Active Curation: algorithmic awareness for cultural commentary on social media platforms

This thesis examines how everyday social media users engage in curation practices to influence what news and information they see on their social feeds. It finds that cultural commentary content can act as a proxy for news on these platforms, contributing to public debate and the fifth estate. While much research has explored the implications of algorithmically driven recommender systems for content personalisation and news visibility, this thesis investigates a gap in our understanding of how social media users understand and respond to algorithmic processes, customising their feed in their day-to-day curation practices on these platforms. It explores how a group of Australians aged 18–30 respond to algorithmic recommender systems and how effective their practices are in shaping their social feeds. The study used a mixed methods approach that included a digital ethnography of social media use and a comparative content analysis of social media news exposure and topics in the legacy news cycle. This study develops a taxonomy of consumptive curation practices that users can engage in to influence their personalised social feeds. The study also examines users’ motivations for this curation and how effective these are in filtering news and ‘cultural commentary’ content into or out of their feed. The findings demonstrate that algorithmic literacy is a driver of active curation practices, where users consciously engage in practices designed to influence recommender processes that customise their social feed. They also demonstrate the prevalence of non-journalistic news-related content or ‘cultural commentary’ on social media platforms in the form of hot takes, memes, and satire, and how this cultural commentary can act as a proxy for the news, even for users who are news avoidant. These findings address gaps in our understanding of news discovery and consumption on social media platforms, with implications for how news businesses can reach emerging news audiences

The Value of News: Aligning Economic and Social Value From an Institutional Perspective

Journalism is considered essential to a functioning democracy. However, the continued viability of commercial news production is uncertain. News producers continue to lose advertising revenue to platform businesses dominating digital advertising markets, and alternate consumer direct revenue streams are not yet meeting the financial shortfall. This has led to questions of who should pay for news, the role of governments in maintaining news production viability, and whether digital platforms have social or economic responsibilities to pay news publishers. In this article, we seek to make explicit what is often implicit in such debates, which is the value of news. This is hard to know in advance as news is an experience good whose value and quality are only known after consuming it, and a credence good, whose perceived qualities may not be observable even after it is consumed. As such, preparedness to pay for news can be hard to ascertain, accentuated by the large amount of free news available online. This article seeks to use a value perspective to consider the relationship between individual consumer choices and questions of news’s value to society. Applying a new institutional economic perspective, it is observed that the value of news as a consumer product needs to be examined in relation to its value as a social good in democratic societies as both a media product and part of the institutional environment in which other social actors operate. We consider news’s social and economic value within a context of platformed news distribution and declining advertising revenues that appear to be structural and not cyclical

ACTIVE CURATION FOR CULTURAL COMMENTARY: YOUNG ADULTS, ALGORITHMS, AND NEWS CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

As social media platforms have become a key source of news for younger generations of users (Newman et al., 2021), media plurality and news visibility have become focal areas for scholars concerned about the future of local content in an era of information globalisation (see esp. Dwyer et al., 2020) and algorithmic gatekeeping (Martin, 2021). Consequently, it is crucial to understand how young adults curate their social media feeds to access socially significant information and the impact that their curatorial design has on their news exposure and consumption. This paper presents the findings from a 12 month digital ethnographic study involving 13 young adult Australians and their use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to highlight the role of individual agency in user experience of news and information. The findings in this paper examine what users categorise as news on social media, and explores how topics discussed in the media are able to break through onto social media feeds without presentation as formal news reporting. It argues that ‘cultural commentary’ content such as memes, casual discussions between friends, and hot takes from influencers and public figures have the potential to keep users up to date with what is happening in the world, hyper-locally and globally. The analysis of the research data demonstrates that a variety of platform users interact with cultural commentary content, including those who describe themselves as ‘news avoidant’

Exploring responses to mainstream news among heavy and non-news users:From high-effort pragmatic scepticism to low effort cynical disengagement

Research shows the growth of online information has led to a decline in audience trust in mainstream news. However, how this lowered trust in the news affects different audiences’ attitudes and news consumption behaviour is less understood. Our thematic analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with Australian heavy and non-news users of mainstream news shows that responses vary with respect to the effort taken to verify dubious news. Among heavy news users, responses include ‘pragmatic scepticism’, ‘selective trust’ and ‘generalised cynicism’ which tend to drive verification and fact-checking behaviours. These findings suggest that mistrust in mainstream news is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can lead to greater critical involvement with news and information. However, many non-news users depicted ‘critically conscious’ or ‘cynically disengaged’ attitudes towards news. A lack of trust can drive a low-effort response, particularly among non-news consumers, creating a downward spiral of disengagement.</p

Safe and Responsible AI in Australia: Submission Paper

We thank the Department of Industry, Science and Resources for the opportunity to respond to the Safe and Responsible AI in Australia Discussion Paper. In light of the enormous social, economic, political, cultural and ethical challenges presented by rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), and particularly generative artificial intelligence, the opportunity to participate in a policy deliberation process that aims to address questions of the social good at an early stage, and to design suitable regulations to meet such challenges, is very much welcomed. Our submission is a collaborative enterprise between academic researchers in the Disciplines of Media and Communications and Government and International Relations in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The University of Sydney. It is a collectively authored document that has arisen out of collaborative discussions among a diverse group of researchers with a shared interest in the digital, and a shared focus upon the common good