Roles of individuals, industry and government

In the Digital Australians survey, no single regulatory approach was thought to be most suitable for the current media environment; rather, a mixture of approaches was needed to address community expectations.

The study participants saw regulation as providing important protections, particularly for professionally produced content intended for broad audiences. Of specific importance was:

• ensuring the accuracy, fairness and transparency of mainstream news and current affairs
• ensuring the continued production and availability of Australian content
• protecting children, with value placed on consumer advice about content.

Participants in the research saw responsibility for making media content ‘safe’ as shared between individuals (for themselves and for children they cared for), industry and government. The extent to which any party had responsibility depended in part on whether the content was offline or online, and was professionally or user-generated. This was particularly the case for protecting children, but also applied more generally to community standards.

There was a wide recognition of the difficulty in applying current protections online, particularly when content was hosted offshore, and because of the sheer volume of user-generated content being uploaded and made available online. For these and other reasons, most participants saw access to user-generated content as primarily an individual responsibility or the responsibility of parents.

For professional content produced for broad audiences, including offline or traditional media such as newspapers, television and radio; from the internet; or online content, standards and rules were felt to be more appropriate. There was little desire to see the current protections reduced for this content.