radio - to a convergent media environment?
• What happens if we consider how content moves ‘horizontally’ - moving between radio and television to podcasts and YouTube, to mobiles and tablet devices?
• What is the role of users in defining our media environment: from flagging problematic content, to shaping platforms, and contributing to media policy?
•  What can Australia learn from international approaches to convergent media content regulation?
• What role should governments, industry and users play in media governance?
• How can we facilitate dialogue between nation-state governments, industry regulation, user communities and international laws?

This report visits these issues in detail through a consideration of the history of online media governance, a comparison of international approaches, a series of case studies that highlight current challenges in managing online content and a consideration of where the regulatory balance should fall between government, industry and user communities. In considering these issues, we acknowledge that the current media environment poses extraordinary new challenges for governments, industry stakeholders and media users. While we canvas a broad range of issues and approaches to managing these challenges, we recognise the complexity of adapting existing regulatory approaches and of ensuring that people are given information and resources to enable them to navigate this new media landscape.

In preparing this report we welcome the announcement of the Federal Government’s Convergence Review by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy. We present our findings as a research-based contribution to this process and its remit: to take a fresh look at Australia’s existing regulatory frameworks with a view to modernising them.

The communications sector in Australia now reaches across an unprecedented array of sectors in the private and public spheres. Communications technologies are the backbone of our health, education, government, finance and culture sectors. The information revolution is critical to Australia’s economic competitiveness and ongoing social and cultural development. Yet, Australia’s laws have not kept up with this technological evolution or with the changes in the diverse modes of media production and consumption.

Image: Andrei Z / flickr