ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7349-1662
Current Organisation
University of Sydney
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In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Communication Technology and Digital Media Studies | Communication technology and digital media studies | Communications and media policy | Communication and Media Studies | Media and communication law | Communication and media studies |
The Media | Public Services Policy Advice and Analysis | Internet Broadcasting |
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Date: 10-10-2020
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-2023
DOI: 10.1177/13548565231178005
Abstract: This study investigates the role of two intermediaries, a mainstream media outlet and a popular digital media platform, to shape cultural identity through a case study of the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire crisis (colloquially known as the ‘Black Summer’). Theoretically framed by networked publics, this study explores the vernacular creativity of social media users and mainstream media coverage during the Black Summer bushfire crisis. Findings draw on a thematic analysis of 100 news articles published between September 2019 and January 2020 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) randomly selected from a larger corpus of bushfire coverage ( n = 1269) and 120 TikTok videos posted between November 2019 and January 2021 that included prominent hashtags associated with the bushfires. Findings from news coverage highlight the ways in which the ABC framed the role of social media to connect with wider audiences while preserving their values as a public service media outlet. Findings from TikTok videos illustrate the role of ‘templates’ that encourage user participation and vernacular creativity on the platform. Comparing coverage of the bushfires on the ABC and TikTok revealed a shared set of striking visual elements used to shape cultural identity, communicate information, and make sense of a significant public crisis. This article offers directions for future research to explore the relationships and tensions between digital content creators and journalists and their capacity to create and contest cultural identities and imaginaries.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-02-2016
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2022
DOI: 10.1002/POI3.325
Abstract: Ms. Nguyen Phuong Hang is the CEO of Dai Nam Van Hien, a tourism complex in Binh Duong province in southern Vietnam, and in 2021 she started livestreaming on social media. Hang's livestreams would humiliate celebrities, include personal attacks, criticize media and charity organizations, and use harassing language, resulting in the Vietnamese government regulating social media influencers. Vietnam is a centralized government that promotes the regulation of social media influencers to control the population by censoring content and banning certain discussion topics. This is exemplary of Vietnam's media regulatory environment: Vietnam wants to take advantage of the opportunities that new media and technology bring to promote economic integration, yet the Vietnamese government prefers to accept them by enforcing their adherence to local regulations via regulatory and economic measures. As a result, the Vietnamese government has increased control over livestreaming influencers: any social media account with more than 10,000 followers must provide account holders' contact information to government authorities. Further, social media platforms will be asked to remove content that has been flagged as problematic by government officials, shoring up Vietnam's view on regulation toward foreign social media platforms. These regulations allow the government to control the narrative around social issues and prevent dissenting voices from being heard. Departing from the analysis of Hang's case study, this article examines the current regulatory status of social media users with a specific focus on Vietnamese influencers. The paper also extrapolates the tension that the country faces as it invests and develops its digital and creative industries.
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2017
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 11-2012
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X1214500113
Abstract: This article investigates the ethnographic methodological question of how the researcher observes objectively while being part of the problem they are observing. It uses a case study of ABC Pool to argue a cooperative approach that combines the role of the ethnographer with that of a community manager who assists in constructing a true representation of the researched environment. By using reflexivity as a research tool, the ethnographer engages in a process to self-check their personal presumptions and prejudices, and to strengthen the constructed representation of the researched environment. This article also suggests combining management and expertise research from the social sciences with ethnography, to understand and engage with the research field participants more intimately – which, ultimately, assists in gathering and analysing richer qualitative data.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-06-2021
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X211017917
Abstract: YouTube is one of the most utilised online content sharing sites, enabling commercial enterprise, education opportunities, and facilities for vernacular creativity. Its user engagement demonstrates online community development alongside its use as a distribution platform to monetise one’s branded self. However, as a subset of Alphabet Incorporated, its access is often restricted by governments of Asian Pacific countries. This research describes how countries that have banned YouTube still have exceptionally strong online communities, bringing into question the sorts of augmentations used by its participants. This article focuses on digital intermediation strategies, specifically the DIY approach of community building through the use of unseen infrastructures. This comparative study of YouTube channels in several Asia Pacific countries highlights the techniques that bypass limiting infrastructures to boost online community activity. The results demonstrate digital intermediation provides unique opportunities for key agents to contribute to strengthening social imaginaries within the Asia Pacific region.
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2021
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-2015
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X1515500103
Abstract: The role assumed by institutions that directly develop and support online communities has emerged as a crucial factor in the development of self-governance models for online communities engaging in collaborative practices. Commonly, online communities reject top-down governance models in favour of a meritocracy that positions users in authoritative positions because of their online performance. Scholarly research into online communities suggests that their governance models are horizontal, even where the community platforms are being developed or supported by commercial institutions. Questions of authority and power emerge when institutional, top-down governance models intersect with online community meritocracy in day-to-day communicative activities and while engaging in creative production. This article examines an experiment in fostering interactive public service media by users of the now-defunct ABC Pool through the case study of Ariadne. It tracks how early user-driven ideas for creativity were aligned with the interests of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation through a process of community self-governance alongside cultural intermediation.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-2021
DOI: 10.1002/POI3.263
Abstract: In January 2021, the editorial team of Policy & Internet changed from the Oxford Internet Institute to the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. This article invites all the past and current editors to contribute to the future directions and discussion of internet and public policy. It is collection of six contributions covering the trajectory of the internet policy research agenda, platform power in the digital economy, algorithms and the need for transparency, media ersity and platform regulation, speech in the age of content moderation and age‐gating the internet. The collection of essays highlights the past 10 years of the journal and paints a clear trajectory for the next era of Policy & Internet .
