Michael J Bourk | Gulf University for Science and Technology (original) (raw)
Papers by Michael J Bourk
Media International Australia, 2021
Social media are prominent channels to foster the social debate about climate change. This resear... more Social media are prominent channels to foster the social debate about climate change. This research explores the strategies that institutions supporting scientific consensus on climate change undertake in order to communicate through social media. We conducted 21 semistructured interviews with community managers and communication directors of organizations of different characteristics in several countries. From the responses we have identified strategies that are based on communicators' perceptions and experience. We identified strategies that: (a) orientate the communication objectives, (b) help to approach citizens in an effective way, and (c) create interaction with the users. This provides a repertoire of well-grounded strategies that can work as a guide that may help organizations to design their actions to communicate climate change through social media. We conclude that including higher levels of interaction in social media strategies remains a challenge that could lead to a more effective social debate on climate change.
Communicating Science and Technology Through Online Video, 2018
Environmental Education Research, Jan 8, 2016
We used a modified circuit of culture enquiry to explore processes of production, representation ... more We used a modified circuit of culture enquiry to explore processes of production, representation and consumption of global perspective at our university, in the context of fostering this perspective as a graduate attribute. We identified four frame packages by which this perspective is understood and communicated. Global perspective is framed within our institution simultaneously as essentially cooperative and as competitive. We express concern about how such complexity is fostered in our students. We ask our colleagues and university teachers internationally to critically reflect upon the diversity of global perspectives extant within higher education and potentially to clarify their intentions as university teachers.
The Australian Journalism Review, Aug 1, 2000
Abstract What are the factors that determine the pattern of international news coverage in the Au... more Abstract What are the factors that determine the pattern of international news coverage in the Australian media? This paper addresses this question via a detailed analysis of international news over two one-week periods in The Australiari, The Sydney Morning Herald and the ...
Environmental Communication-a Journal of Nature and Culture, Oct 1, 2015
Climate change presents scientists, politicians, and media producers with a challenge of articula... more Climate change presents scientists, politicians, and media producers with a challenge of articulating to diverse stakeholders both the complexity of issues and the urgency of action. Analyses of how climate change is represented and constructed in broadcast media are useful to capture a reflection of contemporary values. We use an analysis of news frames and production values as well as a limited "circuit of culture" approach to explore climate change communication as both a news product and cultural phenomenon. Our focus is New Zealand, a country which ratified the Kyoto agreement but which is currently noncompliant. Using qualitative framing analysis and in-depth interviews with leading media producers, politicians, and scientists, we examine how climate change is produced, represented, and consumed by New Zealanders via their broadcast media.
Media International Australia, Nov 1, 2011
The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 brought widespread loss of life and destruction to most of the coa... more The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 brought widespread loss of life and destruction to most of the coastal communities of Sri Lanka. Communities attempting to make sense of the natural disaster and subsequent destruction struggle to describe such unusual and cataclysmic events, which can transform benign physical local environments into disaster zones. Natural disasters force people to rethink the relationship between culture and nature, often using the bricolage of available signs and concepts. This case study uses data from Sri Lankan English-language newspapers, in-depth interviews and a focus group to identify prominent themes in the recollections of the tsunami and its aftermath. Four themes are drawn primarily from oral narratives of a small coastal community near Galle in the south: monster and monsterisation of victims; metaphysical reciprocity; reconsideration of mythical events; and unique corporeality. Arguably, these themes resonate to varying degrees with descriptive and explanatory force to facilitate psychological recovery for those affected. The findings suggest that communities affected by natural disasters make sense of traumatic events through descriptions and narratives that give symbolic and/or ideological agency to events in an effort to rationalise them and restore order to people's lives and place in the universe. On 26 December 2004 at approximately 8.40 a.m., a wave surge between 5 and 6.5 metres struck the northern, eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka