Tag Archive for: research

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Sydney Vietnam Innovation Symposium

Yesterday, I attended the Sydney Vietnam Innovation Symposium both as a delegate and as an invited speaker. The event is a major milestone in the development in the work so far from our Sydney Vietnam Academic Network, which now has incredible support from the University of Sydney, the NSW Government, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Austrade among many others. A big congratulations to Professor Greg Fox and Associate Professor Jane Gavan for their tireless work in this space, and for such a successful symposium.

It seems the ‘physical’ Network will be realised sooner rather than later.

There were a a great number of addresses, roundtables and research presentations during the day which provided such a solid foundation for the next five to ten years of work in the country (apparently it takes 20 to 30 years to do research in Vietnam, as one of the presenters noted!).

Speakers

Dignitaries of the morning included:

  • Professor Mark Scott, Vice Chancellor and President of the University of Sydney
  • Honourable Minister Mr Bri Anoulack Chanthivong, NSW Minister for Innovation, Science and Technology & Minister for Trade
  • Honourable Bui Thanh Son, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Socialist Party, Vietnam

Some of the crucial take aways included the fact that Vietnam is number 13 in the top 20 countries Australia has included in the Australian Innovation Strategy, its GDP was $6billion in 2022, NSW is committed to working with the country, it is a model of how countries can bring their people out of poverty through economic transformation, there is a strong focus on its tech precinct and ‘night time’ economies.

The event was also a celebration of 50 years of collaborative science and technology research between Australia and Vietnam.

Opportunities

One of the huge research potentials is the Aus4Innovation hosted by CSIRO. The Aus4Innovation scheme is:

Aus4Innovation is an AUD$33.5 million development assistance program that aims to strengthen Vietnam’s innovation system, prepare for and embrace opportunities associated with Industry 4.0, and help shape Vietnam’s innovation agenda in science and technology. Through the Aus4Innovation program, Australia and Vietnam will work together to explore emerging areas of technology and digital transformation, trial new models for partnerships between public and private sector institutions, and strengthen Vietnamese capability in digital foresight, scenario planning, commercialisation, and innovation policy.

https://research.csiro.au/aus4innovation/

It’s great for agriculture just now, but they do rotate the focus – keen to keep an eye on this scheme for when its digital comms time.

Layton Pike (RMIT) spoke about the pioneering work that had been done by RMIT in Vietnam and that approaching the country as a consortium of universities is better than vying for leadership. There are 100million people with about 22 million students – one university can’t service all of those students. He also made me aware of the Australian Vietnam Policy Institute (AVPI) which is a useful clearing house of research and public poloicy. Excellent resource.

I also met Ngheim Long, the President of the Vietnamese Australian Scholars & Experts Association (VASEA). They are a reasonably new organisation, but seem to be an emerging peak body for Vietnamese scholars.

And while I missed this year’s round, the New Colombo Plan PhD Scholarship scheme will be front and centre for 2025 research. Engaging a cross-country PhD seems like the obvious way to build research momentum now.

Research

One thing that blew my mind came from the Medicine Faculty, specifically a cancer researcher. Professor Robyn Ward is my new favourite human in the world. Beyond just a stellar career of health research, she and her team have been tasked with addressing a Research Impact Assessment Framework. It feels like there is qualitative research trickling into the Sciences here? Anyway, it was a revelation to think about these things from a Medicine perspective, such as multiple stakeholder perspectives on impact (for me I read that as cultural value). So establishing a framework that is designed by the stakeholders on what they think is important – in this case knowing something works, culture, partnerships, sustainability, engagement, etc. etc. This can then result in a ‘score card’ to measure research engagement based on the importance to a variety of stakeholders. WHAT IF I DID THIS FOR CULTURE? Theme 1 of my Future Fellowship just became so much more interesting now… A Cultural Impact Assessment Framework.

Also, I spoke. It was a kind of tough crowd as the majority of delegates were Health Science, Medicine and Science scholars (we are only three from FASS – Museum Studies, Economics and Media Comms)

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Civic Algorithms: A digital intermediation challenge

Recently, I was invite to deliver a keynote for a joint session with the News and Media Research Center and the Centre for Deliberative Democracy to explore the ideas and concepts of digital intermediation.