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 08-08-2022
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-2018
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 23-08-2023
DOI: 10.1177/14614448211040247
Abstract: This article constructs a theoretical model of digital intermediation: a process of three key, and unseen, components for cultural production in our contemporary media environment. Digital intermediation is a content production and consumption process that incorporates the cultural characteristics of technologies, agencies and automation. First, the article describes the key components of digital intermediation that bring about the production and distribution of cultural artefacts. Second, the article describes digital intermediation as a process of production and consumption amid these three components. Third, the article articulates the problems digital intermediation creates by examining the loss of user agency over the production of and access to cultural artefacts. Finally, the article highlights how digital intermediation problems can be addressed by cultural institutions, specifically public service media, to shore up user agency within automated media environments.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-06-2016
Abstract: During 2011, the now defunct ABC Pool (abc.net.au ool) project developed an experiment that sought to combine emerging augmented reality (AR) technology with the archival collection of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The MyBurb project attempted to alter experiences of Australian suburbs by augmenting ABC archives in contemporary suburban environments to explore the blur between physical and digital spaces with its citizens. Mobile media, specifically geo-locative AR applications such as Layar are “one of the most widely used mobile AR applications” (Liao & Humphreys, 2014, p. 2) and challenge the sociological implications of hybrid spaces as “[m]obile interfaces … allow users to be constantly connected to the Internet while walking through urban spaces” (de Souza e Silva, 2006, p. 261). The project was successfully implemented, but was rarely utilized by the audience it sought to engage, revealing a ision between aspects of the ABC’s remit and engaging its audience through mobile technology and environmental hybridity. This observation supports the cultural production gap Hesmondhalgh (2007) identified between the production and consumption of cultural goods, which I argue could be facilitated through technological intermediation as part of the broader concept of cultural intermediation (Hutchinson, 2013 Maguire & Matthews, 2010 Negus, 2002). How then could cultural intermediation facilitate the collaborative production of cultural goods to include the affordances of geo-locative media while avoiding the disconnection between the MyBurb project and its stakeholders? The data presented within this paper represents 3 years of research at ABC Pool where I was embedded as the community manager/researcher in residence.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-05-2020
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-2015
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X1515400112
Abstract: The public service media (PSM) remit requires the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to provide for minorities while fostering national culture and the public sphere. Social media platforms and projects – specifically ‘social TV’ – have enabled greater participation in ABC content consumption and creation they provide opportunities for social participation in collaborative cultural production. However it can be argued that, instead of deconstructing boundaries, social media platforms may in fact reconstruct participation barriers within PSM production processes. This article explores ABC co-creation between Twitter and the # 7DaysLater television program, a narrative-based comedy program that engaged its audience through social media to produce its weekly program. The article demonstrates why the ABC should engage with social media platforms to collaboratively produce content, with # 7DaysLater providing an innovative ex le, but suggests skilled cultural intermediaries with experience in community facilitation should carry out the process.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-2016
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-07-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 26-04-2021
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2021
DOI: 10.1002/POI3.271
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-06-2021
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-12-2021
DOI: 10.1002/POI3.279
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2022
DOI: 10.1002/POI3.297
Abstract: During a chaotic time for most in which our virtual world, made possible through the internet and its affordances, Policy & Internet sought the voices of scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and higher degree researchers to rethink our internet, its policy and the surrounding communication technology within our contemporary society. One emerging and overarching theme became apparent as our network of global scholars provided their insights into the academic puzzle and broader societal impact surrounding the future of the internet. That is, an ambiguity. More specifically, ambiguity as the core consideration that acts as a critical and connective glue for which we can approach the research of the internet for the coming three to five years, and a way to connect universal elements which underpin our scholarship all at once.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-06-2023
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X231177837
Abstract: This article presents responses from a range of Australian scholars on communication research and teaching in the context of a roundtable in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Australian Communication Association (ACA), the precursor organisation to the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA). Emphasising the range and ersity of approaches and epistemologies in this field, the roundtable invited a ‘situated’ response to questions considering scholarship, frameworks, and theoretical perspectives useful in thinking through the near and mid-term challenges facing the area. Emerging from the exercise is a snapshot of different agendas for research and teaching, many of them future-oriented and reformist in their emphasis on responsible practice and social change.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 18-07-2020
Abstract: This article is about the new roles within social media as a result of the software that automatically gathers and influences our usage: digital first personalities. I use cultural intermediation as a framework to locate the automated processes, such as algorithmic generated recommender systems, that influence content consumption practices driven by digital first personalities. First, the article applies cultural intermediation to celebrity, social media influencers and algorithms to highlight how media is produced and distributed by new forms of intermediation. This section outlines the new players in social media, how the value of media content is transferred from one stakeholder group to another and how algorithms increasingly place prominence on particular types of content. The article then presents fieldwork from several digital agencies that are responsible for creating the digital first personality role. These agencies are demonstrable of those that produce commercially oriented content alongside other more public affairs-oriented content. Finally, the article argues that digital first personalities are crucial actors within cultural intermediation to ensure public issues remain visible to those stakeholders who are most impacted by timely information on societal issues.
Start Date: 03-2018
End Date: 02-2024
Amount: $315,700.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 04-2023
End Date: 04-2024
Amount: $215,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity