The Rise of the Fifth Estate

social media and blogging in Australian politics
Greg Jericho

'An illuminating and, for the most part, entertaining snapshot of where the new media landscape and politics meet.'

Christopher Scanlon, Canberra Times

'An enlightening and well-researched survey of Australia’s blogging landscape. Jericho is engaging and keeps you coming back for more.'

The Adelaide Advertiser

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'A well-researched and engaging look at the world of social media and blogging in the context of the Australian political system ... The Rise of the Fifth Estate is an important contribution to our knowledge of how Australian politics and the Australian media operate, and is a book that all media professionals, and indeed anyone who is interested in politics and the media, should have on their shelves.'

Eloise Keating, Bookseller and Publisher

The Rise of the Fifth Estate is the first book to examine the emergence of social media as a new force in the coverage of Australian politics.

Using original research, Greg Jericho reveals who makes up the Australian political blogosphere, and tackles head-on some of its key developments — the way that Australia’s journalists and federal politicians use social media and digital news, the motivations of bloggers and tweeters, the treatment of female participants, and the eruption of Twitter wars.

The mainstream media’s reaction to all this tends to be defensive and dismissive. As Jericho found to his own cost when he was outed by The Australian as the blogger Grog’s Gamut, hell hath no fury like a criticised newspaper. And although journalists welcome Twitter as a work tool and platform, they have to deal with vitriolic online comments, and face competition from bloggers who are experts in their fields and who, for the most part, write for free.

Politicians, meanwhile, are finding it hard to engage genuinely with the new media. They tend to pay lip service to the connectedness offered by modern technology, while using it primarily for self-promotion.

The new social media are here to stay, and their political role and influence are bound to increase. The real question they pose is whether the old structures of the political world will absorb this new force or be changed by it.

'An illuminating and, for the most part, entertaining snapshot of where the new media landscape and politics meet.'

Christopher Scanlon, Canberra Times

'An enlightening and well-researched survey of Australia’s blogging landscape. Jericho is engaging and keeps you coming back for more.'

The Adelaide Advertiser

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:320pp

ISBN (13):9781921844935

RRP:$29.99

Pub date:22 Aug 2012

Rights Held: World

High-res cover:Download Image

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AUTHOR

Greg Jericho

Greg Jericho writes a weekly blog for ABC Online’s The Drum. From 2006 to 2011 he worked as a Commonwealth public servant, mostly in the film-policy division. He has a PhD in English literature and an honours degree in economics. He also writes, blogs, and tweets as his alter-ego, Grog’s Gamut.