QUT - Academic profiles - Dr Samantha Vilkins

Samantha Vilkins is a Research Associate at QUT's Digital Media Research Centre, working on Professor Axel Bruns's ARC Laureate project "Determining the Drivers and Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate".

Samantha researches how evidence and expertise are distributed and discussed online, especially their role in the dynamics of political polarisation. Drawing on a background in mathematics and an ungodly fascination with bureaucracy, her previous research at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science focused on the uses of statistics in political rhetoric and public debate in Australia. Her visual design work has been on display at the National Museum of Australia and the National Library of Australia, and was part of the Science Gallery Melbourne's 2018 PERFECTION exhibit.

Pronouns: she / her

samantha.vilkins@qut.edu.au

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Digital Media Research Centre

Personal details

Positions

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Communication

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy (Science Communication) (Australian National University)
Master of Science Communication (Australian National University)

Publications

QUT ePrints

For more publications by Samantha, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).

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2025

Vilkins, S., Bruns, A., Svegaard, S. F. K., Dos Santos Choucair, T. & Esau, K. (2025). Polarization. In Samoilenko, S. A. & Simmons, S. (Eds.), The Handbook of Social and Political Conflict (pp. 19–29). John Wiley & Sons. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/255645
Bruns, A., dos Santos Choucair, T., Esau, K., Svegaard, S. F. K. & Vilkins, S. (2025). Polarization in Online Spaces: Distinguishing Forms of Polarized Politics. In Lilleker, D., Jackson, D., Kalsnes, B., Mellado, C., Trevisan, F. & Veneti, A. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Campaigning (pp. 45–57). Routledge. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/254671

2024

Svegaard, S. F. K. & Vilkins, S. (2024). Defining Populism: New Alignments of Polarisation and Power. 12. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/250776
Vilkins, S. & Svegaard, S. F. K. (2024). All politics is local: News influencers and audience engagement in local and state politics discourse dynamics on TikTok. 95–96.
Bruns, A., Angus, D., Lubicz-Zaorski, C., Stardust, Z., FitzGerald, K., Graham, T., Nagappa, A., Burgess, J., Leeftink, D. A., Vilkins, S., Watt, N., Ochoa Diaz, M., Rodriguez, A., Kasianenko, K., Osman, K., Whelan-Shamy, D., Nelson, L., Hyland-Wood, B., Svegaard, S. F. K., Riedlinger, M. & Dezuanni, M. (2024). QUT DMRC Submission to the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society. Parliament of Australia. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/251522
Esau, K., Choucair, T., Vilkins, S., Svegaard, S. F. K., Bruns, A., O'Connor-Farfan, K. S. & Lubicz-Zaorski, C. (2024). Destructive polarization in digital communication contexts: a critical review and conceptual framework. Information Communication and Society. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/253688
FitzGerald, K., Vilkins, S., Bruns, A. & Svegaard, S. F. K. (2024). ## Polarisation, Conspiracies, and Fandom: Taylor Swift as a blank space of political and identity positioning.
Angus, D., Burgess, J., Bruns, A., Cohen, T., Lubicz-Zaorski, C., Nelson, L., FitzGerald, K., Foth, M., Toohey, O., Keogh, B., Genon, L. J., Barnes, N., Pearson, D., Nagappa, A., Luong, K., Di Lizio, S., Obeid, A., Stardust, Z., Harrington, S., Kirby, D., Dehghan, E., Graham, T., Witzenberger, K., Pappalardo, K., Coco, B., Watt, N., Tang, J., Jude, N., Zhu, Z., Kelly, N., Kasianenko, K., Dos Santos Choucair, T., Fituch, M., Ochoa Diaz, M., Sharmin, S., Rodriguez, A., Vilkins, S., Osman, K., Yu, X., Danby, S., Gardam, C., Keane, M., Dezuanni, M., Mitchell, P., Heda, S., Padinjaredath Suresh, V., Esau, K. & Vilela, F. (2024). QUT DMRC Submission to the Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/255156
Vilkins, S. (2024). Faith in Australian numbers: new pressures on public data communication in Australia as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Communication Research and Practice, 10(2), 200–212. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/255718

2023

Roberson, T., Raman, S., Leach, J. & Vilkins, S. (2023). Assessing the journey of technology hype in the field of quantum technology. Zeitschrift fur Technikfolgenabschatzung in Theorie und Praxis / Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice, 32(3), 17–21. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/247802

2018

Parisi, A., Crump, J. A., Glass, K., Howden, B. P., Furuya-Kanamori, L., Vilkins, S., Gray, D. J. & Kirk, M. D. (2018). Health Outcomes from Multidrug-Resistant Salmonella Infections in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 15(7), 428–436. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/235798

2017

Vilkins, S. & Grant, W. J. (2017). Types of evidence cited in Australian Government publications. Scientometrics, 113(3), 1681–1695. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/235797

A complete list of publications is available at: https://www.qut.edu.au/about/our-people/academic-profiles/samantha.vilkins

Dr Samantha Vilkins

Biography

Research centres