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IRC

Internet Reality Check

5:00 pm Friday, 29th October 1999

Kurrajong Hotel Bar, Canberra

Topic: The Fifth Estate? Monitoring the Media with Multimedia

Special Guest: Peter J Monaghan, Director, Capital Monitor


Capital Monitor provides news and information services. They monitor Australian parliaments, governments, courts and news feeds for the latest developments in public policy issues. Key policy developments are flashed by e-mail to subscribers according to their profile of interests, and added to databases for later search and retrieval.

How do these "push" technologies change what parliaments, judges and policy makers do? How are the work methods and approach of the media changed by being monitored themselves. Has the Internet become the Fifth Estate, influencing what appears in the conventional media and driving public policy discussion?

Fifth Estate [fifth column]: A social layer which did not fit into the three estates of feudalism; it is composed of journalists, critics and intellectuals who do not celebrate existing social arrangements... Dictionary of Critical Sociology, Iowa State University
Join Peter Monaghan and members of the first, second, third, fourth and fifth estate, to discuss what the current and future role of the Internet is with the media.

IRCs are free (but you have to buy your own drinks and one for the special guest) and open to anyone interested: just turn up. Internet Reality Check (not to be confused with Internet Relay Chat) is designed so that members of the 'net community can meet and exchange the small amount of very important information which is not suitable for digital transmission. ;-)


See also:
By Tom Worthington, Immediate Past President, Australian Computer Society
Note: This information is no longer being updated but has been retained for reference.