Another brief announcement: along with our CCI colleague Larissa Hjorth, Axel and I are looking forward to editing a special issue of the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media (JOBEM) on the theme “Emerging Methods for Digital Media Research”, due for publication in March 2013. If you work in a related area, please consider submitting an abstract by the March deadline. Details follow below.
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In my new role as Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (CCI for short), I’m excited to be leading the team that’s organising our most ambitious PhD and Early Career Researcher activity to date – the CCI Winter School, to be held in balmy Brisbane in late June this year. It’s a selective but free event (you or your institution only need to cover your travel), involving a fairly small group of promising PhD students and early career researchers from around the world. If you’re in the northern hemisphere and looking for a 2012 summer research school, why not consider being adventurous and coming down under instead? Axel and I will both be on hand as mentors, along with a bunch of other fabulous people.
Applications close on 31 January – don’t miss out!
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We’ve got a few busy years ahead of us, it seems. In addition to the ARC Linkage project on social media and crisis communication which was awarded to us (the QUT Mapping Online Publics team along with our CCI colleague Kate Crawford, the Queensland Department of Community Safety, and the Eidos Institute), which we’ll carry out during 2012-14, we’ve also had word in December that another project application has been successful.
Titled “The Impact of Social Media on Agenda-Setting in Election Campaigns:
Cross-Media and Cross-National Comparisons”, that project will study the use of social media in a series of election campaigns which are coming up over the next few years (2012-15) – including the Queensland state election and the US presidential election this year (and I’m tempted to throw in the French presidential election as well, just for fun), and elections in Sweden, Norway, and Australia which are coming up in 2013 and 2014.
This morning the Australian Research Council announced the latest round of major grant funding, and I’m pleased to be able to report some very good news. Along with our CCI colleagues Kate Crawford and Terry Flew, Axel and I were awarded funding for a Linkage Project on the uses of social media for crisis communication, which we’ll conduct in partnership with the Queensland Department of Community Safety, Brisbane-based public policy think tank Eidos Institute, and our colleagues at Sociomantic Labs:
Social Media in Times of Crisis: Learning from Recent Natural Disasters to Improve Future Strategies
Recent Australian and international natural disasters have demonstrated the changing shape of public communication in times of crisis. Mass media and face-to-face communication are now complemented by a variety of channels from SMS to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
This project combines large-scale quantitative and close qualitative analysis to investigate the public use of social media during disasters, working with key emergency management organisations to improve their communication strategies. It will highlight successful approaches as well as potential pitfalls; the strategies which the project will develop and test will help to make emergency responses in natural disasters faster and more effective.
The project builds on and substantially extends the various bits of work we’ve already been doing in this area, and which we’ve reported on in this blog and elsewhere over the last several months (and here I should especially acknowledge the contribution of Frances Shaw at UNSW). Really looking forward to getting going on this one in the new year – stay tuned for updates!
It’s that time of the year again: we are now calling for expressions of interest from prospective students interested in doing their PhD research with us in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
Regular readers of this blog will have a pretty good idea of the range of topics we’re interested in, but here’s a quick overview anyway:
A quick heads-up for our Australian-based readers: our work on researching social media use during the Queensland floods will be featured at a symposium in Brisbane on 4 April 2011, organised by the Eidos Institute. In addition to Jean, myself, and other colleagues from QUT and USQ, key presenters from emergency authorities and the mainstream media will include
Should be a great event, and we’d very much encourage you to join us. A full blurb for the event is below – to register, please go to the Eidos Website.
On behalf of our colleagues in media, communication, cultural and journalism studies at QUT, I’m passing on an announcement about a new Australian fellowship scheme aimed at Early Career Researchers (0-5 years from PhD).
On a personal note, given the focus of our own work and the significant growth in activity around internet, digital media and games studies at QUT in recent years, Axel and I would be particularly keen to see a large number of high quality applications from people working in these areas; and especially those with a demonstrated interest in methodological innovation. Feel free to contact either of us directly for an informal chat or to ask questions about the research and work environment here; however more formal expressions of interest should go to the email addresses listed below. And one other thing to note: the official ARC rules for the scheme haven’t yet been released, but as far as we know so far, it is possible that these fellowships will be open to both Australian and international researchers.
Update: the rules have now been released and are available here – see the bottom of the post for further details on the application process.
In 2011, the Australian Research Council is introducing a new funding scheme for early career researchers, the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), for funding commencing in 2012. We hereby call for expressions of interest from eligible researchers wishing to conduct their DECRA research at QUT in the communication, media, cultural studies and journalism disciplines.
We are the leading media research institution in Australia, having been awarded a ranking of 5 out of 5 (well above world standard) in the Language, Communication and Culture code overall, including a ranking of 5 in the sub-field Communications and Media Studies (one of only two), and a 4 (above world standard) in the Cultural Studies field, in the recent ERA assessment conducted by the Australian Government.
QUT is the headquarters of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), the only nationally-funded centre in the media and communication field, with strong ties to law, economics, business, and education, thus allowing for multiple cross-disciplinary options for research. Successful DECRA applicants will benefit from the vibrant scholarly environment at QUT, and work closely with world leaders in media, communication, cultural and journalism studies.
Further information on how to apply:
The ARC DECRA Funding Rules for awards commencing in 2012 state that non-Australians are eligible, but would be required to be legally resident in Australia from 2012 until the end of the award period.
If you would like to be considered for submission to the DECRA scheme by the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology please send a full CV and project outline to Professor Brian McNair at b.mcnair@qut.edu.au by Friday March 11.
Your CV should include:
A list of recent significant publications (2006 onwards), split into the four categories of:
o Scholarly books
o Scholarly book chapters
o Refereed journal articles
o Refereed conference papersNumber publications continuously and asterisk the publications relevant to this proposal.
Your Project Description – attach the following information in up to 10 pages:
• Project Title
• Summary (100 words)
• Aims and Background
• Significance and Innovation
• Approach and Methodology
• Benefit
• Communication of Results
• References
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll have seen some of the work on the use of Twitter in the Australian election that we’ve started to do. That’s part of our wider research into mapping Australian online publics which will examine interactions across blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr well beyond the immediately political realm, which we’re undertaking as part of an ARC Discovery project, and in the context of our work researching our changing media ecologies in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), based in Brisbane, Australia.
To further extend this work, we’re now calling for expressions of interests in postgraduate research within the CCI. Within the CCI, there’s a very broad range of research opportunities, and we encourage you to have a look through all of them, even if network mapping isn’t your specific interest – undertaking your PhD at the CCI means you will be working with world class researchers who can offer supervision of the highest standards. Our research activities cover a broad range of emerging issues, themes and projects across the entertainment and creative industries including innovation and policy development; significant project collaborations with Asia; a major project looking at broadband services; mapping the creative industries; IP law; a global cultural futures study and other projects which engage community and industry partners in creative industries from major film studios to the Salvation Army and ‘at-risk’ young people working as media co-creators. visit the CCI Projects Page at http://www.cci.edu.au/projects to find out more about the Centre’s activities.
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