Every day, citizens, publics, media and organisations co-create meaning in contexts embedded, implicated, and problematised by digital technologies, and the political, economic, and cultural forces that sustain them. The UTS Technology, Media & Strategy (TMS) Group seeks to make sense of these forces through engaged scholarship and theorising.
Technology, Media and Strategy Research Group
The Technology, Media & Strategy Group (TMS) engages with the dynamic platforms, publics, and challenges of contemporary media contexts. Research fields represent diverse disciplinary perspectives but all point to the growing importance of trust and legitimacy as prime markers of high-quality investigation, authentic listening, and research that creates social impact. Our scope transcends local, national, and global contexts.
The TMS research team is comprised of over 20 scholars and HDR students who meet at the intersection of fast-changing technologies that impact civil society. Our research foci transverse the stability and integrity of democratic institutions to the inclusion of multiple voices and viewpoints in stakeholder consultation, to the ethical underpinnings of software design and data analysis. The Technology, Media & Strategy Group unpacks how organisations, thought-leaders and change-agents navigate emergent media conditions to drive positive (and sometimes negative) social outcomes and impact.
Together, our research focuses on how public communication, social media and media practices intersect, develop, and achieve social change with technology being seen as the central driver behind these developments. The group offers critical analysis, mixed methods research and industry consultancies that provide national and global underpinnings for both the Global North and the Global South. In turn, we deal with how power manifests through (and sometimes outside) the cultural infrastructure of communication networks.
The TMS group reflects on these topics during an unprecedented moment in history, as professional silos bend to the reality of citizen journalism, the rise of influencers, and the waning status of traditional sites of authority and expertise.
Research themes
Research group members action their research insights through consultations to government and industry.
- access to reliable information around mental health, Covid
- communication, media and organisations in civil society
- co-created meaning in the culture and communication industries
- consumer insights and processes
- crisis communication management
- the efficacy and limitations of “hash tag” movements
- equity, inclusion, and digital literacy
- framing in media and social media
- LGBTQI support
- the profusion of filter bubbles, echo chambers and hate speech
- public diplomacy
Group members
Current research projects
#MeToo; #HimToo: Popular Feminism and Hashtag Activism in the Kavanaugh Hearings, 1 Jul 2020, International Journal of Communication |
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All Our Lesbians Are Dead! An interactive online documentary exploring the ‘bury your gays’ trope in contemporary television and the pop culture response (sole project) |
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Alliance or/and enemy? Debunking perceptual antecedents, attitudinal changes and behavioural outcomes toward diplomatic relationships with China (ACRI fund) |
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Austrade in Asia – Pacific: Post COVID. |
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Branding and Crises: Resilience and Adaptability in an Interconnected World (Forthcoming, Routledge) |
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CiteLearn - an academic tool for learning to cite sources |
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Climate Technologies: Mobile apps and sustainable community engagement in disaster risk communication in Australia |
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Digital Citizenship Resources for LGBTI Young People and Young Key Populations in the Asia Pacific |
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Digital/Social Chinese-language Media in Australia: the Making of a New Transnational Subject (Brill) |
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Diversity in Australia’s Advertising & PR Agencies. cross faculty collaboration with Professor Maureen Taylor, Dr Kaye Chan, Associate Prof David Waller, and the Media Federation of Australia. |
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Domestic Tourism in the COVID era. |
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Exploring the Prospect of a “Hippocratic Oath” for Data Custodians. |
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From #BlackLivesMatter to #BlackOutTuesday: Race and Mainstream Digital Engagement on Instagram, Research Cultivation Grant, National Communication Association |
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Future of Travel. |
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LGBTQ+ young people, mental health and digital peer support |
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Nostalgic nationalism and the banal Anthropocene on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, 8 Apr 2021, Screen62(1):83-91Oxford University Press (OUP) |
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Perceptions of biometric data collection and privacy among users of an AI-enabled women’s health device. |
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Preparing the community–An agency-based framework of community engagement for disaster preparation. With Kim A. Johnston (QUT) and Barbara Ryan (USQ). |
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Queer representation in Hollywood holiday films |
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Social media influencers in crisis communication: Kenya, Australia and Philippine perspectives (collaboration with Dr. Jesica Mwithia, Daystar University, Kenya) |
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Social media use of governments in disaster risk communication: Indonesian and Australian contexts (collaboration with Associate Professor Gregoria Arum Yudarwati, Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta, Indonesia) |
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The ethics of knowledge graphs |
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The Food Network’s Heartland Kitchens: Cooking up neoconservative comfort in the United States, 1 Mar 2019, CRITICAL STUDIES IN TELEVISION |
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The Intimate Consequences of Inequality: China’s Young Rural Migrants (Bloomsbury). |
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The role of popular social media and digital public diplomacy in Australia-China relations: Analysis of how Facebook and WeChat influence nation branding and mutual perceptions. Funded by ACRI, in collaboration with colleagues at Tsinghua University. |
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The semiotics of analgesic intervention. |
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Tuning out traditional media in the Global North and South: Misinformation on digital and social media in Australia and the Philippines (collaboration with Christine Kearney) |
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Vaccine Messaging in Australia |
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Visual language and discourse in post-disaster communication on Instagram |
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Webcare: exploring online complaint management practices of tourism and hospitality organisations in Australia (sole project) |
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WeChat and Chinese diaspora (edited volume, Routledge) |
Funded research
- ARC Discovery Project: Media Pluralism and Online News
- ARC Grant: Chinese-language Digital/Social Media in Australia: Rethinking Soft Power
- ARC Grant:Inequality in Love: Romance and Intimacy among China's Young Migrant Workers
- Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)
- Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC
- International Partnership for Queer Youth Resilience
- National Communication Association (USA)
- Office of the Inspector-General of Emergency Management (IGEM) QLD
- UNESCO
- UTS ACRI - Australia-China Relations Institute
Current HDR projects
Alt-right Radicalisation in Digital Spaces: How Online Communities have led to the Revitalisation of Race and Gender-based Flawed Ideologies |
Jeffrey Millar |
Digital strategies of public relations and its role in reinforcement of government agencies’ communication during war crisis
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Abdu Kuriri |
Integrating diasporic cultural frameworks into the CSV narrative: An opportunity for sustainable development. |
Deeann Phan |
Making lasting impressions online: An assessment of Zimbabwean organisations’ use of impression management for online reputation management on Facebook
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Caroline Makoni |
Migrants’ Perceptions of News Magazines' Front-page Portrayals of China, Russia, Brazil, Germany, the US and Australia. |
Alena Radina |
Movement and counter movement interaction: Hashtags and the Black Lives Matter movement and on Instagram |
Deeann Phan |
Vaccine hesitancy and Facebook: a longitudinal study of communities impacted by COVID-19 vaccine misinformation |
Denby Weller |
Industry and government partnerships
- Fiftyfive-5 Agency (Sydney)
- Media Forum Australia
- World Health Organisation (WHO) International
- World Health Organisation Western Pacific Region (WPRO)
Contact us
Research Group Leader: Maureen Taylor – Maureen.taylor-1@UTS.edu.au