Distinguished Professor
Jean Burgess
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Communication
Biography
Jean Burgess is Professor of Digital Media in the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and School of Communication. After serving as the DMRC's founding Centre Director from 2015-2020, she became Associate Director of the national ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, as well as Convenor of its QUT node, in August 2020. Her research focuses on the social implications of digital media technologies, platforms, and cultures, as well as new and innovative digital methods for studying them. She is the author or editor of more than 120 scholarly publications on these topics. Her latest book is Everyday Data Cultures (Polity Press, 2022), co-authored with ADM+S colleagues Kath Albury, Anthony McCosker and Rowan Wilken. She is a current member of the ARC College of Experts, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association, the Australian Academy of Humanities, and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences.Personal details
Positions
- Professor - Digital Media Studies
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Communication
Keywords
social media, data cultures, digital media, digital methods, gender and sexuality, automation, platforms, memes, Twitter, YouTube
Research field
Communication and media studies, Cultural studies
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- PhD (Queensland University of Technology)
- M.Phil (University of Queensland)
- B. Arts (Hons) (University of Queensland)
- B. Mus (Hons) (University of Queensland)
Professional memberships and associations
Fellow, International Communication Association
Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities
Fellow, Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member, Australian Research Council College of Experts
Member, Association of Internet Researchers
Member, International Communication Association
Teaching
Guest lectures across multiple undergraduate and postgraduate units in Creative Industries Faculty and School of Communication, 2004 - present
Curriculum development, Masters of Digital Communication, QUT, 2019
Unit coordinator, KCZ105, Media and Communication Research Methods, QUT & Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013 & 2014
Unit co-coordinator, KKP001, Entrepeneurship in the Creative Economy, Creative Industries Faculty, QUT, 2010.
Tutor, KXB101 Introduction to Entertainment, QUT, 2010
Course coordinator, MSTU2000 Music Subcultures and the Media, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland, Semester 1, 2004.
Experience
In addition to the full list of partners associated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (see https://admscentre.org.au ), my community, government and industry partnerships have included:
- National Film and Sound Archive
- Telstra
- Australia Post
- Open Data Institute Australian Network
- State Library of Queensland
- Cooperative Research Centres Association (CRCA)
- The Conversation
- True Relationships and Reproductive Health
- Queensland Department of Community Safety
- Eidos Institute
- The Australia Council for the Arts
- Australian Centre for the Moving Image
- Goolarri Media Enterprises
- Briz 31
- Community Broadcasting Association of Australia
- Queensland Museum
- Queensland Association for Healthy Communities
- Gold Coast City Council
Publications
- Burgess, J. & Baym, N. (2020). Twitter: A Biography. NYU Press. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/201368
- Burgess, J. & Hurcombe, E. (2019). Digital journalism as symptom, response, and agent of change in the platformed media environment. Digital Journalism, 7(3), 359–367. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/129043
- Suzor, N., Dragiewicz, M., Harris, B., Gillett, R., Burgess, J. & Van Geelen, T. (2019). Human rights by design: The responsibilities of social media platforms to address gender-based violence online. Policy & Internet, 11(1), 84–103. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/121223
- Burgess, J. & Green, J. (2018). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture (2nd Edition) (Digital Media and Society Series). Polity Press. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215498
- Burgess, J., Marwick, A. & Poell, T. (2018). The SAGE Handbook of Social Media. SAGE Publications Ltd. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215426
- Light, B., Burgess, J. & Duguay, S. (2018). The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media and Society, 20(3), 881–900. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/222987
- Burgess, J., Mitchell, P. & Highfield, T. (2018). Automating the digital everyday: an introduction. Media International Australia, 166(1), 6–10. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/223206
- Albury, K., Burgess, J., Light, B., Race, K. & Wilken, R. (2017). Data cultures of mobile dating and hook-up apps: Emerging issues for critical social science research. Big Data and Society, 4(2), 1–11. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/109579
- Dragiewicz, M. & Burgess, J. (2016). Domestic violence on #qanda: The 'man' question in live Twitter discussion on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Q&A. Canadian journal of women and the law = Revue juridique La femme et le droit, 28(1), 211–229. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/95237
- Burgess, J. & Matamoros Fernandez, A. (2016). Mapping sociocultural controversies across digital media platforms: one week of #gamergate on Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 79–96. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/95337
