Hey folks,

With the usual apologies for cross posting, we’re looking for people interested in doing PhDs, see the blurb below.

Cheers, Ben.

Ben Light
PhD MSc BA(Hons)
Professor of Digital Media Studies

Creative Industries Faculty
School of Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts
Queensland University of Technology
Creative Industries Precinct Z1-515
Musk Avenue Kelvin Grove
QLD 4059 Australia

Phone:    +61 7 3138 8280
Twitter: @doggyb
QUT: http://www.staff.qut.edu.au/staff/lightb
Open Access Publications: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Light,_Ben.html
Personal Site: http://www.benlight.org

QUT Creative Industries Faculty PhD Scholarships for 2015 Entry

Applicants with excellent academic track records (equal to an Australian Bachelor Degree with First Class Honours) or equivalent professional research experience may be eligible for competitive PhD scholarships to undertake study in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. The Faculty is also offering a number of top-ups to these scholarships for highly ranked students whose projects align with our areas of strength.

The Creative Industries Faculty’s world class, industry-connected researchers undertake innovative applied and theoretical research in the media, creative arts and design, and QUT is home to some of the world’s best researchers in digital media, communication and culture, given the highest possible rating of 5 in both the 2010 and 2012 ERA rankings.

QUT's Social Media Research Group (http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/) is a global leader in social media research, and one of the main contributors to the University’s strength in Digital Media overall. Supported by several major research grants and strategic collaborations with industry, QUT researchers are investigating the use of social media in crisis communication, in news and politics, as a backchannel to television and other media, and in everyday life. We are leading methodological innovation by exploring the uses of 'big data' for studying major social media platforms, by integrating STS and software studies into our approaches to social media platforms, as well as by developing novel mixed-methods approaches that support critical and interpretative analysis.

We are seeking new PhD students to investigate topics such as:

1. The practices of sharing and engaging with mainstream media content through social media;
2. the history and political economy of social and mobile media platforms;
3. approaches to geomedia research, including locative and geosocial media;
4. the structures and effects of follower networks in Australian social media spaces, using social network analysis methods;
5. the consequences of emerging online platforms on the production and consumption of culture;
6. new methods to generate quantitative metrics that describe activity patterns in social media datasets;
7. agent-based simulation approaches for the analysis of networked co-creation of culture;
8. critical and interpretive approaches to user engagement and evaluation practices;
9. cross-platform flows of media content, data and cultural practices;
10. uses, meanings and implications of mobile relationship and dating apps;
11. the making and circulation of gender and sexuality with networked media.

Potential supervisors include:

• Prof. Axel Bruns (http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/bruns/)
• Assoc. Prof. Jean Burgess (http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/burgesje/)
• Dr. Stephen Harrington (http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/harrings/)
• Prof. Ben Light (http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/lightb/)
• Dr. Peta Mitchell (http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/mitchepr/)
• Assoc. Prof. Patrik Wikström (http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/wikstrop/)
If you are interested in applying, please contact Axel Bruns a.bruns@qut.edu.au or Jean Burgess je.burgess@qut.edu.au, in addition to following the processes below.

How to apply

PhD program
Doctor of Creative Industries program

Information on the University’s Annual Scholarship Round can be found here.

Closing date: 30th September 2014 (earlier enquiries strongly encouraged)

Further information about the Faculty’s research can be found here.
Looking for a supervisor? Please view our Academic Staff profiles here.

Any Questions?

Contact the Creative Industries Faculty HDR support team at ci.hdr@qut.edu.au or phone +617 3138 3799 or 3138 8591

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

#DIGCULT14 - MAKING DIGITAL CULTURES OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

28 October 2014

Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane.

Organisers: Ben Light, Jean Burgess, Elija Cassidy, and Stefanie Duguay

Bringing together leading and emerging scholars in the study of the digital, gender and sexuality, this symposium seeks to further interrogate questions of the contemporary making of digital cultures of gender and sexuality.  Whilst difference-based approaches to understanding the gendered make up of social media users and audiences have been tackled, this symposium focuses more upon the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed and circulated with and by this media. Additionally, it will seek to explore how sociotechnical elements of social media are being transferred to other digital cultures of gender and sexuality.

The symposium will being with an introduction, by Ben Light and Elija Cassidy, to the Men, Masculinity and Digital Media (MMADM) project which is running out of QUT. See: http://www.mmadm.orghttp://www.mmadm.org/

Speakers include:

• Kath Albury - University of New South Wales - Selfies, sexts and sneaky hats: young people’s understandings of gendered practices of self-representation
• Jenine Beekhuyzen - Griffith University - Upending gender roles and stereotypes through an allegorical exploration of social issues that shape our digital cultures
• Paul Byron – University of New South Wales - Young people using condoms and social media: gendered discourses of safety
• Stefanie Duguay, Jean Burgess and Ben Light – Queensland University of Technology - Dating and hooking up with mobile media: a comparative study of Tinder, Mixxxer, Squirt and Dattch
• Sharif Mowlabocus - University of Sussex - Nice pics, wanna fastest? gay men, app culture and sexual health promotion in the UK
• Susanna Paasonen – University of Turku - Peer pornographies and the economies of desire
• Kane Race – University of Sydney - When is sexual media social media?: gay men, apps and sexual sociability
• Emily van der Nagel – Swinburne University of Technology - Anonymity on reddit gonewild: marking deviance, performing the ordinary

The full programme, and the link to registration, is available at www.digcult.org

Please note the symposium is free to attend, but places are limited.

Cheers,
Ben.

Ben Light
PhD MSc BA(Hons)
Professor of Digital Media Studies

Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
Creative Industries Precinct Z1-515
Musk Avenue Kelvin Grove
QLD 4059 Australia

Phone:    +61 7 3138 8280
Twitter: @doggyb
QUT: http://www.staff.qut.edu.au/staff/lightb
Open Access Publications:
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Light,_Ben.html
Personal Site: http://www.benlight.orghttp://www.benlight.org/