DCS Newsletter and Activity

AUGUST 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

We are thrilled to kick off this month’s newsletter with a huge congratulations to our post-doctoral research fellow Dr Giang Nguyen who was awarded an ARC DECRA in August!

Giang’s wonderful project ‘Too quick or too slow? Unpacking digital temporalities in networked Vietnam’ explores the multiple and tangled ways digital media shapes ordinary people’s lived experience of time in Vietnam. The fellowship will investigate how fast-paced digital technologies, slow-moving infrastructural change, and indelible sociocultural histories intersect by engaging with the lives of online petty traders, rideshare Grab bikers, tech developers, and residents in designated high-tech neighbourhoods. Giang aims to contribute to efforts to imagine digital futures that don’t render the precarious lives of people ‘on the ground’ invisible.

We’re so happy for you, Giang, and we all feel so grateful that we’ll be able to keep working with you over the coming years as you do this work with us.  

We also have a number of events coming up over the next few months, so make sure you pop the dates in your calendars!

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS  

Upcoming Events:

Hello AI: An Introductory Workshop on Creative & Critical AI (HASS Research) – Wednesday 13^th September 2023, 9:00AM – 1:00pm, level 6 of the Forgan Smith Building, UQ, St Lucia.

How can HASS researchers take up or research AI in creative and critical ways? As a tool for research, AI methods offer new questions and approaches. As an object of research, AI models have significant social, cultural, political, and environmental impacts. With the proliferation of AI technologies, grasping the possibilities (and problems) in this space becomes key. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to a wide variety of AI tools, will see how other researchers employ AI, and will consider how these concepts and methods might be used in their own projects. The workshop is intentionally designed as “no tech,” requiring no devices, formal training, or prior knowledge of technical systems. For more info and to register see out event page: Hello AI: An Introductory Workshop on Creative & Critical AI

Speakers:

• Dr Sungyong Ahn (UQ)
• A/Prof Nicholas Carah (UQ) and PhD Candidate Maria-Gemma Brown (UQ)
• A/Prof Liam Magee (WSU) and Dr Luke Munn (UQ)

Digital Humanitarianism: How tech & data are transforming UNHCR operations

Volker – Tuesday 26^th September 2023, 5:30PM-6:30PM, Room 0M08, UQ (308 Queen Street), CBD.

With Volker Schimmel, the Director of the UNHCR’s Global Data Service, we explore the transformative effects of AI and predictive analytics. Today’s already record-high numbers of forcefully displaced peoples are expected to rise exponentially to over 1 billion by 2040. At the same time, new sets of digital technologies (from Artificial Intelligence, data collection, predictive analytics, surveillance capabilities, to biometric and digital identities) are growing rapidly and are becoming broadly available to perform a variety of functions, including foresight, strategic direction, recommendations and decision-making. The confluence of these two trends have started opening up a new ‘digital humanitarian space’.

For the UNHCR, the world’s lead organization for the protection of refugees, this rapidly evolving ‘digital humanitarian space’ offers new opportunities, challenges, risks, and dilemmas all at once.

This event, open to the public, explores how these new sets of technologies are transforming not just the world within which UNHCR is currently operating but UNHCR’s own work. Our guest is Mr Volker Schimmel, the Director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ‘Global Data Service’. The format is a moderated discussion followed by Q&A (and based on Chatham House rules).

Save the Dates:
Works in Progress Session with Dr Luke Munn: The End of Prediction? AI Technologies in a No-Analog World – Monday 18^th September 2023, 1:00PM-2:00PM, Level 6, Forgan Smith Building, UQ, St Lucia.

Informants, interviewees, interlocutors: Working with human participants in research about digital media & cultures – Friday 6^th October, 10:00AM-3:00PM, Level 6, Forgan Smith Building, UQ, St Lucia.

This workshop will be facilitated by researchers in Digital Cultures & Societies who work with human participants to investigate and explore digital media and cultures. In the workshop researchers will explain how they do their work and navigate methodological, conceptual and ethical questions and challenges. Across the workshop we’ll explore approaches to fieldwork, interviews, and informant-led approaches like data donation, scrollback and go-along interviews. The workshop will also give participants the opportunity to pose their own ideas, projects and questions for discussion. 

We welcome any HASS PhD students to participate in the workshop from researchers using these research approaches in their own work to those who are just curious in finding out more about digital research practices and approaches. The workshop is also an opportunity to meet and hang out with other PhD students interested in digital cultures and societies across disciplines. (Registration coming soon.)

Introduction to Creative Futurism: Using Speculative Fiction Techniques to Express and Extend Research – Monday 30^th November 2023, 10:00AM-4:00PM, Level 6, Forgan Smith Building, UQ, St Lucia.

In this one-day workshop run by award-winning speculative fiction writers, you will use storytelling techniques to imagine possibilities for your research over multiple timeframes and from several perspectives. No prior creative writing expertise is necessary. These easy-to-pick-up exercises will help you come to a deeper understanding of the uses and contexts of your research as well as imagining potential future threads and stress-testing your ideas. You will come away with a selection of tools and techniques for expanding an idea, a draft of a proto-story, potential ‘hooks’ to tell others about your research, and a list of questions that make you think about your research in new ways. (Registration coming soon.)

Digital Intimacies – 14^th & 15^th December 2023

This year Digital Intimacies 9 is being organised as a joint collaboration between us here at Digital Cultures and Societies at UQ and the Digital Media Research Centre at QUT. The theme this year is "life among the ruins:"

"Without stories of progress, the world has become a terrifying place. The ruin glares at us with the horror of its abandonment. It’s not easy to know how to make a life, much less avert planetary destruction. Luckily there is still company, human and not human. We can still explore the overgrown verges of our blasted landscapes…" (Tsing, 2015, pp. 282).

Digital intimate publics express that the “vibe is off”, a sense that things aren’t quite right as we doom scroll on and on and on. A state of precarity and instability has left ruin and decay in its wake. From failed political systems, burnt-out utopias and bombed out landscapes, to the eerie and empty urban spaces of the mass industrial era, the persistent rubble left from (neo)colonisation and cultures threatened by climate crises, to recently obsolescent technologies, hyperlinks rotting away, and glitchy automated systems.

Despite the rubble seeming dead and inert, Anna Tsing (2015) reminds us that ruins are lively places where new multi-species and multi-cultures thrive. From a flattened out, ruined landscape, new possibilities grow. Ruins can be enclaves of hope as much as mourning, loss, and longing: they not only invoke nostalgic reflections, but open up space to dream and imagine the future.

Digital intimate publics share the affective experience of life amid the ruin. They are formed in circumstances of something being ‘off’, of being squeezed, constituted from positions of non-dominance. Digital intimacies come to be not in the gleaming corporate towers and cathedrals, but in the messy in-between spaces where resilient, creative practices of ‘making do’ emerge.

For Digital Intimacies 9 we ask in what ways are digital intimacies reckoning with the ruined structures they find themselves in?

Submissions for papers close tomorrow but stay tuned for attendee registration! Any last-minute submissions can be directed to our inbox at: digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au. Feel free to keep an eye out on our website at: Digital Intimacies 9. Thank you to all of the applicants so far!

Past Events: 

Work in Progress session with Romy Wilson Gray and Maria Proctor – 31^st July 2023 Thank you to Digital Cultures and Societies Winter Scholars Romy and Maria for sharing their work on projects about advertising in the fertility sector using data from the Australian Ad Observatory. 

