Home

About

Members

Projects
   Slow Living

Contact Details

Projects

CURRENT PROJECTS

 

Asbestos Stories

Gail Phillips, Chris Smyth, Mia Lindgren, Lenore Layman, Renae Desai

The aim of this second NHMRC grant ($729,000) is to work with medical and public health researchers to develop the Asbestos Stories website to enable it to function as a bridge to medical research knowledge, a source of authoritative public health information and an interactive community-support site. The Asbestos Stories project brings together a multi-disciplinary team of medical and public health researchers, and research/practitioners in history, journalism and public relations.

The first phase of the project involved the creation of the Asbestos Stories website which showed the human face of the asbestos tragedy by collecting the individual stories that all those touched by asbestos have to tell. The storytellers included the workers and their families, as well as the doctors, lawyers and lobby groups who have been working to prevent future illness and obtain compensation for the victims. The website material was enhanced by material gathered for the production of two documentaries, broadcast on Radio National's Street Stories and Hindsight programs, on the history of asbestos and the domestic dangers it currently poses in workplaces and homes. The website stories were told in a variety of formats: oral and filmed interviews, documentary features, pictorial narratives, and archival material.

In the second phase of the project the same team will expand the resource to include medical and public health educational materials, and to make the site an interactive hub around which a community of interest can be built. The capacity of the site to serve as a vehicle for bringing sufferers and carers together is designed to help alleviate some of the isolation and stress many experience when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease, particularly mesothelioma. It will be a repository for credible medical information, will open up the possibility for medical research collaborations, and will create the context for testing the effectiveness of communication strategies in this area of public health.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remix, Mash-Ups, Share: Authentic Web 2.0 assessment scenarios and criteria for interactie media, games and digital design.

Ingrid Richardson, Mark Cypher, Josh Whitkin, Serge Tampalini, Larissa Hjorth (RMIT), Sam Hinton (University of Canberra), Andrew Hutchison (Curtin)

Funded by an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Grant, this project focuses on an under-researched aspect of Web 2.0 and its impact on university learning in the disciplines of interactive media, games and digital design. Increasingly, Web 2.0 is characterised by new media content production that is collaborative, shared, and more significantly, comprises the remixing of existing media content, or the mashing-up‚ and aggregation of existing services and applications. Such derivative‚ work presents a fundamental paradigm shift away from conventional student-authored assessments in new media production, and goes against the grain of current university assessment and plagiarism policies. Yet to prepare students for professional practice, universities must develop authentic Web 2.0 assessment components and criteria, and adjust assessment regulations accordingly. This project will design and implement a series of Web 2.0 assessment components with a view to (i) determining assessment criteria for student work that involves re-use, remixing and aggregation, and (ii) developing guidelines for university Assessment Committees for the trialling of revised assessment policy that effectively accommodates Web 2.0 assessment scenarios.

 

 

Livewire Research/Starlight Foundation

Amanda Third, Ingrid Richardson

This project, undertaken on behalf of a major international not-for-profit organization, uses a predominately qualitative research framework, to identify the key factors shaping young people’s online and social networking engagements, with an emphasis on the particular and everyday needs of young people living with chronic illness or disability. This study evaluates participants’ engagement with Livewire’s existing service (an online social networking site developed specifically for the target group). Focusing upon socio-cultural factors, technological factors, embodiment factors, and material-cultural factors, this project aims to gain a more holistic insight into:

• How young people use social networking in the context of their daily lives.
• How young people living with chronic illness and disability physically engage with technologies.
• The relationship between young people’s online engagement and their friendship and support networks.
• The ways Livewire participants use Livewire in conjunction with other forms of online networking and support.
• How the above situate Livewire in relation to other existing social networking sites.

The project delivers results that Livewire/Starlight Foundation can use in the short term to aid in the implementation of scaling, but also identifies key areas for future research and contributes to the generation of new research on young people’s media usage.

 

 

 

Isolation, Illness and Internet: Exploring the Possibility of a Second Life for Suffers of Chronic Illness

Kirsty Best, Andrew Turk, Maria Bakardjieva (University of Calgary), Pamela Moss (University of Victoria)

This three-year project is the recipient of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant. The project is aimed at understanding the embodied, lived experiences of sufferers of ME/CFS (myalgic encephalopathy/ chronic fatigue syndrome). The project is exploring the inherent tension in the use of digital media for complex chronic conditions characterized by both a high level of isolation and a type of cognitive impairment that makes computer use challenging. By analyzing data collected by ethnography and through a participant-focused virtual forum, the study will uncover ME/CFS sufferers’ embodied, contextual experiences of using computers and the Internet as a way to address, and perhaps overcome, social isolation.

• We have created an enduring repository of up-to-date research information at the ME/CFS Research Centre on the Murdoch Island in Second Life, completely accessible to the general public.
• The Centre also hosts regular meetings designed to provide social support and community bonds among sufferers of CFS/ME and their care-givers.
• Please visit the Centre if you are affected by or care for someone with ME/CFS, or contact Kirsty.

