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GenAI & Creative Practices: Past, Present and Future, Day 2

a hand holding a guitar pick

Fishbowl 3.1: When “open” isn’t: open-washing and the politics of openness in the age of Generative AI. Anna-Maria Sichani, Marina Markellou, Douglas McCarthy

Open Source has demonstrated that massive benefits accrue to everyone after removing the barriers to learning, using, sharing and improving software systems. These benefits are the result of using licenses that adhere to the Open Source Definition. For AI, society needs at least the same essential freedoms of Open Source to enable AI developers, deployers and end users to enjoy those same benefits: autonomy, transparency, frictionless reuse and collaborative improvement.

Research & Education

Claudia Montanaro – What ‘Meaning’ Means in LLMs’ Research: An Interdisciplinary Conceptual Map

  • LLMs outputs meaningful ideas
  • Can LLMs make sense? Can they represent meaning? Noam Chomsky interview and his answer is “It’s like asking whether submarines swim”
  • Hemran Cappelen – it can make language make sense
  • Difficulty in borrowing terms. Key terms are borrowed from human cognition and are ill-defined
  • Method: dataset of academic articles , used ATLAS.ti
  • Identified six clusters
  • Three main themes: meaning is measurable, meaning as emergent property, meaning as something to be understood
  • Meaning and understanding in LLMs is
  • The call for scholars from a rnage of fields ot understna

Q: Can you explain the terms a litter further? unpack the network map how does that relate to the table?


Maede Mirsonbol – Learning with GenAI Images: Supporting Higher Education Students’ Reflection on Inclusive Education

  • AI literacy in in higher education, we need different frameworks to introduce to students
  • Relational Pedagogy – Concept and Contest Teacher <-> Learner <-> Content
  • Where to place AI?
  • Leaning on UNESCO guideline on AI and Education
  • Student <-> Teacher <-> Text <-> AI, Student learning model
  • Two case studies, Lancaster University, England, and University of Tartu, Esrtonia
  • Groups learning using a semiosis-based method to learn with images
  • 5 Steps of inclusive as diversity education: exploration (what is AI education?), co-creation (groups prompting),
  • Then they create images of inclusivity (race, gender, access/communication)

Q: what is the take up of this research like in higher ed? Did participants understand diversity within the four categories demographic, communication, species, nature/material/place?

Berk Alkoç – Generative AI in Design Bootcamps: A Critical Inquiry into Pedagogy, Dependency, and Creative Practice

  • Figma and Make Design, prompt with an idea and it will make an app, borrowing the Apple version/platform/tool
  • Bootcamp and education – Careerfoundary UX Design bootcamp
  • Discourse analysis of marketing and and advertising of a number (10?) UX design bootcamp – a determinism built in of ‘if you don’t know AI, you won’t get a job”
  • How to create a persona in 5 minutes – this demonstrates a ‘frictionless’ process, where the process is more important than the outcome
  • Are they training designers or AI operators?
  • Reference to Hooked
  • Design fixation – pre-existing solution and restricts creative thinking
  • PLatform deactivation very similar to the API reliability of platforms
  • Should we go backwards and ignore the algorithm? (can we though? we’ve ‘drunk the Koolaide’)

Q: what does the industry want/what does the environment look like? Is this quick turnaround what is needed as we build design expertise? what does a co-designer model look like?

Panel 5.8: Creative Work

Nirvi Maru, Vivian H. H. Chen – A Human-AI collaboration approach to creative workflow

  • A GenAI inflection point – democratisation vs. diminishment (erosion of human agency, homogenization), to be understood not as a binary
  • Literature approaches this as a discrete problem to be solved
  • scoping review – 216 papers
  • Conceptual fragmentation – collaboration, teaming, autonomy, etc.
  • Trust-calibration
  • Erosion of human agency – skill degradation,
  • task collaboration misalignment – poor fit between AI capabilities and workflow
  • Reframing Human-AI Creative Collaboration (HAIC): interdependence, hidden costs, navigation tensions
  • Agency Automation Tension – tension needs to be managed not solved
  • Principle 1 – ROle Design as Creative Act: we negotiate the ‘role’ within HAIC
  • Principle 2 & 3: Transparency and Human Experience. As a creative uses more AI, they trade off the critical aspects of design. Human experience should be centred.

Yunus Emre Öztaş – How Creative Workers Make Do with GenAI in Visual Media Production

  • Critical creative labour studies, mostly in cultural and creative industries – high value in autonomy within an environment of augmentation-replacement binary
  • A spectrum of GenAI use model (in iterative development): Human Creative Agency Dominant (task related use) <-> Machine agency dominated (task-agnostic use)
  • Modes of use are embedded in agency

Tolulope Oke, Robert Prey, Femke de Rijk – Beyond the Global North: Generative AI and the Future of Musicians’ Work in Nigeria

  • Based in Nigeria Music Market, growing rapidly (three times larger than the rest of the world’s music industry)
  • There is a talented yet unstructured market (copyright and infrastructures are lacking)
  • Futures of the industry which is usually dominatd by the Global North, where GenAI becomes a crucial infrastructure
  • Africanfuturism – visions of the future, not concerned with what could have been but what is possible/what is the future
  • Decolonial AI: extends beyond data colonialism and into all material aspects of data generation (check this)
  • Future reference about Phillips Olajide, First African trained AI music generator
  • Korin AI – social-technical artefact that reflects and shapes how Nigerians imagine and navigate AI Futures
  • Jamai Fabuyi and legal contracts in Africa – interview here
  • Conclusions: opportunity to restructure global industries. It’s not about if it’s changing it’s about how it’s changing.

Closing Panel with invited speakers – Pei Sze Chow, Maximilian Schich, Naureen Mahmood

Pei Sze Chow

  • Specificity & pluralism across the variety of talks across the past few days. Contractual obligations and the sorts of creative work and their ecologies.
  • Skills. De-skilling. Up-skilling. the ways in which creatives are adopting new skills, retool a skill-set, etc.
  • (my thought – can we stop with the ‘democratisation’ as waves of media technologies emerge. We saw this in Web 2.0, social media, and in some respect through platformisation, and we know this is never the case)

Naureen Mahmood

  • Meshcapade (swing this to Rangi and see what he thinks)
  • Job displacement – everytime a technology revolution, it’s never a loss but a change. “how we let that happen is up to us”
  • Fear around AI and how others are using it (i.e. Governments especially). This community has a lot to offer in terms of understanding what it actually is and the kinds of applications that are possible.

Maximilian Schich

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GenAI & Creative Practices: Past, Present and Future – Day 1

black and white abstract painting

Keynote Session 1 – Baptiste Caramiaux. ‘Steering the Unknown’

  • What can an artist control and what can they not control during the creative practice?
  • Vera Molnár as an example to opne the discussion
  • Induction – a system to infer behaviour. Example of ocean scenes and how AI uses LLM to find a similar structure (an abstract space – model or manifold). Output to latent space (abstract dimension). Form the model, one can pick a point and have a generated version based on teh original input.
  • The abstract (output) becomes a new form of expression
  • Inductive practice: gesturing as a menas of creativiity based on LLMs
  • Using LLMs to create movement in work – Anna Ridler, ‘Tulips’, crafting the output but also creating the model that the artwork was trained on. THis is an important aspect of ‘Induction’
  • Mario Klingemann – moving image artist mixing modalities
  • Terence Broad, exploring the concept of the gaze
  • Forms of agency – new design material, new modalities, “induction enables many practices, generation is only one of them”
  • Drifting Agencies – Ai expands the unknown much faster than our ability to steer it
  • Sean Michaels – “Do you remember being born?”
  • Documenting the undocumented? New narraives, new meanings – integrating AI with people to understand our histories. Could this push our agency (Lenny Martinez undertakgin PhD here)
  • Disempowerment: Reducing agency, most of the practice is through platforms- we cannot change them, we cannot train them, we may be able to calibrate them. Normative behaviours, the ways in which stories are represented. Narratives how the scale impacts the ways in whcih we understand the creativity aspect of AI.
  • Induction as a design material – this is the tool or the skill of GenAI, not simply the application of the existing models (bigger is not better).
  • Creative AI is a power structure – think through moral, cultural and structural dimensions. W way to understand the agency and centralisation of labor. Narrative representation. Norms and identities, accountability, authorship.
  • The Future is Collective – creative agency is through collective organisation (this is increasingly difficult in our current political and economic ecologies).