Works in Progress Session with Dr. Giang Nyugen – “Memory as reciprocal commensuration: Searching for the socialist “bad life” in aspirational Vietnam” – Monday 7^th August 2023
Thank you to Giang for sharing this work with us. It was great to discuss this paper together and hear feedback and insights from other researchers from both DCS and ADM+S.

Masterclass with Assistant Professor Sun Ha Hong – Thursday 17^th August 2023

Thanks to all the attendees and speakers who joined us for this masterclass. It was wonderful to hear a range of perspectives on the topic of algorithmic prediction and techno-futures.

Event Call Out: 
We’re always on the lookout for potential events or collaborations. We encourage researchers at all levels interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us to get in touch. We’re keen to hear from you if: you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, or you’d like an opportunity to speak about your own research. We are also happy to help promote events that may be relevant to Digital Cultures and Societies. We encourage you to submit an Expression of Interest for an event idea or event promotion here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest. Alternatively, send us an email at Digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.  

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OTHER NEWS AND ACTIVITY FROM DIGITAL CULTURES & SOCIETIES

A reminder that in September we’ll be teaming up with Volker Schimmel, the Director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ‘Global Data Service’, to explore the potential for future industry collaboration with UQ researchers (academics, post-docs, and HDRs). This collaboration, which includes a program of events, has been wonderfully led by Dr Seb Kaempf (POLSIS). For more information on Volker and his visit to UQ see our webpage: Visit from Volker Schimmel 17th – 28th September 2023.

DCS post-doctoral researcher Giselle Newton recently had an article published in the journal Sociology of Health & Illness: The incurable self: Negotiating social bonds and dis/connection with metastatic breast cancer. In this article, Giselle and coauthors Sophie Lewis, Katherine Kenny, and Frances Boyle explore the complicated experience of women living with metastatic breast cancer. The paper explores how incurable cancer “inflects understandings of self and transforms interpersonal relationships.” The paper unpacks “ideas around biosociality and belonging” and the tenuous nature of the kinds of social bonds experienced by those living with incurable cancer. Giselle and her coauthors offer an account of these different kinds of social bonds and investigate experiences of (in)visibility, (in)authenticity and (in)validation in the day-to-day lives of women living with metastatic breast cancer. The article is open access and can be read here: The incurable self: Negotiating social bonds and dis/connection with metastatic breast cancer.

DCS post-doctoral researcher Luke Munn was recently interviewed by NBC New York for an article on how social media logics are instrumentalized by men’s rights advocates. The article can be read in full here: The Coast Guard discharged him for abuse. Online, she was called the abuser.

Also, a reminder that our digital research training (foundation pathway) is available for all Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences HDR students at UQ. The course is designed for students who are interested in Digital Research. No prior knowledge is assumed. It is an entry level course to introduce digital research methods, tools, and concepts. The course can be accessed by researchers here: Humanities and Social Sciences Digital Research Training.

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OTHER NEWS, EVENTS, AND ACTIVITY FROM OUR BROADER COMMUNITY 

2023 Digital Publics Symposium – Monday 25^th September 2023, 9:00AM-5:00PM, Room E550, Level 5, QUT, Kelvin Grove Campus (149 Victoria Park Road Kelvin Grove, QLD 4059).

What does a flourishing digital society look like (and how do we get there)?

Misinformation, disinformation, polarisation, bots, trolls, the crisis in journalism, the power of platforms, and the challenges to democracy – not to mention the obstacles to critical, independent, public-interest research: over the past years, much of our work has focussed on diagnosing the problems facing digital societies at the present moment. But our work cannot stop at identifying and addressing what is going wrong: there is a need also to formulate an alternative conception of what could be, and what we are working towards. Taking seriously the mission of the QUT Digital Media Research Centre as a whole, and applying it specifically to research on digital publics, this symposium asks: what does a flourishing digital society look like? And what can we as researchers do to help it thrive? The 2023 Digital Publics Symposium brings together the DMRC research community and invited guests to explore and discuss these questions around a number of key focal points, to plot out a proactive course of research towards a digital society worth living in.

Keynote: Author, Mark Pesce – Man Bites Dogma: Power, Polity and Cybernetics

In a poignant 2012 essay, digital ethnographer Danah Boyd strongly recommended Facebook be regulated as a public utility. Had that been enacted, today’s public discourse would look fundamentally different. The ‘original sin’ of the Web - preferencing private interest above public need - generated tragic consequences for public discourse in the amplification of private interests to global scale. Now nearly impossible to articulate a Web shaped to serve the public interest, it remains even more difficult to create the space within which one could exist. In this seventy-fifth year since the publication of Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics, we have studied enough to understand its profoundly radical observation: ‘The output of a system is its future input’. How do we turn that into praxis? What radical surgeries - philosophical, sociological, psychological, economic, political and technological - need to be performed? How do we rewind and fast-forward, routing around the damage, into a newer, freer (yet far from utopian) conception of human connection, informed by but no longer bound to the hard lessons of Late Capitalism?

Mark Pesce co-invented the technology for 3D on the Web - laying the foundations for the metaverse - has written nine books, including Augmented Reality: Unboxing Tech’s Next Big Thing, was for seven years a judge on the ABC's The New Inventors, founded postgraduate programs at the University of Southern California and the Australian Film Television and Radio School, holds an honorary appointment at Sydney University, is a multiple-award-winning columnist for The Register, pens another column for COSMOS Weekly, and is professional futurist and public speaker. Pesce hosts both the award-winning 'The Next Billion Seconds' and 'This Week in Startups Australia’ podcasts, and, with VRML co-inventor Tony Parisi, recently released the highly-praised, award-nominated series “A Brief History of the Metaverse”. His next book, Getting Started with Generative AI, will be published in January 2024 by BCS Books.

Read more and register here: 2023 Digital Publics Symposium

Electronics Ecologies REPAIR – Wednesday 30^th August 2023, Griffith University, South Bank Campus.

Is electronics repair a right? And if so, who needs it? This symposium, REPAIR, brings together expert practitioners, activists and researchers to discuss the planetary problem of electronics repair. We aim to broaden the current focus for repair activism to ask some fundamental questions: Can repairable electronics really solve the problem of product obsolescence? And what does electronics repair look like at scale? Registrations opening soon, read more on the webpage here: Electronics Ecologies REPAIR

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Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 

Let us know if you have any items for future mail outs. Please feel free to forward this email to interested colleagues and invite them to sign up to our mail list at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au 
 
Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures & Societies Team 

JULY 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

Here's a reminder of upcoming events at DCS! 

With more in development for later in the year, we are always open to collaborations and event ideas! We encourage researchers at all levels interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us to get in touch.

We’re keen to hear from you if: you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, or you’d like an opportunity to speak about your own research.

We are also happy to help promote events that may be relevant to Digital Cultures and Societies. We encourage you to submit an Expression of Interest for an event idea or event promotion here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest. Alternatively, feel free to send us an email at Digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.  

DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS NEWS

Upcoming Events:

Works in Progress Session with Dr. Giang Nyugen – “Memory as reciprocal commensuration: Searching for the socialist “bad life” in aspirational Vietnam” – Monday 7^th August 2023, 1:00pm-2:00pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

Please join us for our monthly Works in Progress session. During this session Giang, our postdoctoral researcher here at Digital Cultures and Societies, will be sharing a paper she is currently working on. No need to register for this session. Just come along and join us on level 6 of the Forgan Smith Building.

