Inventing, Australia: An exploration and subversion of long-form nonfiction as an approach to enhancing the epistemological value of journalistic practice

Abstract

Countless books and articles have been written to determine the “secret sauce” of innovation. These works have typically relied on either standard journalist or academic methods to explore a thesis and deliver universal principles that could help accelerate innovation across countries, organisations and ethnicities. There exists an established popular Australian belief in the country's seemingly outsized contribution to the global pool of inventive technologies and processes. No single work has attempted to explore cultural, systemic and individual reasons for this presumed contribution. Moreover, there has not been a long-form narrative non-fiction book length work that has used journalistic methods, including interviews and immersive reportage techniques, to explore both historical incidents of Australian invention as well as contemporary incidents of invention. But instead of using conventional methods of long form narrative this text is an exercise in subversion. As such, it aims to overturn the constraints typically imposed on journalistic practitioners in an attempt to determine whether there are more effective and transparent methods for gathering information and shaping knowledge for dissemination. This creative PhD was a first for the department and is composed of a book-length nonfiction narrative entitled "Inventing, Australia. Nine ways of discovering a subject and its continent while subverting a journalistic way of knowing" and an exegesis. Proposed outputs from the exegesis include a model for a more ethical journalism that is both an effective disseminator of meaningful information and a path toward rebuilding public trust in the journalism industry.