The blurb:

How might generative artificial intelligence (AI) and automation be undertaken to produce social good? In an increasingly automated digital media world, user agency is challenged through the loss of interaction functionality on the platforms, technologies and interfaces of everyday digital media use. Instead, algorithmically designed decision making processes function for users to assist them in making sense of these environments as a means of assisting them to seek out content that is relevant, of interest and entertaining. However, if the last five years are anything to go by, these sorts of recommendations, particularly across social media, have caused anything but social cohesion and unity amongst users, and have instead spread misinformation, vitriol and hurtful media. Would our society be different had we designed systems that focused on, while still entertaining, content that places the wellbeing of humans at the forefront over content that is, for the most part, popular?

This presentation uses the lens of digital intermediation to explore how civic algorithms might be designed and implemented in digital spaces to improve social cohesion. By unpacking the technologies, institutions and automation surrounding the cultural production practices of digital intermediation, it becomes clearer how these leavers can be adjusted to nudge and encourage platforms, users and content creators to engage in improved civic processes. As a digital intermediation challenge, creating and working with civic algorithms presents as a potentially useful approach towards improving the cornerstone of our democracies by ensuring citizens have access to accurate information, are engaging in the discussions that are important and relevant to them, and are operating within digital environments that value social good alongside commercial gains.

And here’s the recording of the session, slides included:

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New Book: Digital Intermediation

It is with great pleasure I can share the publication of my new book, Digital Intermediation: Unseen Infrastructure for Cultural Production.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003177388/digital-intermediation-jonathon-hutchinson

This book offers a new framework for understanding content creation and distribution across automated media platforms – a new mediatisation process. The book draws on three years of empirical and theoretical research to carefully identify and describe a number of unseen digital infrastructures that contribute to predictive media (algorithmic platforms) within the media production process: digital intermediation. The empirical field data is drawn from several international sites, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, London, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Sydney and Cartagena. By highlighting the automated content production and distribution process, the book responds to a number of regulatory debates emerging around the societal impact of platformisation. Digital Intermediation: Towards transparent digital infrastructure describes and highlights the importance of key developments that help shape the production and distribution of content, including micro-platformization and digital first personalities. The book explains how digital agencies and multichannel networks use platforms strategically to increase exposure for the talent they manage, while providing inside access to the processes and requirements of developers who create algorithms for platforms. The findings in this book provide key recommendations for policy makers working within digital media platforms based on the everyday operation of content production and consumption within automated media environments. Finally, this book highlights user agency as a strategy for consumers who seek information on automated social media content distribution platforms.

As with all new publications, Routledge have provided a 20% discount for all purchases – please use code AFL03.

Also, a series of book launches are underway from August through to October in Australia, so looking forward to seeing those who can travel to the following locations:

  • 9 August – News and Media Research Centre, University of Canberra
  • 20 September – Digital Media and Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
  • 27 September – AI Governance and Trust in Digital Societies, University of Sydney
  • 19 October – RMIT University
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Distinguished Research Fellowship at NMRC – End of Week 1

It is now Friday morning and the I am synthesising the last four days that I have been embedded at the News and Media Research Centre (NMRC), here a the University of Canberra. This is the first of three visits I will make here, and I will be back in July to undertake the next phase of research wonder.

The plan from the outset was to come to NMRC, share my research, mentor some emerging scholars and higher degree researchers and work on potential research connections. I think I did that in probably the best possible way! Also, props here to David Nolan who has been the host with the most – not only was this trip scholarly stimulating, it was also fun.

I gave a two–hour workshop on industry research and mentored a few PhD candidates on Tuesday – you can read about that here.

Wednesday was a chance to meet with one of the Directors at the National Gallery of Australia who looks after the digital media programs. This was a chance to talk through my research, get an overview of where the gallery is heading (particularly around automation and collections) and lay the foundations for future collaboration. Wednesday was also a chance to meet with the Associate Dean of Research and talk through the purpose of the Fellowship. Meeting and greeting was on the agenda over sensational Asian treats.