around a hundred minutes after a major earthquake rocked the coast off Sumatra. A second wave struck approximately 20 minutes later. Official records of the human and ecological impact from the tragedy identify 30,527 deaths, 3884 missing, 15,686 injured and 773,636 displaced; the tsunami damaged nearly two-thirds of Sri Lanka's coastline-over a thousand kilometres (Department of Census and Statistics, 2005). Both waves travelled up to 3 kilometres inland in parts. The tsunamis came without warning at a time when most were enjoying the combined holiday festivities associated with Christian and Buddhist sacred days. Apart from the Christmas season, it was also a Poya day, a time of spiritual significance and celebration to Buddhists across the nation. The purpose of the study is primarily to explore and analyse the personal narratives of those affected by a natural event that caused significant devastation to their community years earlier, and to compare them with the media narratives at the time. The findings contribute to an understanding of 'cosmology episodes', which challenge the perception that the universe is a 'rational, orderly system' (Weick, cited in 'A Makara-like wAve cAMe crAshing': sri lAnkAn nArrAtives of the Boxing DAy tsunAMi
Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2018
Media International Australia, May 1, 2010
This article discusses the influence of sociolinguistic structures such as metaphors and narrativ... more This article discusses the influence of sociolinguistic structures such as metaphors and narratives as organising cognitive frames on telecommunication policy, its representation in the media and other public documents. In particular, it identifies the tension between competing narratives of national development and competition in the public debates and official records of the 1996 Review of Standard Telephone Service. The article argues that metaphors and narratives perform similar but distinctive persuasive and formative functions that extend beyond mere description. Collectively, they influence not only what we think of telecommunication technology and associated policy but how we imagine alternative policy scenarios and future technological innovation.
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Apr 3, 2018
By examining a news story and reader responses published in the Daily Mail Online (DMO), our stud... more By examining a news story and reader responses published in the Daily Mail Online (DMO), our study discursively argues that this daily newspaper promotes an Orientalist perception of Islam and Muslims. The religion and its adherents are both framed and perceived as a threat to British society and its "Western values", thus reinforcing Islamophobia within society. This study also argues that the DMO espouses the perceived Orientalist threat posed by Islam through juxtaposition, exaggeration and manipulation of facts, through lexical choices and visual images that eventually establishes the perception of a cultural clash. In addition, by examining the readers' responses toward the news story, this study demonstrates that the vast majority of respondents perceive Islam and Muslims as a threat to "the West". Their comments, as triggered by the text, also contribute to the discourse of Islamophobia and the perceived Orientalist view of an Islamic threat. Shah Nister Kabir holds a Ph.D. in journalism from University of Otago, New Zealand and an M.Phil. from the University of Queensland, Australia. He teaches Mass Communication and Journalism at the Jagannath University, Bangladesh. His major research interests focus on the "Othering process" of social groups in the media and in the areas of culture and politics, geopolitics, minority affairs and the Middle East. He has published widely in scholarly journals. Sharifah Nurul Huda Alkaff is currently the Deputy Dean of Graduate Studies & Research and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She holds a Ph.D. in education and her research interests are in media discourse, language and gender. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a research grant that investigates media texts in Malay and English in Malaysia and
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Sep 1, 2012
This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse how New Zealand mainstream newspa... more This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse how New Zealand mainstream newspapers represent Islamic identity and Muslim communities. Events reported between October 2005 and September 2006 by three broadsheet metropolitan dailies are analysed to identify prominent news themes and how Muslims are socially constructed. In particular, four events occurring across the period are analysed with a view to comparing the texts with other studies that argue Muslims are constructed in Orientalist terms as dangerous others. The Bali bomb incident, London bomb scare at Heathrow Airport, Middle East conflict, and Iranian Nuclear issue represent prominent news stories that allow the identification of stereotypes and negative depictions, which reinforce Orientalism. The findings suggest a disparity in some newspapers in the sample between hard news and editorials. Although hard news appears to reinforce Orientalist representation of Muslims, the editorials adopt a more liberal pluralist construction of Islamic identity and issues.
Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, May 1, 2012
Review(s) of: Media mergers and the defence of pluralism, by Hulten, O., Tjernstrom, S. and Meles... more Review(s) of: Media mergers and the defence of pluralism, by Hulten, O., Tjernstrom, S. and Melesko, S. (eds),
The Australian journal of emergency management, Apr 1, 2014
This paper discusses some of the challenges faced by key agencies involved in public information ... more This paper discusses some of the challenges faced by key agencies involved in public information management after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The study analysed data collected from published documents and in-depth semi-structured interviews with senior managers and key personnel within government and a citizen journalist who launched the Christchurch Recovery Map. Metaphor is used as a way of conceptualising the constraints faced by state agencies and consideration is given to the features and possibilities of an alternative approach to imagining bureaucratic spaces in times of national emergency.
Sustainability, Aug 26, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Media International Australia, May 1, 2012
Policy quarterly, Feb 1, 2012
MEDIANZ: Media Studies Journal of Aotearoa New Zealand, Apr 8, 2016
Her primary research interests include media reporting and public understandings of health and ri... more Her primary research interests include media reporting and public understandings of health and risk issues. Warwick Blood is Emeritus Professor at the University of Canberra. His primary research interests are risk communication, and he has published widely on the reporting of health issues such as suicide, mental illness, and influenza.
Media International Australia, Aug 1, 2000
In Australia, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) operates as a legislative mechanism that gua... more In Australia, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) operates as a legislative mechanism that guarantees the right of all Australians to access a standard telephone service wherever they reside. In 1997, special provisions for people with severe hearing impairment were added to telecommunication legislation. The Telecommunications Act 1997 included a specific reference to teletypewriters (TTYs), including them as an addition to the definition of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) as the result of the outcome from a public inquiry held in 1995. The inquiry, subsequently referred to as Scott v. Telstra, is a case study illustrating the collision of two separate pieces of federal legislation and the paradigms that formed them. Furthermore, both the inquiry and subsequent revision of definitions of a standard telephone service illustrate the complexity of planning telecommunication policy for equitable social outcomes. Specifically, further questions are raised surrounding the role of universal service in changing technological and competitive environments.
Public Understanding of Science, Jul 30, 2020
Society is undergoing a transformation in the way people consume media: increasingly we are using... more Society is undergoing a transformation in the way people consume media: increasingly we are using online on-demand videos, with the fastest growing segment of online videos about science being user-generated content that uses an infotainment style of delivery, in contrast to the traditional expository narrations of professionally generated content. In this study, we produced two otherwise identical videos about climate change to test the effects of an infotainment or expository narration. A total of 870 survey participants (419 English; 451 Spanish) were randomly presented with either an infotainment or expository version of the video. The expository narration was liked and believed more, and this held irrespective of language, age, sex or online viewing habits. However, the infotainment version was liked more by viewers without a university education and, further, viewers were better able to recall information from it, suggesting that user-generated content with infotainment-style narrations may actually be good for increasing public understanding of science.
Media International Australia, 2021
Social media are prominent channels to foster the social debate about climate change. This resear... more Social media are prominent channels to foster the social debate about climate change. This research explores the strategies that institutions supporting scientific consensus on climate change undertake in order to communicate through social media. We conducted 21 semistructured interviews with community managers and communication directors of organizations of different characteristics in several countries. From the responses we have identified strategies that are based on communicators' perceptions and experience. We identified strategies that: (a) orientate the communication objectives, (b) help to approach citizens in an effective way, and (c) create interaction with the users. This provides a repertoire of well-grounded strategies that can work as a guide that may help organizations to design their actions to communicate climate change through social media. We conclude that including higher levels of interaction in social media strategies remains a challenge that could lead to a more effective social debate on climate change.
