A Few Belated Additions

Hello, blog – it’s been a while. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit slack in updating this site with recent events, so I’ve just made a number of rather belated additions. I’m about to head off to Europe again soon to present at a number of conferences, too (more on that in a separate post shortly), so expect the usual conference blogging again then; for now, though, let’s catch up on some recent news.

Part of my tardiness here is related to the Mapping Online Publics project, which is incredibly active at the moment. It now combines our major ARC Discovery project with a couple of ATN-DAAD-funded collaborations with researchers at the universities of Münster and Düsseldorf in Germany, as well as a CCI-internal project on Media Ecologies and Methodological Innovation. Much of our recent focus has been on social media in crisis communication, and I’ve now added a number of recent presentations to this blog:

• Axel Bruns. “Tracking Crises on Twitter: Analysing #qldfloods and #eqnz.” Plenary paper presented at the Emergency Management Conference, Canberra, 12 Apr. 2011.
• Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess. “Mapping Online Publics.” Workshop presented at the Communities & Technologies conference, Brisbane, 29 June 2011.
• Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess. “Twitter, Public Communication and the Media Ecology: The Case of the Queensland Floods.” Paper presented at The World According to Twitter workshop, Brisbane, 28 June 2011.
• Axel Bruns. “Mapping Online Publics: Understanding How Australians Use Social Media.” Paper presented at the National Public Sector Digital Media Officers’ Forum 2011, Melbourne, 21 June 2011.
• Axel Bruns. “Tracking Crises on Twitter: Analysing #qldfloods and #eqnz.” Plenary paper presented at the Emergency Media and Public Affairs Conference, Canberra, 12 Apr. 2011.
• Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Kate Crawford, and Frances Shaw. “Social Media Use in the Queensland Floods.” Plenary paper presented at the Eidos Institute “Social Media in Times of Crisis” symposium, Brisbane, 4 Apr. 2011.

There’s also been a substantial deal of press coverage of this work recently, including articles in Fast Thinking magazine and The Diplomat. I’ve added a number of links to selected pieces over on the Press and Opinion page.

Additionally, it’s been very gratifying to see that this work has also been highlighted by a number of key submissions to the Australian federal government’s current Convergence Review, examining the changing shape of the Australian media landscape. We’ve been cited in Telstra’s submission, as well as in a joint submission by the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA), the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA), the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), eBay, Google, nineMSN, and Yahoo!7.

You can continue to follow our Mapping Online Publics work over on the project Website, of course (and the sidebar to the left of this post also highlights the latest articles posted to that site). Some further journal articles and book chapters building on this research should also see the light of day later this year; I’ll announce them here, of course. One new article has already made it: our piece in Social Science Computer Review has now been published in print – Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Tim Highfield, Lars Kirchhoff and Thomas Nicolai. "Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere." Social Science Computer Review 29.3 (2011): 277-287.

And beyond the crisis communication work which has been our core focus, I’ve now also posted a first glimpse of a larger effort we’re also pursuing: to develop a more comprehensive map of the Australian Twittersphere. Head on over to Mapping Online Publics to see the full graph.

Finally, an older paper (from the 2007 ICE 3 conference in Scotland) has now also appeared in print: in the collection Digital Differences: Perspectives on Online Learning, edited by Ray Land and Siân Bayne. Very nice to see this come out – my congratulations to the editors! (My coverage of ICE 3 is collected here – and my presentation, on which my paper is based, is also online here.)

And that’s all for the round-up of past news for now – more on upcoming events shortly!