AANZCA 2025 Conference – Day 3

*Yep. Image by AI and, I think, nailed the summary of the day into the prompt.

For You: Understanding Australian TikTok Culture

Patrik Wikström¹, Jean Burgess¹, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez³, Joanne Gray², Jonathon Hutchinson², Jiaru Tang¹, Tian Wen², Michelle Nidoy¹, Billie Wilcox², 1: Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology; 2: University of Sydney, Australia; 3: University College Dublin

This was our panel coming from the DP. First, I’m reminded of how amazing our research team is – a great range of skill and experience which brings the sharpest of perspectives with openness for innovative approaches. Second, the synergy between our three streams is impressive and I can see how this will invoke the next phases of collaborative research. From the Creator Stream perspective, this is super helpful as we enter our next phase of appreciative enquiry. Third, great audience questions: is there another name for the ‘baseline’ (benchmark?); how do creators refer to themselves; what are the creator income streams; what does ‘advertising’ include.

Rethinking the Field: Participatory Models and Narrative Turns in Communication

Yes, let’s revisit participation in media. Don’t mind if I do…

Turning the Tide: Exploring a Participant Model of Human Communication [Zoom]

David Paterno, Minot State University, United States of America

• Bold claims here – keep in our own lane (communication), all communication is with audiences
• Seemed a bit narrow, but maybe i missed something here.

The Absence of “Online” in Researching on the Affect through Online Discourse: Critical Literature Review (Zoom)

Duming Wang, Massey University, New Zealand

• Relationship between affect and discourse (public sentiment, public discourse)
• What is affect? important for social research, “affective turn” (Clough, 2007), the impact of emotion on politics, debate etc.
• affect is automatic, discourse is constructed – they are intertwined, thus affect can be studied through discourse
• Examine Affect-discursive practice of new zealand national day (Waitangi Day) in newspapers
• The moment of immediate response becomes an affective trigger – when person A does this, person B does that
• Q: what about neurodivergent people? Immediate response just isn’t the case. Does this impact broader populations?

Narrating the Field of Communication: Charting the Tides

Steven Maras, The University of Western Australia, Australia

• Typically flows, paradigms, turns. Instead mete-theoretical approach. What about when we narrate an academic field?
• Waisbord ref
• Why? Value purpose, politics of knowledge production, field as boundary-object
• Boundary object – are we talking about academically or industrially? Star and Griesmer (1989) reference
• Topic fields or discipline fields? Empirical example of AANZCA and the topics of last few years
• Fields – Bourdieu and how to speak across several fields
• ‘Fixing’ the field – Bourdieu and how to fix the field, ‘creative industries and the way to fix a field’
• Waisbord: ‘communication studies is held together by an institutional architecture pf professionals organisations, academic units and journals” (2019: p.123-124)
• Q: how does communication/media studies’ grow?
• Post-disciplinarily – enables scholars to transcend many divides

Communicating through Community: Leveraging local engagement for environmental change in the Hunter Valley, NSW.

Chloe Killen¹, Phillip McIntyre¹, Kerrie Foxwell-Norton², Matthew Hayward¹, Luke Foster³, Aaron Mulcahy³, Lucinda Ransom³, Tara Dever⁴, 1: University of Newcastle, Australia; 2: Griffith University, Australia; 3: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water; 4: Mindaribba Local Aboriginal Land Council

• Cessnock focused
• Threatened species
• Grid mapping the area
• Identified and mapped the users of the area
• Incorporating the communication channels to talk with them

Navigating ‘Academic Listening Practices’ – Reframing ‘Listening’ as a qualitative research methodology [Zoom]

Diana Kreemers, UNSW Sydney

• Academic listening, draws on Couldry, Drejher and Macnamara in terms of a variety of listening (cultural, political, marketing)

“Just Asking Questions”: Doing Our Own Research on Conspiratorial Ideation by Generative AI Chatbots [Zoom]

Katherine M. FitzGerald, Axel Bruns, Michelle Riedlinger, Stephen Harrington, Timothy Graham, Daniel Angus

Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

• GenAI chatbots, psychological impact, etc.
• What guardrails protect, what ways to chatbots promote casually conspiracist conversations
• Used Sofia’s policy step-through method
• Engaged a range of conspiracy theories (chemtrails, 9/11), including older and newer (Hurricane Milton,Trump Assassination, rigged election)
• Prompted chatbots: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexisity, Grok
• Vast difference between chatbots, Grok is terribly, terribly bad.
• Some guardrails present, older theories with more open-mindedness,

From Rabbit Holes to the Multiverse: How Far-Right Groups Weaponise Conspiracy and Crisis through Metapolitics

Milica Stilinovic, University of Sydney, Australia

• I’m just so proud to watch Dr Stilinovic deliver her first post-PhD seminar, based on her research
• Conspiracies as cultural artefacts – carrying ideology through networks
• Thematic analysis through two groups – both presenting as churches
• Crises are good for the right, it disrupts and sends peopl looking for something better

Nguyen Do Doan Hahn (?) QUT, DMRC – “Reinterpreting Masculinity through a Vietnamese Influencer: A textual analysis of “Thó Báy Māu”

• Minh, 2023 – cultural influence of Confuucian
• Kim Ngoc, 2022 – commercial brands thorugh AI-generated personas. characters include En, DAM, LAY, CHI CHI EM EM, and THO BAY MAU
• THO BAY MAU is a character across social meida that is playful and ironic story to challenge the lifestyle of Vietnamese people
• 4.4 million followers here: https://www.facebook.com/ThoBayMau
• Popular with youth culture
• Challenging masculinities
• co-creative process with other audience members