Anthony Mccosker

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Swinburne University of Technology

In an academic milieu in which a lot of critical attention is dedicated to the data-grabbing, algorithmically biased, and asymmetrical power of massive techno-corporations, this panel explores how a focus on situated ordinary practices can provide us with a more complex, nuanced, and even at times contradictory account of what happens when pervasiv...

This study explores how individuals in outer metropolitan areas use digital tools to maintain social connections in settings with physical isolation and limited social infrastructure. Based on interviews with 44 participants, the research identifies four layers of digital social connection: close relationships, social support networks, group partic...

The urgency of enhancing community resilience in the face of escalating disasters necessitates a shift in disaster preparedness strategies. This paper presents a novel approach developed in collaboration with the Australian Red Cross, focusing on community-centred data practices for disaster resilience. Recognising the limitations of traditional di...

This paper presents a case study of smart home technology use in a low-income household, focussing on the paradox within the digital divide of having high digital skills while experiencing social disadvantage. Contextualised within a larger study of digital disadvantage in low-income households, we use an ethnographic case study approach to examine...

Introduction: Prevention and early intervention are crucial strategies for improving young people’s mental health and well-being. Building resilience is a key component of these strategies, especially among young individuals in rural areas who face well-documented mental health disparities. This study aimed to investigate how online mental health f...

As a form of synthetic media built on the Internet’s extensive visual datasets with evolving machine learning techniques, deepfakes raise the specter of new types of informational harms and possibilities for image-based abuse. There are calls for three types of defensive response: regulation, technical controls, and improved digital or media litera...

This article considers the politics and practicalities of responding to the COVID crisis with ‘an app for that’. It shows how seductive solutionism in times of crisis created political impetus to direct the public health response to contact tracing through Contact Tracing Apps (CTA). Rather than focus on user-based concerns (uptake, privacy, etc.),...

This paper draws on our research into the cultures of production surrounding the development of deepfakes and use of other forms of generative AI across public sites such as GitHub and YouTube, and subsequent reflective classroom experimentation and learning. Expanding on the notion of ‘vernacular pedagogies’ – informal and in situ education and re...

This paper examines the socio-technical ecosystems that shape the moderation of mental health content. To explore how care is formulated across and between different actors and automated systems, I focus on the experiences of moderators and users of three peer-based mental health support platforms. The analysis is framed by the notion of the 'digit...

Online peer support mental health forums provide an effective and accessible form of support, augmenting scarce clinical and face-to-face assistance. However, to enhance their effectiveness, it is essential to understand the unique characteristics of peer support user groups, and how they participate, contribute and communicate in these forums. Thi...

This report is about the role of online mental health peer support forums in supporting rural resilience.

With the rapid growth of online misinformation, it is crucial to have reliable fact-checking methods. Recent research on finding check-worthy claims and automated fact-checking have made significant advancements. However, limited guidance exists regarding the presentation of fact-checked content to effectively convey verified information to users....

Covid-19 deepened the need for digital-based support for people experiencing mental ill-health. Discussion platforms have long filled gaps in health service provision and access, offering peer-based support usually maintained by a mix of professional and volunteer peer moderators. Even on dedicated support platforms, however, mental health content...

Digital inclusion is about ensuring that all Australians can access and use digital technologies effectively. The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII or Index) uses survey data to measure digital inclusion across three dimensions of Access, Affordability and Digital Ability. The 2023 ADII continues the longstanding reporting of digital incl...

Across commercial social media platforms and dedicated support forums alike, mental health content raises important questions about what constitutes risk and harm online, and how automated and human moderation practices can be re-configured to accommodate resilient behaviours and social support. In work with three Australian mental health organisat...

Since the onset of COVID-19, the benefits of online platforms to enhance rural service accessibility are more acknowledged. However, questions remain about the interconnected roles of geographical community and online digital communities in enhancing rural life – particularly for marginalised groups. In this study, we examine one Australian non-pro...

UNSTRUCTURED This paper identifies and examines pathways by which online peer support mental health forums assist in building the resilience of rural residents by addressing individual challenges with mental health. We accomplish this by using a resilience theory, developing a Theoretical Resilience Framework and applying it to empirical qualitativ...

Background: Rural mental health is a growing area of concern internationally, and online mental health forums offer a potential response to addressing service gaps in rural communities. Objective: The objective of this study was to explore and identify pathways by which online peer support mental health forums help to build resilience for rural...

As community services rapidly digitise, they are generating more data than ever before. These transformations are leading to innovation in data analysis and enthusiasm about the potential for data-driven decision making. However, increased use of personal data and automated systems raises ethical issues including gaining community trust, and introd...

