Is polarisation always destructive? (#50)

In this episode, host Kate FitzGerald speaks to Dr Katharina Esau and Dr Tariq Choucair about their research on polarisation as a buzzword and the problem of actually identifying the symptoms of destructive polarisation, and their effects on democracy. The framework of destructive polarisation was an early and foundational conceptual contribution from Esau and colleagues as part of the ARC-funded Laureate Fellowship project Determining the Drivers and Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate and first presented at the ICA in 2023. You can read the 2024 article here: Destructive polarization in digital communication contexts: a critical review and conceptual framework.

There is a content warning for this episode for discussion of state-sanctioned violence. In this episode, your host Klaus Groebner speaks with DMRC PhD Reseacher, Pardis Yarahmadi, about her recent work on the Mahsa Amini movement on Persian Twitter. Pardis takes us through the history from the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement through to the protests in Iran that are ongoing today. Pardis then describes how she and her coauthors analysed pro- and anti-regime accounts on X during the Mahsa Amini movement. Click here to read the first paper in the broader #MahsaAmini project that Pardis is contributing to, or click here to read the second.

In this episode, your host Sam Vilkins speaks with two visiting scholars to the Digital Media Research Centre - Julia Ester de Paula and Thales Antonelli. They speak about the Comphartilha project, which has been introduced in Brazilian schools to develop skills in deliberative democracy. Julia and Thales explain what deliberative democracy is, the benefit of supporting this in schools, and how a creative game can build confidence and deliberative democratic skills in school students.

In this episode, host Dr Sebastian Svegaard speaks with PhD researcher Kate FitzGerald about her recently published paper considering the safety guardrails in place when prompting chatbots with conspiratorial prompts. That is, do chatbots like ChatGPT have safety features to keep users safe from being exposed to harmful conspiracy theories? Kate explains the methodology and findings of this paper, that she published with DMRC colleagues Michelle Riedlinger, Axel Bruns, Stephen Harrington, Timothy Graham, and Dan Angus. You can read the article, "Just Asking Questions": Doing Our Own Research on Conspiratorial Ideation by Generative AI Chatbots, here.

In this episode, your host Dr Sam Vilkins speaks with DMRC scholars Professor Axel Bruns and Dr Kateryna Kasianenko on the newly released second edition of the Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. Axel and Kateryna reflect on the changes in the field over the last ten years, the chapters they contributed, and the challenges of keeping a companion book such as this both timely and timeless. You can peruse the book by clicking here.

In this episode, your host Kate FitzGerald speaks with Tom Bidewell, a visiting scholar to the Digital Media Research Centre. They discuss Tom's recent paper, Gendered Communication Patterns of Political Elites on Truth Social.Tom explains the context of Truth Social as a platform and whether gender shapes political messaging in digital environments.You can read Tom's paper by clicking here!

Phoebe Matich is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Automated Decision-Making and Society research centre at QUT. In this episode, your host Sebastian speaks to Phoebe about her recently completed PhD, and discusses the idea of truth claims, "fake news", and misinformation in Australian journalism. If you liked this episode, you can read Phoebe's thesis here.

Each year, the Digital Media Research Centre hosts a week-long Summer School filled with symposiums, workshops, and networking. This week's episode is a recording of a discussion from Patrik Wikstrom at this year's Summer School, who discusses the initial findings of the 'For You' project which analyses user experiences on TikTok. This project will reveal how highly individualised our media systems are.

Each year, the Digital Media Research Centre hosts a week-long Summer School filled with symposiums, workshops, and networking. This week's episode is a recording of a discussion entitled, "From 'the' Public Sphere to a Network of Publics: Rethinking Contemporary Public Communication" from Professor Axel Bruns at the 2026 Summer School. His presentation identifies the crucial building blocks that help us conceptualise and investigate how the network of public spheres is structured, and in turns structures our everyday experience of public communication.

On the 21st of March, 2006, Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet: "just setting up my twttr". This was the start of a significant social network, both for researchers and the general public.In this episode, your host Kate FitzGerald speaks with Distinguished Professor Jean Burgess, Professor Axel Bruns, Dr Kateryna Kasianenko, and PhD Candidate & Indigenous X founder Luke Pearson. Each member of our roundtable provides their own unique expertise and perspective on the platform formerly known as Twitter - whether that be as a place for networking, breaking news, or activism.