Toddlers and tablets: exploring the risks and benefits 0-5s face online. Children aged between zero and five are experiencing an extraordinary shift in media consumption. They intuitively swipe screens and press buttons on tablet computers and smartphones, using apps and accessing the internet. With an estimated five-fold increase in their tablet usage (2012 to 2013), there is an urgent need for research and policy development to maximise benefit and minimise risk. This project is intended to in ....Toddlers and tablets: exploring the risks and benefits 0-5s face online. Children aged between zero and five are experiencing an extraordinary shift in media consumption. They intuitively swipe screens and press buttons on tablet computers and smartphones, using apps and accessing the internet. With an estimated five-fold increase in their tablet usage (2012 to 2013), there is an urgent need for research and policy development to maximise benefit and minimise risk. This project is intended to investigate family practices and attitudes around very young children's internet use in Australia and the United Kingdom, and is expected to contribute to public debate and evidence-based policy in Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland. It aims to develop recommendations for policy makers and offers guidelines for parents of three age groups: zero to one, two to three and four to five.Read moreRead less
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL210100051
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,518,080.00
Summary
Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate. Rapidly increasing partisanship and polarisation, especially online, poses an urgent threat to societal cohesion in Australia and other established western democracies; polarisation is also a critical cybersecurity concern when actively promoted by bad-faith actors to undermine citizens’ trust in democratic institutions. By introducing an analytical framework that distinguishes four key dimensions of polarisation, the Fellowship ....Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate. Rapidly increasing partisanship and polarisation, especially online, poses an urgent threat to societal cohesion in Australia and other established western democracies; polarisation is also a critical cybersecurity concern when actively promoted by bad-faith actors to undermine citizens’ trust in democratic institutions. By introducing an analytical framework that distinguishes four key dimensions of polarisation, the Fellowship aims to conduct the first-ever assessment of the extent and dynamics of polarisation in the contemporary online and social media environments of six nations, including Australia. The evidence is expected to enable an urgently needed, robust defence of our society and democracy against the challenges of polarisation.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE140100148
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$460,000.00
Summary
TrISMA - Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis. Tracking infrastructure for social media analysis: The tracking infrastructure for social media analysis (TrISMA) project establishes state-of-the-art technical and organisational infrastructure for the tracking of public communication by Australian users of social media, at large scale, in real time, and for the long term, addressing a significant gap in national research infrastructure. Social media are increasingly embedded in the Au ....TrISMA - Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis. Tracking infrastructure for social media analysis: The tracking infrastructure for social media analysis (TrISMA) project establishes state-of-the-art technical and organisational infrastructure for the tracking of public communication by Australian users of social media, at large scale, in real time, and for the long term, addressing a significant gap in national research infrastructure. Social media are increasingly embedded in the Australian media ecology, and systematic analyses of how public communication takes place via social media provide rich insights into a range of issues and debates of high importance to our society.Read moreRead less
Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation. Encompassed by the disputed term ‘fake news’, overtly or covertly biased, skewed, or falsified reports claiming to present factual information present a critical challenge to the effective dissemination of news and information across society. This project conducts a systematic, large-scale, mixed-methods analysis of empirical evidence on the dissemination of, engagement with, and impact of ‘fake news’ and other malinformation in p ....Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation. Encompassed by the disputed term ‘fake news’, overtly or covertly biased, skewed, or falsified reports claiming to present factual information present a critical challenge to the effective dissemination of news and information across society. This project conducts a systematic, large-scale, mixed-methods analysis of empirical evidence on the dissemination of, engagement with, and impact of ‘fake news’ and other malinformation in public debate, in Australia and beyond. It takes a triangulated approach, combining computational big data analytics with deep forensic analysis, to reveal the complex ‘fake news’ ecosystem, replace 'fake news' with more precise terminology, and provide recommendations for policy responses based on robust evidence.Read moreRead less
Social media in times of crisis: learning from recent natural disasters to improve future strategies. This project will analyse and evaluate how social media was used by emergency authorities, media organisations and citizens during recent natural disasters, including the January 2011 Queensland floods and Tropical Cyclone Yasi. The project will develop a framework for longer-term strategies for public communication during emergencies.
