Digital technologies are reshaping our social and cultural worlds – our personal and professional lives, our private and public selves.
Through transforming cultural expression and identities, politics, work, and consumption, and media industries and content, they raise a range of existential questions about the relationship between humans and machines in a new age of ‘augmented intelligence’.
The Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies address questions of power and ethics, industrial transformation, and the relationships between digital technologies and our cultural practices and expressions. Our researchers come from across the humanities, arts, and social sciences to envision digital cultures that enrich our relationships with one another, facilitate social cohesion, foster cultural understanding and belonging, and create societies that are fair and just.
We play a vital role in building capacity, programs and partnerships between researchers across and beyond the humanities, arts and social sciences. This includes providing support to organise collaborative events, helping to find research assistants for projects, promoting projects and events, running research training, and assisting researchers looking for support with digital research methods, tools and infrastructure.
Our key activities include:
- supporting researchers and research projects that build the foundation for ongoing collaboration,
- fostering research that is engaged with industry, cultural institutions, policy-makers and the public,
- funding post-doctoral and industry fellows to build digital research capacity, and
- developing cutting-edge and durable digital research infrastructure.
Research Funding
The Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies is a network of projects, activities and collaborations across the HASS Faculty and University. We play a critical role in connecting researchers and enabling them to work together. This includes funding projects aligned with the Centre’s research and goals.
DCS runs 2 funding opportunities for HASS Researchers annually:
- Project funding scheme: 2024 Guidelines and Application Form (link to form);
- Call for EOIs to host a Scenario Lab with an external partner: 2024 Guidelines and Application Form (link to form).
Australian Internet Observatory
Supported by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), The Australian Internet Observatory (AIO) is a major new research infrastructure collaboration between the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making + Society (ADM+S), researchers and research centres (including DSC), university partners and organisations across Australia and internationally. The Australian Internet Observatory is developing the tools and capabilities required to gather and analyse online user experience data, algorithms, and interactions. It supports innovative approaches to the collection and analysis of digital social data and internet platforms and the analytical tools and governance required to support cutting-edge research on social, economic, health and environmental issues.
Australian Internet Observatory (AIO)
Digital Humanitarianism Hub
The Digital Humanitarianism Hub is a virtual network which houses and seeks to foster collaboration between UQ and UNHCR’s Global Data Service. At UQ, the Hub is integrated into the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies. It brings together UNHCR staff/experts and academics from UQ and from across Australia. The hub is currently in development.
Automation
How can algorithmic decision-making systems be developed that are responsible, ethical and inclusive?
Automated decision-making systems transform social, economic and cultural life. They also transform how cultural archives are constructed, used and controlled. Automation raises significant questions for the organisation of industries and labour, policy approaches and regulatory frameworks, fairness and accountability. We work across disciplines and institutions to develop responsible, ethical, and inclusive approaches to automated decision-making across media, health, and social services.
Automation activities, projects and events
Computational Language and Media
Computational Language and Media explores the use of digital methods to assemble, understand, critique, and expand collections of social and cultural data. What are the functions of these methods, and what are their possible uses? How can potential biases be mitigated? In this theme, we develop digital collections of cultural data that holds national significance, making these collections available to researchers, and create novel techniques for analysing and visualising them.
Computational language and media activities, projects and events
Digital Cultures and Platforms
How do digital cultures and technologies shape our perception of the world? Digital cultures are characterised by entanglements between our lived experience, bodies, and senses with the data-processing power of computers. We increasingly make sense of ourselves and our world through information that is filtered and presented to us by algorithmic systems and through digital platforms. In this theme, we explore how digital technologies and environments affect our identities, public life, and cultural institutions. Digital platforms are rapidly transforming traditional media, reframing interpersonal mediated communication, and changing the rules of the game for everything from retail to politics, religion to regulation, and evaluation to advertising. How do digital platforms – ranging from social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok to service delivery platforms such as eBay, Uber, or Netflix – revolutionise our interactions and filter our daily routines and experiences through technology? In this theme we examine how digital technologies affect our senses, aesthetics, bodies, and cultural lives.
Digital cultures and platforms activities, projects and events
Digital storytelling and storythinking
Digital storytelling techniques incorporate playfulness, exploration, perspective taking, and collaboration to communicate complex ideas in accessible digital formats. Storythinking enables researchers to translate their disciplinary expertise to new challenges. While many digital research initiatives in the humanities and social sciences focus solely on digital methods and tools, we incorporate the use of digital technologies to tell stories, and the use of stories as a method for scenario-planning digital futures in our research approaches and capacity.
We develop the capacity of HASS researchers in 2 key areas:
- Using digital technologies and media in telling stories and engaging with stakeholders about their research.
- Using story-thinking, design-thinking and scenario-based practices to explore, investigate and speculate about research problems related to digital technologies.
Digital storytelling and storythinking activities, projects and events
Digital Cultures & Societies is committed to developing and providing digital research training opportunities for staff and students.
Research training seasons
This year the DCS calendar of events will include 3 seasons of Digital Research Training. Keep an eye on our newsletter and our events page throughout the year for registration links and more information.
Digital research training
The DCS Digital Research training is now online and accessible for all researchers and HDR students interested in Digital Research. This three-part training begins with the Foundation Pathway course, which introduces the study of digital cultures and societies as a field of study, methods, and considerations. The Researcher Pathway explores further approaches and tools for working with digital data. The Storyteller Pathway describes digital storytelling principles, methods, and approaches.
Access the DCS Digital Research Training
Summer Research Scholarship Program 2025
Applications open 23 September and close 11 October 2024.