I also had a great brainstorming session with David Nolan around the potential of research within the Discovery Project space. We talked through evolving media ecosystems and worked through our foundational scholarly position within our research and where the cross over points are. I think we have something that is starting to flourish here.

Thursday was the last chance to make it all come together, which David and I did through more collaborative discussions about research. We really found a stride here and are moving towards a project.

Thursday was also a great chance to sit down with all (well Most) of the scholars of the NMRC. We exchanged our research areas, which is always refreshing to take time out of our everyday and talk about what really interests us as scholars. As expected, the NMRC is a powerhouse of scholars, ‘punching well above their weight’.

NMRC Researchers

Here’s some take aways form that moment:

Professor Kerry McCallum

Associate Professor Mathieu O’Neil

  • Free software and work and new forms of collaborations, volunteer work potential from a survey, Ford and Sloan, Digital Commons Council was established, mapping email addresses in GitHub.
  • w/Rob Acland, Online networks, grant from VW Scheme working on echo chambers and online discourse
  • w/ faculty on media literacy with kids, orient them to Wikipedia as a fact checking source.

Professor Sora Park

Associate Professor David Nolan

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Senior Research Fellow Kate Holland

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Kieran Mcguinness

  • Postdoc – generalist
  • Split between audience and news consumption, trust misinformation, social media use, attitudes towards news
  • Political comms, policy and politic and discourse analysis, PE focus
  • Client facing in last two years, Judith Neilson Institution, the ACMA, The SBS, partner orgs, specialist skill sets for short term projects
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Distinguished Research Fellowship – Day 2

snow light dawn landscape

I have arrived at the University of Canberra to undertake my first of three visits as the Distinguished Faculty of Arts and Design Research Fellow. While Day 1 was a wonderful day of catching with friends and colleagues and eating some great food from around the way, the real work started on Tuesday, Day 2.

My day was split into two key sessions: a workshop in the morning that explored embedded industry research, and the second half of the day which was for HDR mentoring. I’m here to bring my research, meet people and think through potential collaborative research projects with colleagues. I’d like to thank all the wonderful people at the News and Media Research Centre for hosting me over the five days.

Embedded Industry Research

First off, I forgot how much I love travelling and talking with people in a face-to-face mode! I haven’t presented research anywhere in person for about two years, so I was very excited to talk with people in a room that didn’t rhyme with Zoom.

This first session was designed as a two and a half hour workshop for HDRs and beyond to explore the contexts and nuances of embedded research within industry. Drawing on my last ten years of embedded research at various industry partners from around the world, it was refreshing to re-visit how to do this sort of really important work. From how to approach industry with an offer, to co-designing research questions, and then how to integrate the appropriate methods, particularly in a post-lock down world, was refreshing for me.

What was more exciting was the discussion that emerged after the presentation. We had about an even split of colleagues who had done industry research (and this includes Linkage projects, consultancy work, commissioned research, and longer form research), and those that hadn’t. As we broke into smaller groups (not break out rooms), the conversation was focussed on the lived experience of researching with industry partners. It was excellent.

Some of the key topics that emerged included:

  • Often there are different languages and perspectives at play between academics and industry – intermediaries are always useful, to broker between the different stakeholders
  • We (academics) can become annoying? How do we ensure we remain relevant to the project from the industry perspective, too?
  • Often the experience was disappointing – a great word to use here, where some of the finding shave been ignored or not acted upon
  • There can be an anti-intellectual/academic culture – is it common with media organisations/journalists or more broadly than this?
  • Is there something about the authority of academics that might not gel with industry folk?
  • How could we know about their world/environment?
  • What is your character that you take in with you? I’m a journalist. I’m a content creator. ‘Interloper’ was used.
  • Suspicion seems to be the reaction from those being researched – why are they here?
  • ‘It’s all about trust’
  • The complications of trust
  • Pandemic and the loss of hanging out with our industry folk
  • Reflexivity – all data is skewed, “situation of data gathering’

If you are interested, you can access the slides from the day here:

The slides for the Embedded Industry Research workshop

The second half of the day was spent listening to HDRs talk about their projects and trying to guide them where I could. I very much look forward to connecting many of these amazing people with some fo the amazing humans from MECO – there are many cross over points that can be strengthened with a more national network of HDRs.