Digital photography: mediation, memory and visual communication. This project aims to address the social impact of major shifts in the production, distribution, viewing and storage of photographic images which have profoundly altered their everyday use. By adopting an interdisciplinary, user-centred approach to digitally networked photography, the project will provide a more holistic understanding of how photographs mediate communication, sociality and memory in the present. Expected outcomes i ....Digital photography: mediation, memory and visual communication. This project aims to address the social impact of major shifts in the production, distribution, viewing and storage of photographic images which have profoundly altered their everyday use. By adopting an interdisciplinary, user-centred approach to digitally networked photography, the project will provide a more holistic understanding of how photographs mediate communication, sociality and memory in the present. Expected outcomes include generating original empirical data, building international collaboration, and creating a new conceptual framework for assessing contemporary photographic practices. The research will provide community benefit by enabling insight into the social and ethical tensions affecting photography in the present.
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Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere. The emergence of new media forms has led to a profound transformation of the Australian media environment; mainstream, niche, and social media intersect in many ways, online and offline. Increased access to large-scale data on public communication online enables an observation of how the nation responds to the news of the day, how themes and topics unfold, and how interested publics develop and decline over time. ....Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere. The emergence of new media forms has led to a profound transformation of the Australian media environment; mainstream, niche, and social media intersect in many ways, online and offline. Increased access to large-scale data on public communication online enables an observation of how the nation responds to the news of the day, how themes and topics unfold, and how interested publics develop and decline over time. This project uses such observations to trace how information flows across media spaces, and to develop a new model of the online public sphere. It makes significant contributions to innovation in research methods in the digital humanities, and provides an important basis for policies aimed at closing digital and social divides.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100789
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$401,808.00
Summary
Social media influencers as conduits of knowledge in Australia and Asia. This project aims to evaluate how social media influencers can become conduits to communicate information among young people between Australia and East Asia. As icons on the internet who are experts in holding attention and amplifying content, influencers have expanded from being mere commercial enterprises to being conduits of public service information by reaching wide, diverse, and sometimes marginalised youth audiences ....Social media influencers as conduits of knowledge in Australia and Asia. This project aims to evaluate how social media influencers can become conduits to communicate information among young people between Australia and East Asia. As icons on the internet who are experts in holding attention and amplifying content, influencers have expanded from being mere commercial enterprises to being conduits of public service information by reaching wide, diverse, and sometimes marginalised youth audiences with important socio-cultural messages. This project will glean lessons from leading influencer ecologies in East Asia (Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo), to understand how we can use internet-native communication formats to improve inter-cultural knowledge and relations in Australia.Read moreRead less
Special Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR200200604
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$125,000.00
Summary
Extremism and the Australian National Imaginary. The project will use innovative temporal methods to assess the influence of extreme nationalist discourses on mainstream political discussion in Australia. It will develop computational tools to unpick the relationship between digital media, speed and increasing polarisation in political discourse. Expected outcomes include a dataset describing extreme discourses in Australia, an empirical evaluation of the influence of extremism within mainstream ....Extremism and the Australian National Imaginary. The project will use innovative temporal methods to assess the influence of extreme nationalist discourses on mainstream political discussion in Australia. It will develop computational tools to unpick the relationship between digital media, speed and increasing polarisation in political discourse. Expected outcomes include a dataset describing extreme discourses in Australia, an empirical evaluation of the influence of extremism within mainstream publics, and the development of software, methods and a collaborative framework to support research excellence. Expected outcomes include training governmental and non-governmental advocates and policy makers seeking to address extremism for a socially cohesive Australia. Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100500
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$424,652.00
Summary
Measuring social media speed and the acceleration of informational crisis. The project aims to investigate the role that time plays in the production of misinformation on social media. The speed of digital communication is frequently implicated in destabilising the reasoned discussion upon which democracy depends. However, the temporal study of the internet is hampered by a contradiction in time theory between mathematical-scientific time and intuitive-social time. This project advances a theore ....Measuring social media speed and the acceleration of informational crisis. The project aims to investigate the role that time plays in the production of misinformation on social media. The speed of digital communication is frequently implicated in destabilising the reasoned discussion upon which democracy depends. However, the temporal study of the internet is hampered by a contradiction in time theory between mathematical-scientific time and intuitive-social time. This project advances a theoretical solution to this problem and aims to measure the production of time online, developing digital methods to fulfil this purpose. A better understanding of the relationship between time and communication could support strategies to counter misinformation and promote better informed and more consensual discourse.
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