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Jean, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Awards
- Type
- Fellowship of a Learned Academy or Membership of AIATSIS
- Reference year
- 2021
- Details
- Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
- Type
- Appointment to State/National/International Reference Group or Government Committees
- Reference year
- 2020
- Details
- Member of the ARC College of Experts (2020-2023)
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2018
- Details
- Recipient of a Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence
- Type
- Editorial Role for an Academic Journal
- Reference year
- 2018
- Details
- Co-editor, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2018-
- Type
- Keynote Speaker/Expert Panel Member/Invited Speaker for a Conference
- Reference year
- 2015
- Details
- Invited keynote speaker, opening plenary, International Communication Association conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- Type
- Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Visiting Researcher, Microsoft Research New England, February-June 2013
- Type
- Recipient of a Nationally Competitive Research Fellowship
- Reference year
- 2010
- Details
- DP1094281, APD, 2010-2012"New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks"
Selected research projects
- Title
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADMS)
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- CE200100005
- Start year
- 2020
- Keywords
- Title
- Using Machine Vision to Explore Instagram's Everyday Promotional Cultures
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- DP200100519
- Start year
- 2020
- Keywords
- Title
- VALiD: the Value of Augmented reality for improving medicine Literacy in Diabetes and hypertension
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- 101415
- Start year
- 2017
- Keywords
- Augmented Reality; Community Pharmacist; Diabetes; Health Literacy; Smartphone
- Title
- Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP160100205
- Start year
- 2016
- Keywords
- Title
- Developing an innovative entertainment-evaluation model to evaluate the efficacy of digital comedy in engaging young men with sexual health knowledge
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP140100226
- Start year
- 2015
- Keywords
- Media And Gender; Healthy Sexual Development; Digital Communication
- Title
- Social media in times of crisis: learning from recent natural disasters to improve future strategies
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP120100627
- Start year
- 2012
- Keywords
- Natural Disasters; Social Media; Communication; Media; Internet
- Title
- Digital Storytelling and Co-Creative Media: The Role of Community Arts and Media in Propagating and Coordinating Population-wide Creative Practice
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP110100127
- Start year
- 2011
- Keywords
- Co-Creative Media; Community Cultural Development; Digital Storytelling; Digital Media; Community Arts; Community Broadcasting
- Title
- New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- DP1094281
- Start year
- 2010
- Keywords
- User Created Content; New Media; Public Communication; Internet Studies; Social Networks; Web 2
- Title
- ARC Centre of Excellence - Australian Creative Innovation System
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- SR0590002
- Start year
- 2005
- Keywords
- Creative Industries; Digital Content; Creative Workforce; Intellectual Property; Innovation; International Creative Markerts
Projects listed above are funded by Australian Competitive Grants. Projects funded from other sources are not listed due to confidentiality agreements.
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Bots and other platform inhabitants: Stories of inter-bot governance, automated play, and protest on Reddit
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Nicolas Suzor - Computational approaches and tools for critical simulation of Convolutional Neural Networks in visual social media
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Daniel Angus - YouTube's News Conundrum: An Examination of 'authoritative sources' in YouTube's Recommendations
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Timothy Graham, Professor Axel Bruns
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- Digitally Mediated Martyrdom: The Visual Politics of Posthumous Images in the Popular Struggle for Social Justice (2020)
- The Logics of Social News: How BuzzFeed, Junkee and Pedestrian.tv are Making News More Engaging, Sociable and Personal (2019)
- Contesting Rumours on Social Media during Acute Events: the 2014 Sydney Siege and 2015 Tianjin Blasts (2018)
- Platformed Racism: The Adam Goodes War Dance and Booing Controversy on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook (2018)
- Broadcast, Promote, Respond, Engage: Competing Understandings Of The Purpose And Value Of Social Media In An Emergency Management Organisation (2017)
- Identity Modulation in Networked Publics: Queer Women's Participation and Representation on Tinder, Instagram, and Vine (2017)
- Football Supporter Cultures in Modern-Day Brazil: Hypercommodification, Networked Collectivisms and Digital Productivity (2015)
- Reconfiguring Guangzhou identity - a study of place and locality on Sina Weibo (2015)
- Storytelling and New Media Technologies: Investigating the Potential of the ABC's Heywire for Regional Youth (2015)
Completed supervisions (Masters by Research)
Supervision topics
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.