School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDigital housekeepers and domestic expertise in the networked home(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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ItemMethodological and ethical concerns associated with digital ethnography in domestic environments: participation burden and burdensome technologies(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)This chapter reflects on methodological and ethical issues arising in a digital ethnography project conducted in domestic environments. The participatory aims of the methodological approach required participants to produce a series of videos exploring domestic digital environments. The videos were then uploaded using an ethnographic software application. Early in the project it became evident that researchers had limited control over important aspects of the technology, and that the technology itself was having disruptive effects in households. Further, although the study was designed to be engaging and playful for participants, the tasks of producing the videos was perceived by some participants as requiring onerous levels of creativity and digital media literacy. The chapter discusses these methodological and ethical issues, and how they were largely resolved.
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ItemRemembering Zyzz - Distributed Memories on Distributed Networks(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)In times when public and private spheres are mediated more than ever, this volume looks at the way personal and collective memories are employed to revise and reconstruct old and new forms of individual and social life.
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ItemProxy Users, Use By Proxy: Mapping Forms of Intermediary Interaction(ACM, 2015-12-17)
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ItemAn Ontography of Broadband on a Domestic Scale(Transformations Journal, 2016)
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ItemDigital ethnographic techniques in domestic spaces: Notes on methods and ethics(Visual Methodologies, 2015)This paper reflects on the opportunities provided by the use of novel digital ethnographic methods for gaining insights into the changing uses of broadband internet and digital media in everyday domestic spaces, as well as the new kinds of methodological and ethical issues that are raised by these techniques. It begins by describing the research context, rationale, and methodology for deploying mobile devices, digital ethnographic software, and visual tasks in domestic spaces, which sought to encourage and empower participants to actively produce and interpret visual data. In particular, we describe how these digital ethnographic techniques aimed to overcome some of the limitations of traditional media ethnography in domestic spaces. We go on to describe a number of ethical implications, both anticipated in the research design and emerging during the introduction and early period of household data collection within the longitudinal study. These included issues of gaining informed consent and participant burden, given the disruptive qualities of the mobile device, ethnographic software and visual tasks, and the creative and technical competence required to complete the research tasks. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits and challenges of these digital ethnographic techniques, and note how the research methods have undergone collaborative modification in response to the ethical challenges encountered by participants.This paper reflects on the opportunities provided by the use of novel digital ethnographic methods for gaining insights into the changing uses of broadband internet and digital media in everyday domestic spaces, as well as the new kinds of methodological and ethical issues that are raised by these techniques. It begins by describing the research context, rationale, and methodology for deploying mobile devices, digital ethnographic software, and visual tasks in domestic spaces, which sought to encourage and empower participants to actively produce and interpret visual data. In particular, we describe how these digital ethnographic techniques aimed to overcome some of the limitations of traditional media ethnography in domestic spaces. We go on to describe a number of ethical implications, both anticipated in the research design and emerging during the introduction and early period of household data collection within the longitudinal study. These included issues of gaining informed consent and participant burden, given the disruptive qualities of the mobile device, ethnographic software and visual tasks, and the creative and technical competence required to complete the research tasks. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits and challenges of these digital ethnographic techniques, and note how the research methods have undergone collaborative modification in response to the ethical challenges encountered by participants.
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ItemPosthumous personhood and the affordances of digital media(Taylor and Francis, 2015-01-01)This article identifies and outlines some of the more prominent ways that digital media can extend one’s personhood following death. We consider three examples: when the digital persona of the deceased continues to interact with the living through a human surrogate; the emergence of autonomous and semi-autonomous software enabling the dead to use social media to intervene in current events; and finally the operation of algorithmic presence services like Eterni.me, where artificial intelligence creates a re-enlivened form of the deceased. Situating these examples in relation to sociological, anthropological and cultural literature foundational to ideas of distributed personhood and posthumous symbolic immortality, we suggest that digital codes and computational texts stand as key sites for contemporary forms of ‘distributed personhood’, including posthumous personhood. We then extend this body of literature by examining how the discursive politics of social media contributes to a social and commercial context, which supports ongoing interactions with the dead online. Through this process, we suggest that the persona of the dead, which remains after bodily death, can continue to maintain meaningful posthumous relationships with the living, presenting a new perspective on how we interact with the dead through digital media.
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ItemNo Preview Available#funeral(Association of Internet Researchers, 2014)In this paper we highlight preliminary findings from a study at the intersection of Instagram use and funerary practices. This study analyses photographs tagged with “#funeral” and contributes to research into death and digital media by extending the focus from social networking sites such as Facebook to consider the photo-sharing application Instagram, and how different media platforms are connected with the physical event of funerals. By categorizing photos tagged with “#funeral” on Instagram we show how media architecture and use shapes a complex ecology of grieving practices, with distinct differences from practices that have coalesced around other social media platforms. We consider the collision of digital culture and traditional memorializing practices, and suggest the need for further work that attends to the variety of social media being mobilized in death, grieving and commemoration, as well as to the ways platforms become entwined with physical places and rituals.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Restless Dead in the Digital Cemetery(Praeger Publishers, 2014)
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ItemFraming the NBN: An Analysis of Newspaper Representations(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