Meeting the mental health needs of rural populations is challenging internationally, with few methods and scarce data available to inform site-specific planning. We developed a mixed methods approach that integrates Not-for-profit (NFP) organization data in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to explore interrelated understandings of mental healt...

The book concludes by summarising the goals and stages of building data capability for non-profits, considering data capability as a resource for corporate upskilling, the facilitator of a more resilient sector and social justice activism. The middle part of the chapter considers useful actions leading up to initiating data projects and ways to pro...

Three illustrative case studies are provided of non-profit organisations’ data projects conducted by the authors, with partner non-profits, during 2017–2021. The case studies all use a collaborative data action methodology, but differ in the nature of datasets analysed, visualisations and data products generated. Case Study 1 included government de...

This chapter explains how data capability for non-profit organisations involves having the right skills, technologies and data management practices that match different organisations’ size, mission and contexts. Data capability is a holistic concept, and capability of organisations will flex over time and with changes in organisational goals, work...

This is the proposal for the third edition of the Workshop on Integrity in Social Networks and Media, Integrity 2022, following the success of the first two Workshops held in conjunction with the 13th & 14th ACM Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) in 2020 and 2021. The goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers and practition...

In this paper, we explore the methodologies underpinning two participatory research collaborations with Australian non-profit organisations that aimed to build data capability and social benefit in data use. We suggest that studying and intervening in data practices in situ, that is, in organisational data settings expands opportunities for improvi...

BACKGROUND Resilience is an accepted strengths-based concept responding to change, adversity and crisis that involves a range of environmental, social and personal adaptive factors. The concept underpins both personal and community-based preventative approaches to mental health issues and has shaped digital interventions. Online peer-support mental...

Background: Resilience is an accepted strengths-based concept that responds to change, adversity, and crises. This concept underpins both personal and community-based preventive approaches to mental health issues and shapes digital interventions. Online mental health peer-support forums have played a prominent role in enhancing resilience by provi...

(1) Background: This study tracked the reporting of obesity in the Australian news media over three decades and how changing representations over time were linked to obesity-related public health policy developments. (2) Methods: Machine learning and computational language analysis techniques (word embedding, dichotomous bias mapping) were used to...

The Internet of Things (IoT) training Academy project is a collaboration between Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, Vellore Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Technology, India, and was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The outcome of the project is a business case for a joint India-Australia IoT traini...

In many parts of the world, older adults continue to face significant barriers to digital inclusion, but the source of that inequality is not well understood. However, we do not know enough about differences among older people seeking to improve their digital skills. Examining the impact of a national three-year digital inclusion programme reaching...

Studies show that digital skills and literacy training programs for older adults can help to extend digital inclusion, which remains a policy challenge around the world. However existing research provides little insight into how policy-makers can best deliver large-scale programs. This article examines the design and implementation of a nation-wide...

The Swinburne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) (2020-2027) is leading this project to understand and address the state of technology and data capacity in Australia’s not-for-profit (NFP) sector. The project aims to work collaboratively with NFP sector organisations to investigate data capacity a...

This panel deploys a range of qualitative methodologies to investigate how processes of datafication meet with the subjective experiences of ordinary people, and the practices of everyday life. We draw on the model of ‘everyday data cultures’ proposed by Burgess (2017) to explore the ways diverse data practices – including the production and circul...

One of the issues limiting prevention of elder abuse in Australia is lack of a strong evidence base to target social drivers of abuse, particularly ageism. This evidence gap is exacerbated by social discourses that perpetuate negative representations of older age as a time of vulnerability and physical decline, often in opposition to people’s actua...

Heavily used hashtags on Instagram and other platforms can indicate extensive public engagement with issues, events or collective experiences. This article extends existing research methods to paint a fuller picture of how people engage collectively with public issues online. Focussing on Instagram content often deemed ‘problematic’, we develop and...

Healthcare services face persistent barriers in reaching and improving access for marginalized or hardly reached people. This paper details the strategic use of social media among community connectors, or members of a community who address health issues in their local contexts by spanning socio-cultural boundaries within the community. Undertaking...

This paper explores how older people’s reluctance to engage in social media’s more vernacular practices, such as selfie-taking and sharing, can be attributed to specific social barriers to online inclusion and participation. Drawing on empirical research conducted during social media-oriented digital literacy workshops with older people, we explore...

This paper draws on qualitative research conducted with cis men aged 18–35, who used dating apps to meet women both before and during COVID-19 lockdown. Men in our study — which sought to better understand the aspects of app use that make young people feel safer or less safe — offered affectively loaded accounts of app use, which featured racialize...

Practices of self-care and social support have long been identified across social media platforms and apps, as people find new ways of using and adapting digital technologies to mediate and address personal and public health issues. But digital health participation is considerably contested and unevenly experienced, whether through the commodified...