Communicating Science and Technology Through Online Video, 2018
Environmental Education Research, Jan 8, 2016
We used a modified circuit of culture enquiry to explore processes of production, representation ... more We used a modified circuit of culture enquiry to explore processes of production, representation and consumption of global perspective at our university, in the context of fostering this perspective as a graduate attribute. We identified four frame packages by which this perspective is understood and communicated. Global perspective is framed within our institution simultaneously as essentially cooperative and as competitive. We express concern about how such complexity is fostered in our students. We ask our colleagues and university teachers internationally to critically reflect upon the diversity of global perspectives extant within higher education and potentially to clarify their intentions as university teachers.
The Australian Journalism Review, Aug 1, 2000
Abstract What are the factors that determine the pattern of international news coverage in the Au... more Abstract What are the factors that determine the pattern of international news coverage in the Australian media? This paper addresses this question via a detailed analysis of international news over two one-week periods in The Australiari, The Sydney Morning Herald and the ...
Environmental Communication-a Journal of Nature and Culture, Oct 1, 2015
Climate change presents scientists, politicians, and media producers with a challenge of articula... more Climate change presents scientists, politicians, and media producers with a challenge of articulating to diverse stakeholders both the complexity of issues and the urgency of action. Analyses of how climate change is represented and constructed in broadcast media are useful to capture a reflection of contemporary values. We use an analysis of news frames and production values as well as a limited "circuit of culture" approach to explore climate change communication as both a news product and cultural phenomenon. Our focus is New Zealand, a country which ratified the Kyoto agreement but which is currently noncompliant. Using qualitative framing analysis and in-depth interviews with leading media producers, politicians, and scientists, we examine how climate change is produced, represented, and consumed by New Zealanders via their broadcast media.
Media International Australia, Nov 1, 2011
The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 brought widespread loss of life and destruction to most of the coa... more The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 brought widespread loss of life and destruction to most of the coastal communities of Sri Lanka. Communities attempting to make sense of the natural disaster and subsequent destruction struggle to describe such unusual and cataclysmic events, which can transform benign physical local environments into disaster zones. Natural disasters force people to rethink the relationship between culture and nature, often using the bricolage of available signs and concepts. This case study uses data from Sri Lankan English-language newspapers, in-depth interviews and a focus group to identify prominent themes in the recollections of the tsunami and its aftermath. Four themes are drawn primarily from oral narratives of a small coastal community near Galle in the south: monster and monsterisation of victims; metaphysical reciprocity; reconsideration of mythical events; and unique corporeality. Arguably, these themes resonate to varying degrees with descriptive and explanatory force to facilitate psychological recovery for those affected. The findings suggest that communities affected by natural disasters make sense of traumatic events through descriptions and narratives that give symbolic and/or ideological agency to events in an effort to rationalise them and restore order to people's lives and place in the universe. On 26 December 2004 at approximately 8.40 a.m., a wave surge between 5 and 6.5 metres struck the northern, eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka around a hundred minutes after a major earthquake rocked the coast off Sumatra. A second wave struck approximately 20 minutes later. Official records of the human and ecological impact from the tragedy identify 30,527 deaths, 3884 missing, 15,686 injured and 773,636 displaced; the tsunami damaged nearly two-thirds of Sri Lanka's coastline-over a thousand kilometres (Department of Census and Statistics, 2005). Both waves travelled up to 3 kilometres inland in parts. The tsunamis came without warning at a time when most were enjoying the combined holiday festivities associated with Christian and Buddhist sacred days. Apart from the Christmas season, it was also a Poya day, a time of spiritual significance and celebration to Buddhists across the nation. The purpose of the study is primarily to explore and analyse the personal narratives of those affected by a natural event that caused significant devastation to their community years earlier, and to compare them with the media narratives at the time. The findings contribute to an understanding of 'cosmology episodes', which challenge the perception that the universe is a 'rational, orderly system' (Weick, cited in 'A Makara-like wAve cAMe crAshing': sri lAnkAn nArrAtives of the Boxing DAy tsunAMi
Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2018
Media International Australia, May 1, 2010
This article discusses the influence of sociolinguistic structures such as metaphors and narrativ... more This article discusses the influence of sociolinguistic structures such as metaphors and narratives as organising cognitive frames on telecommunication policy, its representation in the media and other public documents. In particular, it identifies the tension between competing narratives of national development and competition in the public debates and official records of the 1996 Review of Standard Telephone Service. The article argues that metaphors and narratives perform similar but distinctive persuasive and formative functions that extend beyond mere description. Collectively, they influence not only what we think of telecommunication technology and associated policy but how we imagine alternative policy scenarios and future technological innovation.