Parallel Session 1 – Deepfakes, Clones & Imposters

Creative Violence in the Age of AI: Deepfakes, Misogyny, and Community-Based Response in Mexico, Payal Arora,

Ana Miranda Mora

  • Increased mysogonistic content, mostly porn, in AI spaces – this project partnered with Google to examine
  • NCII – (Non-consensual intimate image) also known as Image-based Sexual Abuse (IBSA),
  • Mapping the system, working on the language that is used
  • Reputational harm, financial harm, mental health harms
  • A social way to connect with these activities is through the language used, revenge or sextortion gains traction, whereas NCII does not
  • Deepfake porn in Mexico is not used, it is digital violence and intensifies sexual harassment, 10 million women in the last year have experienced this
  • 13 in depth interviews, survivor sample young women between 20 and 4, middle class, educated in urban areas,
  • Face-swap technologies, AI-generated nudes
  • Community based responses: Olimpia Red de apoyd digital.

Deepfakes under Strict Government Regulation: The Role of Social Influence and Perceived Playfulness on Chinese Centennials’ Intention to Use AI-Generated Media – John Maina Karanja

  • Missing in action

Roundtable 2.2: Global Perspectives on GenAI & Cultural Production

Thomas Poell, Neha Bhatia, Godwin Simon, Lorena Caminhas, Tom Divon

Thomas Poell:

  • The project has begun, but it is very much rooted in Western languages/concepts. The mission of today is to expand on this to better understand from a post-colonial perspective
  • Much of the non-Western literature emerges from China, which is demonstrable of the ways in which the ‘theory follows the money’ – can we provincialise the field of cultural production

Godwin Simon

  • Field production in Nigeria: how it works, & precarity
  • Cultural competence in cultural production: ways to express through co-creation that reflects the authenticity of the industry

Neha Bhatia

  • GenAI in Indian production and background: creativity, precarity and experiences of GenAI production
  • Dispute around if GenAI is at all original – however, GenAI is trained and produces something novel
  • What is creativity and how is it undertaken? (New, novel and somethimg surprising)
  • The value of creativity is decreasing because it is rapid and fast-turnaround

Sin Melata

  • GenAI is used as a tool within the cultural production process
  • Ethical and moral issues emerge when the timeframe of the production cycle becomes tight
  • ChatGPT being used as a writing tool within India

Lorena Caminhas

  • Brazilian influencer industry
  • Deeply shaped by platform logics – not a new thing, an extension of this type of cultural production
  • It’s creativity and brand identity that creates authenticity
  • The takeaway is that users can be seen as more authentic through the use of AI
  • AI in Brazil is enabling greater creativity – this is presenting an opportunity to make a living in the content creation space, but this doesn’t change the impact of the influencer industry (brand deals, management etc.)

Tom Divon

  • Recalling a pre conference from Brazil that brings to the fore things like regulation, labour, and restructing of systems
  • Conditions under which creativity takes place, GenAI in the process, and then the political economy that enables/inhibits, this is where the decision making point sits
  • Imaginaries as a way to understand the whole system together
  • Resistance is often not through refusal, but rather renegotiating, positioning – these are systems that users cannot just move out of.

Thomas’ latest article here.

Q: data sovereignty: what about a third way and how that might integrate with the other countries in this project? Align with Vietnam

Thought process/book idea: Induction sovereignty – can cultural production be possible without induction sovereignty? If we are using GenAI as a production tool, we are already using a model that has been designed, trained and learned through a LLM training process. At best, it can only be calibrated to include localised nuances. Is this where PSM values become important?

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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

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AANZCA 2025 Conference – Day 2

*Image generated by WordPress AI – I guess it makes sense?

Tidal Forces – Risk of Drowning: Aotearoa/New Zealand’s network media economy 2019-2022

Peter A Thompson1, Cameron McTernan2, 1: Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand; 2: The University of South Australia, Australia

  • Have media industries become more or less concentrated overtime?
  • Media concentration matters because share of voices, new entries into markets, revenue matter: this is how operators control markets
  • Method: HHI – sum of the share of market concentration (unconcentrated, moderately concentrated, highly concentrated)
  • Q: expand on how the data was collected?
  • mobile players highlight the impact that Google, Meta, etc. has across media concentration
  • NZ Aotearoa, mergers and takeovers: five significant mergers (refer slides)
  • Siloing in sectors, i.e. radio and newspapers, intense competiton across the value chain (TV, FTA)
  • Stuff LTD and Mediaworks sale

The Digital Demise of National Television Drama: A New Policy Paradigm?

Marion McCutcheon1, Anna Potter2, 1: University of Canberra, Australia; 2: Queensland University of Technology, Australia

  • Broadcasting Services Act 1992 – analogue broadcasting, different local content rules, the n digitisation meant unlimited bandwidth (multichanneling – increased costs with no additional revenue)
  • PSM has no quota for local content but instead has its Charters
  • Subscription TV has dramatically dropped in drama delivery in recent years (’23, ’24)
  • Streaming services have surpassed the commercial and public broadcasters
  • Streaming are behind paywalls – to access all Oz dramas would require 8 service subscriptions
  • [insert picture here of offset slide – amazingly and astonishingly informative]

Re-Discovering Australian Screen Audiences

Maura Edmond, Olivia Khoo, Verity Trott, Claire Perkins, Monash University, Australia

  • Embedded in the ‘cultures of use’ of watching television
  • Case study: mum with two autistic children, issues with the body corporate removing access to FTA TV, needs to go through local ISP which also brings issues,
  • Case study 2: primary school child, high school child, can relate to the kids viewing habits :), children have pins to log into whatever,
  • Case study 3: mother of two young children, Netflix is default, she uses the kids accounts because if she’s watching TV its with the kids, or with husband and then they use his account, Netflix knows her history which is her kids history,

From Digital Originals to Skip Ahead: Online Content and Web Series Policy Rationales in Australia

Mark Ryan, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

  • Web series, grass roots and independent online series AND short online series associated with anchor TV series commissioned by the network
  • Screen Australia continue to fund multiplatform production (web series)
  • Tensions between cultural and economic support within Australia, tensions around the production of international movies, currently less around ‘Australian stories’
  • Multiplatform fund launched in 2012, changes in 2015 if you had produced, you could apply (established TV producers to creators working outside of the industry, ‘Fresh Blood’ ABC
  • 2023, specific development fund was created, content creation and games,
  • Now focus is on talent development – creators looking to crossover, and those who want to stay in the online space

Two Sides of the Exchange: Researching Trauma, Journalists and Communities

Fay Anderson1, Deb Anderson1, Stephanie Brookes1, Alexandra Wake2, 1: Monash University, Australia; 2: RMIT

Fay Anderson

  • From Gemini: “the query likely refers to Jean Lee, the last woman to be executed in Australia, who was hanged in 1951 in Melbourne. While she was not in Perth, her execution is a significant event in Australian legal history, and her case is often confused with others”
  • Journalistic coverage of Jean Lee included single mum, yet the men of this same murder crime, have disappeared (in the media) murder of bookie, William George Kent
  • Ronald Ryan was also implicated, set for capital punishment, Holte was pro his death, Pentridge prison, Coburg
  • The coverage of these two cases highlight significant gaps in the reporting approach
  • Journalists were invited to observe the death in the gallows of these three convicted individuals
  • Brian Morley SMH
  • Contemporary material (podcasts) continue to use this material, such as the interviews with journalist and other historical artefacts

