This article presents an analysis of how social media was used during Tropical Cyclone Winston, the strongest recorded tropical storm that left a wake of destruction and devastation in Fiji during February 2016. Social media is increasingly being used in crises and disasters as an alternative form of communication. Social media use in crisis communication varies according to the context, the disaster and the maturity of social media use. Fiji’s experience during TC Winston contributes to the growing literature as it shows how social media was used during each stage of a disaster in a developing country. The article finds that before the cyclone, people used social media to share information about the cyclone and to be informed about the cyclone. During the cyclone, individuals used social media to share their experiences with some citizens capturing the cyclone as it happened and even one citizen live-tweeted her ordeal during the cyclone. Finally, following the cyclone, the hashtag #StrongerThanWinston was coined as a rallying point to bolster a sense of national solidarity.

Paradise in the Pacific is often rendered as a natural state where "native" people live in simple harmony without the need for government or state institutions. However, Christian traditions also include paradise not simply as a state of innocence but also as a narrative of salvation history in which paradise is lost through original sin and must be restored through sacrifice and repentance. This article takes recent Fijian Christian interpretations of Tropical Cyclone Winston as a key site in which contested ideologies of Paradise are being reworked. As the idyll of island harmony is disrupted by disaster, Christians have seen Winston as an act of divine judgment and punishment on a sinful people. This essay analyzes how narratives of a sinful nation intersect with contemporary formulations of climate change, disaster, politics, and human agency.

This article explores the phenomenon of the use of ICT for climate change activism in the Pacific. Climate change activism in the Pacific is characterised by the use of ICT tools such as social media. The article draws on semi-structured interviews and an analysis of social media sites to examine the use of social media in Pacific climate change campaigns. While other campaigns such as relating to West Papua have also been facilitated by social media, it has been generally NGO, citizen-led and varied in Pacific government support. In contrast, climate change campaigns in the Pacific are fully supported at the NGO, citizen, and state levels. Furthermore, while early Pacific ICT-based climate change campaigns used iconic images of Pacific Islanders leaving their homelands, more recent campaigns have leveraged social media to depict Pacific Islanders not as victims but as ‘warriors’. This new imagery aims to empower Pacific Islanders and engender a regional Pacific identity that shows strength and solidarity on the Pacific’s stance towards climate change.

Purpose: This study explores accounting practice in an Indigenous organization. This organization is embedded within a rural Aboriginal community in the country currently known as Australia. In doing so, this study illustrates the intertwining of accounting practice, practitioners, organizations and social/cultural context, while recognizing that the cultural embeddedness of accounting is not uniform.Design/methodology/approach: Empirical materials were collected as part of a qualitative field study with an Indigenous organization. Specific methods include interviews, informal conversations, documentary reviews and participant observations. These materials were analysed through a Bourdieusian perspective.Findings: By working with Indigenous Peoples on the ground, rather than relying on secondary materials, this study highlights how the values of a community challenge and reorient accounting practice towards community aspirations. This study illustrates how fields beyond the organization influence accounting practice, including in budgeting and assurance.Originality/value: Exploring Indigenous practices of accounting maintains Indigenous agency and opens up space for alternative understandings and practices of accounting. By illustrating how a community can influence the accounting practice of an organization, this study has implications for wider understandings of the cultural embeddedness of mainstream accounting and possible alternatives.

Prior research has identified both the contribution that people make to nature and the contribution that nature makes to people (by enhancing wellbeing) - with clear conceptual models to describe the interactions. Prior research has also made a clear case for incorporating insights from multiple perspectives and knowledge systems when seeking to better understand this interactive system. What is lacking, is guidance on how to operationalise some of these ideas to provide bespoke advice to environmental managers. Arguably, we have an adequate, albeit imperfect, understanding of how to operationalise (measure, value and/or otherwise account for) some parts of the conceptual model. There is, for example, abundant literature that describes different ways of valuing Ecosystem services, and a growing body of literature that describes and quantifies the ecological benefits of various stewardship activities, which will subsequently also generate an indirect benefit to people (since improved ecological conditions will improve Ecosystem services). In comparison, we know relatively little about the way in which stewardship activities directly benefit people - and it is on this gap that our paper focuses. We partially fill that knowledge gap by first reaching out to and learning from some of Australia's First Nations People. Key learnings underscore the inter-connectedness of the system, and the need for resource managers to not only monitor the extent and condition of natural system but also the extent and condition of an inextricably connected human system, in addition to the human-nature interactions. We clearly identify ways in which those insights can be used to improve and extend accounting frameworks, such as SEEA Ecosystem Accounts developed by the United Nations that are often used by natural resource managers. In so doing, we generate new insights about Indigenous stewardship (Caring for Country) and methods of accounting for and monitoring stewardship activities. As such, our work provides a practical illustration of one way to populate conceptual models with 'real world' data that also incorporates different world views, to support decision makers for improved social and environmental outcomes.

Purpose: This paper aims to present the findings of a government-initiated project that sought to explore the possibility of incorporating cultural connections to land within the federal national accounting system using the United Nations Systems of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework as a basis.Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a critical dialogic approach and responding to the calls for critical accountants to engage with stakeholders, the authors worked with two Indigenous groups of Australia to develop a system of accounts that incorporates their cultural connections to “Country”. The two groups were clans from the Mungguy Country in the Kakadu region of Northern Territory and the Ewamian Aboriginal Corporation of Northern Queensland. Conducting two-day workshops on separate occasions with both groups, the authors attempted to meld the Indigenous worldviews with the worldviews embodied within national accounting systems and the UN-SEEA framework.Findings: The models developed highlight significant differences between the ontological foundations of Indigenous and Western-worldviews and the authors reflect on the tensions created between these competing worldviews. The authors also offer pragmatic solutions that could be implemented by the Indigenous Traditional Owners and the government in terms of developing such an accounting system that incorporates connections to Country.Originality/value: The paper contributes to providing a contemporary case study of engagement with Indigenous peoples in the co-development of a system of accounting for and by Indigenous peoples; it also contributes to the ongoing debate on bridging the divide between critique and praxis; and finally, the paper delves into an area that is largely unexplored within accounting research which is national accounting.