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Australia Talks. But Should We Listen?

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The anonymity of the Internet enables a range of ugly behaviour that was unthinkable in the pre-tech world. Cyber-bullying and trolling can be perpetrated by cowards who are ashamed or unwilling to put their name to their comments, but happy to drip-feed poison into cyberspace without consequence. But like so much of technology, there are positives as well as negatives associated with being able to communicate incognito. The anonymity and reach of the Internet presents opportunities in collecting data that…

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Power, politics and social media

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How do the 10 most powerful people in Australia in 2019 use social media? The 2019 AFR Magazine’s Power Issue published on 4 October lists the top 10 most powerful people in the country – six politicians, two regulators, the Chair of the ABC and a tech leader/social activist. Interestingly six of the ten were new to the list this year with Bill Shorten, Kenneth Hayne, Mathias Cormann, Sally McManus, Chris Bowen and Tony Abbott bowing out for Gladys Berejiklian,…

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Disruption was a blast, now to sort out the news

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It was over a decade ago that digital technology companies like Facebook and Google entered the market and blew open the possibilities for content sharing and social networking. The ramifications of this digital disruption on the media have been well documented. We’ve seen new digital publishers, new styles of journalism, new commentators and new advertising opportunities. In terms of the news, there’s more of it, it’s more niche, it’s more targeted and curated, and it’s harder to verify. So, what’s…

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Have we become too literal?

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Idioms. We use them every day. They are phrases or expressions that have a figurative meaning that is different from their literal meaning. ‘Burn the midnight oil’ lately? ‘Hit the sack’ early last night? Talk about the ‘elephant in the room’? These are common idioms. It is estimated that there are at least twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language. The use of figurative language will always have a role in conversation, but what about in the written form?…

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What Happens When Truth Disappears?

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When I was growing up it was easy to understand truth from lies; to distinguish fact from fiction. Truth emanated from the mouths of politicians, priests, sports heroes, policemen, business leaders and the newspapers. We trusted people in uniform and those representing large institutions, both secular and religious. We trusted our scientists and our teachers. We trusted the books in the library and the bloke who lived next door. We knew that some people were prone to exaggeration, but we…

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It’s Not Enough To Be Good

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Community organisations, just like for-profit entities, must actively protect their reputation. Not-for-profit organisations largely spend their time, and resources, “doing good”. It’s easy to think they have less of a need to invest in protecting their reputation when the public feeling toward them is generally favourable. Community organisations consistently rank higher [1] on reputation measures than Australian corporations, even compared with the strongest and most trusted corporate brands like Qantas. Not-for-profit organisations largely spend their time, and resources, “doing good”.…

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Go Draw a Picture

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In a data-led age, presenting easily digestible and interactive content is now more important than ever. A colleague once told me a story about how the statistics professor at his MBA school gave students a set of data and asked them to analyse it for an assignment. They tried everything but most could not find any correlations or insights from the data. A few plotted the data, and the data was an outline of an elephant. The lesson being, always…