Stephanie Brooks – “We might as well face up to it” Youth gangs…

  • Cronulla Riots: the ways in which we find our way into these stories through journalism/how do we (Steph) go into these stories with journalists?
  • This, I guess we use the word, human
  • Bob Carr’s incredibly deaf response “…support police”
  • Western Sydney and moral panics (Noble and Poynting, 2010) I think this is the article
  • “Streets to avoid in Bankstown – Mean Street” – WTAF?
  • Moral Panics – Cohen work here
  • Voices of journalists is missing in scholarly representations

Alexandra Wake, “Trauma at Home”

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AANZCA 2025 Conference – Day 1


Keynote: Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgenson (University Dean of Research Environment and Culture Cardiff University) The rise of boutique media: Authority, trust and emotion in post-industrial news production

  • Boutique media as those that are not institutionalised media creators
  • First positive piece of journalism research I’ve seen in years
  • Call to Action to expand how we understand media with a range of media forms
  • Boutique media has the affordability to be agile and responsive, but is also at risk of being swooned by those they commentate on (i.e. how influencers operate)

Children’s Creative Agency

Digital puppet lab: child expressions of agency, identity, and creativity through multimodal, play-based workshops

Harrison Waed See1, Sian Tomkinson1, Lingyue Ding1, Kylie Stevenson2, Giselle Woodley1, Stephanie Milford1

1: Edith Cowan University, Australia; 2: Murdoch University, Australia

  • Interviewing children is hard, so alternative approaches are needed
  • Young people using iPads to understand ‘texture’
  • Drawing to workshop scenarios “draw your puppet in an adventure…”
  • Co-design emerges as strong because of the ownership the young people have in their puppet design
  • Instead of giving answers, ask questions to help guide the participant to find the answer

Children as Creative Digital Players: Exploring Digital Play in Family Contexts Among Children Aged 3–5

Lingyue Ding, Edith Cowan University, Australia

  • High penetration rate of internet for people, and young people, as basis of research
  • Screentime and parents having negative view of video games, rely more on control-based mediation
  • Qual research methods, young people and parents, ethnographic
  • Q: what about interviewing paediatricians?
  • Much evidence of the resilience, sharing of joy, longer moments of concentration, higher levels of emotions (sounds like negative emotions)

Uncovering the Analogue Archaeology of Children’s Digital Gamble-Play Cultures

Jessica Balanzategui1, César Albarrán-Torres2

1: RMIT; 2: Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

  • ARC grant presentation
  • Non mobile game data presented here, but rather material gaming play cultures such as claw games etc. to highlight cross pollination across an ecosystem of young people and gambling
  • Melbourne central walkthrough of the space that is from the muliple spaces that blur the line between adventure park/game arcades/Lego shops etc.
  • Eb Games and arcade sit side by side, adapted Walkthrough method
  • Ambient Play, Larissa and Ingrid
  • Conflation of urban space: it’s Melbourne Central – it’s difficult to ‘see’ it when you are there all the time (and probably not a young person)
  • Playthings and Playtime

Co-Designing Digital Policy in Early Childhood Education: Turning the Tide on Top-Down Approaches

Stephanie Milford, Sinead Wilson, Karen Murcia, Emma Cross, Sarsha Mennell, Curtin University, Australia

  • Policy lag in this space where early childhood centersa re now creating their own ‘policy’ (I suspect more guidelines than policy?)


Journalism Practice & Impact

Turning Tides of Friendship: Chinese-Australian Journalists and Local Communities, 1920-1945© [Zoom]

Caryn Coatney University of Southern Queensland, Australia

  • Chinese Australian reporters, editors and publicists are harnessing power to raise awareness of their own communities
  • Beyond jounrnalistic values, there is, heroic responsibility, business elite,
  • This was underway while the White Australia policy, thre was pushback from other Australian journalists (SMH, Tele, etc.) arguing that trade would be at risk if the White Australia policy remined
  • Mrs Fabian Chow (Alice Lee Kim)
  • The Chinese journalism world has risen and fallen across eras within Australia, which is very different to what was happening in the US and the UK. Unionism was high there, whereas here they were more focused on traded development.

Virtuous hacks: Identifying the qualities that characterise good journalism through qualitative research

Sacha Molitorisz, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

  • Virtue ethics and Australian journalists
  • Eudaimonia (flourishing) is a good thing
  • Virtue – th epurpose of human life is to live a good life. Identify what the virtues are and cultivate them – this is eudaimonia
  • Top three: courage, justice, truth-telling
  • Q: how does this differ from journalist ethics?

What do we do with diversity? Limited mechanisms of news media redress under stress

Archie Thomas1, David Nolan2, 1: University of Technology Sydney; 2: University of Canberra

  • Diversity is an ambivalent assemblage, heterogeneous, an ’empty signifier’ (Ahmed, 2012), its backlash suggests its successes and failures
  • Institutions being forced into ‘diversity’
  • Often diversity is the embodied diversity, the visible,
  • Diversity policy across news media orgs, through a traffic light system (clear, there but unclear, not there)
  • staffing is one persepcitve, infrastrucues and policies is another and this is reflected in different countries
  • Q: are news orgs doing diversity in different ways, then?

*image generated by AI, obviously.

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#IAMCR2025 Day 3 & 4 – International Association of Media and Communication Research

tropical garden in singapore

CPT – Users in focus: Weighing behaviour and attitudes in media governance and platform policies

I know how it works: Exploring the impact of algorithmic media content awareness on the privacy calculus of self-disclosure
» Dr. Zhang Hao Goh (Singapore)1, Prof. Gerard Goggin (Australia)2, Dr. Kym Campbell (Singapore)1 (1. Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, 2. Western Sydney University)

  • More data = more insights within mobile AI applications
  • Layman vs. Expert – what does a model of knowing look like?
  • Hierarchical structure of Awareness: Experiential (knowledge and experieince); systematic (how algorithms work); Normative (values and norms/ethics)

Are All AI Applications Created Equal? Unpacking Public Attitudes Toward AI Policies in Taiwan
» Dr. Tsung-Jen Shih (Taiwan)1, Ms. WEI-SHAN ZHENG (Taiwan)2 (1. College of Communication, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, R.O.C., 2. Telecom Technology Center (TTC), Taiwan, R.O.C.)

  • General public in Taiwan and how they understand AI policies
  • Deference and scientific authority (Lee & Scheufele, 2006) – we trust scientist more and we believe, if we do not believe we question legitimacy of science
  • Findings indicate that both deference and moral considerations benefit perceptions

Behaviorism Takes Command: A Study on A/B Testing and Experimental Culture in Big Internet Tech Companies
» Ms. Xia Yunxuan (China)1 (1. Peking University School of New Media)

  • Engineers vs. designers through A/B testing (testing as a decision making process)
  • How has A/B testing evolved from a testign tool to a mechanism of digital governacne?
  • A/B testing as a form of experimental culture – this emerges from within the tech industry as a constant process that is underway
  • The backbone of design inhibits how the experimentation of the testing process – expanding the gaps between techn workers and users

Characteristics and Regulations of Digital Identity Theft in the AI Era: A Grounded Theory Study of Rednote Micro-Influencers
» Ms. Yichuan Wang (China)1, Mr. Hanze Zhao (China)2 (1. School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, 2. Beijing Foreign Studies University)

  • It makes me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOuGH9Gpeos
  • Method (coding): Open coding, axial coding then

Day 4

CPT – Generative AI Governance: Institutions, Imaginaries, Innovations

Innovation vs Imagination in GenAI: A Comparative Patent Analysis of China, Europe, and the United States
» Dr. Yuner ZHU (Hong Kong)1, Dr. Xinzhi Zhang (Hong Kong)2, Prof. Bu Zhong (Hong Kong)1 (1. Hong Kong Baptist University, 2. City University of Hong Kong)

  • Systematic review of AI policy in Europe (Value Oriented), US (Market-driven) and China (State-led)
  • Examining the relationship between Innovation and Imagination
  • Patent filings: THomson Reuters Derwent World Patents Index
  • Patent claims – 6.7% China, 86% Europe, 34.8% US – really clever way to identify where the innovation is and where the rest follow (I suspect it is highest in China with much interest emerging from Europe)
  • Q: Expand on the clash between the three policy spaces?