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Apr 3, 2018
By examining a news story and reader responses published in the Daily Mail Online (DMO), our stud... more By examining a news story and reader responses published in the Daily Mail Online (DMO), our study discursively argues that this daily newspaper promotes an Orientalist perception of Islam and Muslims. The religion and its adherents are both framed and perceived as a threat to British society and its "Western values", thus reinforcing Islamophobia within society. This study also argues that the DMO espouses the perceived Orientalist threat posed by Islam through juxtaposition, exaggeration and manipulation of facts, through lexical choices and visual images that eventually establishes the perception of a cultural clash. In addition, by examining the readers' responses toward the news story, this study demonstrates that the vast majority of respondents perceive Islam and Muslims as a threat to "the West". Their comments, as triggered by the text, also contribute to the discourse of Islamophobia and the perceived Orientalist view of an Islamic threat. Shah Nister Kabir holds a Ph.D. in journalism from University of Otago, New Zealand and an M.Phil. from the University of Queensland, Australia. He teaches Mass Communication and Journalism at the Jagannath University, Bangladesh. His major research interests focus on the "Othering process" of social groups in the media and in the areas of culture and politics, geopolitics, minority affairs and the Middle East. He has published widely in scholarly journals. Sharifah Nurul Huda Alkaff is currently the Deputy Dean of Graduate Studies & Research and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She holds a Ph.D. in education and her research interests are in media discourse, language and gender. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a research grant that investigates media texts in Malay and English in Malaysia and
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Sep 1, 2012
This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse how New Zealand mainstream newspa... more This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse how New Zealand mainstream newspapers represent Islamic identity and Muslim communities. Events reported between October 2005 and September 2006 by three broadsheet metropolitan dailies are analysed to identify prominent news themes and how Muslims are socially constructed. In particular, four events occurring across the period are analysed with a view to comparing the texts with other studies that argue Muslims are constructed in Orientalist terms as dangerous others. The Bali bomb incident, London bomb scare at Heathrow Airport, Middle East conflict, and Iranian Nuclear issue represent prominent news stories that allow the identification of stereotypes and negative depictions, which reinforce Orientalism. The findings suggest a disparity in some newspapers in the sample between hard news and editorials. Although hard news appears to reinforce Orientalist representation of Muslims, the editorials adopt a more liberal pluralist construction of Islamic identity and issues.
Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, May 1, 2012
Review(s) of: Media mergers and the defence of pluralism, by Hulten, O., Tjernstrom, S. and Meles... more Review(s) of: Media mergers and the defence of pluralism, by Hulten, O., Tjernstrom, S. and Melesko, S. (eds),
The Australian journal of emergency management, Apr 1, 2014
This paper discusses some of the challenges faced by key agencies involved in public information ... more This paper discusses some of the challenges faced by key agencies involved in public information management after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The study analysed data collected from published documents and in-depth semi-structured interviews with senior managers and key personnel within government and a citizen journalist who launched the Christchurch Recovery Map. Metaphor is used as a way of conceptualising the constraints faced by state agencies and consideration is given to the features and possibilities of an alternative approach to imagining bureaucratic spaces in times of national emergency.
