Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Exploring Scientists’ Perceptions Of Citizen Science For Public Engagement With Science, Stephanie A. Collins, Miriam Sullivan, Heather J. Bray

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

It is often assumed that citizen science is inherently participatory in nature. However, citizen science projects exist along a continuum from data contribution to full co-creation. We invited 19 biologists to explore their conceptions of citizen science. Almost all participants defined citizen science as involving non-scientists in data collection. This definition acted as a barrier for scientists who did not see how citizen science could suit their research objectives. While interviewees perceived many societal and experiential benefits of contributory citizen science, deliberate design is needed to realise the full potential of citizen science for public engagement

Children’S Perspectives Of Digital Citizenship In India, Korea And Australia: Report Of Findings From Children’S Digital Citizenship And Safety Roundtables, Kylie Stevenson, Emma Jayakumar, Harrison See, Yeonghwi Ryu, Shruti Das

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This report presents data and findings from Phase Two of the research project Digital Safety and Citizenship Roundtables. In this phase, which focuses on children’s perspectives of digital safety and digital citizenship, three child-focused, play-based roundtables were held in Seoul (Korea), Delhi (India) and Perth (Australia) respectively in the months of June and July 2022, with 48 children in total contributing their perspectives. Qualitative data was collected from these child participants through 90-minute play-based roundtables featuring three sections: a short introductory drawing activity using prompt cards; a discussion regarding the children’s understanding of digital citizenship; and a LEGO play activity …

Children’S Digital Citizenship Project: Your Perspectives: A Report For Children, Harrison See, Kylie Stevenson, Emma Jayakumar, Phoebe Zeng

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This report talks about a teamwork project between the LEGO Group, the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (Digital Child) and Edith Cowan University (ECU).

In 2022, the LEGO Group, ECU and Digital Child researchers teamed up to ask children and adults in India, Korea and Australia about digital citizenship. We collected all this information together and compared our results, and then made some suggestions about how we can all do things better to help kids be safer, smarter, and happier online.

A Big Data Exploration Of The Informational And Normative Influences On The Helpfulness Of Online Restaurant Reviews, Stephanie Meek, Violetta Wilk, Claire Lambert

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 Edith Cowan University With the proliferation of user generated online reviews, uncovering helpful restaurant reviews is increasingly challenging for potential consumers. Heuristics (such as “Likes”) not only facilitate this process but also enhance the social impact of a review on an Online Opinion Platform. Based on Dual Process Theory and Social Impact Theory, this study explores which contextual and descriptive attributes of restaurant reviews influence the reviewee to accept a review as helpful and thus, “Like” the review. Utilising both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, a big data sample of 58,468 restaurant reviews on Zomato were analysed. Results revealed …

The Influence Of Camera Perspective And Viewer Attitudes Towards Police On Perceptions Of Police-Civilian Encounters, Anna-Louise Skidmore

Theses : Honours

Research suggests there may be a Camera Perspective Bias (CPB) effect across different camera footage types which influences viewer perceptions of police use of force encounters. Police body-worn camera (BWC) footage presents a first-person perspective from the officer’s point of view which predominantly captures the civilian. It is suggested that viewing an encounter from this perspective elicits a positive bias towards the officer when compared to CCTV footage. Additionally, research also shows that attitudes towards police influence perceptions of a filmed police-civilian encounters. This research aimed to investigate the effect of different camera evidence types (i.e., CCTV, BWC without audio …

Digital Citizenship In Domestic Contexts, Lelia Green

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Digital citizenship is an important aspect of children’s rights and is receiving increasing policy attention around the world, including from the United Nations. For many children, however, it is the domestic environment where core digital rights are negotiated, with parents and teens sometimes clashing over children’s digital activities. This chapter draws upon ethnographic work with adolescent male online gamers who constitute the inner circle of a Dota 2 clan of two years’ standing. Separate interviews with five parents and four teens, and follow up focus groups with each cohort, reveal details of domestic negotiations around digital citizenship rights.