Strikes and unrest in Hollywood media industry: bringing workers into the debate over GAI regulation and governance
» Mr. ANDRE ROCHA (Brazil)1 (1. DigiLabour research lab)

  • digitallabour.com.br (double check this link) Brazillian colleagues doing work on the WGA
  • Hollywood strikes
  • Power resources mobilization: Institutional “Hollywood is ‘union town'”; Economic (structural): disruption of media markets; Societal (discursive): public opinion that AI is not art/threat to workers/reflects dominant views
  • This moment spilled over into the gaming industry and other labour movements

Preemptive Dispositif: Data Annotation, Security, and the Territorialisation of Generative AI in China
» Dr. PENGFEI FU (China)1, Dr. Jian Lin (Hong Kong)2 (1. Shanghai Jiao Tong Univeristy, 2. Chinese University of Hong Kong)

  • China internet governance has existed in a ‘post-moderation’ mode since its inception
  • Concerns have moved from not what is made but how AI systems are designed, trained, developed, etc.
  • ‘upstream interventions’ – data annotation such as screening, cleaning, classifying, rating, marking and quality verification that can be used to train LLMs. Not just technical but also normative and social.
  • This is done as a ‘national workforce’. Ummmmm….
  • This sits within a global workforce labour model towards data annotation
  • Shift towards a pre-production regulation (this thinking aligns with our sandboxing approach), with focus on how training is done
  • Q: yes! But how to do this practically?

Assembling Generative Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Policy Evolution and Governance
» Dr. Chao Su (United States)1 (1. Boston University)

  • Wayback machine to snapshot TikTok’s Community Guidelines from 2018
  • Published article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2513672

CPT – What drives digital adoption and regulation? Between moral panics and digital identity

Do Sleeping Sovereigns Dream of Digital Identities?: Identity, Sovereignty, Citizenship
» Mr. James Rosenberg (United States)1 (1. University of Wisconsin–Madison)

  • The introduction of the EU digital wallet
  • Self Sovereign Identity: the internet identity layer as a solution to public trust across the internet – a menas of proving identity on the internt
  • TCP/IP provides an address not an identity
  • 3 solutions: centralised model (id cards etc.); federated model (insert identity provider i.e. Google credentials); decentralized model (SSI – relationship between you and IP provider)
  • Self-Sovereign Identity: Decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials
  • The sovereign individual – anyone can be rich, citizenship is dead, nation-state is dead, live elsewhere from your money in a tax haven

The Anxiety of Age: Moral Media Panics over Children’s Social Media Use as a Tool to Regulate
» Dr. Catherine Page Jeffery (Australia)1, Dr. Justine Humphry (Australia)2, Prof. Jonathon Hutchinson (Australia)1 (1. University of Sydney, 2. The University of Sydney)

  • This is our work, questiosn as follows: Is this private and public media? What is the reach of those orgs that are presented in the data? I don’t know if reach is the thing to measure here, I think it’s impact. Haidt > Wippa > 36 months etc. then the link with policy agenda.
  • What about individual ‘media’, as opposed to ‘the media’
  • Presented excellently by Cat and Justine

One World, Different Priorities: AI Technology Policies and the Global South
» Prof. chika Anyanwu (Australia)1 (1. University of New South Wales)

  • AI policies and tis translation around the world, especially the Global South
  • GenAI in Africe, a colonial lens,
  • “Technology transfer”: colonial term that the West will allow knowledge to come into Africa
  • Socially constructed technology spaces (GenAI) and how this transfers across the glove(the question of power and influence)
  • Superiority lens (McDonalds food is cheaper than good food as an example), Interesting read on this topic here
  • Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space Theory and Cultural Identity Today: A Critical Review
  • Noble and algorithms of oppression
  • Fascinating analysis of Africa from early ‘cheap labour’, then to material wealth
  • What about now (space for GenAI)?
  • Africa AI Policy Framework
  • Congo as a stronghold of minerals for tech, becoming ‘the bride of the US’ as a result of the tensions between US and China

Understanding Digital Cryptocurrency Communities: Digital Participation, Infrastructure, and Social Networks in the Global South
» Dr. Jonalou Labor (Denmark)1 (1. Aarhus University)

  • This is important work to bridge the scholarship between crypto worlds (bitcoin etc.) and platform studies
  • Multi-layers as a way to understand crypto (create their own platform layers), embedding this work in platform studies – think: Discord as a way to communicate about Bitcoin
  • Digital Bayanihan is the connection between collective action and cryptocurrencies – adaption of new frameworks in digital activism
  • Great work that provides clear evidence for the inclusion of alternative regioanl models (i.e Philippines) in platform studies.

Media’ s Embrace of Technology: How Media Portrays the Use of Autonomous Taxis and Its Impact on Individuals’ Adoption Intentions
» Prof. Christine Yi-Hui HUANG (Hong Kong)1, Ms. Ruoheng LIU (China)
1, Ms. Shuang GAO (China)1, Ms. Bo CHANG (China)1 (1. City University
of Hong Kong)

CPT – The Digital Transactions Turn: Making Policy and Governance Fit-For-Purpose

Digital Transaction Platforms in Asia
» Prof. Adrian Athique (Australia)1 (1. The University of Queensland)

  • Digital transactions are acts of: code, exchange, communication, solidarity and power
  • Xanadu Project was already doing this
  • Cascading transactions – automated and layered nature of platforms to think beyond economies
  • Strategic design
  • Transaction platforms: payment, banking, exchange, escrow, social media, social credit
  • Currencies: Airtime, social, crypto, legible reserves

TikTok Refugees and the Cross-Cultural Public Sphere: Social Transactions and International Communication Policy
» Prof. Haiqing Yu (Australia)1 (1. RMIT University)

  • TikTok refugees went to Insta reels, YouTube shorts but India won: Chingari, Roposo, Moj, Josh. Plus Rednote in China
  • Red note users: “What?!? Why do I now see all these blue eyes?”
  • Total cultural explosion between US and Chinese users – Cross cultural social translations
  • Exchange of English, Chinese, Chinglish is more informative than then a Chinese State or New York Times explanation
  • Impacts on policy – book idea: “policy intermediaries”

Platform Labor and Transaction Chains
» Prof. Cheryll Ruth Soriano (Philippines)1 (1. De La Salle University Manila)

  • Next Wave Cities – support for Philippines labour industries – digital jobs and labour
  • Upwork is the platform that results – think: Airtasker but better
  • This platform and service prompts a new kind of transaction platform – GCash
  • [This includes Vietnam]
  • The oversupply of labour has created new industries on how to be successful on UpWork
  • It’s very similar to the YouTube world – creators, MCNs, training, ‘universities/feeder schools’

E-commerce logistics in Southeast Asia: the cases of Shopee and Lazada
» Dr. Emma Baulch (Malaysia)1 (1. Monash University Malaysia)

  • Lots of talk of ‘intermediaries’ here – I think there is a thread that unexplored in all the work in this panel
  • Fascinating work that explores the tensions of delivery drivers especially in Malaysia
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#IAMCR2025 Day 1 – International Association of Media and Communication Research Conference Continues…

view of illuminated buildings at night

CPT – Governing content and user behaviour on platforms: regulation, policy and practices

“Weapons of the Weak”: Daily Resistance and Collusion of Platform Content Moderators
» Prof. Enqiang Guo (China)1, Dr. Jiebing Liang (China)2 (1. East China University of Political Science and Law, 2. School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

  • Content moderators utilising the form of adaption in the application of moderation
  • Data from Bilibili, Dounyin, Weibo, also used digital ethnography of moderators, users and creators
  • Timing is important, compliance risks due to overwhelming or working overtime
  • China is positioned between complex workgin conditions and platform content moderation. The moderators develop strategic and flexible practices to address stringent assmenet metrics imposed by platforms
  • Q: how does this compare with Western moderation practices?

