Advocating Online Censorship
Using Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Framework, the development of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 is presented. Introduced to control the flow of online content (especially pornography) into and within Australia, this policy area incorporates a mix of high technology, morality and commercial interests. Analysis of the development of the Act is presented over five periods that show: the activation and formation of competing coalitions; acquisition of information and arguments about what form (if any) government regulation should take; and the relative importance of the issue. Analysis shows a number of relatively stable advocacy coalitions formed rapidly in response to government moves for regulation. The stability of these coalitions was significantly influenced by shor -term changes in regulatory technology and the nature of the political discourse used by the government which raised or lowered the ‘temperature’ of subsystem conflict. The article makes a number of methodological comments about the application of multivariate clustering to subsystem analysis.