New Media and Australia’s National Security Debate

Over the last decade there has emerged in Australia a small but fertile and occasionally influential group of blogs devoted to international security and foreign policy. This is not the romantic grass-roots story that beguiled US media watchers in the mid-2000s, in which a handful of lone enthusiasts pioneered a new publishing form, building their part-time passion into influential outlets for punditry, and sometimes creating successful media businesses. In Australia, the major international-policy-themed blogs emerged quite late in the short history of blogging, and they are all supported to varying degrees by non-profit institutions. Notable in this regard are The Interpreter (established 2007 by the Lowy Institute for International Policy; covers world politics from an Australian perspective, with a focus on Asia), The Strategist (established in 2012 by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI); focused mainly on defence and national security); East Asia Forum (established in 2006 by Peter Drysdale and Shiro Armstrong, based in the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; focused on Asia Pacific politics and economy). and New Mandala, which is focused on political analysis of Southeast Asia. Like East Asia Forum, it was established by two academics in 2006 and is partly supported by the Australian National University.