Connecting Policies and Algorithms: A New Governance Framework for Cyberbullying
» Prof. Wei Li (China)1, Ms. Qingxuan Cheng (China)1, Prof. Hao Xu (China)1 (1. School of New Media, Peking University)

  • Cyberbullying: abusive, insulting, slanderous, invasive information (what does the literature say/could this be extended further?)
  • AI engaging in cyberbullying: “ChatGPT/4Chan is the worst model on the internet”
  • What are the new trends? What are the governing frameworks? develop new governance models;
  • New trends: rise of intelligent user networks. intellignet nodes become the centre of the network becoming the most significant ‘users’ in the network (how do we know this?)
  • Existing governance frameworks: Policy docs from Meta, WeChat, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp. Categories include Supportive Tools, Coercive Measures with minimal guidance, Weak connection to law enforcement in accountability
  • Dilemmas: High cost, Imbalance between control and guidance, Difficulty in pursuing and obtaining evidence
  • New dilemmas: AI can ‘crack the keyword audit system’ quickly
  • Integrating LoveGPT (?) (chat with victims), GPT-4Chan (speed of fake content)
  • By allowing bad content, this can help to train models (wow, contentious)
  • Looking for collaborators
  • Q: What about civic dissent/deviant practices (legitimate)?

Negotiating state-led governance policies: how self-regulation operates on Weibo
» Mr. Wenhao Zhou (China)1 (1. School of Journalism and Communication, Wuhan University)

  • Instructuralization on platfomrs – Weibo has 587m users, state-led regulatory model
  • RQ: How has China state-led platfrom governance policies evolved? RQ2: How can Weibo interact with state-led policies of regulation
  • “Negotiative Governance”
  • Platform governance, policy debates in platform governance, platform self regulation – the integration of these approaches is the background for negotiative governance
  • Doc analysis (regulatory papers), case study of Weibo, Platform biography
  • Evolution of regulation in China – content governance (health), market governance (fair), data governance (user rights)
  • The role of intermediary – can you unpack this further? Is this the role of Weibo?
  • The user participation and global collaboration (ordinary users and global platforms) Digital sovereignty (Shi & Yu, 2023)

Communicating the Climate Crisis: Translating Science into Policy and Practice

Audrey Tan (Assistant News Editor (Environment), The Straits Times, Singapore Press Holdings Kong)

  • Straits Times – National newspaper covering national events, has a Singapore focus,
  • Keen interest in environmental reporting, weather reports have lots of engagement, people can see the relevance
  • Raising awareness, serving as a bridge, galvanising action, spotlight on SEA

Man Jing (Co-founder, Science and Environment, Channel “Just Keep Thinking”)

Adam Douglas Switzer (Director, CIFAL @ NTU, Asian School of the Environment, Professor, Asian School of the Environment, Assistant Dean (Development), College of Science, Director of CIFAL@NTU, Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University)

  • $57Million funded project that brings science and humanities together – science project that brings communicaiton in at the foundation level
  • “Climate Change and Misinformation in the Media”
  • How do we do communication when the science is real and effects are visible
  • Leaders and their misinformation (i.e. Trump and Abbott)

Janil Puthucheary (Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Digital Development and Information, Singapore)

  • How does the lessons from Singapore inform the world and vice-versa?

CPT – Digital geopolitics, sovereignty and technological interdependence

The European Third Way: the EU’s strategic narrative of a valuebased digital order and its global impact
» Dr. Julia Pohle (Germany)1, Mr. Leo Thüer (Germany)1, Mr. Milan Schröder (Germany)1, Prof. Christian Rauh (Germany)1 (1. WZB Berlin Social Science Center)

  • European values are framed as a way of European governance – promote as an alternative to the Chinese restrictive and the US liberal model

Towards a “federated sovereignty”? Mobilizations of decentralized platforms for (European) digital autonomy
» Dr. Ksenia Ermoshina (France)1, Prof. Francesca Musiani (France)2 (1. Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Centre Internet et Société, 2. Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France)

  • The Fediverse is the central focus of this research, requires a high level of technical knowledge
  • Federation sits between digital sovereignty and federation networks – less technical knowledge is required
  • This is relevant in a post Twitter world where users are lookign for new forms of communication (i.e. Mastodon, Matrix, Delta Chat)
  • RQ: How are ‘alternative projects’ adopted by European public institutions
  • Federation and sovereignty – encourages interoperability between services beyond proprietary silos
  • 4 Cs of Federation: Compatibility, Community, Customization, Care
  • Moving from platform sovereignty towards protocol sovereignty
  • Q: how has PSM as a particular kind of European public institution adopted (or not) federation sovereignty?

Politics, Privacy or Soft Power: TikTok Ban in the U.S. at the State Level
» Dr. wenhong chen (United States)1 (1. University of Texas at Austin)

  • US Federal policy tools that can be used to implement a TikTok ban: Legislative, Executive, Judiciary
  • CFIUS – the Committee for Foreign Trade in the US – these talks have been going on for several years and it has shifted from Federal to State level politics

Informational Ethos and Digital Sovereignty: Technologies, Neoliberalism, and Coloniality
» Dr. José Cláudio Castanheira (Brazil)1 (1. Fluminense Federal University (UFF))

  • Brazilian Liberal (Right Wing) Conference – hoihgly attended by Googel, Meta and CapCut who presented practical tutorials on how to produce automated videos and content.
  • Zuckerberg et al. was supporting the activities of this party
  • There is an environment of ‘congress is the enemy of the people’
  • AI politics in Brazil – They do not meet the needs of Brazilians (Barros; Vaz 2023)

CPT – Emerging Digital Technologies Policies and Laws in South Asia Beyond Geopolitical Approach

Policy Rhetoric to Practice: The Case of Streaming Services in India
» Ms. Shubhangi Heda (Australia)1 (1. Queensland University of Technology)

  • Viewing experience as a regulatory variable is ignored
  • State intervention is inevetiable

Dynamics of Elite Capture on Media Regulation: Policies and Practices in Pakistan
» Dr. Mahnoor Farooq (Pakistan)1, Dr. Shabana Naveed (Pakistan)2 (1. University of Haripur, 2. Lahore Garrison University)

Secretive Digital State: Hidden Policy Documents and the Issues of Transparency and Accountability of the National Identification System in Nepal
» Dr. Harsha Man Maharjan (Qatar)1 (1. Northwestern University in
Qatar)

Communication Policies of a Digital Authoritarian Regime in Bangladesh
» Dr. Anis Rahman (United States)1 (1. University of Washington)

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International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) preconference – The 50th Anniversary of Communication Policy & Technology #IAMCR2025

IAMCR 2025 CPT precon

I was honoured to be invited to participate as a panel discussant at the 50th Anniversary of Communication Policy & Technology preconference. I was invited to talk at the first panel, The Asia-Pacific Perspective to
Communication Policy Research, alongside Prof Yu Hong, Zhejiang University, China; Prof Ang Peng Hwa, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and Prof Yu-li Liu, Shanghai University, China.