 

 

 

 

Moblogging and Belonging

Ingrid Richardson, Amanda Third

Funded by the Telstra Foundation, this two year project aims to show how moblogging (blogging directly from mobile phones) has the potential link to real people in the virtual world in ways that can foster greater connections with local and online communities congruently. The project focuses on developing ways for socially isolated youths to tap into and expand their own support networks that in turn will translate into a greater sense of inclusion and well-being. Working with three target groups of 20 participants (two groups of upper high-school students in WA and Queensland, and one group of school leavers in WA), this project:

• Conducts an ethnographic study into young people‘s current use and experience of local and online communities.
• Explores the ways that young people use both their mobile phones and the internet as ‘community’ devices, and how current obstacles (economic, media literacy, accessibility) might be overcome via the creation of an innovative, interactive, cross-platform, user-led and user-generated moblog interface.
• Enhances the media literacy of young participants through a series of workshops on how to create an effective mobile phone photo and video content and how to use the full functionality of their mobile phones as multimedia devices.
• Develops a sustainable mobile log interface using a Participatory Design (PD) approach

 

 

 

 

 

The Filtered Encounter: Policing Borders in Mediated Relationships

Kirsty Best, Sharon Delmege, Beth Pengelly

The Filtered Encounter investigates online dating from a novel perspective: the importance of filtering. Since Manual Castell’s influential study The Network Society, commentators have assumed that the primary social use of new technologies is to foster connections. This study started from the premise that such a position fails to fully understand the nature of new technology. The current age is one characterized by information plenty, not information scarcity. People using technology to facilitate meeting and managing relationships are faced with this situation. The aim of the project is to research the prevalence, pragmatism and social impact of these filtering mechanisms. As a marketing device, a user strategy and a form of normative control, filtering is a real and powerful force. This project unpacks the broader social, cultural and political implications of these forms of control in a world increasingly interested in boundaries, policing and security.

 

 

 

Carnarvon's Inspiring Identities

Kathryn Trees

Kathryn has been working with young people in Roebourne and Carnarvon to produce a book about people in their community. The process included them learning and performing all aspects, including planning, design, interviews, photography and recording.

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Nan and the Yandi

Denise Groves

Denise has recently written and directed My Nan and the Yandi, a story of a granddaughter's love for her grandmother, and the political and cultural significance of the Yandi to her family's history. The Yandi, a tin dish used to separate minerals from sand using no water, was of utmost importance during the first Aboriginal strike in Australia, the Pilbara strike, which lasted ten years. The film was awarded support from Film & Television Institute (WA), ScreenWest and Lottery West. It screened on the ABC in September.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PAST PROJECTS

 

Midland Workshops History Project

Mia Lindgren, Bobbie Oliver (Curtin), Patrick Bertola (Curtin), Brogan Bunt (University of Wollongong)

This ARC Linkage Grant explored the social, political and industrial history of the Midland Railways Workshops in Perth, WA. Presented in a book, in a video documentary and online, the stories from the Workshops were told through material gathered from interviews, photographs, documentary and ephemeral material of past employees of the Workshops. This material has had a wide range of applications including scholarly research, educational material, and public information and has been integral to the interpretation and re-development of the Workshops site. Midland Workshops History Project was a inter-disciplinary collaboration between history and media academics, which included 11 industry partners: Western Australian Museum; Aust Rail, Tram & Bus Industry Union; CEPU; Unions WA; City of Swan; Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union; Australian Services Union; J S Battye Library; Australian Society for the Study of Labour History; State Record Office of Western Australia; and Midland Redevelopment Authority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reporting Diversity Project

Gail Phillips, Lynette Sheridan Burns (UWS), Suellen Tapsall (UWA), Kerry Green (UniSA), Kathryn Bowd (UniSA), Ian Richards (UniSA), Julie Posseti (UC), Jacqui Ewart (Griffith)

The Reporting Diversity Project, funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, began in 2005. Gail Phillips was lead researcher of this five-university project from 2005-2009. The project is aimed at examining the representation of different ethic groups in different news media. The aim is to conduct a longitudinal study to collect data on these representations, and also develop protocols that industry and journalism educators can use for training, toward the goal of more equitable representation.

 

 

Production Challenges in the On-Line Learning Environment

Gail Phillips, Simone Volet, Dorit Maor, Suellen Tapsall, Brogan Bunt

This ARC Linkage Grant ran from 2002-2004, in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The project investigated new delivery mechanisms that respond to worldwide trends in virtual communities and self-directed learning. Investigators explored the relationship between content pedagogy, use of technology and work-related issues and expectations. It adopted both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies in identifying opportunities, producing a learning prototype, testing and trialing that prototype, and applying research outcomes in the context of emergent new educational nodels that draw upon convergent media.

 

 

Asbestos Stories

Gail Phillips, Chris Smyth, Mia Lindgren

Asbestos Stories is a Perth-based digital storytelling project run by a group of journalists and historians at Murdoch University. It is part of a larger project, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), that also involves medical and public health researchers from the University of Western Australia and Curtin University. The Murdoch team have created a website to document the use of asbestos in Australia, the stories of people who have come in contact with it, and the issues of living with asbestos and its health effects. Among other things, this website provides informational resources and support for those living with asbestosis, and their friends and family.

 

 

Creative suburbs may not be 'Dullsville'

Mark Gibson, Terence Lee, Ingrid Richardson

Researchers in the Centre for Everyday Life in the Media Communications and Culture School investigated the truth of the ‘Dullsville’ tag that has plagued Perth suburban living. Suburban areas could actually be hotbeds of creative productivity, suggested the study conducted through the Centre. The research team, consisting of Dr Mark Gibson, Dr Ingrid Richardson and Dr Terence Lee, investigated life in the suburbs from three different angles:

• The history and transformation of suburbia in Perth over the past decade including the huge phenomenon of house and garden makeovers, which reflect a developing sense of creativity and design talent in suburban developers.
• The impact and uptake technology in the suburbs and analysing the flow-on effects to creative output within suburbia.
• The cohort of highly-skilled professionals from Singapore who have been drawn to Perth because of the suburban lifestyle.