Canberra.
The final session at ANZCA 2010 today starts with Libby Lester, whose focus is on online media in the 2010 Tasmanian state elections. She begins by describing the election tally room, at the Hobart casino (!); there tends to be little cross-traffic between the tally room and the rest of the casino. Tallying is still a very traditional process, with updates being made physically on boards, and state and local journalists going about their business, with a few national journalists thrown in. The general public is allowed in to observe the process, but without simultaneous access to broadcast media it is difficult to understand what is happening.
There is also a central space used for interviewing, and the arrival of political leaders is also indicated by the presence of representatives of their (or their opposing) youth organisations making themselves visible as instacrowds. After the election results are confirmed, the space clears out, and a few people move over to the casino bars proper.
But how is this changing with the shift towards online media? What is their impact on the election - in Tasmania, especially in the context of environmental politics? How are issues transferred from the local to the national and transnational, and vice versa? How to different political actors attempt to maximise their influence by utilising the affordances of the Net?
Tasmania is important especially for its environmental politics; Australia's environmental movement has a very strong base here, and Tasmania's concerns and conflicts in this area are regularly carried from the local and state to the national and international stage. The 2010 campaign, called in mid-February by Labor Premier David Bartlett, was no exception; his Labor predecessor had been seen as forestry industry-friendly, but environmental protests as well as the economic crisis have increasingly threatened the future of the industry.
The makeup and mix of leading environmental groups has also changed over time. During the previous election, the Greens Party were demonised and vilified, and in 2010 presented relatively conservative policies to prevent a repeat, but in doing so also alienated some of the more activist environmental groups; after the election, they ended up holding the balance of power.
How did this play out in the mainstream media; how did party Websites operate; what was the role of social media? Social media usage remained relatively subdued; news media coverage of environmental issue remained relatively low-key. Only an ABC Australian Story programme provided some excitement by linking forestry activity and water contamination. This may be explained by how both Liberal and Labor parties did not wish to foreground environmental issues, and how the Greens did not want to be seen as radical environmental activists; actual activists may also have wanted to support the Greens by not appearing overly radical.
Since then, important meetings have been held between peak environmental and forestry industry groups - and again, there have been relatively few reports about this. Perhaps this lack of coverage is what enables these conversations in the first place.
