Grant Noble Award for best postgraduate paper recognises Grant’s scholarly commitment and leadership. By way of background, Grant Noble was, along with Henry Mayer and Bill Bonney, a significant scholar at a time when there were few avenues for postgraduate training in communication studies in Australia. Many media and communications postgraduates at this time undertook their work in other disciplines such as education or psychology or linguistics. Although Grant Noble’s disciplinary training was in psychology he retained a major interest in media and communications. His studies of children’s media and telephone use are still valuable today. An interdisciplinary approach was characteristic of his work, and indeed typical of much Australian work in communication studies at that time.
It was not awarded for three years and re-launched for the 1999 conference as the Grant Noble Award for best paper submitted by a postgraduate student (excluding full-time academic staff) to the Annual Conference as judged by the ANZCA Executive [see MIA 88 (1998): 5]. In early 2002, the Faculty of Arts at the University of New England, where Noble worked from 1976 to 1994, agreed to sponsor the Award for three years. UNE has now decided to extend its support for this award for a further five years to 2020.
Past Recipients
1999 – Gill O’Neill, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work another day”: A study of emotion in the work of divers and black water rafters
2000 – Elinor Rennie, ‘Digital Progression, Community Setbacks: Community Television and the Transition to Digital Broadcasting’. Published the Australian Journal of Communication 28(1) (2001): 57-68
2001 – Tanja Dreher, ‘Intersections: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Media, Identity and Place’. Published in the conference proceedings and the Australian Journal of Communication 29 (1) (2002): 67-80
2002 – Not Awarded.
2003 – Kerry McCallum, ‘Walking and Talking Reconciliation: An Analysis of the Role of Local Talk as a Construction of Public Opinion on Indigenous issues in Australia’, Australian Journal of Communication 30(2) (2003): 115-132
2004 – Louis C. North, ‘Naked Women, Feminism and Newsroom Culture’, Australian Journal of Communication 31(2) (2003): 53-67
2005 – Emma Earl. ‘Brand New Zealanders: The Commodification of Polynesian Youth Identity in Television Advertising’
2006 – Not Awarded
2007 – Philip Senior, ‘Press Coverage of Televised Leaders: Debates in Australian Federal Elections’
2008 – Ann Pennhallurick, ‘Not Sporting: Australian Identity, the Power of the Average and the Fear of the Disabled Within’
2009 – Lyn McGaurr, ‘Putting the Globe in the Sphere: Climate-change Scientists in the Public Sphere’
2010 – Lisa Waller, ‘Singular Influence: Mapping the Ascent of Daisy M. Bates in Popular Understanding and Indigenous Policy
2011 – Kris Vavasour, ‘Music to Watch Girls By: Pop Songs and Carnival Culture at the 2007 Netball World Championships’, Australian Journal of Communication, 38(2) (2011), 161-177.
2012 – Sebastian Dixon, The rhetoric of Internet regulation: How language is framed in a changing media landscape (161.79 kB)
2013 – Jonathon Hutchinson, ‘Communication models of institutional online communities: the role of the ABC cultural intermediaries’. Published in Platform: Journal of Media and Communication, 5(1) (2013), 75-85.
2014 – Kim Barbour, ‘Performing Professionalism: Validating Artistness’. Published in Platform: Journal of Media and Communication, 6, AANZCA special issue (2015), 5-12.
2015 – Not awarded
2016 – Jessamy Gleeson, “‘Destroying the joint?’: how an online feminist campaign can assert a form of power in its attempts to challenge and change representations of women in the mainstream media’.
2017 – Elizabeth Goode, ‘The dilemma of voice in biographical narratives: confronting complexity in the “unexpected stories” of intercountry adoptees’.
2018 – Dan Andrew, ‘Programmatic trading: The future of audience economics’.
2019 – Ashleigh Haw, ‘”Manufactured hysteria”: Audience perceptions of sensationalism and moral panics in Australian news representations of people seeking asylum’.
2020 – Not awarded.
2021 – Vicki Kerrigan, Menzies School of Health Research (Charles Darwin University). ‘Shifting power between Aboriginal language speaking patients and hospital-based providers through interpreter use’.
2022 – Josie Gleave, RMIT University. ‘Can’t Delete: An intervention in mainstream news media representations of image-based sexual abuse’.
2023 – Mona Chatskin, University of Canberra. ‘Malka Leifer in secular and religious news and community talk: Reportage, power and scandal’.