Abstract:

This WIP paper is not directly relevant to anything “digital”, but it feeds into my general inquiry of the lived experience of time passage in the late-socialist context of Vietnam. The paper raises the question of how one remembers a past that is fundamentally contradictory to the present. It addresses the question by demonstrating the work of memory as reciprocal commensuration—the intensive social labour required to make the past and the present comparable and the condition of bittersweetness that is inherent to this process. Drawing from twenty-eight life stories of Hanoi’s residents who claim that “life today is better than before,” this article traces the ways Hanoi people turn the “badness” of the socialist life into a ground of comparison against which “life today” was graded as “better.” This paper then unpacks how the materialistic quality of the “better life” was historically formed along the greater intensities of “Western” comfort, convenience, and abundance experienced and remembered by the extensive network of Vietnamese who travelled to Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Despite the confirmation of the “better life” as an escape from socialism, the memory of Hanoi residents about life quality evinces a state of bittersweetness, in which laments about past miseries become folded in with nostalgic stories of progress, and stories of past progress are entangled with lamentations of present dissatisfaction. Thinking in terms of commensuration makes visible the ways Vietnamese people orient themselves out of socialism, thus demonstrates the navigational dimension of memory thanks to its inherent comparative nature, which has been largely overlooked in memory studies. 

Contributors:
Dr. Giang Nyugen

Registrations open:

Masterclass with Assistant Professor Sun Ha Hong – Thursday 17^th August 2023, 1:00pm-4:00pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia

Sun-Ha is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University and the author of Technologies of Speculation: The Limits of Knowledge. His research focuses on how the way we think and talk about technologies shape their human and social implications. In a series of public lectures and masterclasses across Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, Sun-Ha will discuss the powerful imaginaries established by contemporary technologies and the way in which data becomes invested with ideals of precision, objectivity and truth. With his philosophical yet accessible work, Sun-Ha’s visit to Australia offers researchers, students, and the general public a perfect opportunity to enrich their understanding of the digitally-driven shifts that condition our world today.

Digital Cultures & Societies is hosting a masterclass with him on the 17^th of August. This workshop takes up themes via the work of Sun-Ha Hong on algorithmic prediction and techno futures. Sun-Ha will open with an overview of recent research, followed by short “lightning talks” of work-in-progress by digital cultures researchers at UQ to kick-start discussions. Readings for this in-person workshop will be provided in advance.

More details can be found here: https://hass.uq.edu.au/event/14948/masterclass-assistant-professor-sun-ha-hong

You can find registration details here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/masterclass-with-assistant-professor-sun-ha-hong-tickets-679243634997

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Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 

Let us know if you have any items for future mail outs. Please feel free to forward this email to interested colleagues and invite them to sign up to our mail list at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au 
 
Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures & Societies Team 

JUNE 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS  

Upcoming Events:
Works in Progress Session with A/Prof Nic Carah – “Observing ‘Tuned’ Advertising on Digital Platforms” – Monday 3^rd July 2023, 1:00pm-2:00pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

Please join us for our monthly Works in Progress session. During this session Nic, our Director here at Digital Cultures and Societies, will be sharing a paper he is currently working on with a number of collaborators from an ARC Linkage project. PhD Candidates Lauren Hayden and Maria-Gemma Brown are two co-authors on this project who will also join us for the session. No need to register for this session. Just come along and join us on level 6 of the Forgan Smith Building.

Abstract:
The hyper-targeted advertising that emerged on digital platforms over the past two decades is now more productively understood as tuned advertising, a dynamic and unfolding process where ads are continuously algorithmically ‘optimised’ to users in real time. Following Rieder and Hofmann (2020), we aim to develop a framework for the ‘conditions for the practice of observing’ algorithmically-tuned digital advertising. We draw on our research across the Australian Ad Observatory and a multi-year research project on digital alcohol advertising. Across these projects we build customised tools to collect ads from platform ad libraries and through data donation from citizen scientists. We argue that the power of digital advertising is increasingly located in its capacity to tune. Platforms’ ad transparency tools draw our attention to ads, but we need to develop the capacity to observe the dynamic socio-technical process of tuning. We conceptualise and present visualisations of ‘tuned sequences’ of ads, as an alternative to ‘libraries’ of ads. We argue that developing the capacity to observe these tuned sequences better articulates the mode of observation required to develop the forms of public understanding accountability both civil society organisations and researchers are looking for.

Contributors:
Nicholas Carah, Lauren Hayden, Maria-Gemma Brown, Daniel Angus, Aimee Brownbill, Kiah Hawker, Jane Tan, Amy Dobson, Brady Robards

Save the Date:
Masterclass with Assistant Professor Sun Ha Hong – Thursday 17^th August 2023, (Time TBC)

Sun-Ha is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University and the author of Technologies of Speculation: The Limits of Knowledge. His research focuses on how the way we think and talk about technologies shape their human and social implications.In a series of public lectures and masterclasses across Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, Sun-Ha will discuss the powerful imaginaries established by contemporary technologies and the way in which data becomes invested with ideals of precision, objectivity and truth. With his philosophical yet accessible work, Sun-Ha’s visit to Australia offers researchers, students, and the general public a perfect opportunity to enrich their understanding of the digitally-driven shifts that condition our world today.

During his visit to Brisbane in August this year, Digital Cultures & Societies will host a one-day masterclass. Sun-Ha will discuss his work on knowledge production in the data-driven society and present some recently-emerging research. This presentation will be followed by a handful of short, informal talks on work in progress from Brisbane researchers, with Sun-Ha responding. The Masterclass will conclude with a discussion of the key challenges (methodological, social/political, and epistemological) when carrying out digital cultures research in this space.

More details to come.

Past Events: 
Data Science Education & Digital Society – 23^rd of June 2023
 

Thank you to all our wonderful speakers and attendees for joining us on Friday for our Data Science Education & Digital Society symposium. It was great to see attendees from a range of schools across the faculty attend.

Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School:  
Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School – Wednesday 14^th – Friday 16^th June 2023, 9:00am-4:00pm (each day) on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

A huge thank you to all the speakers, attendees, and event organisers for our inaugural Digital Cultures & Societies Winter School. We received wonderful feedback on the three days of events, and we are stoked to have established our first DCS Winter School Cohort. It was a fantastic opportunity for HDRs and ECRs working in this space to come together, network, share stories, challenges, and tips – and learn about not only some of the tools and methods that can be used to do digital research but also some of the important conceptual considerations.

Dr Sam Hames led a session on “stuck projects” assisted by our DCS Postdoctoral Researchers where attendees were asked to consider not only where they might have gotten stuck in the past, but where they might also get stuck down the track. Dr Tom Doig led a workshop on Digital Storytelling and Dr Caroline Graham ran a Podcasting workshop. These sessions were incredibly engaging and helped a number of students step outside their comfort zones. Dr Martin Schweinberger and Dr Sam Hames led a session on using text analytics and data in humanities research. This session helped attendees navigate some of the tools they have available to them as UQ based researchers and challenged researchers to think more creatively about the possibilities of text analytics. We wrapped up the winter school with a final session led by A/Prof Nic Carah and Prof Daniel Angus, supported also by PhD Candidate Maria-Gemma Brown, that explored machine vision from both a historical and methods perspective.

Overall, it was a very successful event, and we want to thank everyone involved for their enthusiasm, commitment, and engagement across the three days. A special thank you to Katy McHugh and Swastika Samanta for all their work organising this event.  

Event Call Out: 
We’re always on the lookout for potential events or collaborations. We encourage researchers at all levels interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us to get in touch. We’re keen to hear from you if: you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, or you’d like an opportunity to speak about your own research. We are also happy to help promote events that may be relevant to Digital Cultures and Societies. We encourage you to submit an Expression of Interest for an event idea or event promotion here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest. Alternatively, send us an email at Digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.  

