Computing and Information Systems - Research Publications

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    The disposition of the destitute
    Arnold, M ; Nansen, B ; Kohn, T ; Gibbs, M ; Harewood Gould, H (Council to Homeless Persons, 2019)
    The final disposition is a term used by people in the funeral industry to refer to the burial or cremation of a dead person. The final disposition is a profoundly important event, not simply a pragmatic or material process, and its significance is expressed through ritualised performances. The disposition and its rituals are shared and communal, involving ceremonies attended by the deceased’s family, friends, and community, whilst less indirectly the disposition is shared by wider social norms and values around the proper treatment of the deceased body. Although the disposition is common to us all, then, it is also a personalised event in which the particularity of the life lived is recognised. Similarly, the place of interment, whether body or ashes, is named and marked to recognise the individual life of the deceased. Places of interment are thus not only identified, but are also accessible to family, friends and community, for the purpose of ongoing visitation and remembrance.
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    ‘Death by Twitter’: Understanding false death announcements on social media and the performance of platform cultural capital
    Nansen, B ; O'Donnell, D ; Arnold, M ; Kohn, T ; Gibbs, M (University of Illinois Libraries, 2019)
    In this paper, we analyse false death announcements of public figures on social media and public responses to them. The analysis draws from a range of public sources to collect and categorise the volume of false death announcements on Twitter and undertakes a case study analysis of representative examples. We classify false death announcements according to five overarching types: accidental; misreported; misunderstood; hacked; and hoaxed. We identify patterns of user responses, which cycle through the sharing of the news, to personal grief, to a sense of uncertainty or disbelief. But we also identify more critical and cultural responses to such death announcements in relation to misinformation and the quality of digital news, or cultures of hoax and disinformation on social media. Here we see the performance of online identity through a form that we describe, following Bourdieu as ‘platform cultural capital’.
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    Digital housekeepers and domestic expertise in the networked home
    Kennedy, J ; Nansen, B ; Arnold, M ; Wilken, R ; Gibbs, M (Sage Publications, 2015-11-01)
    This article examines the distribution of expertise in the performance of ‘digital housekeeping’ required to maintain a networked home. It considers the labours required to maintain a networked home, the forms of digital expertise that are available and valued in digital housekeeping, and ways in which expertise is gendered in distribution amongst household members. As part of this discussion, we consider how digital housekeeping implicitly situates technology work within the home in the role of the ‘housekeeper’, a term that is complicated by gendered sensitivities. Digital housework, like other forms of domestic labour, contributes to identity and self-worth. The concept of housework also affords visibility of the digital housekeeper’s enrolment in the project of maintaining the household. This article therefore asks, what is at stake in the gendered distribution of digital housekeeping?
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    Introduction: What 'is' Australian Game Studies?
    GIBBS, M ; Carter, M ; Apperley, T ; Nansen, B ; Crawford, L (Digital Games, 2015)
    This special issue of the Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association Journal represent approaches by contemporary Australian scholars in the study of digital games. They responded to the provocation ‘What is Game Studies in Australia?’ the topic of the inaugural conference of the Digital Games Research Association Australia (DiGRAA). This event, held on 17th of June 2014, was a meeting of academic researchers, critics, designers, developers, and artists focused on developing a discussion of what game studies ‘is’ in Australia. The conference focused special attentiveness both to diversity and any particular regional issues that delegates chose to address. These articles illustrate the breadth and variety of approaches which were discussed.
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    Dwelling with media stuff: latencies and logics of materiality in four Australian homes
    Nansen, B ; Arnold, M ; Gibbs, M ; Davis, H (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2011-08)
    Extending research into material, media, and cultural geographies of the home, our interest turns to the spatiotemporality of dwelling with information and communication technologies. We pose a number of questions: How do inhabitants and their media stuff adapt to the more rigid physical spaces of a building? How does the building respond to the more rapid changes to dwelling produced by this media stuff? And how are these differing times synchronised? In answer to these questions we present four case studies of homes in Melbourne, Australia, each representative of a particular strategy of synchronisation. They are: the found home, the imagined home, the designed home, and the renovated home. We identify logics informing these homes: the first naturalises the choices made, the second rationalises choices, and the third is one in which dwelling and (re)building are intertwined.