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Digital Intermediation: A study of automated media influencers

Jonathon_Hutchinson_Digital_Intermediation

Social media audiences consume approximately three percent of the entire amount of content published across platforms (Bärtl, 2018). Of this three percent, a small number of popular digital influencers create that content, for example Casey Neistat, Logan Paul, or Zoella that, arguably, leads to media homogenisation through the limited focus of popular themes and topics. Moreover, platform providers, such as YouTube and Instagram, operate on algorithmic recommender systems such as ‘trending’ and ‘up next’ mechanisms to ensure popular content remains highly visible. While platforms in the digital era exercise a social and political influence, they are largely free from the social, political and cultural constraints applied by regulators on the mass media. Beyond vague community guidelines, there remains very little media policy to ensure that the content produced by digital influencers and amplified by platforms is accurate, diverse to include public interest, or are indeed beneficial. 

This project will research the content production process of automated media systems that engage digital influencers, or leading social media users, who interact with extraordinarily large and commercially oriented audiences. The evidence base will assist in developing theory on contemporary digital media and society, which will consequently shape how communities access public information. Instead of harnessing this knowledge for commercial imperatives, this research project will examine the findings in the context of socially aware digital influencers who occupy similar roles to those found in traditional media organisations. Further, this project will examine how algorithms are making decisions for media consumers based on commercial executions, which are often void of the social awareness associated with public affairs and issues.  

At a time when mass media comes under scrutiny for its involvement in perpetuating misinformation around public issues, accurate media becomes increasingly crucial to the provision of educative material, journalistic independence, media pluralism, and universal access for citizens. At present, media organisations are attempting to repurpose traditional broadcast content on new media platforms, including social media, through automation built on somewhat experimental algorithms. In many cases, these organisations are failing in this new environment, with many automated media attempts appearing more as ‘experimental’. This should be an opportunity for media organisations to rethink how they produce content, and how new informed publics might be brought into being around that content. 

Instead of thinking of automation as a solution to their increasing media environmental pressures, media organisations should be looking toward algorithms to curate and publish informative media for its audiences. This moment provides a unique opportunity to research the contemporary social media environment as media organisations experiment with automated media processes. It also challenges our understanding of automated media through popular vanity metrics such as likes and shares, in what Cunningham and Craig (2017) are calling ‘social media entertainment’. Under this moniker, these scholars highlight the intersection point of social media platforms, content production, and entrepreneurial influencers who commercialise their presence to develop their own self-branded existence. Abidin (2016) refers to these users as digital influencers, to include YouTube and Instagram superstars who demonstrate an unprecedented capacity to manifest new commercially oriented publics. Digital influencers are typically young social media users who commercially create content across a host of social media platforms, which is liked, commented on and shared by millions of fans. It is estimated the top ten 18-24 year old YouTubers are worth $104.3 million collectively (Leather, 2016), indicating a burgeoning new media market. This model of exercising digital influence within automated media systems has potential to translate into the support of an informed public sphere amid a chorus of social media communication noise.  

The research is innovative in a number of ways. Firstly, it is groundbreaking through its approach of collecting and comparing datasets of contemporary social media practice from within the commercial and non-commercial media sectors. Secondly, it theoretically combines media studies, science and technology studies, sociology and internet studies to bolster the emerging field of contemporary life online: an interdisciplinary approach to everyday social media. Thirdly, methodologically it combines traditional qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups, and blends these with contemporary digital ethnography techniques and emerging social network analysis. Fourth, this research contributes to the emerging field of automation and algorithmic culture, by providing a groundbreaking exploration of data science with traditional audience research: a field of particular importance for media organisations. Finally, the outcomes will provide innovative insights for digital agencies and leading media organisations. 