How is mental illness conceptualised, designed, experienced or produced by digital life? This panel explores how digital technologies and media are transforming the performance, recognition, and experience of mental illness. We bring together different methodological and theoretical contributions towards an interdisciplinary study of mental illness...

Drawing from a conceptual framework that problematises and redefines the digital lives of older people aged 65 years and over, this panel explores how older people engage with digital communication tools and skills, and the way this plays out in their everyday lives. Each paper situates older people as experiencing a rich social life integrated wit...

In this paper we examine how popular media reporting positions dating and hookup app use as a ‘social problem’ that impacts on health and wellbeing. The paper adopts a mixed-methods media studies approach to create and analyse a dataset of over 6,000 international news articles published within a 12-month period, drawing on thematic content analysi...

This report summarises insights from research undertaken to include the ‘hidden voices’ of people living in rural Australia that experience mental ill-health. It follows from a Phase 1 report that reviewed literature, policy and interviewed key stakeholders – with the goal of analysing current rural mental health need, services and service accessib...

As an image and location sharing platform, Instagram offers intimate visual access to events, experiences and situations in a manner that is mobile and contextual. Partnering with Australian Red Cross, this paper develops a mixed methodology for using Instagram data to identify and understand individuals’ everyday humanitarian activity in a major u...

Background: This study presents a way for health services to improve service access for hardly reached people through an exploration of how staff can find and collaborate with citizens (referred to as connectors) who span socio-cultural boundaries in their community. The study explored the local socio-cultural contexts of connectors' boundary span...

Background: This study presents a way for health services to improve service access for hardly reached people through an exploration of how staff can find and collaborate with citizens (referred to as connectors) who span socio-cultural boundaries in their community. The study explored the local socio-cultural contexts of connectors’ boundary spann...

Background: This study presents a way for health services to improve service access for hardly reached people through an exploration of how staff can find and collaborate with citizens (referred to as connectors) who span socio-cultural boundaries in their community. The study explored the local socio-cultural contexts of connectors’ boundary spann...

Background: This study presents a way for health services to improve service access for hardly reached people through an exploration of how staff can find and collaborate with citizens (referred to as community connectors) who span socio-cultural boundaries in their community. The study explored the local socio-cultural contexts of connectors’ boun...

Digital media research commonly explores the use of social media platforms and dating/hook-up apps separately, implying distance between social and sexual communication practices. By exploring how friendships enfold into LGBTQ+ young people’s use of dating/hook-up apps, this paper troubles that delineation. In 2018, we ran four workshops with LGBTQ...

Dating and hook-up apps constitute spaces of intense negotiation around issues of sex, identity and intimacy, in which norms are tested and reinforced. This paper examines discussions of ‘ideal app use’ which emerged in qualitative workshops conducted in 2018 with 23 LGBTQ+ app-users aged 18-35 in urban and regional New South Wales. We explore how...

A considerable amount of personal data is now collected on and by individuals: footsteps on Fitbits, screen time in Apple’s iOS, conversations on dating apps, sleeping patterns in baby tracker apps, and viewing habits on Netflix and YouTube. What value do these data have, for individuals but also for corporations, governments, and researchers? When...

Organisations are becoming increasingly reliant on social media for realising effective public engagement strategies, as well as managing branding and reputation. Nonetheless, traditional organisational external communications strategies have often proven to be unwieldy in developing and managing social media content. Instead, the development of or...

mHealth programmes and apps have been developed by organisations like Beyond Blue and the Black Dog Institute, as tools to help people manage their mental health. The pace of development raises questions about ensuring sustained engagement and an ethical approach. Derived from ethnographic research at each organisation, this article explores reflec...

Global health policies direct health services to improve access and health outcomes of people who are ‘hardly reached’ by services. The institutionalised nature of health services with associated professional and organisational boundaries create ongoing challenges to achieving this policy aim. We present an approach to this challenge by exploring h...

Digital platforms offer an important means for improving the reach, scale and accessibility of community-based support for those dealing with mental health issues. They enable new forms of health participation. A research gap remains in understanding the role of peer mentors in building effective digital environments for mental health support. This...

Seniors are amongst the most digitally excluded in Australia. Despite the increasing popularity of social media, seniors often lack access to technology and to basic digital skills. Thus many seniors do not derive the social benefits and service realisation that arise from online forms of communication and engagement. One barrier to digital inclusi...

Health services in high income countries increasingly recognise the challenge of effectively serving and engaging with marginalised people. Effective engagement with marginalised people is essential to reduce health disparities these populations face. One solution is by tapping into the phenomenon of boundary spanning people in the community- those...

Background: Health services in high-income countries increasingly recognise the challenge of effectively serving and engaging with marginalised people. Effective engagement with marginalised people is essential to reduce health disparities these populations face. One solution is by tapping into the phenomenon of boundary-spanning people in the com...

