Conservative Shift among Liberals and Conservatives Following 9/11/01

Political orientation and political attitudes were measured in two independent adult samples. One sample was taken several months before the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01; the other, shortly after. Liberal and conservative participants alike reported more conservative attitudes following 9/11/01 than before. This conservative shift was strongest on two items with the greatest relevance to 9/11/01: George W. Bush and Increasing Military Spending. Marginally significant conservative shifts were observed on two other items (Conservatives, Socialized Medicine), and the direction of change on eight of eight items was in a conservative direction. These results provide support for the motivated social cognition model of conservatism (Jost et al., 2003) over predictions derived from terror management theory (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1992).     

The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung,the Settlers and the Protectors

The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors . By Bain Attwood (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2017), pp.xiv + 225. AU$29.95 (pb).     

Developing the North,Defending the Nation? The Northern Australia Development Committee, 1945–1949*

The Northern Australia Development Committee (NADC) was established in late 1945 to coordinate the efforts of the Commonwealth, Queensland and Western Australian governments in developing the north of the continent. At the outset, defence considerations were uppermost. However, the NADC soon became entangled in disputes among Commonwealth departments and personalities over the relevance of northern development to national defence. Some — notably the Department of Defence — insisted that northern Australia no longer possessed special strategic significance. Others — notably the Department of External Affairs — argued that northern development must be conceived within a broader geo‐political context. This paper examines the NADC's entanglement in these disputes, and explains how this entanglement contributed crucially to the committee's ineffectualness and early demise.     

Development,foreign aid and post-development in Timor-Leste

Post-development theories have successfully challenged many of the ways in which we think about development but have yet to substantially influence development practice. In this paper I explore what opportunities exist for applying post-development ideas within the current development apparatus of Timor-Leste. Four types of community-focused programmes are analysed: sectoral project-based initiatives, institutional capacity-building programmes, community partnerships and small grants programmes. While alternative opportunities are clearly shown to be present, it is argued that they are rarely realised because of the overwhelming priority to produce better agents of development, rather than those able to pursue ‘alternatives-to-development’. The paper concludes by suggesting that the development apparatus itself may not be inherently faulted; instead this apparatus could be usefully utilised by those inspired by alternative imaginaries to pursue post-development goals.     

From Contest to Content: The Impact of Public Journalism on New Zealand Election Campaign Coverage

Supporters of public journalism hope to reengage citizens with politics and overcome the shortcomings of contemporary political journalism. However, there has been little systematic study of how public journalism differs from mainstream journalism. During the 1996 general election campaign in New Zealand, the first under proportional representation, three newspapers, conscious of the challenges imposed by electoral changes, experimented with public journalism coverage. This presented an opportunity to study how coverage as a whole differed from coverage of the previous elections and what specific changes were the result of public journalism initiatives. The researchers analyzed 1,938 stories from a 12-day sample of the New Zealand general election campaign coverage in 1993 and 1996. A total of seven metropolitan and provincial papers were included. The results showed public journalism articles covered proportionally more policy issues and concentrated less on personality than conventional campaign stories. Public journalism stories also were less negative and more neutral in tone and were more inclined to be ''soft'' news, reflecting a tendency to cover issues rather than events. Public journalism articles also were less likely than conventional coverage to cover the campaign from a ''horse race'' angle. The findings provide support for the utility of public journalism in campaign reporting.