Facebook: Where Privacy Concerns And Social Needs Collide, Sonya Scherini

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Facebook is an integral part of today’s social landscape, but Facebook use involves compromising one’s privacy in relation to both other users and to the Facebook corporation and its affiliated businesses. This analysis explores respondents’ reasons for using Facebook together with their Facebook-related privacy concerns, and how these factors influence self-disclosures and privacy management strategies on the site. Also explored are respondents’ perceptions both of what the Facebook corporation ‘knows’ about them and with whom it shares their data. The research is based on the concepts of user-user and user-corporate privacy concerns versus the social needs of self-portrayal and belonging. …

Netnography: Range Of Practices, Misperceptions, And Missed Opportunities, Leesa N. Costello, Marie-Louise Mcdermott, Ruth M. Wallace

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This is the first article to describe how broadening of the term netnography in qualitative research is leading to misperceptions and missed opportunities. The once accepted need for human presence in netnographic studies is giving way to nonparticipatory (passive) approaches, which claim to be naturalistic and bias-free. While this may be tenable in some environments, it also removes the opportunity for cocreation in online communities and social media spaces. By contrast, participatory (active) netnographers have an opportunity to conduct their research in a way that contributes value and a continuity of narrative to online spaces. This article examines the ways …

A Survey Of Social Media Users Privacy Settings & Information Disclosure, Mashael Aljohani, Alastair Nisbet, Kelly Blincoe

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This research utilises a comprehensive survey to ascertain the level of social networking site personal information disclosure by members at the time of joining the membership and their subsequent postings to the sites. Areas examined are the type of information they reveal, their level of knowledge and awareness regarding how their information is protected by SNSs and the awareness of risks that over-sharing may pose. Additionally, this research studies the effect of gender, age, education, and level of privacy concern on the amount and kind of personal information disclosure and privacy settings applied. A social experiment was then run for …

Going Online On Behalf Of Others: An Investigation Of ‘Proxy’ Internet Consumers, Neil Selwyn, Nicola Johnson, Selena Nemorin, Elizabeth Knight

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A range of Australians find themselves acting as ‘proxy internet users’ – i.e. using online services and applications on behalf of other adults who otherwise make limited use of the internet. It is rare for those adults being supported by proxies to be absolute non-users of the internet. Apart from extreme cases of physical/intellectual incapacity, most people covered by our research were making some use of the internet, if only through smartphones and Apps. Proxy internet assistance often takes place within families – notably elderly parents being helped by their adult sons and daughters. Other proxy users include people acting …

Understanding And Combatting Terrorist Networks: Coupling Social Media Mining With Social Network Analysis, Benn Van Den Ende

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Throughout the past decade the methods employed by terrorist organisations have changed drastically. One of these key changes has been associated with the rise of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogging in general. Terrorist organisations appear to be using the wide reach and vast network capabilities created by social media to disseminate propaganda, radicalise susceptible individuals, recruit potential fighters and communicate strategic and operational objectives. However, this growing terrorist presence on Social Media can also offer invaluable insights into the social networks of terrorist organisations through the use of Social Media Mining and Social Network Analysis. By …

The View From Above: How Consolidating Library Enquiries Led To A Streamlined And Enhanced Service, Ben Seabourne

Emerging Topics in Academic Libraries

At the beginning of 2013 Edith Cowan University’s Library Services switched the management and handling of all incoming electronic enquiries from campus service desks to a centralised Communications Team (Comm’s Team) composed of three library technicians and a coordinator. The team was to handle not only phone calls and incoming emails, but also an internet chat service and eventually also the Library’s Twitter account and maintenance of the library website.

The primary objective of the new Comm’s Team was to field all these electronic enquiries and function as a virtual library enquiry desk. At the team’s core is the customer …

Archiving The New, Now, For Future Users Yet Unknown, Lelia Green, Cat Hope, Kylie J. Stevenson, Tos Mahoney

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Associate Professor Cat Hope, along with colleague and collaborator Tos Mahoney, is one of Western Australia’s leading proponents of New Music, and the instigator of the development of the Western Australian New Music Archive (WANMA), that was launched on 20 May 2015, at the State Library of Western Australia. As co - curator of WANMA, alongside Mahoney, Hope is a key determinant of its contents. Consequently, Hope’s working definitions of new music and of the role and function of an archive are critical areas of interest and key to realising the communicative vision of this project which is also sponsored …

Digitods: Toddlers, Touch Screens And Australian Family Life, Donell J. Holloway, Lelia Green, Kylie J. Stevenson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Children are beginning to use digital technologies at younger and younger ages. The emerging trend of very young children (babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers) using Internet connected devices, especially touch screen tablets and smartphones, has elicited polarising opinions from early childhood experts.At present there is little actual research about the risks or benefits of tablet and smartphone use by very young children. Current usage recommendations, based on research into passive television watching which claims that screen time is detrimental, is in conflict with advice from education experts and app developers who commend interactive screen time as engaging and educational.

