AI, streaming services, disinformation on social media and the changing media landscape are topics being addressed by members of QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) at the Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference this week.
The 74th ICA conference, which is themed Communication and Global Human Rights, runs from June 20-24 on the Gold Coast and is expected to draw thousands of attendees.
The ICA exists to advance the scholarly study of human communication by encouraging and facilitating excellence in academic research worldwide. Three of its Fellows are DMRC members - Distinguished Professor Jean Burgess, Professor Amanda Lotz, and Distinguished Emeritus Professor Stuart Cunningham. All three are presenting at ICA24.
Professor Burgess is giving the prestigious Steve Jones Internet Lecture on Saturday on the topic Why the GenAI Moment Needs Communication and Media Research.
“The world has seen the release and widespread adoption of various GenAI models over the past two years and this has resulted in a fundamental shift in the history of AI and its impact on society,” Professor Burgess said.
“GenAI is essentially an information, communication, and media phenomenon. In addition to operating and being applied predictively, analytically, and discriminatively, AI is now emphatically expressive, communicative, and agentive in its operations and uses.
“It is already deepening existing tendencies toward personalisation and customisation in our media environment. It is also rapidly being integrated into the infrastructures, platforms, and interfaces of the internet and digital media whose characteristics and cultures communication and media researchers have spent the last several decades working out how to observe and study.”
Professor Burgess will use her lecture to argue communication and media researchers have much to offer – theoretically, methodologically, and pragmatically – as we all try to deal with the challenges and possibilities suggested by GenAI.
“This ‘GenAI moment’ we are now experiencing is an extension of other key moments of transformation, such as those marked by the emergence and adoption of the World Wide Web, the smartphone, and social media platforms,” Professor Burgess said.
“What seems like a potentially general-purpose technology is in fact likely to have significant implications for a wide range of other societal domains. That has been the history of transformative technologies, and it amplifies the importance of our work as digital communication and media scholars to help society for further change which is sure to come in the near future.”
The following day, Professor Lotz and Dr Gabriela Lunardi will present the paper Understanding New Forms of Video in Culture: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. It includes findings from pilot research using focus groups and interviews to explore why people use these services, the gratifications they offer, and how viewers understand them relative to television and film.
Professor Cunningham, along with Associate Professor Scott Brook (RMIT), Dr Marion McCutcheon and Dr Jee Young Lee (University of Canberra) will discuss the qualification pathways into media, cultural and creative industries (MCCIs) and career trajectories that exist outside the MCCIs for those with media and creative skills.
Other presentations from QUT DMRC and School of Communication researchers include input into a panel discussion on The Possibilities and Perils of Generating News With Generative AI from PhD researcher Ned Watt who will cover the use of GenAI for fact-checking.
Another PhD candidate, Lucinda Nelson, will present her paper Depp v Heard: Cancel Culture and Online Discourses on Violence Against Women which examines how the case played out on social media.
DMRC researchers Professor Daniel Angus, Associate Professor Stephen Harrington, Professor Axel Bruns, Phoebe Matich, Nadia Jude, Dr Edward Hurcombe (RMIT) and Ashwin Nagappa will outline their analysis of the broad topics of discussion in 954 ‘super-spreader’ Facebook pages and groups that are most strongly implicated, and highly visible, in the sharing of links to 2314 high-profile ‘fake news’ websites, between 2016 and 2022.
On Monday, PhD candidate Daniel Kirby will present his extended abstract How Mobile Apps Shape the Construction and Mobilisation of Vegan Consumerism which looks at the ethical status of the vegan apps and their potential as tools for sustainable consumerism.
The full list of the 32 QUT speakers for the conference can be found online at: DMRC ICA Presenters - QUT Digital Media Research Centre
QUT is also hosting an additional 12 pre and post ICA conferences on-campus.
Main image: Distinguished Professor Jean Burgess
Media contact:
Amanda Weaver, QUT Media, 07 3138 3151, amanda.weaver@qut.edu.au
After hours: 0407 585 901, media@qut.edu.au
