Prof Daniel Angus2, Prof Jean Burgess2, Prof Julian Thomas1, Dr Amanda Lawrence1, A/Prof Nic Carah
1ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making + Society, RMIT node, Melbourne, Australia, 2ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making + Society, QUT node, Brisbane, Australia
Digital platforms are central to Australia’s social and economic activity. Given their importance, it is essential that researchers and governments are able to investigate, understand, and respond to online platforms and the activities they support. Large-scale online data has the potential to substantially contribute to the capacity of business, government and the community to understand and address Australia’s major social, economic and public policy challenges. Despite recent advancements in national capabilities for gathering and analysing platform data our capacities are still limited as a vast amount of data is closed off in proprietary archives of platform corporations. Building on recent investments and world-leading Australian research, the Australian Social Data Observatory (ASDO) is a new proposal for landmark national research infrastructure that would advance the tools and capabilities to gather and analyse online user experience data, algorithms and interactions, making social data dramatically more useable for Australian researchers—across universities, government, industry and civil society. Using innovative methods of collecting and analysing data, such as data donations and crowdsourcing, combined with machine learning, natural language processing and other tools, ASDO would enable research on critical national issues from the distribution of misinformation to the patterns of everyday engagement with business, culture and science, the flows of communication in emergencies and humanitarian crises, and dynamics of political conflict and consensus. In this talk we will provide an overview of why we need ASDO, the types of tools and approaches envisioned and discuss how it would benefit researchers from across HASS and STEM disciplines.
Biography:
Prof Daniel Angus
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1412-5096
Prof Jean Burgess
Jean Burgess is Associate Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), co-leader of the Data program, and convenor of the QUT node. She is a Professor of Digital Media in the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and School of Communication, and a current member of the ARC College of Experts.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4770-1627
Prof Julian Thomas
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2907-4586
Dr Amanda Lawrence
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2194-8178
A/Prof Nic Carah
Nicholas Carah is Associate Professor and Deputy Head of School in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. His research examines the algorithmic and participatory advertising model of digital media platforms, with a focus on the digital alcohol marketing.