Aims and Outcomes 

The aims of the project are:  

  1. to understand how digital influencers operate across social media, in both commercial and non-commercial media environments;  
  2. to document how digital media agencies enable digital influencers to create large consumer based publics; 
  3. to examine and understand how algorithms are operating within large-scale media content production; 
  4. to identify how global media is incorporating digital influencer roles and automation (if at all) into their production methodologies; and 
  5. to provide a new theoretical framework, recommendations and a policy tool that enables media organisations to manifest and engage with its audiences on critical public issues.  

The aims will be met by engaging in digital ethnography methods that documents how digital influencers produce content and actively engage with their audiences in an online community. These users are responsible for creating discussion around a number of issues they deem to be important, yet are typically driven by commercial imperatives. These conversations inspired through influencer content production is then compounded by the digital agencies who operate as amplifying agents for those messages, by especially ‘gaming’ the exposure mechanisms of YouTube and Instagram. However, this research will seek to prove that if this model can work in the commercial media environment, can socially aware digital influencers adopt the same techniques. 

The primary research question is:  

  1. how do digital influencers operate to create large consumer based publics?  

The research subquestions are: 

  1. how does automation operate in media content production and distribution? 
  2. how do automated media systems make content distribution decisions based on behavioural assumptions? 
  3. how can media organisations incorporate the successful methods of automation and digital influencers in their publishing practice? 

Background 

Digital influencers are social media users, typically ‘vloggers’ or video bloggers, who create content about products or lifestyles on popular themes including toys, makeup, travel, food and health amongst other subject areas. Increasingly, digital influencers are using a number of social media platforms to build their brand and publish content to their niche and considerably large audiences. This process of content production and distribution is emblematic of digital intermediation through social media platforms that afford individuals to operate in a media ecology, while determined through algorithmic processes. As Gillespie (2014, p.167) notes, algorithms “provide a means to know what there is to know and how to know it, to participate in social and political discourse, and to familiarize ourselves with the publics in which we participate”. At the heart of these algorithmic platforms distributing trending and popular content are the digital influencers who are creating popular, entertaining media and represent the flow of traffic and information between increasingly large audiences. 

Media organisations have been experimenting with both digital influencers and automation to create and distribute its branded content. In many cases, commercial media have employed the services of digital influencers to boost their traditionally produced media content, while deploying, in many ways, crude experiments in automation. Media brands consistently send digital influencers products and services to integrate into their ‘lifestyle’ videos and images. Recommender systems (Striphas, 2015), such as those used for distribution platforms such as Netflix have proved most popular, where content is suggested based on an audience member’s past viewing habits. Recommendation systems have been adopted across a number of media services including Spotify, Apple iTunes, and most news and media websites. The integration of chatbots is also rising, where the most interesting experiment has emerged from the public media sector through the ABC News Chatbot. Ford and Hutchinson (forthcoming) note that the ABC News Chatbot is not only an experiment in automated media systems, but also a process of educating media consumers on how to access crucial information from within a cornucopia of media. 

The key theoretical problem demonstrated in these examples is an asymmetric distribution of agency when automated systems make ‘decisions’ that can be based on flawed normative or behavioural assumptions (Vedder 1999). At worst, there is no possibility to override the automated decision. That is why algorithmic recommendations are sensitive matters and should be explained to users (Tintarev & Masthoff 2015). But explaining and understanding recommendation systems requires deep technical knowledge as the results are produced by a series of complex and often counter-intuitive calculations (Koren et al 2009). Furthermore, recommendations are often the result of more than one algorithm applied in the online and offline processing of consumer behaviour data (Amatriain & Basilico 2015). The asymmetrical relationship this creates between users and media content providers is especially problematic due to the public complexion and social responsibility obligations that should be demonstrated by media organisations. 

Digital influencers as cultural intermediaries are tastemakers that operate across traditional media platforms such as television and radio, and have become more effective at their translation ability across social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Vine for example. Digital intermediation is the next phase of this research, which builds on cultural intermediation, yet focuses on its relationship with automated media systems. 

Original by Ari He on Unsplash

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