rms has led to a profound transformation of the Australian media environment: mainstream, niche, and social media intersect in many ways, online and offline. Increased access to large-scale data on public communication online enables an observation of how the nation responds to the news of the day, how themes and topics unfold, and how interest publics develop and decline over time. This project uses such observations to trace how information flows across media spaces, and to develop a new model of the online public sphere. It makes significant contributions to innovation in research methods in the digital humanities, and provides an important basis for policies aimed at closing digital and social divides.

TrISMA - Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis (ARC LIEF)

CCI researchers Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, John Banks, John Hartley, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, Rowan Wilken, and Ellie Rennie along with other colleagues from QUT, Curtin, Swinburne, and Deakin universities and the National Library of Australia have won a two-year ARC LIEF project which will commence in 2014. The TrISMA project establishes state-of-the-art technical and organisational infrastructure for the tracking of public communication by Australian users of social media, at large scale, in real time, and for the long term, addressing a significant gap in national research infrastructure. Social media are increasingly embedded in the Australian media ecology, and systematic analyses of how public communication takes place via social media provide rich insights into a range of issues and debates of high importance to our society.

Design & Art Australia Online Research Tool: enabling next generation e-Research in Australia’s visual and design cultures (ARC LIEF)

CCI researcher Deb Verhoeven and colleagues will build on the recent and highly successful transformation of Design and Art Australia Online (DAAO). As DAAO i