Children And Young People's Emotional Literacy In A Networked World, Donell Holloway

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

After nearly 15 years of research into the risk and harm of the internet for children and young people, research attention is beginning to turn towards investigating the social and emotional skills children and young people need to successfully engage in the digital world. This turn, from a protectionist-only approach to a more nuanced research agenda, examines the positive and negative implications of minors’ internet use, including all the protective factors children need to engage effectively and safely online. This change in research agenda will go some way towards helping children develop the skills they need to participate and navigate …

Digital Play: The Challenge Of Researching Young Children’S Internet Use, Donell Holloway

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Children’s Internet use is rapidly changing. Tweens' (9–12) usage patterns now resemble those of teenagers five to six years ago, and younger children’s (5–8) usage is approaching that of tweens. Primary school aged children are increasingly engaging in virtual worlds with social network functions (game sites such as Club Penguin, Minecraft or Webkinz). These digital public spaces carry with them opportunities as well as risk. With policy resources often targeting high school children, there is a need to map the benefits, risks and competencies associated with these trends, and develop recommendations for parents and policy makers. This paper analyses the …

Mother's Experience Of Social Media: Its Impact On Children And The Home, Abe Van Hatch

Theses : Honours

With the prevalence and accessibility of social media within the last 15 years it has become possible for children to have constant access to their friends and social networks. It is relatively unknown what impact adopting social media has on children and how mothers interpret this. There are gaps in the literature investigating the pervasive effects of modern technology and what meaning mothers ascribe to their children using social media as a method of connecting with the world. The present research aims to explore this phenomenon by investigating the experiences of mothers who have children that have recently adopted social …

Platforms And Activism: Sharing 'My Make It Possible Story' Narratives, Debbie Rodan, Jane Mummery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Although livestock welfare issues were once barely visible to mainstream consumers, animal welfare activists now combine traditional public media advocacy with various media platforms to spread their campaign message as widely as possible. For instance, Animals Australia’s ‘Make it Possible Campaign’ has used billboards, print media, television, radio, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, website stories, and Twitter to make livestock welfare issues visible to consumers. Such variety of platforms make it possible for animal activist groups such as Animals Australia to not only hail and mobilise consumers in a way that was not possible previously, but also to attract supporters, advertise their …

Role Of Icts In Improving Drought Scenario Management In India, Shubhangi S. Wankhede, Niketa Gandhi, Leisa Armstrong

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Drought is a natural phenomenon that affects social, economic and environmental sectors. It is caused due to low or no rainfall in the specific region and for some duration of time. Reduced soil moisture and ground water level are the other causes for drought. Based on its intensity, drought has impacts on various sectors like agriculture, transportation, forest fire, environment and many more. Agriculture is the major sector being affected by drought resulting in low crop production and having great detriment to economy of the country. In this paper, an attempt is made to study the different causes and effects …

Virtual Travel And The Pleasure Peripheries -- Case Study Of Second Life, Judith A. Elund, Panizza R. Allmark

Research outputs 2013

No abstract available

Zero To Eight: Young Children And Their Internet Use, Donell Holloway, Lelia Green, Sonia Livingstone

Research outputs 2013

EU Kids Online has spent seven years investigating 9-16 year olds’ engagement with the internet, focusing on the benefits and risks of children’s internet use. While this meant examining the experiences of much younger children than had been researched before EU Kids Online began its work in 2006, there is now a critical need for information about the internet-related behaviours of 0-8 year olds. EU Kids Online’s research shows that children are now going online at a younger and younger age, and that young children’s “lack of technical, critical and social skills may pose [a greater] risk” (Livingstone et al, …

Print To Pixel: How Can The Cultural Implications Of Mediated Images And Text Be Examined Using Creative Practice?, Patricia Adele Thomas

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Information in the twenty-first century is at our fingertips in an instant. Through the technology of the mobile phone, computer, and television, we are alerted to information of international, national, local, and personal significance. The aim of this research is to establish that creative practice can provide a cogent forum with which to interrogate the cultural implications of mediated images and text in the twenty first Century. This exegesis Print to pixel explores the interrelationship between the political and cultural values as identified in the various codes within western mainstream news media. The cultural implications of the shift from print …

Masculinity, Mass Consumerism And Subversive Sex: A Case Study Of Second Life's 'Zeus' Gay Club, Judith A. Elund

Research outputs 2013

This article is a case study of a Second Life region in reference to the prevailing attitudes of sexual conservatism and the growing acceptance of homosexual coupling. The site of Zeus is a contested site of legitimacy in view of tensions regarding masculinity as it applies to sex, sexuality, gender conformity and consumption practices. Furthermore, it is representative of the tensions between an acceptable, albeit conservative gay male identity, and the subversive hyper-sexual and hyper-masculine subject of desire.