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES FUNDING SCHEME

Thank you to everyone who submitted an application to our DCS funding scheme for this year. We are currently reviewing applications and will be notifying applicants of the outcomes soon.

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Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 
 
Let us know if you have any items for future mail outs. Please feel free to forward this email to interested colleagues and invite them to sign up to our mail list at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au 
 
Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures and Societies Team 

MAY 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS  

Past Events: 
Death in Digital Society – 3^rd of May 2023
It was wonderful to hear from Katy McHugh, Kate Falconer, and Rebecca Lush at our recent Death in Digital Society event. It was great to hear these researchers exploring the intersections between evolving technologies and our own evolving grief and death related practices in a digital era.

Marketplace of Ideas – 3^rd and 23^rd of May 2023
Thank you to all participants in our recent Marketplace of Ideas events led by Sebastian Kaempf in preparation for Volker Schimmel’s visit to UQ in September. From these two events we have observed lots of opportunity for collaboration between UQ researchers and Volker Schimmel.

Researching Lived Experiences of Digital Cultures – 12^th of May 2023
This month we had Dr Amy Dobson and A/Prof Brady Robards visit us at DCS and present some of their work alongside our own post-doctoral research fellow Dr Giselle Newton. Amy and Brady were visiting UQ as investigators in the ARC Linkage Project that works with young Australians to co-investigate the promotion of alcohol and nightlife on social media. Thank you to those who came along and participated in the interesting discussion. It was a great opportunity to ask questions, from a range of perspectives, about the kinds of methodologies we might use to study digital cultures, intimacies, and our daily lives.

HDR Welcome event and DCS Digital Research Training Launch – 19^th May 2023
Thank you to everyone who helped organise this HDR Welcome event. It was a pleasure to collaborate with the HASS Faculty on this and soft launch our digital research training ahead of our DCS Winter School in June. A special thank you to Katy McHugh, our learning designer at DCS, and our research assistants for all their incredible work writing, building, and testing this training. If you have any questions about the digital research training we offer, please get in contact with us by emailing us at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au

Upcoming Events:
Works in Progress Session – Dr Andrew Dougall – Monday 19^th June 2023, 1:00pm-2:00pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

Please join us for our monthly Works in Progress session where post-doctoral researcher Dr Andrew Dougall will be sharing a paper he is currently presenting overseas at a book workshop on ‘Knowledge and Global Orders’ at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, as well as a workshop on ‘Technoscientific Geopolitics’ at KU Leuven, Belgium. An abstract for his working paper can be read below. No need to register for this event if you are interested in attending, just come along and join us on level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower.

Global orders rely on repertoires of knowledge. What does it mean for these repertoires to be produced not by humans alone, but by emerging technologies of generative artificial intelligence (AI); that is, coproduced by humans and machines? In turn, what do the social underpinnings of these AI technologies tell us about the conditions under which knowledge is (re)produced within today’s contemporary global order? This paper examines these questions through the example of Large Language Models (LLMs) whose development has sparked considerable debate. LLMs threaten to deepen a crisis of epistemological security afflicting the contemporary liberal order, occasioned by the spread of mis- and dis-information. But they also reveal, through the story of their own development – entangled with exploitative labour practices in the Global South – the political inequalities already institutionalised by liberal information ordering. The paper explores each of these dimensions and asks how they relate.

Save the date:
Data Science Education & Digital Society – Friday 23^rd June 2023, 9:00am-12:00pm, The Terrace Room, UQ, St Lucia.
In today’s world, data hold extreme power, this issue is central to our understanding of how technologies impact society. Technological innovations mean that data now have many forms, from streaming to scraping to text-based to AI-generated; yet we don’t arm citizens with tools and dispositions to address the messy problems that impact their lives and rely on complex, non-traditional forms of data. Rather than limit access by first requiring a conventional mathematical background, we see new opportunities to empower young people and citizens to use and create data to advocate for their lives, while grappling with the ethical, equity and accessibility issues at play in an era of data science.

This symposium has been organised by Professor Katie Makar and will involve a workshop at UQ followed by a couple of panels at QUT in the afternoon. Speakers are listed below – more information coming soon!

• Professor Dani Ben-Zvi, University of Haifa, Israel
• Professor Lucia Zapata-Cardona, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia
• Dr Kym Fry, Griffith University
• Dr Carl Sherwood, The University of Queensland
• Discussants: Professor Katie Makar, The University of Queensland (+ others TBC)

Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School:  
Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School – Wednesday 14^th – Friday 16^th June 2023, 9:00am-4:00pm (each day) on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

The Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School is three days of workshops about digital research for humanities and social sciences. The Winter School is an opportunity to meet fellow UQ HASS HDR students and form a cohort dedicated to the intersection of our research with digital research concepts and methods. There is no need to be an expert in digital methods, this is an introductory program that will teach you these methods, techniques, and digital project considerations and possibilities. In collaborative workshops you will have the opportunity to engage with researchers across humanities and social sciences whose work engages with the intersection between digital technologies and our personal and professional lives, our private and public selves. The Digital Cultures and Societies team will lead discussions about digital research approaches and workshops on developing your own research practices. You will be introduced to digital storytelling, digital project management and problem solving, text analysis and data considerations, and machine vision and image classification. This is a cohort-based event, with the same group attending every session and leading to long lasting relationships and collaboration opportunities. Digital Cultures and Societies are relevant to all areas of Humanities and Social Sciences, so students from every school are strongly encouraged to express their interest in attending.

Speakers: 

• Dr Sam Hames (UQ) – Stuck projects with Sam Hames and DCS Postdoctoral Researchers
• Dr Tom Doig (UQ) – Digital Storytelling workshop
• Dr Caroline Graham (UQ) – Podcasting workshop
• Dr Martin Schweinberger (UQ) & Dr Sam Hames (UQ) – Data in the Humanities with Text analytics
• A/Prof Nic Carah (UQ) and Daniel Angus (QUT) – Machine Vision workshop

Please note that expressions of interest for our Winter School this June have currently closed – however, if you have extenuating circumstances and would like to enquire about availability, please do feel free to get in touch with us at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.

Event Call Out: 
We’re always on the lookout for potential events or collaborations. We encourage researchers at all levels interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us to get in touch. We’re keen to hear from you if: you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, or you’d like an opportunity to speak about your own research. We are also happy to help promote events that may be relevant to Digital Cultures and Societies. We encourage you to submit an Expression of Interest for an event idea or event promotion here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest.  

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES FUNDING SCHEME

We have just opened our funding scheme for 2023! We are looking to fund a small number of projects where we can help researchers scale-up a program of research toward funding, partnerships, or other meaningful outcomes.

If you are interested in applying for the DCS funding scheme this year, please visit the following webpage to find out more information: DCS Funding Scheme, and get in touch with us at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au to ensure you meet the scheme objectives and guidelines.

Applications must be submitted by June 19^th 2023.

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – OTHER NEWS AND ACTIVITY  

Postdoctoral Research Fellows 
Dr Luke Munn’s latest book, Red Pilled: The Allure of Digital Hate was recently released by Bielefeld University Press. The book explores how internet technologies repackage racism, sexism, and other ideologies into compelling new forms that shape hearts and minds. The book can be ordered now and is also available as an open access volume. See more here: Red Pilled: The Allure of Digital Hate.

Congratulations to Dr Giselle Newton who has been offered a year-long extension to her current fellowship to work in collaboration between DCS and the Centre for Policy Futures (CPF). We look forward to the research that this collaboration will allow Giselle to undertake. 

Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 

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OTHER EVENTS AND NEWS FROM OUR RESEARCH COMMUNITY 
 
Registrations now open for 2023 ADM+S Symposium: Automated News & Media – 13-14^th July 2023, hosted online and in person at the University of Sydney Law School.

