Blog

A couple more new publications before I head off overseas again (mainly for research workshops, but I’ll also take in the Digital Humanities conference in Hamburg and the Conference on Science and the Internet in Düsseldorf):

Tim Highfield and Axel Bruns. “Confrontation and Cooptation: A Brief History of Australian Political Blogs.” Media International Australia 143 (2012): 89-98.

This article in a special issue of Media International Australia on the history of the Internet in Australia, edited by Gerard Goggin and Jock Given, reviews the development of the Australian political blogosphere, from the earlier ‘blog wars’ especially around the …

Phew – it’s been a busy month since my last update. Here’s a run-down of the latest news. First, the emerging maps of the Australian Twittersphere which I presented at the Digital Humanities Australasia conference in Canberra in March have received quite a bit of press coverage over the past week or so, following our press release about this work. Here are some of the highlights:

• The Australian ran a big page three article about our research, and reprinted the annotated map itself;
• the Australian Financial Review also printed the map on page three;
• Stilgherrian gave us a great write-up …

Time for another quick news roundup. Following on from the ANZDMC 2012 conference in Brisbane, where Jean Burgess and I presented our research into the use of Twitter during the 2010/11 Christchurch earthquakes, there were another few follow-up presentations of our research on social media and crisis communication.

First, I flew down to Melbourne to run a workshop on social media and disaster resilience together with Chris Fisher from the Queensland state Department for Community Safety, as part of the Disaster Resilient Communities conference. I’ve now published my two presentations from the workshop (slides + audio); they’re …

Brisbane.
I’m still blogging somewhat selectively from the Australia New Zealand Disaster and Emergency Management conference, given that some of the presentations here really are well outside my own research area. I’m here, though, because I’m presenting a paper with my QUT colleague Jean Burgess on our research into the use of Twitter following the 2010/11 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand. The presentation is below (with audio to come soon, hopefully), and the full paper is also online.

This research is also associated with a new ARC Linkage-funded three-year research project on “Social Media in Times …

Brisbane.
The next speaker at ANZDMC 2012 is Chris Fisher from the Queensland Department of Community Safety, who presents DCS’s ‘All Hazards’ approach to integrated information management. This is especially important in the context of disasters, in order to accelerate the provision of essential information to stakeholders and the public. But this is limited by existing barriers and silos – and it cannot simply be addressed through better information technology.

Disasters do not respect borders or organisational boundaries – and to address this, ‘All Hazards’ became an informational problem-solving exercise. It was an important recognition of ‘information’ as an independent …

Brisbane.
OK, after a brief power outage (why are there never enough outlets in conference facilities?), I’m back to blog the afternoon sessions at ANZDMC 2012. We begin with a presentation by Paul Salmon, who will apply systems theory to the disaster response context.

Disaster preparation, response and recovery processes are complex sociotechnical systems. They have shorter and longer timeframes, and small events can have huge implications well down the track. This means that systems theory models can be applied to the study of these processes: complex systems comprise various levels (relating to the various stakeholders in the process) …

Brisbane.
The next speaker at ANZDMC is Paul Pisasale, the Mayor of Ipswich (which was also severely affected in the 2011 south-east Queensland floods, of course). Paul is currently in re-election mode, so he starts with a bit of a sales pitch for Ipswich.

He notes the problems of talking to the media during the crisis: while the disaster management team might have known what a prospective flood level of 18m meant, the media largely didn’t, and this had the potential of causing substantial stress for the community – so there needed to be clear communication strategies for getting the …

Brisbane.
Over the next couple of days, I’m at the Australia New Zealand Disaster & Emergency Management Conference (ANZDMC), where Jean and I will present our research into the uses of Twitter in the Christchurch earthquake later today. We begin with a keynote from Assistant Commissioner Peter Martin from the Queensland Police Service, though, who was District Disaster Coordinator for the Brisbane-based response to the 2011 floods.

From late November 2010, Queensland experienced some very heavy rain, and many rivers across the state reached record flood levels, this was worsened by Cyclone Tasha in north Queensland by the end …

Canberra.
And the (dubious) honour of presenting the final paper in the final session at DHA 2012 falls to … me. Below is the Powerpoint, and I’ll try to add audio to this as soon as I can, too I've now finally also managed to add the audio, no thanks to a very dysfunctional Slideshare.