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But the media element of financialisation has received little scholarly attention particularly in local, Australian contexts and their connectedness to wider global practices and relations. Given the importance of finance within contemporary media environments this is a surprising gap and indicates considerable scope and need for ongoing research. To understand this development we need to trace how populations have been equipped—educated—with a finance literacy that makes the ethos and affiliations of finance culture ‘common sense’, enabling the formation and exploitation of ‘human’ and ‘social’ capital, and changing existing and possible relations of mutuality. The historical and economic phenomenon of financialisation (a growth regime organised around increase in equity, or ‘shareholder value’) has emerged as a key shaping factor in Australia, and in many other countries.
The project examines the very different formations of finance literacy and considers its significance. This entails identifying: what has gone to air; relevant broadcast organisation policies and rationales; estimated audiences; related print media material; and patterns of program characteristics (discourses, sources, agency, narrativisation and characterisation, modes of address). Program tapes are being sourced from educational archive sources, and from the broadcast organisations through access to their archives. In addition in-depth group interviews will be used to collect data directly from the population group.
This history will provide a basis for informed description and analysis of the formation of widespread finance literacy. A study of current audience sense-making of broadcast finance programming will provide knowledge of the kind and weight of significance audiences are likely to attach to finance programming.
Researchers working in this field include Cathy Greenfield
and Peter Williams.
Current Projects
Funding Body:
RMIT University
Description
This project concerns the role of media in ‘financialisation’, understood as the composite of practices involved in making finance central to present-day capitalism, and extending upon the theme of ‘communication’. A focus on financialisation deters us from seeing this state of affairs as natural or inevitable, and focuses attention on how financial capital is empowered to the extent that its corporate organisations, rather than national governments or international bodies, seem to be the key locus of decision-making and action. Financialisation entails a range of elements (including neo-liberal economic doctrines, deregulation policies, the rise of pension funds or superannuation, and changes in information and communication technology) which have received scholarly attention.
But the media element of financialisation has received little scholarly attention particularly in local, Australian contexts and their connectedness to wider global practices and relations. Given the importance of finance within contemporary media environments this is a surprising gap and indicates considerable scope and need for ongoing research. To understand this development we need to trace how populations have been equipped—educated—with a finance literacy that makes the ethos and affiliations of finance culture ‘common sense’, enabling the formation and exploitation of ‘human’ and ‘social’ capital, and changing existing and possible relations of mutuality. The historical and economic phenomenon of financialisation (a growth regime organised around increase in equity, or ‘shareholder value’) has emerged as a key shaping factor in Australia, and in many other countries.
To date, several papers have been published on the late twentieth-century rise of finance culture in Australia. Broadcast media has been a focus and is dealt with in a forthcoming article “Financialisation, finance rationality, and the role of media in Australia” in Media Culture & Society 29 (2) 2007. The article begins the work of constructing a genealogy of the currency of finance rationality by considering archival televisual material, programming patterns, discourses and modes of address.
Current work involves the completion of a database of Australian print finance journalism providing snapshots from 1971, 1981, 1991 to 2001. Overtime, especially since the early 1970s, there has been a change in the volume and nature of journalism pertaining to finance in Australia. This has both matched and contributed to the burgeoning finance sector as the dominant sector of the Australian economy in its global interrelations. A longitudinal study of Murdoch and Fairfax newspapers aims to describe and analyse the historical, economic and cultural shifts of such journalism as it contributes to financialisation and an increasingly dominant finance culture.
A monograph is planned which will explore how financial markets, their practitioners and their reportage in a range of media have come to operate with and circulate particular economic knowledges and thus set social, cultural and economic agendas within Australia. This work is undertaken with Professor Dick Bryan (Economics, University of Sydney) who has written widely on global integration and national economic policy.
One focus within this work is the emergence and consolidation of market populism—the alignment of ‘the market’ and ‘the people’. Future work will consider this as one major variant of populist rationality within Australia, and as part of description and analysis of the generally neglected relations between media, business, organisational culture and politics. The broader aim of this work is to further knowledge contributing to sustainable—that is, viable and democratic—social, economic and cultural futures.
Completed Projects
C2C System: An Integrated Book Production Project
Funding body:
Department of Industry, Science and Resources, through the Infrastructure and Industry Growth Fund, Book Production Enhanced Printing Industry Competitiveness Scheme Grants
Collaborating Researchers:
Globalism Institute, RMIT Art, Design and Communication, RMIT Business, Faculty of Education, Languages and Community Services (FELCS), and Common Ground
Description
The C2C (Creator to Consumer in the Digital Age) research project has attracted approximately $1.7 million in research funding to RMIT in 2001-2002. The project has involved a large number of RMIT researchers as well as external joint venture collaborators. The research has produced a series of books comprehensively covering a broad range of technological, market and cultural issues affecting the publishing industry. Commentary internationally and in Australia has recognised this as perhaps the most comprehensive and forward thinking body of knowledge on the impact of the digital publishing revolution in recent years anywhere in the world. The Globalism Institute has been involved in different aspects of the research. This includes research and editing of the publications listed below.
• Cope, B. and Mason D. (eds) Creator to Consumer in a Digital Age: Book
Production in Transition
• Cope, B. and Gollings, G. (eds) Print and Electronic Text Convergence
Multilingual Book Production
• Cope, B. and Mason, D. (eds) Digital Book Production and Supply Chain
Management
• Cope, B. and Freeman, R. (eds) Digital Rights Management and Content
Development
• Cope B. and Mason D (eds) New Markets for Printed Books
• Cope B. and Mason D (eds) Markets for Electronic Book Products
• Cope, B and Ziguras C (eds) The International Publishing Services Market
• Cope B and Brown, R. (eds) Value Chain Clustering in Regional Publishing
Service Markets
• Cope, B. and Freeman, R. (eds) Developing Knowledge Workers in the
Printing and Publishing Industries
• Cope, B and Gollings, G. (eds) Multilingual Book Production
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