What Bothers Australian Kids Online? Children Comment On Bullies, Porn And Violence, Lelia Green, Danielle Brady, Donell Holloway, Elisabeth Staksrud, Kjartan Ólafsson

Research outputs 2013

This briefing on what bothers Australian kids online builds upon a short report from the EU Kids Online network: In their own words: What bothers children online? Based upon research across 25 European nations, with 25,142 children (aged 9-16) and the parent or caregiver most involved in supporting the child’s internet use, the In their own words report addresses children’s answers to the question: ‘What things on the internet would bother people about your age?’ Children had not been asked about troubling content at this stage in the research, so their open-ended answers to this question represent the issues and …

0-8: Young Children's Internet Use, Donell J. Holloway, Lelia R. Green, Danielle J. Brady

Research outputs 2013

Internet participation, by young children (0-8) is increasing world-wide. Tweens (9-12 year olds) usage patterns now resemble of those of teenagers 5 to 6 years ago, and younger schoolaged children’s usage is increasing to the equivalent of tweens. Pre-schoolers are also going online at ever-increasing rates. This paper reports on evidence assembled in an international network of Internet researchers about young children under 9 and their increasing engagement with the Internet. The increase in children’s (0-8) Internet participation indicates certain trends and usage patterns that warrant further attention by researchers, educators and policy makers. Primary school aged children under the …

"Your Neighbours Are Your Friends": An Investigation Into Microgeographical Exchanges In The Remote Northwest Of Australia Between 1987-2012, Donell J. Holloway, Lelia R. Green, David Holloway

Research outputs 2013

This paper addresses intersections of communication, technology and geography in remote areas of Western Australia. It uses verbatim accounts from fieldwork bracketing decades of communication development to explore changes and constants in the micro-geographical exchange strategies of people living in the remote northwest of Australia. It articulates the continuing irony that the Australians who most need reliable and effective communications are those who experience the greatest difficulty in accessing them. We contend that geographical isolation and continuing problems with the reliability and reach of communication technologies in remote Western Australia have cultivated a robust community in which flexibility, resilience and …

Towards A Natural History Of Internet Use? Working To Overcome The Implications For Research Of The Child-Adult Divide, Lelia R. Green, Donell J. Holloway, David Holloway

Research outputs 2013

Using a metaphor borrowed from the biological sciences, this paper discusses a ‘natural history’ of Internet use. As ‘digital natives’ many of today’s teenagers and young people have grown up and matured interacting with the Internet from an early age. Research about young people’s Internet use tends, however, to focus on the protection of minors. Young people, 16 years or older, are often excluded from noncommercial research about how young people grow into more mature patterns of Internet use. This paper highlights how parents with teenagers are building dynamic models of their children’s engagement with the Internet as they mature. …

Empowering Protest Through Social Media, Simon O'Rourke

International Cyber Resilience conference

Advances in personal communications devices including smartphones, are enabling individuals to establish and form virtual communities in cyberspace. Such platforms now allow users to be in continuous contact, enabling them to receive information in real time, which allows them to act in support of other members of their network. This paper will discuss some of the capabilities afforded by social media to protest groups focused on civil disobedience. Direct action protests are now a common sight at gatherings of world leaders, most notably the meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle in 1999, the G20 meetings in Melbourne …

Facebook Jihad: A Case Study Of Recruitment Discourses And Strategies Targeting A Western Female , Robyn Torok

International Cyber Resilience conference

Recent years has seen a trend towards the increasing specificity of recruitment targets for global jihad. This paper is a case study of the discourses used to recruit a Western female who originally subscribed to an antigovernment, anti-New World Order ideology. Categorising using grounded theory analysis found that female recruiters tapped into the interest of their target subject and then shifted her towards sympathy and commitment to radical Islam. This was achieved through media saturation of Western aggression against Muslims coupled with an ideology that promotes the need to fight and resist. Subject material to which the recruit was directed …

Geointelligence: Data Mining Locational Social Media Content For Profiling And Information Gathering, Peter Hannay, Greg Baatard

International Cyber Resilience conference

The current social media landscape has resulted in a situation where people are encouraged to share a greater amount of information about their day-to-day lives than ever before. In this environment a large amount of personal data is disclosed in a public forum with little to no regard for the potential privacy impacts. This paper focuses on the presence of geographic data within images, metadata and individual postings. The GeoIntelligence project aims to aggregate this information to educate users on the possible implications of the utilisation of these services as well as providing service to law enforcement and business. This …