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Frequently referred to as 'sexting' or 'amateur pornography', digital sexual images and videos form an increasingly common part of adult sexual relationships. However, the vocabulary available to speak about these practices is limited, with 'sexting' often associated with young people in negative terms. This study is based on 23 interviews with adults in Australia who are 25 years and older. It explores the language adults employ to discuss and comprehend the creation and sharing of sexualised images and videos. Findings show that negative or positive connotations associated with the terms used to discuss sexual images and videos influenced the ways participants drew on, or rejected, terms to align digital practices with their sexual subjectivity. Reticence to engage in active communication about digital sexual practices, and participant's distancing of their own practices from the terms commonly understood to refer to such practices, made it difficult to engage in conversations about consent or desire in the context of digitally mediated sex. Findings provide insight into the ways that -digital sexual subjectivities are discursively framed and extend these implications for sexual health promotion with respect to how to frame messages of digital sexual safety in a sex-positive and open way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies and mobile apps provide migrants connectivity that helps alleviate the distressing experience of being separated from their families, as they endeavour to integrate socially and culturally into a new nation. In this article, we highlight the role played by communications technologies in maintaining family ties and emotional support transnationally among middle-class individuals. Building on the notions of transnational families, social media research and emotions, we examine the particularities with which migrant family members stay in touch across borders. In this context, emotions arise from the heartache experienced due to the separation from family. Drawing from qualitative data collected in 2010–2011 and in 2021 among middle-class Mexicans living in Australia, we show how digital communications are used to connect with the homeland and analyse the emotions associated with being separated from family. Given the middle-class status and aspirations of these migrants, it is noteworthy to highlight the relevance they attribute to kin in the homeland and contact with them. Existing research about Mexican im/migrants in Australia is limited. This study contributes to the growing body of research on the intersection of transnational family life, emotions arising from mobility, and digital media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media emerged with a broad understanding that egalitarian practices would become the standard approach to publishing and distributing content. In recent times we have seen this flat hierarchical approach fade as commercial stakeholders, platform providers and content publishers continue to design and practice exclusionary processes to ensure their work is visible. This current practice limits the capacity for all voices to be heard, prompting the question how can digital activism remain visible in a media-saturated social media environment? This paper draws on a content analysis of the most popular YouTube users in Australia to illustrate the absence of digital activism within its visual culture. It maps the process of fragmented platformization, called here micro-platformization, to highlight the content production and publishing strategies digital activists should adopt. While successful commercial YouTube practitioners adhere closely to the principles of social media logics (Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2014). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14), this paper argues that stakeholders engaging in the practice of digital activism need to adopt similar strategies to their commercial counterparts. By including strategies that reflect the successful practices of social media logics, digital activism can not only become visible across social media spaces, but also engage public discourse on civic matters and public affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Digital Platforms Inquiry, as a case study in the new thinking about digital platform regulation taking place in many nations. With its focus upon the impact of digital platforms on news and journalism, the ACCC Inquiry parallels other reviews, such as the Cairncross Review on the Future of Journalism in the United Kingdom. While the Inquiry had a somewhat 'accidental' history, the core issues that it raised have acquired considerable political resonance in Australia. The concept of harms provides a useful lens through which to understand the ACCC's focus, as it identified harms caused by the market dominance of Google and Facebook for traditional news media businesses, and for consumers and citizens. Responding to the ACCC Final Report will present challenges in identifying the public good dimension of journalism and who should pay for it, the scope and reach of digital platform regulation and its relationship to media policy and regulation, and the scope for small nations to effectively manage the power of global digital platform giants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While digital communication is almost universal amongst adolescents, we do not yet know why adolescent girls seek support electronically or how they perceive this support. The prevalence of adolescent girls' informal digital support seeking was determined by a self-report questionnaire with 186 early and middle adolescent girls (Mage = 13.64 years), drawn from four socioeconomically advantaged schools in Australia. Digital support seeking from friends was extremely common, with 73.66% seeking emotional support and 85.48% seeking academic support. Next, to determine perceptions of digital support seeking, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with a representative subsample of 31 girls (Mage = 13.95 years). Interview data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Themes of friendship and emotional self-regulation emerged as perceived benefits. Girls perceived digital support to be poorer in quality than face-to-face support, and were particularly concerned about limitations to privacy and the disclosure of confidential information. Several maladaptive behaviours such as using digital support seeking to conceal or avoid emotion were identified. There was variation in the attitudes of the sample, and four groups of girls with distinct attitudes towards digital emotional support seeking were identified. Implications for supporting adolescents to effectively seek support electronically and face-to-face are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New forms of digital information and communication technologies have the potential to provide a "next generation" of agricultural technologies, which can drive improvements in productivity and efficiency while reducing risks and negative impacts. However, such digital transformation brings with it significant socio-ethical challenges. Responsible innovation provides insights and approaches to help guide digital transformation in socially beneficial and equitable directions. Drawing on the authors' involvement in digital agriculture programmes in two public research organisations in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, we reflect on our collective experiences and consider who is responsible for being responsible and how public research organisations can enable more responsible digital agriculture research and innovation programmes. This short communication is informed by a synthesis of: (i) insights from our research on socio-technical dimensions of digital agriculture programmes; (ii) critical reflections as social scientists participating in these programmes; and (iii) workshop synthesis that draws out reflections from wider programme participants about responsible innovation, developed through four collaborative workshops held virtually between May and August 2020. Our experiences show that responsible innovation in Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand public digital agriculture research and development so far tends to be only partially operationalised, with a mismatch between aspirations, rhetoric, and practice. Successful responsible innovation requires systemic and organisational changes to research and development practices across multiple levels to enable and enhance the 'response-ability' of project teams, including changes to the performance measures and reward mechanisms that encourage more responsible research and development outcomes. Our synthesis and reflections raise broader questions about the productively disruptive potential of responsible innovation. By challenging techno-centric framings of digital agriculture and encouraging more socially responsible processes and outcomes, this 'disruption' by responsible innovation can ultimately add value to digital agriculture research and development programmes and innovation systems. [Display omitted] • We reflect on who is responsible and how research organisations can enable more responsible digital agriculture programmes. • We share insights from our experiences as social scientists in digital agriculture research projects and programmes. • Responsible innovation encourages more inclusive approaches, challenging techno-centric framings of digital agriculture. • Responsible innovation can improve digital transformation by encouraging more responsible research and development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]