AI and automation are now part of the news and media industries. Digital platforms use automated systems to shape how we find and access information and entertainment, as well as to filter, fact-check and moderate content, and to serve advertising to their users. Newsrooms are producing stories without human intervention and using bots to collect newsworthy data. As these sectors start to seriously grapple with AI, the dominance of major platforms and media organisations  looks far less certain, thanks to a series of economic shocks and a renewed interest in alternative social media technologies. This is a moment of possibility, and one that invites reflection and action. 

The 2023 ADM+S Symposium brings together researchers, industry, advocacy groups and policymakers to showcase the findings of our work together to date, and to address the most pressing emerging challenges associated with automated systems in the digital media, information, and entertainment environment.

The two-day symposium will include:

• Keynotes, panel discussions and fireside conversations with leading international and national researchers, and stakeholders.
• Dissemination of new findings from the ADM+S Centre’s key research projects
• Opportunities to connect with others through interactive workshops, social activities and satellite events.

Find out more information and register here: 2023 ADM+S Symposium: Automated News & Media - ADM+S Centre

Save the date for: Towards a Positive Internet – 6-7^th July 2023, QUT, Kelvin Grove.

This interactive workshop aims to identify the necessary building blocks of a more positive internet including platform policy, conditions for meaningful community formation and personal wellbeing.

Creating positive internet futures for everyone, including children and young people, requires attention to the already successful elements of the internet and social media. By identifying the spaces where the internet supports human flourishing we can create a more positive internet and social media spaces. This workshop aims to identify the necessary building blocks of a more positive internet including platform policy, conditions for meaningful community formation and personal wellbeing. This will be achieved by bringing together experts from across Australia to direct future research attention to internet spaces where people experience joy, fun and connection as understanding these spaces can help build a better internet for everyone.

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Let us know if you have any items for future mail outs. Please feel free to forward this email to interested colleagues and invite them to sign up to our mail list at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au 
 
Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures and Societies Team 

APRIL 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS  

Past Events: 
Digital Platforms in Asia: The Politics of Labour, Regulation, and Health – 31^st March 2:00pm-4:00pm. Thank you to our speakers and attendees for joining us on the 31st of March for our Digital Platforms in Asia event where we heard from Associate Professor Pradip Thomas, Dr Giang Nguyen, and Doctoral Candidate Nishtha Bharti. Our chair for the session, Dr Andrew Dougall, rightly pointed out how complimentary each of the talks were in offering a richer picture on the politics of labour, regulation, and health within this broad context.

Fitter, Happier, More Productive: Algorithmic Regimes & the Future of Work – 19-20^th of April.

A massive thank you to all of the speakers, organisers, and attendees at our recent work and automation symposium: Fitter, Happier, More Productive: Algorithmic Regimes & the Future of Work. A special thank you to Dr Luke Munn for bringing this cross-institutional event into fruition. It was such a wonderful opportunity for researchers to connect with each other’s work over the course of two days. 

Upcoming Events:  

Works in Progress Session – Dr Giselle Newton Tuesday 2^nd of May 2023, 1:00pm-2:00pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

Please join us for our monthly Works in Progress session where post-doctoral researcher Dr Giselle Newton will be sharing a paper she is currently working on titled “On Privacy and Emotion: Donor-conceived adults’ feelings towards their DNA data.” No need to register for this session.

See the below abstract:

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to how different social groups have distinct expectations about personal data and privacy. For example, while for some people, sharing their saliva with a company to generate DNA data may be viewed as a relinquishment of control, for others, such a process may be considered necessary. Combining scholarship on information privacy and the sociology of emotion, and drawing on reflexive thematic analysis of free-text data from an online survey (n = 91) and semi-structured interview data (n = 28) with Australian donor-conceived people, I will examine participants’ motivations for testing and emotional responses to the process. I will explore how donor-conceived people’s emotions towards DNA testing and the companies that their data subsequently belongs to, are mediated by relationships with their donor-conceived peers and social and donor families, as well as the assisted reproduction industry and governments which have regulated the industry to varying extents across time and jurisdictions. Beyond the situated context of donor-conceived people’s everyday digital lives, more broadly I aim to highlight the relational and structural dimensions of emotion and the value of an attentiveness to emotion when considering DNA data.

Death in Digital Society – Wednesday 3^rd of May 2023, 1:00pm-2:30pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

This event will host three lightning talks and an open discussion about death and grief in digital society. Co-badged by the Australian Death Studies Society, these talks focus on the implications of combining technology with death and grief studies, and how this changes our death related practices as a society. We approach the issue from three different perspectives. Firstly, the practices of grieving on social media, and speculation about the future of digital grief. Secondly, the implications for death and succession law in the face of ever-evolving thanatechnology. Finally, the digitisation of human specimens and the ethics at play as these human stories enter the digital world through 3D scanning, digital education, and more.

Marketplace of Ideas – Multiple sessions

Digital Cultures & Societies are hosting Volker Schimmel, the Director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ‘Global Data Service’, for a visit to UQ in September. The visit will include a range of collaborative events with UQ researchers and students. In anticipation of his visit, Sebastian Kaempf will be running two ‘marketplace of ideas’ events over Zoom. See below for more information or please contact Seb with any questions at: s.kaempf@uq.edu.au

In these events, participants will explore the key questions about artificial intelligence, data and technology that animate the work of the UNHCR’s Global Data Service. The Marketplace of Ideas events are open to all UQ researchers – academics and students. In the Marketplace of Ideas events, we will explore questions that animate the work of the UNHCR’s Global Data Service are:

1. What are potential adverse effects of the push for open data and how would the humanitarian approach have to be changed in terms of data protection and human rights of forcefully displaced populations;
2. What impact does automated decision-making under imperfect data conditions have and to what extent can human agency be removed from humanitarian or human rights operations;
3. Digital identities (biographic and biometric) and transnational identity, which creates specific regulatory and legal challenges for international organizations such as UNHCR in the context of service delivery (e.g. digital cash) and comes with the added challenge of extending protection of refugees into cyberspace;
4. Does the digital space and the transnational identity of organizations such as UNHCR conflict with the fundamental principle of sovereignty and if so, what are the consequences?
5. In order to better anticipate future crises, predictive modelling, foresights and big data analytics is needed, especially for population movements to help organizations such as UNHCR to provide faster (emergency) responses.

We would like to emphasize that this is a deliberately interdisciplinary initiate. We are keen to have researchers across disciplines at UQ involved, whether you are working in computer science, politics, humanitarianism, journalism, law, sociology or any area that engages with questions related to digital humanitarianism.

Zoom Event 1: 3^rd of May, 4:00pm-5:30pm Brisbane time

Here, Mr Schimmel will introduce the research work that is animating the UNHCR Global Data Service (GDS) to all interested UQ researchers. The goal is for us here at UQ to listen to and get a broad sense of the work/research of the GDS. Following his presentation, there will be the opportunity for discussion of the GDS’ work and research.  

Zoom Event 2: 23^rd of May, 4:00pm-5:30pm Brisbane time

Here, you will be given 3-5 mins each to respond to what you have taken from Mr Schimmel’s talk in the previous zoom session and – this is crucial – to express ideas you might have on GDS’ work, possible approaches that can be taken and how your expertise might be of interest to Mr Schimmel’s team.