View current research scholarship projects
Project title | Analysis of large image datasets using sparse nearest neighbour graphs |
Hours of engagement & delivery mode | This will be offered on-site or hybrid, for 20-30 hours/week between 13 Jan and 21 Feb. |
Description | Visually exploring large databases of images by their content remains challenging. While recent advances enable images to be represented by embedding in a dense vector space and therefore compared through geometric operations, it is difficult to reason and think about this geometric space in the same way we might think about searching for a word in a document. This project aims to test whether a specific transformation (k nearest neighbour graphs) can be used to make querying a large database of images easier. |
Expected learning outcomes and deliverables | This project will give the applicant an end-to-end overview of testing a concrete idea for visual analytics approaches. They will be exposed to the architectural principles involved in building and validating a prototype for this idea, including testing and evaluation with users on their own data. They will be expected to give a short presentation on their process and outcomes of their work on this project. |
Suitable for | Applicants will need demonstrated Python programming experience, ideally with exposure to text analytics, machine learning, or some other kind of data analysis/data analytics. |
Primary Supervisor | Dr Sam Hames |
Further info | Please contact Dr Sam Hames at s.hames@uq.edu.au if you have any questions. |
The Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies (DCS) is a strategic funded HASS Faculty Research Centre. If you would like to find out how you can connect with our work contact us at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.
Associate Professor Nicholas Carah
Nic is the Director of DCS. Nic facilitates the development of collaborative research projects, funding bids, high quality academic outputs, supporting HDR students and coordinating digital research training. He fosters partnerships and research translation with industry, government, and cultural institutions. Nic oversees the development of durable digital research infrastructure used by HASS researchers.
Andrea is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at DCS. She 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, studies of digital nomads, and remote virtual assistants.
Aimee is an ARC Early Career Industry Fellow with DCS. Aimee is undertaking this fellowship in partnership with the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), where she is also the Policy and Research Manager. Her current research focus is on digital marketing by harmful industries and exploring potential avenues for regulation in this space.
Andrew is a is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at DCS. He is an International Relations researcher whose work deals with the relationship between communication media and international order. Andrew’s current work examines the politics of liberal ordering through the prism of labour-intensive digital mediation practices, such as content moderation and generative AI.
Luke is a Research Fellow at DCS. His wide-ranging work investigates the sociocultural impacts of digital cultures, from data infrastructures in Asia to platform labor and far-right radicalisation. His work combines diverse digital methods with critical analysis that draws on media, race, and cultural studies.
Giselle (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at DCS. Giselle is a social researcher of technology, health and family with a background in media studies, sociology and linguistics. Giselle's research agenda focuses on how developments in digital and bio- technologies facilitate the emergence of new identities, communities and family structures; shifts in knowledge practices and positionings; and changes in power dynamics particularly between laypeople, experts and institutions.
Giang is working on her DECRA project with DCS and the School of Communication and Arts. In her current research, she explores the contesting temporalities, or the lived experiences of time, on the ground of digital development in Vietnam. Giang’s work also investigates the gendered dimensions of digital transactions in Vietnam, focusing on the experiences of male delivery workers and female online retailers.
Dan Tran
Dan is a Software Developer at DCS, as well as the UQ node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). Dan works on a range of projects to support different research groups within both DCS and ADM+S. His work leverages computational techniques and designs to create user-friendly web, desktop and mobile applications to support the data gathering, storage, extraction and analysis for social science research, ranging from welfare rights to alcohol advertisement on social media platforms.
Meg Herrmann
Meg is the Communications and Events Officer for DCS. Meg assists with the centre’s outward facing communications, activity reporting, and event planning and execution.
Jess White
Jess is the DCS Centre Coordinator. Jess’ role is to work with the director to develop and implement strategic plans, and to manage the centre’s operations and engagement activities. Jess also has experience and an ongoing interest in digital storytelling for humanities research.
Web Archives, Web Archiving, and Web Scraping
4 October, 11.00 am
This workshop will introduce you to working with the web as a data source for your research. The aim is to provide you with a broad overview of the major techniques and considerations of working with the Web so that you can start asking the right questions for your research. The workshop will use a mixture of case studies and practical exercises to cover topics including: how the web works, and how this impacts on the ways and means of data collection; working with existing web archives, such as the Internet Archive and the Australian Web Archive, to examine history; and making your own archives of web material for practical and reliable data collection.
Introduction to Creative Futurism: Using Speculative Fiction Techniques to Express and Extend Research
21 November 10.00 am – 4.00 pm
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. 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.
Artificial Visionaries: Exploring the intersections of machine vision, computation, and our aural and visual cultures
27 November – 28 November
"Artificial Visionaries" is a two-day symposium with the goal of bringing together scholars who are exploring the intersections between computation and creativity across a broad range of aural and visual cultures. We welcome researchers, practitioners, and artists exploring the relationship between data, machine vision, digital platforms, algorithms, generative technologies, and aural and visual cultures.
Works in Progress
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. These sessions are designed to facilitate connections within our research community and across faculties, for researchers to receive early feedback during the writing process, and/or for researchers to gain experience presenting in a supportive environment.
Contact us to arrange a WIP with our team
Contact us
Get in touch to learn more about our research, research training, and events at digitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au.
Associate Professor Nicholas Carah
Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies
n.carah@uq.edu.au
Jess White
Centre Coordinator
j.s.white@uq.edu.au
Meg Herrmann
Communications and Events Officerdigitalcultures@hass.uq.edu.au