Internet Studies

This podcast is what it says on the tin (we hope). The title is an homage to the "On the Reg" podcast created by Inger Mewburn and Jason Downs.

INTRO

Here's another conversation between Sky and Eleanor...

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, thinking, technology, bots, produced, rubbish, human, create, writing, ways, ai, point, internet, terms, information overload, clogging, plastics, externalities, idea, talk

SPEAKERS

Eleanor Sandry, Sky Croeser

SUMMARY

Start of the podcast.

0:36

The internet of garbage.

2:10

Fears about the volume of rubbish.

4:55

Blurring the lines between bots and humans.

8:24

Good uses for bots in politics.

11:08

Accountability and responsibility in tech.

15:30

The difference between digital technology and plastic bottles.

18:45

There's a transcript of this episode here.

Disclaimer: This is not well produced, but the fact it was produced at all is a minor miracle.

We realised that the podcast wasn't going anywhere in the form we'd originally chosen, so this episode (which has been dubbed Season 2 Episode 1) is really just us having a chat, getting used to being recorded again and (with no preparation) talking about what we might do with the podcast from now on.

We touched upon fast fashion, fast electronics, AI in the news (natural language generators and text-to-art generators), Twitter, Mastodon and Tumblr. Sky managed to weave the issues with capitalism into the discussion and we found "interesting" links between Sky's PhD research on genetically modified crops and my thoughts on AI.

We're committed to recording something once a month. We're not sure how that's going to go, but that is the plan! In future we'll probably have a more defined topic or respond to a particular thing (academic or other) we've read, heard or seen.

There's a transcript of this episode here.

In this episode, Eleanor and sky talk to Associate Professor Tama Leaver, Discipline Lead for Internet Studies Curtin University, about teaching online. Tama, Eleanor, and sky each have over a decade of experience teaching online, and Curtin's Internet Studies (now Digital and Social Media) course is designed with online students in mind. We chat about creating good lectures (online and off); how to build engagement and community online; how to create teaching that works online; and giving up on participation marks.

Full transcription available here. 

[Please excuse the variable sound levels. We used the Fancy Recording Deck, and apparently we are the first to have three people use the Fancy Recording Deck and the hardware was - the tech assures us - secretly wonky. Probably we could have fixed it if we did a bunch of audio editing, but who has the time or energy for that In These Times?]

Intro beeps are a snippet of Minimal Necessity, by Tagirijus.

Eleanor talks to Professor Katie Ellis, Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University, about her research on accessibility online. As the pandemic spurs a huge shift towards working, socialising, teaching, and running conferences online, accessibility should be at the centre of our discussions. As Katie notes, people with disabilities are 20% of the population, and creating more accessible online spaces benefits everyone in a multitude of ways. 

This conversation was recorded on Noongar Boodja in July 2020.

The transcript for this episode can be found here.

In this episode, we have two great talks about the early history of Internet Studies: Professor Matthew Allen (founder of Internet Studies at Curtin University in 1999) and Henry Jenkins (who started a Masters program in Comparative Media Studies at the same time on the other side of the world). Both of them talk about the ways in which they responded to how their universities worked, and some of the challenges of trying to explain what the Internet was - and why it mattered - at the time.

These talks were recorded on Noongar Boodja at the 2019 Open Literacy: Digital Games, Social Responsibility and Social Innovation Conference, an international research symposium co-sponsored by Tencent Holdings (China) and Curtin University’s Centre for Culture & Technology and Internet Studies.

The transcript for this episode can be found here.

In this episode, we (sky croeser and Eleanor Sandry) have an awkward little chat about why we're doing the podcast, our research and teaching, and what you can expect in the first season. Find further links and a transcript on our website.