My panel followed an excellent opening remarks from the Dean of the Faculty, Professor Lionel Wee, and Prof Jeremy Shtern, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada (Secretary General, IAMCR), and Prof Gerard Goggin, Western Sydney University, Australia (Co-Chair, Global Media Policy Working Group, IAMCR). Within this session, I took two key items away:

  • Policy implications are pertinent and remain the same – allocation of resources, global north and south, voice those who have none, etc. (Jeremy Shtern);
  • Inter-generational research has really helped the Section grow (inclusion of ECRs and HDRs), how might this shift over new technologies and their introduction (Gerard Goggin)

This was followed by the Keynote Roundtable, which had five generations of Presidents of the CPT Section. THe following key points were made by the following colleagues:

  • Emeritus Prof Robin Mansell, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
  • Emeritus Prof Cees Hamelink, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Dr Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEAsia, Sri Lanka
  • Prof Hopeton Dunn, University of Botswana, Botswana
  • Prof Francesca Musiani, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France

Emeritus Prof Cees Hamelink

  • The process of UN and IAMCR focusing on techniology and human rights, but nothing actually happening beyond broad and general agreement.
  • Bypass governemtns, engage with individuals

Emeritus Prof Robin Mansell

  • CPT – infrastructures and political economy, but also the uses of technology
  • The issues haven’t changed but the technologies have, the ‘thigns’ we research are changing (platforms, datafication, AI, social meida, etc.) but the underlying issues remain and continue to need attention

Dr Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEAsia, Sri Lanka

  • Wihtin the global context, the state is the issue – Sri Lankan state government is a huge hump in the road for communication and power
  • Regulator work is important

Prof Hopeton Dunn, University of Botswana, Botswana

  • Real growth came when the secion started working with the ECR network – this tells me that is is the crossover of policy research needs novel approaches
  • Shcolarship that ceoms form htose marginalised voices is important to encourage emerging scholars (and students) to understand their place within the world. It connot be just one voice and one way of scholarship
  • AI versus IA (internet access) – while some parts are forging ahead with AI work, some parts of the world are still coming to grips with getting online

After lunch, we moved to Panel 2: AI governance

  • Tarja Turtia, Senior Programme Specialist, UNESCO Communication and Information Sector
  • Dr Jingbo Wang, United Nations University Institute in Macau, Macau
  • Prof Jungpil Hahn, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • Dr Chew Han Ei, Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore
  • Moderator: Dr Jun Yu, National University of Singapore, Singapore (Local Organising Committee Co-Convenor)

Prof Jungpil Hahn, National University of Singapore, Singapore

  • Working on AI projects that are human focused
  • Has funding for projects

Dr Jingbo Wang, United Nations University Institute in Macau, Macau

  • Research community is needed to bring the issues to policymakers, and then to be involved with more hands-on work in terms of how the results go post-policy implementation
  • What will be the jobs in 10 years that we need to be focussed on within AI
  • Check this out: https://www.un.org/en/summit-of-the-future

Tarja Turtia, Senior Programme Specialist, UNESCO Communication and Information Sector

  • UNESCO is there to protect humans
  • Guidelines for Governance of Digital Platforms
  • Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
  • It’s difficult to undertake ‘fairness, equality, etc.’ as these principles are somewhat objective, burt UNESCO is ther to push pressure on policymakers
  • Working in AI and public media
  • The traditional media and the broader ecosystem also contributes to this AI discussion space

Dr Chew Han Ei, Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore

  • Policy studies and has a research project out that examine show chat bots respond to taboo subject: I’d Blush If I Could

PANEL 3: Policy beyond Communication Tech
Prof Catherine Middleton – Professor, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Dr Bohyeong Kim – Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Vanderbilt University, USA From Chat App to Fintech Giant: Kakao’s Journey Through South Korea’s Policy Landscape

Dr Renyi Hong – Associate Professor, Department of Communications and Media, National University of Singapore,
Singapore
Dr Wijayanto – Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Government, Universitas Diponegoro, Indonesia Governing the Digital Space: Regulation, Institutional Fragmentation, and Governance Gaps in the 2024 Indonesian
Election

Moderator: Prof Shaojing Sun, Fudan University, China

Prof Catherine Middleton – An Investigation of how Current Policy Debates about 6 GHz Spectrum and Wi-Fi 7 Will Impact Digital Inclusion in the Next Decade

  • License spectrum – set in a way that commercial operators pay fees to governments to use them, users pay to providers for access. Citizens are paying for a public resource (Mobile network operators)
  • Wireless networks are different in that we are not paying for them – permissionless innovation
  • US govt. is looking at charging for wifi spectrum – they would sell it to a provider and then we pay to use it.
  • Wifi 7 example given, required for faster broadband speeds to our home to avoid a bottleneck
  • Work by Ofcom: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/innovative-use-of-spectrum/ofcom-pioneers-sharing-of-upper-6-ghz-spectrum-between-mobile-and-wi-fi-services
  • Work by ACMA: https://www.acma.gov.au/consultations/2024-05/planning-options-upper-6-ghz-band

Dr Bohyeong Kim: From Chat App to Fintech Giant: Kakao’s Journey Through South Korea’s Policy Landscape

  • Kakao Talk – 43 million users, South Korea population is 51 million
  • Ride Hailing, information, food, etc. (super app)
  • Kako has 218 affiliates and 175 subsidiaries in 2023
  • 26 million users are on Kakoa Bank, it’s fintech subsidairy
  • Published article: South Korea’s Megacorp and super app: Kakao’s paths to market dominance – this is how the Chaembol are not able to own financial services industry
  • Sandbox finacial regulatoriy space(2019) – test services without regulation that might inhibit innovation – Q: how has this worked and could this approach be used in broader context of digital technologies? Could we reframe policy as a helpful tool and not a roadblock?
  • Kakao pay now also uses social media activity ‘points’ to understand financial information

Dr Wijayanto – Governing the Digital Space: Regulation, Institutional Fragmentation, and Governance Gaps in the 2024 Indonesian Election

  • Indonesia’s political battleground is on TikTok – positive disinformation and whitewashing were key tactics used
  • There are no laws against AI so it cannot be controlled – stance of govt.
  • Officials can have 10 accounts, and rely on platform governance to make sure all content is OK

Dr Renyi Hong – Platform Workers Bill: The Politics of Regulating Workers’ Injury in Singapore

  • Singaporeans are covered under a pension act, and a Platform Workers Bill (compensation)
  • Platform workers are now one fo the most dangerous workplaces (compared with construction, scarily)
  • Insurance is covered by platform providers for ‘free’ but it is actually included in the charge to consumers, but this de-associates the platform provider from the worker and their potential claims
  • Grab has Audio-protect – https://help.grab.com/passenger/en-sg/360035134272

PANEL 4: Regionalising Communication Policy
Dr Wafa Khalfan – Independent Scholar, United Arab Emirates
Dr Yongliang Gao – Associate Professor, State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication, Communication
University of China
Dr Tianchan Mao – Postdoctoral Fellow, Fudan University, China
Dr Lydia Ouma Radoli – Associate Dean, School of Communication, Daystar University, Kenya

Dr Lydia Ouma Radoli – Searching for a Middle Ground: Analyzing Artificial Intelligence Policies for Journalistic Practice in the Global South

  • Ethical issues versus opportunities for machine jouralism
  • Shifting the practice of journalism to include more technological dynamics, significant politics and audience sentiment
  • Bias mitigation, transparency and accountability – all areas that are pertinent for AI in journalism
  • Trust again appears as a significant issue (I interpret this as trust and institution)

Dr Wafa Khalfan – Regionalizing Communication Policy & Technology: Situating the Gulf Region in Global Media and AI Policy Discourse.

Dr Yongliang Gao – From the Regulation of Content Production, Technological Application, Market Operation, and International Communication to Social Governance

Dr Tianchan Mao – Governance in the Shadows: Why the Co-Governance Model Undermines the Effectiveness of Platform Governance in the Facebook Oversight Board?

  • Two sides of platform governance – what the platforms claim, and the impact of their actions
  • What is the efficiency of the Facebook Oversight Board? (I thought it was a kind of puppet mechanism, even thought I have some amazing colleagues sitting on the Board – I’d be keen to hear their thoughts)
  • Thematic analysis which was then run through topic modelling process – violence became a key issue to unpack
/by

ICA25 – International Communication Association Day 2

Scholarship continues into day 2… Took a chance on a random room and it was amazing. I learnt quite a bit about Bangladesh media, its regime, and the role news and media plays in this space.

