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Students’ increasing use of text messaging language has prompted concern that textisms (e.g., 2 for to, dont for don’t, ☺) will intrude into their formal written work. Eighty-six Australian and 150 Canadian undergraduates were asked to rate the appropriateness of textism use in various situations. Students distinguished between the appropriateness of using textisms in different writing modalities and to different recipients, rating textism use as inappropriate in formal exams and assignments, but appropriate in text messages, online chat and emails with friends and siblings. In a second study, we checked the examination papers of a separate sample of 153 Australian undergraduates for the presence of textisms. Only a negligible number were found. We conclude that, overall, university students recognise the different requirements of different recipients and modalities when considering textism use and that students are able to avoid textism use in exams despite media reports to the contrary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we explore Quick Response (QR) codes (machine-readable optical labels that link to information) and how, after a period of having fallen out of favor, they have been reactivated and have come to underpin COVID-19 automation and contact-tracing efforts. During the pandemic, they were used especially for "safe entry" and other kinds of check-in to locations to facilitate contact tracing. In this context, QR codes facilitate automated decision-making in relation to infectious disease surveillance and disease outbreak control. However, the use of QR codes for contact-tracing purposes has enjoyed mixed success and its implementation has encountered several challenges, as we illustrate through a case study that explores QR codes and COVID contact tracing in Singapore and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the idealised promises and purposes of urban informatics compare to the material politics and practices of their implementation? To answer this question, I ethnographically trace the development of two data dashboards by strategic planners in an Australian city over the course of 2 years. By studying this techno-political process from its origins onward, I uncovered an interesting story of obdurate institutions, bureaucratic momentum, unexpected troubles, and, ultimately, frustration and failure. These kinds of stories, which often go untold in the annals of innovation, contrast starkly with more common framings of technological triumph and transformation. They also, I argue, reveal much more about how techno-political systems are actualised in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability is a long-standing area of digital inclusion finally emerging out of the shadows. In this article, we argue that a critical understanding of digital media from the perspectives of disability and intersectionality will offer generative insights for framing the terms and agenda of digital inclusion in the next decade. With a focus on the area of automated decision-making (ADM) in social and welfare services, we reflect upon the controversial 2015–2020 Australian government programme widely known as 'Robodebt' that recovers putative debts from support recipients – and we discuss implications for Indigenous Australians with disabilities in particular. We contrast the 'Robodebt' programme with explicit digital inclusion policy on disability in Australia, noting that such digital inclusion policy does not specifically acknowledge yet alone address ADM or other aspects of automation. Here, there is a major opportunity for overdue acknowledgement of disability and intersectionality to spur and shape an affirmative and just agenda on people with disabilities' digital inclusion, ADM and other associated areas of automated technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing concern around the dependency of news organisations on platforms like Facebook for audience traffic. However, scholars are still working out the extent of this dependency and how it manifests in practice. In this article, we draw on interviews with Australian news professionals and industry fieldwork to provide a nuanced account of this phenomenon. We find that news media organisations have recently started to diversify their distribution strategies and the business models associated with them in response to Facebook's algorithm changes. While Facebook remains important, we suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the complex relationships that news organisations have with platforms. This article ends by considering the implications of these findings for international policy discussions centred around the prospect of platform regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how Indigenous peoples in Central Australia share and keep digital records of events and cultural knowledge in a period of rapid technological change. To date, research has focused upon the development of digital archives and platforms that reflect Indigenous epistemologies and incorporation of protocols governing access to information. Yet there is scant research on how individuals with little access to such media share and hold—or not, as the case may be—digital cultural information. After surveying current enabling infrastructures in Central Australia, we examine how materials are held and shared when people do not have easy access to databases and the Internet. We analyze examples of practices of sharing materials to draw out issues that arise in managing storage and circulation of cultural records via Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drives, mobile phones, and other devices. We consider how the affordances of various platforms support, extend, and/or challenge Indigenous socialities and ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses policy debates in the United Kingdom and Australia concerning the regulation of online pornographic content as it relates to children. Through a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with key stakeholders at the negotiation table, we find that rather than positivist notions of the 'developing' and 'vulnerable' child dominating policy discourse, post-modern representations of the 'savvy' and 'agentic' child have come to dominate policy culture and outcomes. In this scenario, the regulatory role of states in providing media protection is diminished, while neoliberal forms of governance that emphasise the responsibility of individuals, including parents and children, have come to dominate the emerging policy landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore the material, sensory and corporeal aspects of digital ethnography, primarily in the context of mobile media use in the domestic environment. We align our methodological approach to the 'sensory turn' in theory, situated loosely under the rubric of new materialism, and outline the insights that a post-phenomenological method can offer. Drawing from our current research into everyday media use conducted within Australian households, which involved a range of data collection methods aimed at capturing the embodiment of mobile media, we explore the significance of play in and around haptic interfaces. Mobile games are evidently integral to our embodied ways of knowing, and there are a number of challenges faced by the mobile media researcher who seeks to document, understand and interpret this contemporary cultural and everyday practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet gambling offers unique features that may facilitate the development or exacerbation of gambling disorders. Higher rates of disordered gambling have been found amongst Internet than with land-based gamblers; however little research has explored whether Internet disordered gamblers are a distinct subgroup. The current study compared problem with non-problem and at-risk Internet gamblers to understand further why some Internet gamblers experience gambling-related harms, using an online survey with a sample of 2799 Australian Internet gamblers. Problem gambling respondents were younger, less educated, had higher household debt, lost more money and gambled on a greater number of activities, and were more likely to use drugs while gambling than non-problem and at-risk gamblers. Problem gamblers had more irrational beliefs about gambling, were more likely to believe the harms of gambling to outweigh the benefits, that gambling is morally wrong and that all types of gambling should be illegal. For problem gamblers, Internet gambling poses unique problems related to electronic payment and constant availability, leading to disrupted sleeping and eating patterns. However, a significant proportion of Internet problem gambling respondents also had problems related to terrestrial gambling, highlighting the importance of considering overall gambling involvement when examining subgroups of gamblers. It is argued that policy makers should consider carefully how features of Internet gambling contribute to gambling disorders requiring the implementation of evidence-based responsible gambling strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports on the findings of a research project that mapped the patterns of internet access and use in remote Indigenous communities in Australia. Remote Indigenous communities comprise some of Australia's most disadvantaged users of internet services. Taking a case-study approach, the article raises challenging theoretical questions for those seeking to understand the extent and nature of the digital divide in relation to indigeneity and remoteness. It suggests approaches for more sustainable introduction of internet facilities to remote Indigenous communities in Australia and improved practices for better delivery of training to users. It reinforces the need for research and collaboration at the community level so that the introduction of facilities is conducted in a culturally and technically appropriate manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with key policy interventions in relation to the issue of violence in the Australian media. Media panics about violent events or violent media events, new media technologies and executive government inquiries are argued to be important elements in our analysis of policy formulation. We examine the recurring patterns in Australian regulatory policies governing media representations of violence from 1983–97. Media image regulation, at the close of the 20th century, is in part characterized by liberalizing and self-regulatory tendencies and that regulation inevitably has a strong commercial and market orientation. There exists a trajectory from state- to self-regulation, even though tensions still exist between these two regulatory impulses. Older media, television and video, have been subject to renewed attempts at state regulation, whereas emergent media policies display a clear industrial or market orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]