Sustainability, Aug 26, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Media International Australia, May 1, 2012
Policy quarterly, Feb 1, 2012
MEDIANZ: Media Studies Journal of Aotearoa New Zealand, Apr 8, 2016
Her primary research interests include media reporting and public understandings of health and ri... more Her primary research interests include media reporting and public understandings of health and risk issues. Warwick Blood is Emeritus Professor at the University of Canberra. His primary research interests are risk communication, and he has published widely on the reporting of health issues such as suicide, mental illness, and influenza.
Media International Australia, Aug 1, 2000
In Australia, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) operates as a legislative mechanism that gua... more In Australia, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) operates as a legislative mechanism that guarantees the right of all Australians to access a standard telephone service wherever they reside. In 1997, special provisions for people with severe hearing impairment were added to telecommunication legislation. The Telecommunications Act 1997 included a specific reference to teletypewriters (TTYs), including them as an addition to the definition of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) as the result of the outcome from a public inquiry held in 1995. The inquiry, subsequently referred to as Scott v. Telstra, is a case study illustrating the collision of two separate pieces of federal legislation and the paradigms that formed them. Furthermore, both the inquiry and subsequent revision of definitions of a standard telephone service illustrate the complexity of planning telecommunication policy for equitable social outcomes. Specifically, further questions are raised surrounding the role of universal service in changing technological and competitive environments.
Public Understanding of Science, Jul 30, 2020
Society is undergoing a transformation in the way people consume media: increasingly we are using... more Society is undergoing a transformation in the way people consume media: increasingly we are using online on-demand videos, with the fastest growing segment of online videos about science being user-generated content that uses an infotainment style of delivery, in contrast to the traditional expository narrations of professionally generated content. In this study, we produced two otherwise identical videos about climate change to test the effects of an infotainment or expository narration. A total of 870 survey participants (419 English; 451 Spanish) were randomly presented with either an infotainment or expository version of the video. The expository narration was liked and believed more, and this held irrespective of language, age, sex or online viewing habits. However, the infotainment version was liked more by viewers without a university education and, further, viewers were better able to recall information from it, suggesting that user-generated content with infotainment-style narrations may actually be good for increasing public understanding of science.
Abstract Videonline Kuwait is part of a larger international study that examines the Internet as ... more Abstract
Videonline Kuwait is part of a larger international study that examines the Internet as a source of popular science knowledge. Online video has already eclipsed television in many countries as the preferred source of science-related knowledge, particularly shorter information packages. In total, video content constitutes more than half of traffic across the Internet. This study joins an emerging body of research that uses different content and formats of popular science videos to evaluate online science popularisation initiatives. This pilot study explores survey responses among Kuwaitis to two short science video packages discussing the implications of climate change, which frame the same key facts using different media narrative styles communicated by changing voiceover content. The first video script maintains a traditional documentary news style characterised by formal textual elements (e.g. impersonal narration, formal structures). The infotainment style constructs the second video script and places a stronger emphasis on personal narration, colloquialisms, and humour to communicate the key themes. Both videos use the same video footage. Participants receive an online questionnaire and answer several questions before watching one of two randomly distributed video packages communicating key climate change themes. Once they have viewed the video, participants answered a survey that measures perceptions of message salience, seriousness of the issue, and recall.
The methodology was tested in a pilot study. Our preliminary findings from the pilot study indicate that salience and seriousness perceptions do not only depend on the narrative but also the exposure level to online video. In addition, the pilot study indicates a difference in greater perception of the seriousness of climate change in traditional news narrative than in the infotainment sample. A pattern emerges across three questions identifying far greater personal salience and seriousness of climate change is linked to those watching the formal news format video
The outcomes from the study will be used to facilitate more effective communication of science-related knowledge and its popularisation in response to both changing media environments and audience preferences. The study is funded by the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2013-45301-P). Keywords: science communication; popular science; online video; climate change.