This article reflects on part of a three-year battle over the redevelopment of an iconic Melbourne music venue, the Palace-Metro Nightclub (the Palace), involving the tactical use of Facebook Page data at trial. We were invited by the Save the Palace group, Melbourne City Council and the National Trust of Australia to provide Facebook Page data ana...

While many older Australians are embracing the social and health benefits of digital life, there is a disproportionate number who do not have an understanding of, access to, or experience with, newer digital and online technologies. Swinburne Social Innovation Research Institute researchers partnered with Telstra and two Melbourne Councils – Boroon...

In a postdemographic world, characterized by the continuous production and calculation of social data in the form of likes, comments, shares, keywords, locations or hashtags, social media platforms are designed with techniques of market segmentation in mind. "Datafication" challenges the agency of participatory social media practices and traditiona...

Consideration of the drone as a component of an audio/visual methodological assemblage prompts post-phenomenological questions about how bodies act with technologies. Piloting a drone through a live video stream appears to create a sensory extension. Yet the increasing autonomy of the drone, facilitated by exponential innovation in sense-and-avoid...

This chapter reconsiders Twitter as a ‘machinery that produces banality’ and the criticisms this attracts, by approaching it via the work of Georges Perec, and his enduring interest in the musings of the late tenth century Japanese courtesan, Sei Shōnagon and her The Pillow Book . Perec identified in her work two specific elements that became cruci...

Georges Perec is widely acknowledged as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His far-reaching influence has inspired many fields of creativity, extending far beyond literature itself. The Afterlives of Georges Perec examines the impact of Perec’s ideas, writing and analytical experimentation in architecture, art and design, m...

Social media platforms are associated with significant digital transformations but also carry some uncertainty for organisations seeking to capitalise on their affordances while developing new professional roles. This article explores the characteristics and contexts of social media work and the different approaches of organisations as they enter a...

This report sheds some light on the activities that take place on beyondblue’s mental health support forums. Around 88,000 people visit the forums per month (6,800 posts per month at 10 a month per active user). Given the forums are restricted to people in Australia, this is a high level of engagement, and a reminder of the importance of digital to...

In recent years, cyberbullying, online abuse and harassment and related ‘misuses’ of social media have generated new laws and platform controls, and stimulated the development of countless cybersafety educational programmes. Where harms like youth suicide can be identified, strong reactions follow. One prominent example in the United States is the...

With pervasive use of mobile devices and social media, there is a constant tension between the promise of new forms of social engagement and the threat of misuse and misappropriation, or the risk of harm and harassment. Negotiating Digital Citizenship explores the diversity of experiences that define digital citizenship. These range from democrati...

IntroductionAccounts of mentoring relationships inevitably draw attention to hierarchies of expertise, knowledge and learning. While public concerns about both the risks and benefits for young people of social media, little attention has been given to the nature of the mentoring role that parents and families play alongside of schools. This concept...

A review of Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert, Being Digital Citizens (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2015).

This article is concerned with social media activism at the margins and deals with the problem of managing visibility and voice and the role of affect in the emergence of contested publics over time. While we hear a lot about social media mobilization and exchange during critical and large-scale protest events, less is understood about the capaciti...

In recent civil and political turmoil in Turkey, Thailand, and Hong Kong, protesters and activists have had to negotiate attempts from ruling regimes to censor news industry journalists and shut down access to messaging services and popular social network sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. In these sites of protest, the vantage points th...

This article explores the productive role of provocation in YouTube publics in the context of two culturally and geographically situated visual events that took place in New Zealand throughout 2011. Through qualitative analysis of the extensive comments fields for the two videos, the article examines the nature of participatory acts associated with...

While social media tools enable new kinds of creativity, cultural expression and forms of public, civic and political participation, we often hear more about the harms that arise from instances of trolling and 'aberrant' online participation, including racist provocation. In media and communications research, these issues have been framed in a numb...

While social media tools enable new kinds of creativity, cultural expression and forms of public, civic and political participation, we often hear more about the harms that arise from instances of trolling and 'aberrant' online participation, including racist provocation. In media and communications research, these issues have been framed in a numb...

Informational data, we are told, are proliferating ever more rapidly and with increasing complexity. In an age of ‘big data’ we are seeing a broad reaching, and often uncritical fascination with data visualisation and its potential for knowledge generation. At its extreme this represents a fantasy of knowing, or total knowledge. Nonetheless, for th...

As well as introducing the Coding Labour section, the authors explore the diffusion of code across the material contexts of everyday life, through the objects and tools of mediation, the systems and practices of cultural production and organisational management, and in the material conditions of labour. Taking code beyond computation and software,...