My current work focusses on the study of public communication in social media spaces, its implications for our understanding of the contemporary public sphere, and on the development of new research methodologies and conceptual frameworks for such research. I have developed the concept of gatewatching to describe the processes by which bloggers and social media users interact with and curate the news, and I continue to investigate alternative and emerging forms of journalistic practice and news engagement; and I coined the term produsage to better describe the current paradigm shift towards user-led forms of collaborative content creation which are proving to have an increasing impact on media, economy, law, social practices, and democracy itself. My major current and recent research projects and centres include:

Current Projects

Determining the Drivers and Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate

Australian Laureate Fellowship, 2022-26 (A$3,518,080)

Rapidly increasing partisanship and polarisation, especially online, poses an urgent threat to societal cohesion in Australia and other established western democracies; polarisation is also a critical cybersecurity concern when actively promoted by bad-faith actors to undermine citizens’ trust in democratic institutions. By introducing an analytical framework that distinguishes four key dimensions of polarisation, the Fellowship aims to conduct the first-ever assessment of the extent and dynamics of polarisation in the contemporary online and social media environments of six nations, including Australia. The evidence is expected to enable an urgently needed, robust defence of our society and democracy against the challenges of polarisation.

Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation

ARC Discovery Project, 2020-22 (A$431,000)

Encompassed by the disputed term ‘fake news’, overtly or covertly biased, skewed, or falsified reports claiming to present factual information present a critical challenge to the effective dissemination of news and information across society. This project conducts a systematic, large-scale, mixed-methods analysis of empirical evidence on the dissemination of, engagement with, and impact of ‘fake news’ and other malinformation in public debate, in Australia and beyond. It takes a triangulated approach, combining computational big data analytics with deep forensic analysis, to reveal the complex ‘fake news’ ecosystem, replace 'fake news' with more precise terminology, and provide recommendations for policy responses based on robust evidence.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S)

ARC Centre of Excellence, 2020-26 (A$31,783,576)

The ARC CoE for Automated Decision-Making and Society aims to create the knowledge and strategies necessary for responsible, ethical, and inclusive automated decision-making (ADM). ADM applies new technologies from machine learning to blockchains across a wide range of social sectors; it carries great potential and risks serious failures. The Centre combines social and technological disciplines in an international industry, research and civil society network. It will formulate world-leading policy and practice; inform public debate; and train a new generation of researchers and practitioners. Expected benefits include reduced risks and improved outcomes in the priority domains of news and media, transport, social services and health.

Global Journalism Innovation Lab

SSHRC Partnership Grant (Canada), 2019-25 (C$2,472,154)

The Global Journalism Innovation Lab researches new approaches to journalism. Our research teams are looking at how new revenue models, new policy frameworks, and new modes of audience engagement can support informed, knowledge-based journalism so that it can continue to fulfill its essential public role in the 21st century. Our leading journalistic partner The Conversation Canada is an independent online source for news and opinion written by academics and edited by experienced journalists. It is delivered to the public via Creative Commons licensing and is free for anyone to read, share, and republish. The Conversation network continues to seek new ways to disseminate essential research that will enhance global public understanding of timely and important issues. This is an urgent moment for journalism. Traditional models are faltering. Mainstream media face increased media concentration, falling advertising revenues, and cutbacks in staffing. The 24-hour news cycle, the rise of mis- and dis-information, and the digital news landscape pose challenges to the production of high quality journalism. At the same time, critical global issues, from climate change to the Covid-19 pandemic, demand broadly shared and well informed journalism. 

Social Media Analytics in Society and Crisis Communication (RISE_SMA)

Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie research and innovation programme (EU), 2019-23 (€1,168,400)

RISE_SMA forms an interdisciplinary, international network combining excellent scholars and practitioners to enable vigorous knowledge sharing and to develop solutions for contemporary challenges for Social Media Analytics (SMA). Advanced theoretical approaches and methods of analysing social media data are especially relevant for two domains addressed in RISE_SMA: society and crisis communication. Recently, social media communication gained immense impact on society and decision-making at all levels. It offers potential for new forms of public discourses, but also challenges societal cohesion phenomena like fake news and vicious social bots. During uncertain events such as natural disasters or human-made crises, social media communication plays an increasingly important role for citizens and emergency service agencies. RISE_SMA attempts to uncover communication patterns and suggest best practices to seek and share information in precarious situations.