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    Framing the NBN: An Analysis of Newspaper Representations
    Wilken, R ; Kennedy, J ; Arnold, M ; GIBBS, M ; Nansen, B (RMIT University, 2015)
    The National Broadband Network (NBN), Australia’s largest public infrastructure project, was initiated to deliver universal access to high-speed broadband. Since its announcement, the NBN has attracted a great deal of media coverage, coupled with at times divisive political debate around delivery models, costs and technologies. In this article we report on the results of a pilot study of print media coverage of the NBN. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis techniques were used to examine how the NBN was represented in The Age and The Australian newspapers during the period from 1 July 2008 to 1 July 2013. Our findings show that coverage was overwhelmingly negative and largely focused on the following: potential impacts on Telstra; lack of a business plan, and of cost-benefit analysis; problems with the rollout; cost to the federal budget; and implications for business stakeholders. In addition, there were comparatively few articles on potential societal benefits, applications and uses, and, socio-economic implications
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    National, local and household media ecologies: The case of Australia's National Broadband Network
    Wilken, R ; Nansen, B ; Arnold, M ; Kennedy, J ; Gibbs, M (RMIT-SCH MEDIA & COMMUNICATION, 2013)
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    CHILDREN AND DIGITAL WELLBEING IN AUSTRALIA: ONLINE REGULATION, CONDUCT AND COMPETENCE
    Nansen, B ; Chakraborty, K ; Gibbs, L ; MacDougall, C ; Vetere, F (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2012)
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    'You do the math': Mathletics and the play of online learning
    Nansen, B ; Chakraborty, K ; Gibbs, L ; Vetere, F ; MacDougall, C (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2012-11)
    This article reports on a case study of the web-based educational maths application, Mathletics. The findings are drawn from an ethnographic study of children’s technology use in Melbourne, Australia. We explore the experience, governance and commerce of children’s Mathletics use, and offer insights into the developing possibilities and challenges emerging through the adoption of Web 2.0 applications for learning and education. In analyzing the interaction between students and this software, this article deploys two key concepts in technology studies – affordance and technicity – to develop a relational understanding of Mathletics play. This conceptualization of play, which accounts for the playability or give of a technology, helps to illuminate some ways in which the aesthetics, functionality, and materiality of this online application accommodate a number of – and often competing – uses, interests and values: parental anxieties, pedagogical concerns and corporate stakes.
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    ‘MYBus’: Young People's Mobile Health, Wellbeing and Digital Inclusion
    Nansen, B ; Chakraborty, K ; Gibbs, L ; MacDougall, C ; Vetere, F (University of Waterloo, 2013)
    As part of an ethnographic study researching the role of information and communication technology use in mediating young people’s social inclusion in an outer urban growth area of Melbourne, Australia, this paper reports on a case study of a community mobile youth centre, named MYBus. The MYBus is a converted passenger coach that operates as a mobile youth centre for young people aged 12-25. It aims to provide young people with up-to-date youth-specific information and resources, especially access to health and wellbeing information and services. The bus has been fitted with laptop computers, Internet access, Wii games, D.J. console and other gaming devices to support this engagement. This paper examines how the aggregation of digital media on MYBus not only has direct healthcare benefits, but also enables a broader approach to young people’s wellbeing by providing resources for digital access and participation. In particular, the mobilisation of these technologies operates to redress geographic and socioeconomic inequities for young people living on the urban fringe. We discuss this digital inclusion through research findings related to young people’s digital access, mediation, and mobility in the use of the MYBus technologies. This empirical work is situated theoretically by connecting this mobile digital inclusion with literature on young people’s social capital, to develop the concept of children’s e-mobility capital.