COMU2140. How to Approach and Write Your Report

1.  What to Do

The ACCC’s inquiry examined how digital platforms exert market power in the Australian media industry. It especially focussed on journalism and advertising, and on the platforms’ relationships with consumers.

Given the focus and scope of its inquiry, the ACCC’s final report will be important to many organisations. Some are in the media industry, such as content producers and advertisers. Some are in related areas, such as bodies that regulate consumer privacy, or which aim to defend quality and diversity in journalism, or which try to protect copyright.

Every institution with some stake in the inquiry’s outcome will want to understand the report’s analysis and its recommendations. To do so, they would prepare their own reports about the ACCC’s report, whether for internal use or for wider publication.

For this assessment task, imagine that one of these other organisations has asked you to prepare a response to the ACCC’s final report.

They want you to tell them about the ACCC’s analysis and its findings. In particular, they want you to explain how those findings matter to them.

2.  How to Begin

You have 10 options to choose from. Each option asks you to write a response to the ACCC’s report for a particular organisation, focussing on an aspect of the report that is most relevant to that organisation’s interests.

So, your first step is: choose one of the options!

Your next step is to do pursue two lines of preliminary research:

1. You need to do background research on the organisation for which you are writing the report, whether that is the Australian Communication and Media Authority (Option 1), Transparency International (Option 4), the Cyberspace Administration of China (Option 10), or any of the other options in-between.

Ask questions like:

• What are the aims of this organisation?
• What is its remit, or, in other words, what is the scope of its activities and concerns?
• What powers does it have, if any?
• What kinds of activities does it engage in?
• Which groups, if any, does it represent, and how does it understand and explain the concerns of those groups?
• Did it make any submissions to the ACCC inquiry, and if so, what positions did it take in those submissions?

1. You also need to research the sections of the ACCC’s final report that are relevant to your chosen organisation.

In doing this, you will start to use your background research on the organisation to guide your reading of the ACCC’s final report.

Ask questions like:

• Given what you’ve discovered about the organisation, and given the topics of interest outlined in your chosen task, what parts of the ACCC’s report are most relevant?
• How do certain concepts and readings from the course help you understand, analyse, and evaluate those parts of the ACCC’s report?

As you assemble this research material, keep relating what you find back to the explicit or implicit questions at the heart of your chosen task.

Remember, the fundamental question you are trying to answer is something like:

What issues, opportunities, and challenges does the ACCC’s final report raise for your chosen organisation?

3.  How to Deliver

Your findings must be presented as a report. Unlike essays, which give the author a lot of room for invention in regard to structure, style, and tone, reports are highly conventional. That is, there are set ways in which the information in a report is structured and presented.

Read the ACCC’s final report for its platform-related content, but also for its structure and style. It will provide a model for you to emulate. Reports are written for busy people who need to understand information quickly and without strain. They need to be clear and simple without becoming crude or simplistic.

Please consult this really great guide to report writing – believe me, it is super-useful! 

You need to use these headings in your report. Feel free, it you think it will make your report even easier to read, to use further sub-headings of your own invention.

Report Title

TO: [Body to whom the report is addressed]

Status: Information or Noting Executive Summary Introduction/Background Key Issues/Body

Policy Implications/Recommendations References

The Assessment folder on Blackboard has details on what each section should address, so please read that outline carefully.

That outline makes frequent mention that your report should address a “problem”.

Think of the “problem” this way: for the Australian Copyright Council (ACC), the practices of social media platforms in the Australian market might be a problem because they erode copyright protections, and thus weaken the ability of content creators to be paid when their works are distributed and consumed.

So, the Copyright Council will be very interested in what the ACCC finds and recommends – it might welcome some findings and recommendations, and not others. The Copyright Council, in other words, would be likely to employ someone to produce a report much like the one you are preparing to write!

If you have any further questions, about what I’ve said here or about what’s on Blackboard, please let me know! I can add further advice here if you let me know what you need.

Enjoy your writing!