University of Canberra

Abstract

Many Australians access news by following news outlets through social media. The interactive affordances of social media platforms enable users to also create, cocreate, and distribute information. The project examines how news and information are circulated, and how this is changing the news ecosystem in Australia. We investigate how Facebook users respond to different types of information. We examine what types of news and information are widely shared and how they are framed by those who share the information.The project has three aims: to identify distinct temporalities between categories of news and non-news platforms; to analyse differences in interactions with news and non-news URLs and domains; and to investigate polarisation in news and its implications for sharing practices.

Principal Investigator

Sora Park

Associate Professor, University of Canberra

Bio
Sora Park is associate professor of communication and associate dean of research at the Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra. Her research focuses on digital media users, media markets, and media policy, and she has written widely on how digital media are transforming communication, media, and society. She has led international collaborative research projects on different segments of the population on their uses and non-uses of digital technologies and the internet using multiple data collection methods. Her recent book, Digital Capital (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), examines how people access, use, and engage with digital technology, and the resulting inequalities in digital society. Her current projects include a longitudinal data analysis of household, income, and labor dynamics in Australia funded by the Australian Research Council, and an international comparative study on the uses of messaging apps for information and news sharing funded by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is part of the global network of Reuters Institute Digital News Report representing Australia.

Participants

Caroline Fisher

Assistant Professor, University of Canberra

Bio
Caroline Fisher is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Canberra. She is a member of the News and Media Research Centre and co-author of the Digital News Report Australia. She received her PhD in communication from the University of Canberra. Fisher’s research interests lie in journalism and political communication. Her journalism scholarship focuses on impacts of digitization on news consumption, trust in news, professional boundaries of journalism, and journalist-source relations. Her political communication research centers political uses of social media, political PR, and shifting power relations between politicians and journalists. Fisher received the Anne Dunn Scholar of the Year Award in 2018 for excellence in communication research; a top paper award for the Journalism Division of the International Communication Association 2018; and the Early Career Researcher Award 2017 in the Humanities and Arts at the University of Canberra.

Glen Fuller

Associate Professor, University of Canberra

Bio
Glen Fuller is an associate professor of media and communication and head of the School of Arts and Communication at the University of Canberra. He conducts research on media cultures in the context of technology, experience, and sociocultural change. Fuller is a chief investigator on the Australian Research Council–funded Discovery Project “Pedalling for Change,” researching the intersection of cycling culture, active transport policy, and media discourses.

Michael J. Jensen

Associate Professor, University of Canberra

Bio
Michael J. Jensen is associate professor at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis and the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra. His research concerns political campaigning, the involvement of digital technologies in political organization, propaganda, and foreign influence operations. He has published articles previously in the International Journal of Press/Politics, the Journal of Information Technology and Politics, and Information, Communication, and Society and edited volumes with Cambridge University Press and Palgrave.

Jee Young Lee

Lecturer, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Canberra

Bio
Jee Young Lee is a lecturer at the School of Arts & Communication at the University of Canberra, and Digital News Report Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the News & Media Research Centre. She is a statistical support advisor at the Graduate Research Office at the University of Canberra, providing research students with specialized statistical assistance. Her current research focuses on the impact of digital technology use on social practices in accessing and sharing information, especially within the context of the growing networked news consumption among individuals and groups.

Yoonmo Sang

Senior Lecturer, University of Canberra

Bio
Yoonmo Sang (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Design at the University of Canberra where he is a core member of the News & Media Research Centre. Before joining the University of Canberra, he taught as an assistant professor at Howard University. His primary research interests center on the intersection of new media technologies and the law, focusing on how sociocultural and technological changes advantage and/or disadvantage different stakeholders. He brings his international perspective and cross-cultural research experience to the study of the intersection of new communication technologies and the law. He is on the editorial boards of three journals: Social Media + Society, Communication Law Review, and the Journal of Media Law, Ethics, and Policy Research, a journal of the Korean Society for Media Law, Ethics, and Policy Research.
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