ABC Online & Social Media

ABC Life: a new way to connect Australians

The ABC will next week launch ABC Life, a new digital site that harnesses stories from across the Corporation’s many platforms and outlets and presents them in an accessible, independent and engaging way for audiences.
Australians trust the ABC for information that is relevant to their daily lives and engages them in conversations. From its creation, the ABC has been adept at using its platforms and services and embracing new technology to meet that demand.

ABC Life recognises that in a cluttered digital environment, fresh approaches are needed to ensure stories are created, published and shared in ways that are most useful to audiences – making ABC stories as accessible as possible.

Going live on Monday 6 August, the ABC Life site creates a new home to showcase content on issues important to all Australians – work and careers, health and wellbeing, finance, relationships and family – free from commercial agendas.

It brings together curated content from ABC Television, ABC NEWS, ABC Regional and Local, triple j, Radio National, ABC online and our podcasts, supplemented by creative output from the ABC Life team. It utilises the skills of our journalists and content makers from across metro and regional Australia, including the capital cities and regional centres such as Launceston, Orange, the Sunshine Coast and Broome.

Pan-ABC collaborations will deliver much-loved programs to new audiences, including recaps of Gardening Australia and a special series with RN’s Life Matters. The new digital service also features distinctive ABC content such as War on Waste, Employable Me, The Pineapple Project and Ladies, We Need To Talk.
Scott Spark, ABC Life Lead, said the new site will help audiences Australia-wide discover and enjoy the huge variety of distinctive and informative content they expect from the ABC.

“ABC Life builds on the tradition of the ABC tapping into the everyday topics, issues and stories that matter to people. It will look and sound like Australia now, and be free of advertiser interests," he said.

ABC Life was developed within the ABC’s Content Ideas Lab and is part of the Investing in Audiences Strategy to meet the changing needs and expectations of audiences within the ABC’s Charter remit.

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I can’t wait for every other website to rail against Aunty for stamping in on their territory.

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We know what just about every article in The Australian’s media section next Monday will be about…

They’ve already started

The Australian reported on Monday this week that ABC will spend more than $100,000 of public funds on a new editor of lifestyle platform ABC Life, reporting to the “editorial lead” and creating another layer of seniority at the controversial website. It’s a 12-month fixed-term contract, reporting to ABC Life editorial lead Scott Spark.
http://careers.abc.net.au/caw/en/job/500531/editor-abc-life

Wrong abclife tag in this tweet - check it out :slight_smile:

ABC Life will be merged into ABC Local under the broadcaster’s 5-year plan:

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As mentioned in ABC reporters thread, ABC Life’s Tim Fisher was made redundant yesterday.

ABC Life will be renamed as ABC Everyday from this Wednesday, December 16. ABC Life was to be called ABC Local in June but that name had since been abandoned.

I was today saddened and still really can’t believe that the ABC news department appears to sometimes be so frightened by the truth when it doesn’t suit its own agenda that on its Facebook page it has hidden a link to one of its own stories in response to a comment on an item about the South Australian electricity grid since the 2016 blackout … on the left, my link to the story as posted on Facebook … on the right, how everybody else saw the comments after it was hidden …

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Good on you for highlighting this. Lodge a complaint with the ABC and follow it through the process. Then notify the Comms Minister to draw to their attention.

An interesting complaint about some potentially false claims made within ABC Online “analysis” relating to the Ghislane Maxwell case

I’ve noticed ABC Onlines analysis pieces often have very blurred lines between factual reporting and editorialisation, this seems to be no exception.

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There’s a legitimate question on why the ABC is wasting precious resources on ‘analysis’ like this when there’s so many American or global news orgs takes on the same story. They really need to stop focusing on the US so much :roll_eyes:

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I don’t mind if it’s from their own correspondents who put an Australian angle on the story, but this appears to be an off the shelf piece to fill space from a UK writer. Weird.

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That’s good. At least there’s an attempt to be accountable. Whether it makes any difference is another matter.

ABC and eSafety Commissioner release online safety guidelines for journalists

A ground-breaking collaboration between the ABC and Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has seen the release of best practice guidelines designed to help protect journalists and newsrooms from online abuse.

Launched on UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day today (Tuesday May 3), the guidelines align with this year’s theme of “Journalism under digital siege”.

The resources include tips for media organisations in supporting staff to manage and mitigate the risk of social media abuse. They include some of the practical steps the ABC is taking to prepare for and respond to social media abuse and continue the ABC’s leadership in the space following last year’s CyberSafety summit.

The ABC’s Managing Director, David Anderson, said the online abuse of journalists was a trend connected to the rise of disinformation, conspiracy theories and extremism.

“We have all felt and observed a rise in online hate and abuse directed at our media professionals, and we have seen the devastating cumulative impact of this daily bullying,” he said. “The ABC has made a significant investment in the structures and policies and processes to support journalists and staff. But all journalists need to know they’re not alone and that there are resources they can use for their protection.”

He pointed out that the growing incidence of abuse of journalists online is not equally distributed. Female journalists, Indigenous journalists, LGBTQIA+ journalists and culturally and linguistically diverse journalists more likely to experience online abuse.

Research conducted by the eSafety Office – the world’s first government regulatory agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online – has found that women with a media presence were 56 per cent more likely to receive online abuse, and for those with a public profile the threat was even higher. Through the nature of their work, journalists have become more accessible online, with 78 per cent of respondents believing that people think it’s ok to harass and abuse you if you have a public profile or are active online.

“It has been so rewarding to work closely with the ABC on this important issue because we know more and more journalists, particularly female journalists and those from diverse backgrounds, are becoming the targets of abuse online as part of their daily work,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said. “And this abuse of women online has devastating consequences, not only for their mental health, but also for the promotion and protection of their important voices in shaping public discourse.”

“This visible normalisation of targeted online harassment of female and diverse journalists has an incredibly powerful downstream impact on society. In fact, our Women In the Spotlight (WITS) research report showed a quarter of Australian women were reluctant to move into public-facing roles because of the fear of being targeted in such a savage and visible way.

“It is important to remember to #ReportandSupport, including reporting serious adult cyber abuse to eSafety at www.esafety.gov.au if the social media site refuses to comply.”

The ABC has also recently become a signatory to the Brussels declaration, a new global initiative in support of media professionals’ safety.

The resources can be found here