School of Communication Studies - Te Kura Whakapāho
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The School of Communication Studies is committed to innovative, critical and creative research that advances knowledge, serves the community, and develops future communication experts and skilled media practitioners. There is a dynamic interaction between communication theory and media practice across digital media, creative industries, film and television production advertising, radio, public relations, and journalism. The School is involved in research and development in areas of:
- Journalism
- Media and Communication
- Media Performance
- Multimodal Analysis
- Online, Social and Digital Media
- Asia-Pacific Media
- Political Economy of Communication
- Popular Culture
- Public Relations
- Radio
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Recent Submissions
- ItemPublic Money Well Spent? Unintended Consequences and Challenges Arising from Trans-Tasman Public Journalism Funds(Informa UK Limited, 2024-09-20) Myllylahti, Merja; Meese, JamesThis paper identifies various issues associated with the increase in direct public funding of news media across Australasia. We conduct a comparative analysis of outcomes from two Trans-Tasman public interest journalism funds: the Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) in New Zealand and the Public Interest News Gathering Fund in Australia (PING). By investigating the allocation of funding, the paper identifies risks and unintended consequences arising from the direct public funding of private media. It also raises issues that policymakers need to address when drafting media policies in the future as government support can lead to negative outcomes. While a substantial proportion of the public money of the two funds was aimed at retaining newsroom roles, redundancies and newsroom closures have continued, highlighting the limitations of these specific government interventions.
- ItemCatering to Clients: How Artificial Intelligence Can Influence the Advertising Agency–Client Dynamic(Intellect, 2024-10-01) Nairn, Angelique; Matthews, Justin; Fastnedge, DanielMuch has been made of the role artificial intelligence (AI) can have in the creative processes of advertising agencies. Not only can it be used to automate tasks and assess the success of advertising on audiences, but it can also alter the relationship between creatives and the work they produce, with computational creativity opening new opportunities to engage in creative and innovative practice. In fact, recent research has emphasized that creative people believe AI technologies will revolutionize the development, execution and dissemination of advertising. Yet, the potential of AI is not without its detractors because of the threat of job losses and ethical conundrums, leading advertising creatives to feel cautious and concerned about the place of this new technology in the industry. Of particular concern is how AI will influence the relationships between clients and agencies. Using data gained from five focus groups held in Aotearoa, New Zealand, with advertising creatives, this research article illuminates the perspectives of current practitioners on the role and potential influence of AI on creative production processes. It finds that most of those attending the focus groups believed that the speed of AI in creating content would increase the pressure placed on agencies to meet the needs of clients, that clients may opt to engage in their own computational creativity costing agencies money and reputation and that aesthetic considerations of agencies and clients may come into conflict.
- ItemArtificial Imagination: Industry Attitudes on the Impact of AI on the Visual Effects Process(Intellect, 2024-10-01) Narayan, Aditya; Caillard, Duncan; Matthews, Justin; Nairn, AngeliqueThe integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the visual effects (VFX) industry has significant implications for creativity, workflow efficiency and ethical considerations. AI offers benefits in automating labour-intensive tasks and enhancing creative processes, yet it raises concerns about intellectual property, job displacement and the overall impact on artistic integrity. Through semi-structured interviews with nine experienced VFX artists, the study captures current attitudes towards AI and its potential to reshape the industry. The findings reveal a complex interplay of optimism for technological advancements and apprehension about the ethical and practical challenges posed by AI. This pilot study provides a foundational understanding of VFX artists’ perceptions of AI, highlighting the need for ongoing dialogue and careful integration of these emerging technologies.
- ItemComputer-Assisted Qualitative Visual Analysis: Automating Thematic Analysis of Images(Intellect, 2024-10-01) Guinibert, MatthewThe advent of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies has opened new avenues for qualitative research, particularly in visual data analysis. This pilot study introduced computer-assisted qualitative visual analysis (CQVA), leveraging GPT-4 Turbo and Google Cloud Vision to automate the thematic analysis of visual datasets. Traditional methods, relying on manual coding, are time-consuming and labour-intensive. CQVA addresses these challenges by providing an efficient, scalable and cost-effective alternative. This study had two objectives: developing the CQVA method and applying it to analyse the top 1000 advertisements from the ‘adPorn’ subreddit, offering insights into Reddit users’ advertising preferences. A clear preference was identified for ads utilizing visual metaphors, as these were the most common. Additionally, the importance of engaging visual communication was underscored, with themes employing visually striking and easily comprehensible imagery being favoured by Reddit users. Despite its promise, CQVA required human intervention to guide AI outputs and validate clusters and themes. However, the findings demonstrated CQVA’s potential to revolutionize qualitative visual analysis by significantly reducing time and cost, while maintaining the richness of insights typically achieved through manual methods, thus enabling more efficient and comprehensive analysis of large visual datasets, highlighting the method’s scalability and practicality for future research.
- ItemResearch, Practice, Knowledge: Introducing the Creative Knowledges Enabling Framework(Taylor & Francis, 2024-08-06) Batty, Craig; Zalipour, ArezouAmongst a myriad of articles, chapters and books that argue for different ways to understand and conduct creative practice research – or as it is otherwise known, artistic research, arts-based research, practice-led research, practitioner-based research, and so on – this article goes to the heart of the affordances of creative practice research and offers what the authors believe is more generative model for this work, with more productive terminology. By focusing on a process of research enabling, as opposed to research being led by, based on or taken through practice (and vice versa), the article seeks clarity on the relationship between research questions, research design and methods; where a contribution to knowledge resides; how, accordingly, a research project might be written up; and who, indeed, creative practice researchers are. From our experience of undertaking, supervising and evaluatingcreative practice research, we have come to realise that some of the fundamental challenges of this work reside in a basic understanding of what, why, how and by whom. We believe that some of the definitions and models of creative practice research are a contributor to these challenges, hence a new model with alternative terminology to help untangle some of the intellectual complexities we have seen. The discussion uses screen practice as its disciplinary site, encompassing media/screen production and screenwriting.