Researching Lived Experiences of Digital Cultures – Friday the 12^th of May from 2:00pm-4:00pm on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

Which methodologies can be used to study digital cultures, intimacies and daily lives? And how might digital platforms or tools be employed in qualitative research to prompt rich insights? This seminar brings those who have experience developing and using participatory and critical approaches to investigate lived experiences of digital cultures as well as those interested in experimenting with and developing new approaches to the digital. Researchers Giselle Newton and Amy Dobson will present research studies where they used interviews to explore our lived experiences and the questions of justice and politics that arise in our digital cultures. The presentations will be followed by a discussion with Brady Robards about developing qualitative, critical and participatory approaches to studying digital cultures that draw on the enduring value of approaches like interviews and develop new techniques for studying our intimate entanglements with the personal, ephemeral and algorithmic digital cultures. Attendees are encouraged to share their own experiences with digital participatory methods, in the context of past and future research and the classroom. Amy and Brady are visiting UQ as investigators in the ARC Linkage Project that works with young Australians to co-investigate the promotion of alcohol and nightlife on social media.

This is event is supported by Digital Cultures & Societies in the ARC Linkage Project Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol and Nightlife on Social Media.

Find out more and register for this event here: Researching Lived Experiences of Digital Cultures.
 

Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School:  
Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School – Wednesday 14^th – Friday 16^th June 2023, 9:00am-4:00pm (each day) on Level 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower, UQ, St Lucia.

The Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School is three days of workshops about digital research for humanities and social sciences. The Winter School is an opportunity to meet fellow UQ HASS HDR students and form a cohort dedicated to the intersection of our research with digital research concepts and methods. There is no need to be an expert in digital methods, this is an introductory program that will teach you these methods, techniques, and digital project considerations and possibilities. In collaborative workshops you will have the opportunity to engage with researchers across humanities and social sciences whose work engages with the intersection between digital technologies and our personal and professional lives, our private and public selves. The Digital Cultures and Societies team will lead discussions about digital research approaches and workshops on developing your own research practices. You will be introduced to digital storytelling, digital project management and problem solving, text analysis and data considerations, and machine vision and image classification. This is a cohort-based event, with the same group attending every session and leading to long lasting relationships and collaboration opportunities. Digital Cultures and Societies are relevant to all areas of Humanities and Social Sciences, so students from every school are strongly encouraged to express their interest in attending.

Speakers: 
Dr Sam Hames (UQ) – Stuck projects with Sam Hames and DCS Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr Tom Doig (UQ) – Digital Storytelling workshop

Dr Caroline Graham (UQ) – Podcasting workshop

Dr Martin Schweinberger (UQ) & Dr Sam Hames (UQ) – Data in the Humanities with Text analytics

A/Prof Nic Carah (UQ) and Daniel Angus (QUT) – Machine Vision workshop

Find out more information and submit your Expression of Interest here: Digital Cultures & Societies Winter School 2023. (Please submit your EOI before the 15^th of May.)

Please note that this year the Winter School is only open for enrolled UQ HASS students. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Event Call Out: 
We’re always on the lookout for potential events or collaborations. We encourage researchers at all levels interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us to get in touch. We’re keen to hear from you if: you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, or you’d like an opportunity to speak about your own research. We are also happy to help promote events that may be relevant to Digital Cultures and Societies. We encourage you to submit an Expression of Interest for an event idea or event promotion here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest.  

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – OTHER NEWS AND ACTIVITY  

Winter Research Scholar Program

Thank you to all our applicants for applying to be a part of the UQ 2023 Winter Research Program through Digital Cultures and Societies. Successful applicants will be working with Dr Giselle Newton looking at health-focused targeted advertising on Facebook or Dr Andrea Alarcon looking at virtual assistants in the Philippines. We look forward to announcing the successful applicants. For more info on the projects see the following link: https://hass.uq.edu.au/Digital-Cultures-and-Societies/Research-Training

Postdoctoral Research Fellows 
Dr Giselle Newton recently published a piece with colleagues Caitlin Macmillan and Professor Katharine Gelber in The Conversation that explores donor-conceived people’s right to know the identity of their donor. Read the paper here: Qld agrees to allow donor-conceived people the right to know the identity of their donor. Here’s why it’s important

On the 29th of March, Giselle and colleagues Caitlin Curtis and James Hereward also contributed a submission to the Review of the Privacy Act in relation to Genetic and genomic information as a specific category of sensitive information

Dr Luke Munn has recently published a new work on the topic of artificial intelligence in the post-COVID home office in a Brazilian journal. Read the paper here: At Home with AI: Artificial Intelligence and Friendly Power in the Post-COVID Home Office.

Luke also gave a talk recently at UQ on the various responses to ChatGPT. See the Abstract below:

The rapid rise of AI language models has drawn various responses, from claims of sentience to dismissals of them as machinic parrots. While acknowledging their limits as technical systems, interacting with them feels like interacting with a subject. For this reason, we turn to a field deeply invested in subjectivity and language: psychoanalysis. We carry out a case study of InstructGPT, detailing its construction and conducting exploratory interviews with chatbots. These investigations draw out how the model is like and unlike human subjects, including short term memory loss, self/object confusion, and competing logics of being helpful, truthful, and not harmful. We conclude that critical media methods and psychoanalytic theory together offer a productive frame for grasping the powerful new capacities of AI-driven language systems.

Dr Andrea Alarcon recently delivered a paper at our work and automation symposium on the 19^th of April (organised by Luke): “Always Already Precarious: On-Demand Work in the Majority World.” See her abstract below:

Location-independent work has been on the rise since before the COVID 19 pandemic, yet its possibilities, limitations and emerging questions came to the surface during lockdown. This presentation draws from a larger ethnographic book project on what are popularly known as “digital nomads” and how they leverage the flexibility aspect of the precarity/flexibility arrangement of on-demand work to gain time and autonomy. The presentation will focus on definitions and uses  of “precarity” as an analytical and political category, noting that in the Majority World, the ideal of nine-to-five secure, waged labor has been an exception rather than the rule. In this sense, these “digital nomads” are meeting the Majority World where they have always been: always already precarious.

Dr Giang Nguyen recently shared some of her findings from her fieldwork in Vietnam at both our Digital Platforms in Asia event on the 31^st of March and our project workshopping session on day two of our work and automation symposium.

Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 

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OTHER EVENTS AND NEWS FROM OUR RESEARCH COMMUNITY 
 
Save the date for the 2023 ADM+S Symposium: Automated News & Media – 13-14^th July 2023 hosted online and in person at the University of Sydney Law School.

AI and automation are now part of the news and media industries. Digital platforms use automated systems to shape how we find and access information and entertainment, as well as to filter, fact-check and moderate content, and to serve advertising to their users. Newsrooms are producing stories without human intervention and using bots to collect newsworthy data. As these sectors start to seriously grapple with AI, the dominance of major platforms and media organisations  looks far less certain, thanks to a series of economic shocks and a renewed interest in alternative social media technologies. This is a moment of possibility, and one that invites reflection and action. 

The 2023 ADM+S Symposium brings together researchers, industry, advocacy groups and policymakers to showcase the findings of our work together to date, and to address the most pressing emerging challenges associated with automated systems in the digital media, information, and entertainment environment.

The two-day symposium will include:

• Keynotes, panel discussions and fireside conversations with leading international and national researchers, and stakeholders.
• Dissemination of new findings from the ADM+S Centre’s key research projects
• Opportunities to connect with others through interactive workshops, social activities and satellite events.