Full notes from sessions below:

PARTNER PANEL: South Asia Communication Association (SACA)
Chairs(s): Zahedur Arman (Framingham State University) and Shafiqur Rahman (South Carolina U)
Discussant(s): MD Tareq Hossain (National University of Singapore), Zahedur Arman (Framingham State University), Uma Shankar Pandey (Surendranath College), Dilshad Hossain Dudul (Independent U of Bangladesh), Mohammad Ala-Uddin (Saint May’s College), Waqas Mahmood (GIFT University, Gujranwala), ANIRUDDHA JENA (INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT KASHIPUR), Didarul Islam (Central New Mexico Community College), Aakash Shaw (U of Calcutta), Janifar Kamal Nova (Southern Illinois U ), Abu Ahmed, Sherin Farhana Moni, Khairul Islam (State University of New York at Oswego), Khadimul Islam (Chadron State College) and Nur E Makbul (U of Alabama)
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM; Quartz (Regency 3)

  • Life without Twitter in India – Snowball sampling, 18-34, n=1200
  • Users are mainly Facebook and Twitter
  • Key issues: cyber bullying and wellbeing

Creating the Bubble: Newsmedia role in checking the Global South

  • Bangladesh: examine selected text from selected press conferences. How do news media outlets exercise their journalistic freedom under the former regime?
  • Challenges the norms of journalism, asking questions that are journalistic oriented, they would first praise the leader without criticism of major policies, then shifting to challenging questions.

In search of Habamasian Ideals – Abu Ahmed, Sherin Farhana Moni, Khairul Islam (State University of New York at Oswego)

  • Broad (very) overview of public sphere, natioanl debate, inclusivity, all members of public

International Law in Kashmir and India and the spread of misinformation

  • No studies on how governments shut down internet to stop misinformation
  • RQ: how do governments limit the spread of misinformation in India
  • Frame: political economy
  • Misonfomraiotn happening for a long time makes the people more pessimistic
  • Laws adopt to reflect this. make power more visible
  • Public trust is declining (like most global areas) wht are the factors that are impoacting thisn in Bagledash
  • There is s media reform underway in this country

10:30 AM-11:45 AM, Colorado B (Grand 2), HIGH-DENSITY: Digital Escapes: Problematic Media Use and Family Dynamics, High-Density Paper Session, Children, Adolescents and Media, Chairs: Allyson Snyder, U of California – Davis

Family Under the Screen: Problematic Mobile Media Use as a Family Issue and Its Relation to Children’s Self-Esteem, Parental Self- Efficacy and the Parent-Child Relationship Nele Janssens; K. Beullens

  • Affordances vs. problematic mobile media use (PMMU)
  • Research adopts a ‘family systems approach’ research understood as part of the family system
  • Assumes PMMU leads to lower self esteem
  • Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale (SAPs) check this here; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097920
  • Many of these scholars are part of the Media Psychology Lab: https://soc.kuleuven.be/smc

Parent Problematic Media Use, Child Emotional Reactivity, and Household Income Relate to Parent Reliance on Media Emotion Regulation Strategies J. Shawcroft; A.L. Snyder; D.P. Cingel; J.B. Ruiz

  • Emotional regulation – using media to calm or soothe children, not necessarily bad, and can be used in conjunction with other approaches to stressful situations
  • This research focuses on resources: internal: screens etc. , external: family, housing etc.
  • Published paper here

Smartphones as Surrogate Attachment: Examining Digital Dependency and Emotional Bonds Among Left-Behind Children in China F. Yu; K. Wang

  • Nomophobia – no mobile phone phobia
  • Phones as surrogate attachment – reasons for using smartphones: connections, relaxation, environment knowledge, reduced anxiety and discomfort
  • Something about insert numbers and that equals children need phones when parents aren’t around

The Growth of Maternal Technoference Across Early Childhood and Associations With Child Problematic Media Use S. Ashby; S. Coyne; J. Shawcroft; M. Van Alfen; P. James; H. Holmgren; T. Austin

  • Technoference (phubbing) – the disruptions from technology between children and parents
  • Linked to higher stress and behaviour problems
  • 7 year longitudinal study, 0.5- 6.5 year olds

Understanding Problematic Video Game and Mobile Phone Use in Chilean Children: The Role of Family Support and Parental Mediation P. Cabello; Matias Dodel; N. Delgado; M. Claro; P. Véliz

The Impact of Emotional Neglect on Internet Addiction Among Left-Behind Adolescents in Rural China: A Moderated Mediation Model H. Jiang; L. ZHONG; V. Huaxng; R. Zhong

  • 15 million ‘left behind’ adolescents in China, parents move to urban area to make more money, but cannot bring their children, resulting in lack of education, and experiencing emotional neglect
  • Internet addiction is 18.3% higher in this group of young people
  • Published paper available here

12:00 PM-1:15 PM, Mineral A (Regency 3), Youth and Popular Culture, Standard Paper Session, Popular Media & Culture, Chairs: Miriam Rahali, The London School of Economics & Political Science

The Promises and Perils of Being a Popular Youth Online Content Creator Rebecca Ortiz; S. Condemi; K. Leahy; V. Hidalgo Garcia; S. Ramasubramanian

  • Trans parasocial relation framework
  • I hour interview with content creators, 10-17 years old, at least 3000 followers
  • Let participants identify themselves (ethnicity, pronouns, neurodiversity, etc.)
  • Tensions between online/offline – more like relationships that are not online
  • Enacted online personas – once popularity emerges, they started thinking more about fame by changing and shifting their persona. “authenticity and the real content creator”
  • Implications: constructing and affirming their personas, balancing authenticity against impression management, performative labour, navigating layers of risk
  • Engages Communication Theory of Identity

1:30 PM-2:45 PM, Grays Peak B (Grand Conv Center 2), The Yuck Factor: Digital Disgust, Rhetorics of Repulsion, and Cultural Critiques in Food Media, Panel Session, Popular Media & Culture, Participant: S. Marek Muller , Texas State U; Participant: Banu Akdenizli, Northwestern U – Qatar; Participant: Sun Young Park, Florida State U; Participant: Diana Willis, U at Albany – SUNY; Participant: Antara Dey, York U


From Culinary Bridges to Cultural Barriers: The ‘Yuk Factor’ in Food Media and its Impact on Gastrodiplomacy B. Akdenizli

  • Try not to gag reactions – disgust as communication/entertainment
  • Binary between west and other food types
  • “This can’t be real”, “WTF” – normalising cultural translations
  • Gastro-diplomacy and state-led narratives
  • How about this: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429465543-25/guide-gastrodiplomacy-paul-rockower


Disgust as a Communicative Tool in Food Media Sunny Park

  • Food is popular (TikTok) but gross-out content is rising, or gaining attention
  • Broad overview of ‘disgust’ and its psychological mechanisms (cognitive, emotional, behavioural, gagging etc.)
  • Boundary setting: contamination, cultural, purity
  • Framing theory (Goffman, 1974) and purity and danger (Douglas, 1966)
  • Inductive coding from 150 TikTok videos – results to come

Nostalgia, Disgust, and Demon Quiche: B. Dylan Hollis’ Playful Critique of Mid-Century Cuisine Diana Willis

  • Communication through Mid-Century America: clothes, language, references, recipes
  • Disgust through language and vision
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International Communication Association Conference – Day 1

Monkey Bar Denver

After a wonderful plenary last night that provoked us to think about who we are and how we respond, individually and as an association, to the current political environment, Day 1 for me has been a great experience. Much quality scholarship emerging from the Popular Media and Culture, and Children and Media streams.

Here’s the following notes from the sessions I attended:

9:00 AM-10:15 AM, Capitol 6 (Regency 4), Subcultures, Subgroups, and Sublayers, Standard Paper Session, Popular Media & Culture, Chairs: Chengbao Jin, Shanghai University

Rita Genser – Engineering Adaptive Conspiracies: Cults and the Case of QAnon

  • Framework, cultish language Subculture Evolution model (establishment, implosion
  • Users look for the movement, had a mysterious connection with the figure Q
  • Emergence of specialised jargon ‘Anons’
  • Working together on a common goal – the connection of Q with Trump
  • The ‘Covfefe’ method (Trump Tweet)

Jiahui Xing – Regulating the Past: The Role and Unexpected Empowerment of Hanfu Experts in Chinese Costume Drama Production

  • Hanfu and costume drama
  • Drama trends are declining, the NRTA introduced new policy (? I missed the name)
  • Genre trend: ancient drama – they believe it has a bad impact on society and these were banned
  • RQ: does theatre strategies work anymore?
  • Cultural intermediaries (Hanfu Experts) – transfer the knowledge of the Hanfu to the society (contemporary China)
  • Four layer legitimation Mechanism – regulation, industrialisation, institutionalisation, populisation
  • Vietnamese drama are produced in China, using the costume from China (Hanfu), causing cultural tension between the two
  • Intermediation has not restricted but empowered, Hanfu became cultural intermediation

10:30 AM-11:45 AM, Grays Peak A (Grand Conv Center 2), Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, and Digital Interactive Entertainment, Standard Paper Session, Popular Media & Culture, Chairs: Hilde Van den Bulck, Drexel U; Chairs: Hui Lin, Kings College London

[Chaos finding the right room/building]

Museum Interestingness and Aesthetic Interaction: The Evolution From Intuitive to Embodied Cognition X. Chen; J. Jiang; J. Li

  • Cognitive processing mechanisms for exhibition understanding
  • Integration of design elements with visitor cognitive characteristics

Hui Lin – Challenging the Algorithms: Users’ Resistant Strategies on Douyin

  • PhD candidate – early finding and thesis overview
  • Framework – EchoChamber and filter bubbles, Algorithmic Surveillance, stereotyped categorisation and identity construction (Cheney et al.)
  • RQ: why use Doutin when algorithims have negative impact?
  • Folk theories (Eslama et al. 2016), Influencing user behaviour
  • Algorithmic resistance
  • Walk Through method (Ben et al.)
  • 31 young urban users (18-35), week-long video recordings and interview
  • 6 month recruitment (q: Is this population representative?)
  • Users resist when the algorithm is used in various ways – even resistance (commercial exploitation)
  • Check out the Social Media + Society article
  • https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20563051251313610

12:00 PM-1:15 PM, Capitol 4 (Regency 4), HIGH-DENSITY: Growing Up Online: Social Media and Adolescent Mental Health, High-Density Paper Session, Children, Adolescents and Media, Chairs: Sarah Ashby, Brigham Young University

Social Media Use and Loneliness: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescents in South Korea S. Vigil; J. Shawcroft; D.P. Cingel; H. Lee

  • High density of users/increased loneliness – is there a connection?
  • 958 users aged 14-18, Differential Susceptibility to media effects model, social media use
  • Results – no causal relationship, peer belonging acts as a protective factor, FOMO but social media doesn’t make this worse, use remained stable over time

The Swiss Cheese Model of Social Cues: A Theoretical Perspective on the Role of Social Context in Shaping Social Media’s Effect on Adolescent Well-Being J. Trekels; E.H. Telzer

  • Youth feel connected with their friends but feel pressure to be the best version of themselves
  • Media effects: selective, transactional, conditional, however these theories miss the physical, cognitive and social changes young people go through
  • Friends are key to development, more nuanced to social cues, access through social media
  • Swiss cheese model – social cues on platforms, social cues in the surroundings, in the individual (neuro) context
  • Published here: https://academic.oup.com/joc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/joc/jqaf001/8029825?searchresult=1

The Influence of Adolescent Depression on Social Media Experiences: Evidence From a Daily Diary Study L. Janssen; P.M. Valkenburg; L. Keijsers; I. Beyens

  • Do adolescents experience social media differnet to those who do not have depressive perspectives:
  • 479 Dutch, 14-17, 100 day diary study
  • Baseline survey Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (Reynolds, 2005) – 17% depressed
  • Some results:Those who were depressed are more preoccupied with feedback from their peers
  • Self reinforcing feedback loop, e.g. someone who feels rejected may have those feelings reinforced
  • AWeSome is the space of research – https://www.project-awesome.nl/for-researchers

Experiences: Evidence From a Daily Diary Study L. Janssen; P.M.

Daily Links Between Adolescents’ Perceived Digital Well-Being, State Self-Esteem, and Affective Well-Being J. Rosič; R. Vanherle; L. Vandenbosch

  • Perceive well-being is when users are more happy than not (?), cognitive domain,
  • 14 day diary study
  • Results when users perceived higher digital well being they also recorded higher perceived self esteem – all fairly typical outcomes for this kind of research within this field of research. It is supportive of existing research.

[Sideline thoughts – the gender of the researchers is significantly skewed towards female (like, 1 male/non-binary), no tlak of platforms, but instead ‘social media’, nothing seems to challenge the status quo. Perhaps this is psychology?)

Appnome Analysis Reveals Small or No Associations Between Social Media App-Specific Usage and Adolescent Well-Being Y. Liu; L. Marciano

  • Trying to understand the relationship between social media use and well being
  • Outlines the existing methods, but introducing user-donated screenshots – usage times from phone, provides app overviews
  • Relationships between apps and well-being? used HappyB Study Being, (?)
  • Results: no causality between social media use and negative well-being
  • Nod to what is the correct time to measure this kind of research (avoiding cherry picking insights) – good persepctive here

Diverse Platforms, Diverse Effects: A 100-Day Diary Study on Social Media and Adolescent Mental Health A. van der Wal; I. Beyens; L. Janssen; P.M. Valkenburg

  • Gap – how effects vary within individuals across multiple dimensions
  • Frame- within-person unity, within-person duality
  • Method, diary: 44,211 daily diary entries (questionnaire sent each night at 7:30pm)
  • Dynamic structural equation modelling (DSEM)
  • Found there is a negative effect on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram; positive or neutral effect on WhatsApp and Snapchat

Performance and Toxicity: The Relationship Between Toxic Communication During Adolescent Videogame Play and Performance -Contingent Self-Esteem E.J. Noon; L. Carbone; L. Vandenbosch

  • Reciprocal Mediation Model: in gaming they come across toxic activity, primarily against women

4:30 PM-5:45 PM, Mt. Oxford (Grand 3), Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race and Ethnicity, and Sexuality, Standard Paper Session, Popular Media & Culture, Chairs: Radhika Parameswaran, Indiana U Bloomington

“Sexy Side of Queerness”: Provocative LGBTQ+ Artists’ Music Videos and Commentary About Sexual Content Clay Williams

  • Sam Smith & Troy Sivan – 2023 provocative video
  • Content discourse across six music videos
  • Self esteem – larger people demonstrated higher levels of esteem with videos of a “larger body condition” as per Williams
  • Exposure to thinner music videos decreased self esteem, this has also been found in the heterosexual men category
  • First study on GBTQ+ provocative entertainment and effects

A Critical (Rhetorical) Fabulation of Indigenous Trans Women in the United States Andy A. Acosta

  • Hip Hop elements (authenticity measures); styles drill, bounce, etc. traumacore: sexual assault therapy
  • Case study: Bobby Sanchez
  • Theory: Critical Fabulation; Artifacts: four albums
  • Indigenous Hip Hop: deliberative rhetoric – digging into the lyrics that cross sexual orientation
  • Critical rhetorical fabulation – Indigenous hip hop that demonstrates the connection between music and politics

Fashioning Identities: How Chinese Youth Reconstruct Hanfu and Social Identities on Social Media Y. Dai

  • Definition – Fashion as per the Han people: fashion, non-Western fashion, nationalism in Hanfu Studies
  • RQs: What are the instutions shaping Hanfu culture? Gen Z representing? Digital practices shaping aesthetics?
  • Self-Orientalism: a pushed form of reappropriating Hanfu for China’s national image (that are 56 cultural groups)

“Them’s a Rat”: Queerness and Inclusive Communities in World of Warcraft Andrew Restieri

  • WoW celebrated its 20th year last year – I feel old
  • RQs: How LGBTG+ find community, what support is there, what do they tell us about online inclusivity?
  • 17 semi structured interviews, snowballing sampling from a guild on Discord. Interesting how participants were reluctant when Zoom was introduced as the preferred platform
  • Results: most time toxic and not inclusive, many use voice changers, users were terrified of being mis-gendered
  • Meaningful connections: some were extra connection activities, but many expressed there is nothing beyond the online experience
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