The Australian Local News Resilience Project (2023-2026), an Australian Research Council Linkage study, led by Deakin University with the ABC and Griffith University. It responds to calls — including a 2022 parliamentary inquiry — for public service media to partner with local news providers to shore up a struggling sector where hundreds of regional newsrooms have closed and many communities have become “news deserts”. Drawing on 52 interviews, 12 focus groups, six action-research trials, and international comparison, it argues that strategic, evidence-based collaboration between the ABC and local outlets is essential, while warning of power imbalances, market distortion, and government funding that rewards strategic claims of “localness”. Key challenges include workforce recruitment and retention. Its centrepiece is a six-initiative Australian Local News Resilience program, supported by the new Australian Local News Proximity Index and six recommendations. See final report here.
Exploring the role of community philanthropy to strengthen civic discourse and replenish news deserts in Australia (2026-2029), an Australian Research Council Linkage study, led by Deakin University, proposes Australia's first comprehensive examination of how place-based philanthropy, particularly community foundations, can strengthen civic discourse and replenish "news deserts". Led by Deakin University, partnering with Community Foundations Australia and the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation, it builds on the team's earlier Alice Springs pilot. The project pursues four aims across three phases: reviewing existing philanthropic models globally, surveying community foundations and identifying innovative civic-communication practices, and co-creating and road-testing initiatives in selected communities before developing an evidence-based framework and recommendations. Outputs include a PhD comparative study (Australia–Canada), a deliberative summit, an international network, and guidance for philanthropists, policymakers and local news providers.
Media Innovation and the Civic Future of Australia’s Country Press (2020-2023), an Australian Research Council Linkage study, led by Deakin University with RMIT and Country Press Australia (CPA). Drawing on two national audience surveys, focus groups and interviews with news producers, and a PhD sustainability study, the research argues that rural and regional local news is an “essential service” to communities but is threatened by a broken business model. The project’s central findings challenge the “digital-first” orthodoxy: print still matters, audiences want more genuinely local content and government support has been misdirected toward digital innovation and metropolitan outlets with big digital reach. The project proposes a “goldilocks zone” (roughly a 50–100km radius) for feasible place-based journalism and offers 22 recommendations, including redirecting government advertising to regional mastheads, workforce incentives and stronger CPA collaboration. See final report here.
Understanding and Combatting ‘Dark Political Communication’ (2024-2027), funded by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects scheme, examines an emerging set of tactics used by political actors — politicians, lobbyists, and political groups — that the researchers term “Dark Political Communication” (DPC): the deliberate spread of disinformation, use of highly inflammatory language, antagonism towards the press and democratic institutions, and actions that seek to exacerbate social discord. Led by the QUT Digital Media Research Centre and Deakin University, the project aims to provide the first complete account of DPC tactics and a series of recommendations to journalists about how their practice can best evolve to address this novel communication paradigm. A key concern is that DPC operatives often succeed by exploiting the media's operating “rules”, such as objectivity, meaning journalists can unwittingly add to the problem. The research identifies the figures exploiting DPC and how it undermines democracy and responses to crises like climate change and COVID-19.
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Taking Notice was a Deakin University project (2025), funded by the Victorian Country Press Association, examining the relationship between government advertising and local news sustainability. Specifically, it examined the Victorian Government's 2022 decision to buy the equivalent of a weekly full-page advertisement in rural, regional and some outer-suburban newspapers. Around 105 mastheads affiliated with the Victorian Country Press Association have been eligible, collectively receiving more than $5.5 million annually. Drawing on interviews with Victorian news proprietors and political leaders, the project traced the centuries-old link between public notices and newspapers, and how Big Tech severed that revenue stream as government advertising shifted to digital platforms. It contends that public notice and government messaging spend matters both as revenue and as a marker of newspapers’ credibility as journals of public record. See final report here.
Central Connection was a Deakin University study (2023-2024), co-funded by Deakin and the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation. It examined a novel approach to reviving local news in Alice Springs, where a community foundation partnered with a commercial news company (Today Media Group) to bring back a weekly masthead, the Centralian Today, pledging to underpin its sustainability by buying a page of advertising each week. The research explores community perceptions of life without a local newspaper, the process of re-establishing one, and its perceived impact after return. It also reviews not-for-profit and place-based funding models for public-interest journalism in Australia and internationally. Findings show clear demand and high expectations for local news, that community foundations offer untapped potential to support vulnerable news ecologies, and that funder–journalist relationships must remain transparent and editorially independent. The Australian Local News Proximity Index was trialled in the project. See report here.
On the Horizon: Surveying the News Needs of the Sunraysia Region is a Deakin University study (2023) examining audience perceptions, readership habits and expectations of the Sunraysia Daily, the largest paid-circulating newspaper serving north-west Victoria and south-west New South Wales since 1920. Using two Qualtrics surveys — one targeting existing readers, another targeting residents in new housing estates who were not regular readers — the study aimed to help the outlet reflect on its offerings and shape future strategy in a digital world. Findings show residents regard the Sunraysia Daily as their main “go-to” credible source for local news and want more local content, especially community events, achievements, local history, and births, deaths and marriages, alongside appetite for crime stories and investigations. Print remains popular, free or low-cost access is the biggest motivator to read, and audiences go directly to the news website over social media. Some raised concerns about balance, accuracy and perceived reliance on political elites.