Past Projects

Journalism beyond the Crisis

ARC Discovery Project, 2016-19 (A$484,590)

Journalistic culture in Australia is in transition, with significant implications for politics, culture and economic life. Change is impacting on the forms of journalism available to Australian audiences; the ways in which, and by whom, journalism is produced; and the uses to which practitioners and citizens in general put journalistic content. This project connects six leading journalism scholars in a transnational comparative study designed to discover how journalism is changing as a cultural form, and the implications of this for political and cultural life.

Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions’ Impact on Public Debate

ARC Linkage Project, 2016-19 (A$322,971)

Publicly funded researchers and agencies are increasingly expected to respond to the need for greater detail and transparency of the impact of their contributions to wider public value, public debate, and opinion formation. Working closely with partners The Conversation and Cooperative Research Centres Association, this project applies groundbreaking, mixed-methods analytical techniques to improving the assessment of impact of scholarly public intellectual content. It does this by investigating the ‘amplifier’ platforms’ contribution to the impact of public intellectual outputs on public debate as well as how these services impact researchers’ and public intellectuals’ career trajectories.

Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere

ARC Future Fellowship, 2014-18 (A$910,994)

The emergence of new media forms has led to a profound transformation of the Australian media environment: mainstream, niche, and social media intersect in many ways, online and offline. Increased access to large-scale data on public communication online enables an observation of how the nation responds to the news of the day, how themes and topics unfold, and how interest publics develop and decline over time. This project uses such observations to trace how information flows across media spaces, and to develop a new model of the online public sphere. It makes significant contributions to innovation in research methods in the digital humanities, and provides an important basis for policies aimed at closing digital and social divides.

TrISMA: Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis

ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment, and Facilities (LIEF) Project, 2014-16 (A$710,000)

The TrISMA project establishes state-of-the-art technical and organisational infrastructure for the tracking of public communication by Australian users of social media, at large scale, in real time, and for the long term, addressing a significant gap in national research infrastructure. Social media are increasingly embedded in the Australian media ecology, and systematic analyses of how public communication takes place via social media provide rich insights into a range of issues and debates of high importance to our society.

Social Media in Times of Crisis: Learning from Recent Natural Disasters to Improve Future Strategies

ARC Linkage Project, 2012-15 (A$262,878)

Recent Australian and international natural disasters have demonstrated the changing shape of public communication in times of crisis. Mass media and face-to-face communication are now complemented by a variety of channels from SMS to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This project combines large-scale quantitative and close qualitative analysis to investigate the public use of social media during disasters, working with key emergency management organisations to improve their communication strategies. It will highlight successful approaches as well as potential pitfalls; the strategies which the project will develop and test will help to make emergency responses in natural disasters faster and more effective.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)

ARC Centre of Excellence, 2005-14 (A$10,636,449)

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) was established in 2005 to focus research and development on the role the creative industries and their contributing disciplines make to a more dynamic and inclusive innovation system and society. With core support from the Australian Research Council from 2005-13, the centre has been acknowledged as a global leader in this emerging field.  It was a broadly based, cross-disciplinary, internationally focused centre embracing both fundamental theoretical, and highly applied, research in media, cultural and communication studies, law, education, economics and business and information technology, addressing key problems and opportunities arising for Australia, the Asian region, and more broadly in the world, from innovation in and through the creative economy. The Centre played a significant role in theoretical and strategic debates with academic, policy, and industry interlocutors, as well as working extensively on new empirical and technical methodologies, including, for example, the creation of new statistical approaches to measuring the creative economy, business intelligence services for creative enterprise, and ethnographic action research.

Smart Services CRC

Cooperative Research Centre, 2007-14 (A$30,800,000)

Headquartered at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney and with research nodes in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, the Smart Services CRC Pty Ltd was established as an incorporated company in July 2007 with operations commenced in July 2008. Smart Services was awarded $30.8 million to be invested over 7 years for research and development to support innovation in Australia’s services economy.