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.
Research Activities
Collaboration with researchers at RMIT, QUT, University of Melbourne, Swinburne, Deakin and UQ on the development of an Australian Internet Observatory to develop research tools and approaches for studying automated decision-making by digital platforms.
Giang Nguyen’s ARC DECRA Fellowship ‘Too quick or too slow? Unpacking digital temporalities in networked Vietnam’ (2024-2026) and the ARC Discovery Project ‘Digital Transactions in Asia’. Giang’s DECRA project aims to study how digital media shape ordinary people’s lived experience of time in Vietnam.
Luke Munn’s DCS Research Fellowship ‘After the Future: Heat, Collapse, and Exhausting the “Future of Work”’. Luke’s project explores the rapidly emerging impacts of climate change on the “future of work”.
DCS Projects
'Platformisation and International Order': with Andrew Dougall, DCS Research Fellow, and Andrew Phillips, School of Political Science and International Studies, 2023. This collaboration explores the consequences of ‘platformisation’ for the future of international order.
'Bridging the Digital Divide in Australian Regional and Rural Journalism': with Richard Murray’s, Schoo of Communication and Arts, 2023. This project partners with the Queensland Rural Press Club (QRPC) to understand and respond to the need for sustainable business models and careers for digital journalism in regional Queensland.
'Informality and online labour supply chains'with Andrea Alarcon, DCS Research Fellow, 2023. Andrea's research on “virtual assistants” conducts qualitative data collection on online workers based in the Philippines.
‘Sexual Harms in Online Spaces: The Residential College Experience’ with Lisa Featherstone and Cassandra Byrnes, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, and Alex Bevan, School of Communication and Arts, 2023. This project developed research partnerships with university residential colleges to investigate sexual harms and consent in online spaces.
‘DNA Datascapes: Experiences and imaginaries of DNA datafication’ with Giselle Newton, DCS Research Fellow, 2023. This project investigated how people with lived experience understand the process of DNA testing. The project developed partnerships with organisations in the reproductive health and migration sectors.
‘Online community dialogue and shared understandings of crime and deviance in Queensland and New Zealand neighbourhoods’, with Renee Zahnow, School of Social Science.
‘A Queer Arcades’ with Mo Engel, School of Communication and Arts, year. Mo developed research approaches and partnerships around the use of augmented and virtual reality technology in humanities research and storytelling.
Engagement and Events
‘Interrogating Emotion Machines: Five Critiques of Affective Computing’, 2022. A public lecture with Frank Pasquale (Brooklyn Law).
‘Internet Platform Regulation: Emerging Issues’, 2022. A public panel sponsored with Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC).
‘Digital Humanitarianism: How tech and data are impacting on UNHCR’s operations’, 2023. A public discussion with Volker Schimmel, the Director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Global Data Service.
‘International Platform Societies’, 2023. One-day symposium.
‘Technologies of Speculation’, 2023. A masterclass and lightning talks with Sun-Ha Hong on algorithmic prediction and techno futures.
‘Informants, Interviewees, Interlocutors: Working with Human Participants in Research About Digital Media & Cultures’, 2023. One-day research training workshop held by Digital Cultures & Societies researchers.
‘Digital Intimacies 9: Life Among the Ruins’, 2023. Digital Cultures & Societies co-hosting Digital Intimacies 9 with QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre. The two-day symposium features keynotes from Jessa Rogers (QUT) and Zahra Stardust (UNSW).