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Objective: This paper explores Australian military families' use of social media and digital communication to maintain and strengthen parent–child relationships during military deployments. Background: The physical and emotional well‐being of children and partners of military serving members is affected by service. Maintaining positive family relationships between military members and their children during periods of absence (including deployment) is important for parental relationships as well as the well‐being of the child. Method: A qualitative meta‐analysis is used to collate data from two previous studies of Australian Defence Force (ADF) families with children, in order to generate a new data set from which novel insights were drawn. Results: Families show a preference for social media and digital communication methods, and digital technologies affordances and practicalities are well suited for Defence families with children. There are a range of benefits; digital technologies are used to strengthen relationships between children and their deployed parent. The study highlights a range of challenges for deployed parents as well as points to the work required from the at‐home parent in facilitating these connections. Conclusion: Maintaining positive family relationships between military members and their children during times of absences is important for both relationships. This paper explores how ADF families use social and digital communication during military absences and outlines the role these technologies play as a medium for strengthening familial relationship. Implications. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of digital and social communication technologies for supporting families during absences. This has implications for the ADF, who might look to reduce members' access to such communication for security concerns. Reduced family well‐being may also have impacts on retention, a key issue for military organizations. Accordingly, the findings of this paper may be used to inform decisions about restricting internet and social media access for deployed military members. [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]

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]

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]

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]

Informed by Bourdieu's notions of habitus and taste, and Raymond Williams' notion of cultural form, this article considers the relationship between young people's use of technology and social class. Drawing on the findings of case studies of 25 Australian 15-year-olds, the article suggests that there is a strong link between technology use and class. We argue that markers of class such as parents' level of education and occupation inform the habitus of young people which, in turn, influences their digital tastes. The case studies set out to explore young people's digital communication practices at home and in school. The findings show the importance of habitus in young people's engagement with and interest in digital technologies. We found that new experiences, objects, actions and accomplishments using digital technologies were accepted as valuable or rejected depending on how well they fit with already existing thoughts and processes incorporated into the young people's habitus. Apart from common teenage interests such as music, young people's tastes are influenced by their social background. For schools to equip young people with the skills to participate and communicate in an increasingly digital world, an expansion in ICT resources is not the sole solution. The article concludes that the link between cultural capital, habitus and cultural form produces a socially entrenched digital inequality rather than an economically entrenched digital divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many areas of digital communication, including digital television, raise concerns about unauthorised reuse of content. Proposals exist in the United States and Europe for applying content control technologies to free-to-air digital television to limit the reuse of broadcast content. These proposals have implications for regulatory options, and for the social and cultural position of television in countries such as Australia. Each proposal also demonstrates the importance of current issues in copyright reform for questions of media law and policy. By examining the history and current status of the broadcast flag in the United States and the Content Protection and Copy Management standard being developed in Europe, this article suggests that Australian regulators are likely to face similar calls for action on digital broadcast content and explains some of the possible regulatory choices regarding the transmission and the reception of digital free-to-air content. As with the United States' and European plans, the choices made in relation to television may have wider implications for digital networked communications and the evolution of a diverse media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistics and musicology, along with other fieldwork-based disciplines, have obligations to facilitate access to research results by the communities whose cultural heritage is recorded and analysed, especially when the languages and musics in question are otherwise little documented, have few speakers or performers, and are threatened by the global dominance of English. This article presents the early results of our planning for establishment of a digital resource to preserve and make accessible recordings and other documentation of Murrinh-patha public dance-songs at Wadeye, a remote Indigenous community in Australia's Northern Territory. With the recent establishment of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, copies of recordings previously left in the community by researchers have been digitized and made available through computer workstations. Many of these digitized recordings, however, have poor or no documentation and thus are difficult to locate and access. The most urgent task is to work with elderly performers and composers to assemble metadata about the oldest recordings of songs and who composed and performed them. In order to maximise local accessibility and use, both elders and young people will be involved in planning and creation of a bilingual search interface to the collection. Planning must also consider sustainability issues through integration with other local initiatives, appropriate use of open standards and formats, locally sustainable technical platforms, and regular backup and maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the experiences of the introduction of digital terrestrial television in Finland and Australia. Value of the experiences of the countries identifying policy choices available to government; Confirmation of the deficiency of high definition model for digital television in the Australian experience; Reasons why the overall transitional policies adopted in Finland are more liberal.

Against a backdrop commonly considered one of the most wondrous locations in the world, thousands of global experts convened in the iconic "Harbour City" of Sydney, Australia from June 10 - 14 to participate in one of the industry's largest and most profound gatherings focused on the advancements rapidly transforming every area of life and business. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Up to 350,000 health assessments are conducted annually for persons seeking a visa to enter Australia. Health screening is conducted by accredited panel doctors and radiologists in the visa applicant's home country. Their findings are forwarded to the appropriate government department in Australia. The move to an e-visa system, with certain visas being available via the Internet, has seen the introduction of a compatible electronic health assessment system. An online system to support health assessment processing was implemented in two stages. The first, eHealth1, has been in operation since July 2002 and the second, eHealth2, commenced in November 2003. In a pilot trial in Singapore during 2003 and 2004, 5000 student visa applications (87%) were lodged through the eHealth2 system. The main advantage of the eHealth2 process is the rapid transmission of a digital photograph and X-ray image. This avoids the delay of sending documents and films by post. The success of the pilot has led to the expansion of eHealth2 to other electronic visa sectors, such as working holiday makers, long-stay business people and visitors. The eHealth2 system is fully operational in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the implications of the increased funding for digitization of records for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). It states that the records held by the AIATSIS Library and Audiovisual Archive can be central to research on community and family histories. It asserts that consideration of the retention of personal records of digital communications will be essential for maintenance of archives in the future.