Find out more information here: 2023 ADM+S Symposium: Automated News & Media - ADM+S Centre

Talk with Emeritus Professor Terry Carney: Robodebt – A failure of Governance – Thursday 4^th May, 11:00am-12:30pm in Room 342, level 3, Michie Building, UQ, St Lucia. Zoom link: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/89865297322

Professor Carney will talk with us about how the automated and unlawful Robodebt Scheme was able to operate bypassing the usual and multi-layered checks and balances in place for accountable government. In addition to having a distinguished academic career, Professor Terry Carney served on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and its predecessors for over 30 years, with his appointment not being renewed after overturning five early Robodebt decisions. Since leaving the AAT Professor Carney has also written and spoken extensively about Robodebt, including:

• Carney, T. (2018). The new digital future for welfare: Debts without legal proofs or moral authority. UNSWLJ F., 1.
• Carney, T. (2019). Robo-debt illegality: The seven veils of failed guarantees of the rule of law?. Alternative Law Journal, 44(1), 4-10.

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Let us know if you have any items for future mail outs. Please feel free to forward this email to interested colleagues and invite them to sign up to our mail list at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au 
 
Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures and Societies Team 

February 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS  

We have a range of events coming up over the next few months. When these events are available for registration, the links will be included in future mailouts and on our website. Here are some dates to pop in your calendar in advance!

Save the Dates: 

Digital in Asia – Friday 31^st March 2:00pm-4:00pm, location TBC
Speakers:  

• Pradip Thomas (UQ) – Introducing his new book Platform Regulation: Exemplars, Approaches, and Solutions
• Giang Nguyen (UQ) – Speaking to her recent fieldwork in Vietnam as a part of the broader Digital Transactions in Asia Project headed by Adrian Athique
• Nishtha Bharti (Indian Institute of Technology) – Digital Health in India

DCS Works in Progress Session with Andrea Alarcon – Monday 3^rd April 1:00pm-2:00pm in Room 607, Level 6, Forgan Smith Tower

Professor Martin Volk on ChatGPT – Thursday 13^th April 2:00pm-4:00pm, location TBC
Over the last couple of years our team at the University of Zurich has worked on the digitization of the correspondence of 16th century reformer Heinrich Bullinger (www.bullinger-digital.ch). Around 2000 letters that he wrote and another 10,000 letters that he received have been preserved. 3000 of these letters have been professionally transcribed, edited and published as PDFs in recent decades. Another 5000 letters have been transcribed by various scholars over the years. We turned all of this into a large XML corpus of 3 million words in Latin and 1 million in Early New High German.

In collaboration with the Zurich cantonal archive and the Zurich central library we had all letters scanned so that we can provide images of the originals next to the transcriptions. We ran 2000 of the remaining 4000 letters through automatic handwriting recognition (HTR) with character error rates between 5% and 8%. We also built a machine translation system to convert the 16th-century Latin into German.

With the advent of ChatGPT new opportunities arose: Its machine translation capabilities surpass Google Translate on Latin to German, and it also translates the old German variety surprisingly well into modern German (or English). Moreover the GPT technology offers suggestions for comments and footnotes for the historical letters.

In this talk I will introduce our project and demonstrate our search system. I will show examples of ChatGPT usage, and I will speculate about future opportunities for large language models in the Digital Humanities.

Fitter, Happier, More Productive: Algorithmic Regimes and the Future of Work – Wednesday 19^th & Thursday 20^th April, The Pavilion at UQ St Lucia

Clickwork. Quiet quitting. Bossware. Gigging. Automated Management. Precarity. In the face of advanced technologies, post-pandemic conditions, and intersecting economic and ecological crises, labour is undergoing a series of substantial upheavals. Old paradigms are being rethought; new modes of production are being unlocked. Work is being reworked. In some ways, these shifts are unprecedented; in others, they continue long standing inequalities predicated on race, class, and gender. How do we make sense of these digitally-driven shifts and their social, cultural, and political consequences? This two-day event brings together scholars from media and communication, migrant studies, business and management studies, and other disciplines to develop a rich portrait of our changing work conditions. Day 1 will present a series of interdisciplinary papers and provocations; Day 2 will workshop projects-in-progress through informal presentations and discussions.

Speakers:

• Assistant Professor Sun Ha-Hong (Simon Fraser University) – “Predictions Without Futures: Labour Automation and the Extraction of Discretion”
• Dr. Lutfun Nahar Lata (University of Melbourne) – “Good gig, bad gig: Gig economy, algorithmic control and migrant labour”
• Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens (UQ) – “From Fatigue Studies to Burnout”
• Dr. Penny Williams (QUT) – “The Rise of the Algorithmic Supervisor”
• Dr. Thao Phan and Dr. Jathan Sadowski (Monash) – “Amazon Exceptionalism as a Theme in Techno-Political Thought”
• Dr. Andrea Alarcón (UQ) – “Always Already Precarious: On-Demand Work in the Majority World”

DCS Works in Progress Session with Giselle Newton – Monday 8^th May 1:00pm-2:00pm in Room 607, Level 6, Forgan Smith Tower

Digital Consumer Cultures – Thursday 11^th & Friday 12^th May, time and location TBC

Digital Cultures and Societies Soft Launch of Training Modules – 19^th May 2:00pm-4:00pm, location TBC

Digital Cultures and Societies Winter School – Wednesday 14^th - Friday 15^th June, location TBC

Event Call Out: 
We’re always on the lookout for potential events or collaborations. We encourage researchers at all levels interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us to get in touch. We’re keen to hear from you if: you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, or you’d like an opportunity to speak about your own research. We are also happy to help promote events that may be relevant to Digital Cultures and Societies. We encourage you to submit an Expression of Interest for an event idea or event promotion for future events here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest.  

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – OTHER NEWS AND ACTIVITY  

Postdoctoral Research Fellows 

Andrea Alarcon – on February 3rd Andrea presented "Identity as Safety Net: Re-creating Global Supply Chains in Independent Online Work" in the Labor Tech Series events. 

Giang Nguyen – On February 23^rd Giang was invited by the SEATRiP Program at the University of California, Riverside to give a talk. Giang delivered a paper titled “Between Hope and Haunt: Digital Activism and The Politics of Hope(lessness) in Networked Vietnam.”

Abstract: This talk explores the formation and diminishment of collective hope in Vietnam by tracing the Facebook-based circulation, intensification, and attenuation of affective engagement with the Đồng Tâm land dispute in Hanoi from April 2017 to September 2020. The dispute enables us to conceptualize online activism as essentially fuelled by collective embodiment of hope, understood as temporalized openness toward the ‘not-yet’ that stretches beyond pre-existing agendas. The magnitude of online activism depends not on the network itself but on how new media facilitate an attunement between the public and the latent force of subaltern dissensus. When such connection was disrupted, political hope faded when it was enveloped by endless crises habituated by the network. With implications in Vietnam and beyond, the talk highlights hope as a political affect and a political capacity indispensable in social struggles, which enables us to embrace instead of enclosing the precarious possibilities of change.

Giselle Newton – In February Giselle had an article published with co-author Clare Southerton in a special issue of Media International Australia. Read the article here: “Situated Talk: A method for a reflexive encounter with #donorconceived on TikTok.”

Luke Munn – Luke had an article published in AI & Society. Read the article here: The five tests: designing and evaluating AI according to indigenous Māori principles

Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 

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Let us know if you have any items for future mail outs. Please feel free to forward this email to interested colleagues and invite them to sign up to our mail list at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au 

Come visit us at Digital Cultures and Societies on level 5 and 6 of the Forgan Smith Tower!
 
Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures and Societies Team 

JANUARY 2023

Hello from Digital Cultures and Societies! 

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – EVENTS 2023

We’re always on the lookout for potential events or collaborations. And after a high level of interest in our events in 2022, we have developed an Expression of Interest process for researchers at all levels who might be interested in proposing or collaborating on an event with us.

