Digital Commons Network^™

The Human Green Office Experience: Happy And Healthy Or Sick And Frustrated?, Lynne Armitage, Ann Murugan

Lynne Armitage

Adopting the proposition that the effect on people using, interacting or working in a ‘green’ workplace environment is not currently clear nor fully understood, the purpose of this research is to examine what the green workplace environment is like from the perspective of one of this sub group – the users’/employees’– especially when it comes to satisfaction levels and health outcomes. This study examines and compares responses between employees in green and in non-green workplace environments in order to determine if a gap exists between the satisfaction and health levels of these two groups. The survey covers 351 employee respondents …

"Fourth World" Values In A Spanish-Language Newspaper Serving An Immigrant Community, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

This study operationalized the Four Worlds model for mass media values in a new context — that of a foreign-language newspaper serving a recent-immigrant community within a First World society, namely a Hispanic community in central Arkansas, in the United States. The study established baseline representations of previously described “First World” and “Fourth World” values in a mainstream central Arkansas newspaper, and in Cherokee and Koori newspapers. The study speculated that the central Arkansas Hispanic community exists with a measure of physical and cultural separation from mainstream society — arising from informal barriers such as socioecomomic status, residential neighborhoods, language, …

Deterring The ‘Boat People’: Explaining The Australian Government's People Swap Response To Asylum Seekers, Jaffa Mckenzie, Reza Hasmath

Reza Hasmath

Recommendations For Australia’S Implementation Of The National Emergency Warning System Using Location-Based Services, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas

Professor Katina Michael

Mobile alerts, notifications and location-based emergency warning systems are now an established part of mobile government strategies in an increasing number of countries worldwide. In Australia the national emergency warning system (NEWS) was instituted after the tragic Black Saturday Victorian Bushfires of February 2009. In the first phase, NEWS has enabled the provision of public information from the government to the citizen during emergencies anywhere and any time. Moving on from traditional short message service (SMS) notifications and cell broadcasting to more advanced location-based services, this paper provides executive-level recommendations about the viability of location-based mobile phone services in NEWS …

Well-Being And Its Discontents: A Critique Of Hamilton And Dennis’ Affluenza, Richard Hil, Grant Cairncross

Grant Cairncross

This article develops a critique of Hamilton and Dennis's book Affluenza. In recognising many of the strengths of the book in terms of its focus on Australia's consumerist culture, the article nonetheless outlines a range of significant shortcomings in its argument, not least the tendency to overstate the prevalence of consumerist values, the narrow interpretation of what constitutes 'consumerism', the flawed assumptions over marketing, savings and 'downsizing', and the range of culturally loaded assumptions that underpin the text. In asserting that affluence rather than poverty is the main issue in Australia, Hamilton and Dennis tend to sweep aside deep and …

Connecting Diversity: Paradoxes Of Multicultural Australia, Ien Ang, Jeffrey E. Brand, Greg Noble, Jason Sternberg

Jeffrey Brand

Commissioned by SBS, and published in March 2006, Connecting Diversity: Paradoxes of Multicultural Australia is a follow-up study to SBS’s 2002 report, Living Diversity: Australia’s Multicultural Future. The attitudes of many younger Australians from culturally diverse backgrounds reveal paradoxes about Australian multiculturalism today. This report sheds light on their views, experiences and expectations and the role of media in their lives. Younger, culturally and linguistically diverse Australians are often the subject of mediafanned controversy about disaffection, ‘ethnic gangs’ and cultural isolation. While these controversies tend to be localised – Cronulla, Inala or Bankstown – Connecting Diversity tells a national and …

Living Diversity: Australia’S Multicultural Future, Ien Ang, Jeffrey E. Brand, Greg Noble, Derek Wilding

Jeffrey Brand

In 2002, SBS commissioned research into trends in multicultural Australia. This study gives us a glimpse of the ‘diversity within diversity’of Australians’engagement with multiculturalism, their senses of identity and belonging, the ways in which they engage with others of different backgrounds, and their uses of media in a multicultural society. The overall picture is one of a fluid, plural and complex society, with a majority of the population positively accepting of the cultural diversity that is an increasingly routine part of Australian life, although a third is still uncertain or ambivalent about cultural diversity. In practice, most Australians, from whatever …