Month: April 2021

For most of us, it’s hard to imagine a media-free day. We need media to stay informed, interact with our community, be entertained and participate in democracy. But to do these things effectively, we need a basic level of media literacy. But what is media literacy? And why is it important? RTRFM’s Allan Boyd caught up with one of the authors of a new report into media literacy…

Most of believe that media, and media diversity is important, and we consume so much of it – often reading the news from the moment we wake up, scrolling throughout the day – and can often be the last thing we do at night. Social media is by far the most common type of media we use – with 83% of adults using social media on a daily basis. But how well do we understand media? A new study on Adult Media Literacy in Australia provides a comprehensive analysis into how Australians understand and use different forms of traditional and digital media. I spoke with the lead author of the study – Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Dr Tanya Notley from the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney.

• Article in the Conversation.
• REPORT

It has been 30 years since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. To discuss I spoke with Gomeroi woman, Fulbright scholar, law researcher, essayist/activist/writer and poet – Alison Whittaker – who is a Research Fellow, at University of Technology Sydney.

This month marks 30 years since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The report investigated 99 deaths over 10 years and made over 330 recommendations intended to protect Aboriginal people in custody. Despite this, the number of Indigenous people imprisoned has increased 100 per cent in the past three decades.
Indeed the numbers are stark – When you break down it all down, around three per cent of the Australian population make up nearly 30 per cent of those behind bars.

In Western Australia, 40 per cent of prisoners are Indigenous. In the Northern Territory, it is more than 80 per cent.

Aboriginal people are jailed at 13 times the rate of non-Indigenous people. They are also jailed younger, and more likely to die of preventable medical causes, more likely to be incarcerated for minor offences, and more likely to be on remand. To date there have been 474 deaths in 30 years: why are Aboriginal people still dying in custody?

To discuss this I was joined by Gomeroi woman, Fulbright scholar, law researcher, and essayist/activist/writer and poet – Alison Whittaker… who is a Research Fellow, at University of Technology Sydney. Alison’s recent article on Indigenous deaths in custody was published in the Conversation last week.

 

66% of Australians have a Facebook account – with over 16 million Australians using the social-media platform every month. And we would expect our personal information to be safe and secure.

But this month, the private data of 533 million Facebook accounts was made publicly available online – causing concern with cyber security experts.

I spoke with Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean for Computing and Security at Edith Cowan University. Paul’s article on the recent Facebook Breach can be found at the Conversation.com

The website to discover if you have been a victim of this and other breaches is: haveibeenpwned.com – and you can add your email or phone number.

 

 

Also here on the RTRFM website: https://rtrfm.com.au/story/how-safe-is-your-personal-information

Perth historian Dr Chris Owen from the University of Western Australia recently wrote about the barbaric and illegal use of neck chains on Aboriginal people in WA’s Kimberly region – used from the 1880s – right up until 1958. (Read Guardian article)

Dr Chris is the author of Every Mother’s Son is Guilty: Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905.  He joined Indymedia’s Allan Boyd to talk about the cruelty of white colonialists and the Massacre Map.

And just a warning: The following interview discusses and describes the brutal treatment of Aboriginal people.