This Events EOI form can be used to submit:

• Event ideas/requests – for example a training, masterclass, or talk that you would be interested in attending should we be able to organise it.
• Event proposals – an event that you would like to organise with the logistical and/or financial support of Digital Cultures and Societies.
• Event collaborations – events that are being organised another research group, centre or school that Digital Cultures and Societies could co-badge and help support.
• Event promotion – events that may be relevant to our research community at Digital Cultures and Societies.

If you have an idea for an event around a particular topic, question or method, or you’d like to organise an event around a visiting researcher or a research project you’re working on, we encourage you to go ahead an submit an EOI here: Digital Cultures and Societies Events - Expression of Interest.  

This EOI link will be included in all of our mail outs, on our website and linked in our email signatures.

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – REGULAR WORKS IN PROGESS SESSIONS

Beginning in March, we will hold a Works in Progress session for researchers based at UQ on the first Monday of each month. During these sessions, a researcher presents a piece they are currently working on, another researcher offers a response, and this is followed by an open discussion among attendees.

DCS Works in Progress sessions are open to any researchers across the humanities and social sciences whose research engages with digital technologies, media, cultures or methods. We strongly encourage expressions of interest from researchers at all levels including HDRs, Early Career Researchers, or experienced academic staff.

These sessions are designed to facilitate connections within our research community, for researchers to receive early feedback during the writing process, and/or for researchers to gain experience presenting in a supportive environment. 

Our WIP EOI Process

1. Applicant submits EOI.
2. We review the EOI to determine whether the manuscript is likely to be a good fit for our Works in Progress sessions at DCS.
   1. If the EOI is not a good fit at the present moment or we do not have an available session, you will be notified via email.
3. If the EOI aligns well with DCS, we will then work with the applicant to finalise a date for their presentation and select a respondent for the session.
4. A week prior to the Works in Progress session, the applicant submits a copy of their manuscript draft (5000-7000 words) for the respondent to review.

If you would like to submit an EOI you can access the form here: Digital Cultures and Societies - Works in Progress EOI.

If you would be interested in regularly attending these sessions, please let us know by replying to this email and we will add you to our WIP mailing list in addition to our general DCS newsletter.

This WIP EOI link will be included in all of our mail outs, on our website, and linked in our email signatures.

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DIGITAL CULTURES AND SOCIETIES – OTHER NEWS AND ACTIVITY  

Postdoctoral Research Fellows 

Welcome to Andrea Alarcón and Giselle Newton!
Andrea and Giselle have officially joined us at Digital Cultures and Societies on level 7 of the Michie Building!

Andrea comes from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Andrea’s work examines power relationships in day-to-day uses of translational online communication. Andrea is working on a book emanating from their PhD work that examines the mobility, precariousness and power relationships of ‘outsourcing the home’ where Global North tech-workers maintain Global North wages while sitting, or traveling, through the Global South. With us at Digital Cultures and Societies Andrea will develop a project that extends from this work on remote virtual assistants.

Giselle Giselle’s doctoral study explored how digital technologies have afforded donor-conceived people new opportunities to bond, sleuth, educate and strategise. Her work has included advocacy and engagement with donor-conceived people including participating in a delegation to the UN on the anniversary of the Convention of Rights of the Child and contributions to legislative reviews and reforms. Giselle has published across digital media, health and sociology. At the Digital Cultures and Societies Hub, Giselle will focus on genetic datafication, considering how genetic data are managed, (re)used and regulated. Please feel free to drop in on level 7 of the Michie building behind the kitchenette and introduce yourself to Andrea and Giselle sometime!

Book Release
Congratulations to Luke Munn on his most recent book release – Countering the Cloud: Thinking With and Against Data Infrastructures.

How do cables and data centers think? This book investigates how information infrastructures enact particular forms of knowledge. It juxtaposes the pervasive logics of speed, efficiency, and resilience with more communal and ecological ways of thinking and being, turning technical “solutions” back into open questions about what society wants and what infrastructures should do. Moving from data centers in Hong Kong to undersea cables in Singapore and server clusters in China, Munn combines rich empirical material with insights drawn from media and cultural studies, sociology, and philosophy. This critical analysis stresses that infrastructures are not just technical but deeply epistemological, privileging some actions and actors while sidelining others. This innovative exploration of the values and visions at the heart of our technologies will interest students, scholars, and researchers in the areas of communication studies, digital media, technology studies, sociology, philosophy of technology, information studies, and geography.

Fieldwork
Giang Nguyen has recently conducted seven weeks of fieldwork in Vietnam which will help inform her work as a post-doctoral researcher at Digital Cultures and Societies.

Digital Cultures and Societies in the Media

Our post-doctoral researcher Luke Munn was recently featured on the New Books Network Podcast for his 2022 book Automation is a Myth. Check out the interview here: NBN Podcast: Luke Munn on Automation is a Myth.

Luke was also interviewed by media scholar Dr Mél Hogan for another podcast called The Data Fix. In this episode Luke and Mél discuss the allure of ChatGPT technology. Listen to the podcast here: The Data Fix Podcast: Allure, with Luke Munn.

Twitter 
Follow us on Twitter @DGTL_CulturesUQ to stay updated on events and other news! 

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OTHER EVENTS AND NEWS FROM OUR RESEARCH COMMUNITY

Opportunities

Research Consultant at Amnesty Tech: Algorithmic Harms of Social Media Platforms
Amnesty Tech is a programme in Amnesty International's Research Advocacy and Policy Directorate with a mission to protect and extend human rights in a world of rapid, technological change.

The consultancy is intended to deliver research, including replicable research methodologies and data collection frameworks, on the availability and algorithmic amplification of content depicting and/or promoting depression, self-harm and suicide to children and young users (up to the age of 24) on Instagram and TikTok, respectively. See the job posting here: Research Consultancy: Algorithmic harms of social media platforms

Events

DataFest: Who What and Why – with Professor Rob Gould (UCLA) – 1^st Feb 11:00am in person at QUT Gardens Point (GP-O603) and via Zoom.

DataFest was started in 2011 to provide undergraduates with an experience with large and complex data in an open-ended problem-solving environment with very limited time. It is both a contest and a celebration of data. In this talk, with reference to data science thinking, I’ll discuss why I started DataFest, give a brief overview of the challenges (and some of the solutions) over the past 12 years, and explain how to participate.

Speaker:
Rob Gould is a professor in the UCLA where he is Director of the Centre for Teaching Statistics and has overseen all issues for the undergraduate programs in the Dept. of Statistics since 1994. Rob has been a national and international leader and pioneer in statistics and data science education for more than 25 years and long before data science became a buzzword.  In 2007 he established Technology Innovations in Statistics Education, an e-journal publishing peer-reviewed work on the intersection of statistics (and now data science) education and technology, of which he has been editor since its founding. In 2011, recognising that undergraduate students need opportunities to work with data beyond the classroom he founded DataFest, with a first dataset of 10 million records. DataFest has turned into an international phenomenon, with ASA formally sponsoring it since 2016, and held at 42 sites with over 3000 students participating. In 2018, Rob organized an ASA Two-Year College Data Science Summit. Among his extensive publications is the introductory statistics textbook Exploring the World Through Data. Rob has held organizational and editorial leadership positions for a number of international conferences. In 2019 he was awarded the ASA Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award and the US Conference on Teaching Statistics Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
https://qut.zoom.us/j/84971143724?pwd=TWdDTWZJU1Y0ZlczaGxuTUlDYmUxZz09
Password: 658914

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Cheers, 
from the Digital Cultures and Societies Team