Remote rural Australians on the wrong side of the digital divide. And it’s not so much about distance.
Plans during 2008 for super-fast broadband services excluded two percent of Australia. A year later, the proportion had risen to 10 percent in “remote” and “very remote” regions. Communications researcher Lelia Green reported this challenge in a recent article in the journal, Culture Unbound .
Her historical analysis also examined perspectives of rural Western Australians when the telephone, broadcast radio, two-way radio, and satellite were introduced. Findings suggested that while these remote residents were keen to gain access through new communications technologies they did not imagine such services so much in terms of “dispelling of distance.” Instead, they imagined them in terms of equity and interconnections. Those challenges remain as the National Broadband Network takes shape, she concluded.
You can read the article, “Imagining rural audiences in remote Western Australia,” at: http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v2/a09/cu10v2a09.pdf
New issue of JAC available online
Concerned about assuring the integrity of online public research reporting? Interested in website design, use of social media by farm organizations, sources of information about agroterrorism, or competencies needed by future agricultural communicators?
You can read four research reports, a commentary, and two book reviews in the new issue of the Journal of Applied Communications . This open-access journal is published by the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE).
Read Issue 2 of Volume 96 at: http://journalofappliedcommunications.org .
Promising ITs for use in agricultural and environmental sciences.
Writing in a 2012 issue of Agricultural Informatics/Agrárinformatika , Rȯbert Szilágyi suggested several information technologies he considers promising. Among them:
- Cloud computing “provides equality in resources management and exploitability.”
- Parallel computing “brings exponentially increased core processing to low-end computers facilitating the use of huge computer power by small agricultural research units.”
- Mobile internet can implement e-government service “as a cost effective and technical interoperable solution, by providing open sources.”
- On-farm sensor networks “provide remote, real-time monitoring of important farming operations.”
- Mobile broadband “is among the areas where growing revenues are expected.”
You can read more about these and other possibilities at: http://journal.magisz.org/index.php/jai/article/view/77
Losing the language of Nature .
“What does it say about Western industrialized society when the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has omitted words of historical significance pertaining to Nature and culture…?”
That question came from Chris Maser and Carol A. Pollio, authors of a new edition of Resolving Environmental Conflicts , which we are including in ACDC. They listed 107 nature-oriented words that were deleted from the latest edition, ranging from acorn, adder, almond, and apricot through turnip, vine, violet, walnut, weasel, willow, and wren. Yes, and deletions included animal words such as boar, colt, piglet, and poultry.
Authors observed that, “as a global society, we are slowly making ourselves blind to our relationships with one another, the universe, and ourselves—which is augmented by Nature deficit disorder in the children of today.”
You can read more about the book, including several reviews, at the lead author’s website: http://www.chrismaser.com/bk-conflict.htm
Please get in touch with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in scouting for content that fits your interests.
Meet Olivia Harris, newest addition to the ACDC staff.
Olivia is a sophomore in agricultural communications here at the University of Illinois. Within the program, she has chosen to pursue a news-editorial concentration as she feels writing is one of her stronger skills. Her favorite topics to communicate are environmental issues, whether it is the link between agriculture and the environment or controversy about atmospheric science. She is passionate about being a good steward of the planet.
On campus, Olivia is an officer in Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT) and copy editor for the Green Observer , a student-run publication about environmental issues. We welcome her as part-time student assistant in the Center, helping process materials and provide information services.
Announcing the new ACDC online search system
Your online searches for documents in the ACDC collection are now easier than ever, thanks to a new web-based search system developed by the University of Illinois Library. BibLeaves went online September 10, with ACDC as the pioneer collection it serves. You will find simpler, more robust service when you click on “Document Search” from the ACDC home page. Here are a few of the features we think you will find helpful:
- Simply enter author, title, keyword(s), or year into the single entry box.
- Search by which format you desire (e.g., books, journal articles).
- Sort any search result (e.g., from “farm journals”) by relevance, year, author or title.
- Identify named collections of interest to you (e.g., Harold Swanson Collection).
- Forward citations by email or SMS
Want to get acquainted with BibLeaves now? Click here .
Find us on Twitter
ACDC team members are proud to announce our first foray into new social media endeavors: a twitter account ! Please feel free to tweet at us @ACDCUIUC (all caps) and make sure to follow us as we keep you posted on agricultural communications news and events, and happenings at the Center and in the agricultural communications community.
If you have any suggestions for whom we should follow, or if you would like us to follow your account, please feel free to tweet your suggestions, or email them to docctr@library.illinois.edu .
Communicator activities approaching
- September 20-23, 2012
Annual conference of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation (CFWF) in Winnipeg, Canada. A celebration of soil and water, the building blocks of agriculture. Information: http://cfwf2012.com - September 25-26, 2012
“Fertile ground, forward thinking.” Fall conference of the National Agricultural Marketing Association (NAMA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA. Information: http://www.nama.org - September 27-28, 2012
Human Choice and Computers International Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. An initiative within the International Federation of Information Processing. Sustainable and responsible innovation, citizen rights and involvement, and implications of social media are among the topics to be covered. Information: http://ifiptc9.csir.co.za/conference.html - October 15, 2012
Deadline for research and professional papers to be presented in the Agricultural Communications Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) meeting, February 2-5, 2013, at Orlando, Florida USA. Information: Frankie Gould at FGould@agcenter.lus.edu or 225-578-5679. - October 17-21, 2012
“Big land. Big sky. Big issues.” Annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) in Lubbock, Texas USA. Information: http://www.sej.org - October 23-24, 2012
Food Integrity Summit in Chicago, Illinois USA. A forum on ethics, values and trust, giving food system stakeholders opportunity to address the fundamental challenge of building trust in today’s food. Strategic partners: International Food Information Council and National Restaurant Association. Information: http://www.foodintegrity.org/events/2012-summit - October 24, 2012
Food and Agriculture Messaging Summit: Creating Movements and Taking Action. A supplemental seminar about putting food-related research into action, Chicago, Illinois USA. Hosts: U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, Center for Food Integrity, and International Food Information Council. Information: http://www.fooddialogues.com/usfra-research-summit - November 2, 2012
Deadline for research posters and innovative-idea posters to be presented in the Agricultural Communications Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) meeting, February 2-5, 2013, in Orlando, Florida USA. Information: Prof. Chris Morgan at acm@uga.edu or 706-542-7102. - November 7-9, 2012
“Our rich heritage: A bridge to the future.” Annual meeting of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://www.nafb.com - November 26, 2012
Deadline for submitting papers for the 12 th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, May 19-22, 2-013. Organized by Working Group 9.4 of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP). Information: http://www.ifipwg94.org/ifip-conference-2013
Honored for concise writing.
We close this issue of ACDC News with impressive results of an entomology writing contest. The sponsoring newspaper offered a prize for the shortest poem that could be written on “The Antiquity of the Cootie.” The prize winner was:
Adam
Had ’em.
Best wishes and good searching.
Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu
2012-09-12