Digital Culture and New Media

This research program brings together the study of culture (symbolic meanings and discourses, social relationships and identities) with digital technologies and new media platforms (digital equipment, social media, global networks), and their connections via textual forms, from storytelling to hypertext. To understand the complex systems, global reach and dynamic changes involved in contemporary culture and technology studies, it is also interested in interdisciplinary dialogue and methodological innovation, combining the textual-discursive and historical-critical methods familiar in the humanities with large-scale analysis from the evolutionary and systems sciences.
Program leader
Dr. Amy Dobson, Internet Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University
Researchers
Dr. Robert Briggs, Director of Graduate Studies, MCASI
Dr. Katie Ellis, Senior Research Fellow, MCASI
Dr. Mike Kent, Internet Studies, MCASI
A/Prof. Tama Leaver, Discipline Lead, Internet Studies, MCASI
Dr. Eleanor Sandry, Internet Studies, MCASI
Dr. Burcu Şimşek, CCAT Associate, Hacettepe University
Dr. Anna Hampson Lundh, Senior Research Fellow, MCASI
Dr. Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow, Internet Studies, MCASI
Dr. Gwyneth Peaty, Internet Studies, MCASI
Dr. Sky Croeser, Internet Studies, MCASI
Dr. Stuart Bender, Early Career Research Fellow, MCASI
Ms Kai-Ti Kao, Sessional Academic, MCASI
Projects
Cultural Science
Digital Identity
Critical Theory
Digital Storytelling
Disability and Technology
Journals
Cultural Science Journal, ed. John Hartley. ISSN 1836-0416
Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy, founding co-editors, Niall Lucy and Robert Briggs
ARC grants
ARC DECRA (2013-16). “Disability and Digital TV: Access, representation and reception” (369, 706 AUD). Principal investigator Katie Ellis.
ARC LIEF (2013-15). “TrISMA – Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis”. (53, 493 AUD, administered by QUT: total amount 460,000 AUD, 2015-16). Principal Curtin investigator Tama Leaver, co-investigators John Hartley and Anne Aly.
ARC Discovery (2012-14).“A Cultural History of West Australian Popular Music, 1945 to 2010” (120, 000 AUD). Co-investigator Niall Lucy.
ARC Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation (2012-14). “Cultural Science Program” (114, 835 AUD). Head of the Curtin ‘node’, John Hartley.
ARC Linkage (2012-14). “Digital storytelling and co-creative media: the role of community arts and media in propagating and coordinating population-wide creative practice” (203, 000 AUD). Principal Curtin investigator John Hartley, administered by QUT: total funding 250,000 AUD.
ARC Linkage (2011-14). “Online money and fantasy games – an applied ethnographic study into the new entrepreneurial communities and their underlying designs” (99, 000 AUD). Principal investigator Michele Willson, co-investigator Tama Leaver.