This report explores how the Chinese party-state’s globally focused propaganda and disinformation capabilities are evolving and increasing in sophistication. Concerningly, this emerging approach by the Chinese party-state to influence international discourse on China, including obfuscating its record of human rights violations, is largely flying under...

This paper outlines some key behavioural insights to help improve policy responses to stop the spread of mis- and dis-information.

This report, commissioned by the Islamic Council of Victoria, argues that the failure of social media platforms to improve their demonstrably ineffectual systems for the review of hateful material, coupled with the grave harms of online Islamophobia, necessitates government intervention.

This year's Freedom on the Net report finds that global internet freedom declined for the 12th consecutive year in 2022, and governments are on a campaign to divide the open internet into a patchwork of repressive enclaves.

The 'Mapping the Digital Gap' project involves working with remote First Nations communities to measure and track changes in digital inclusion levels and media use within each community over three years, from 2022–2024. This working paper sets out the project’s approach, covering its main objectives...

This publication sets out guiding principles that platforms, governments, policy-makers and other stakeholders ought to take into account in their design, moderation and regulation practices. It builds upon the generative work currently underway with the proliferation of alternative, independent collectives and cooperatives, who are designing...

This research looks at the ways that far-right social media users use mainstream media outlets for their ideological messages. Researchers analysed over 55,000 social media posts from far-right users on Facebook and Gab, and found that all mainstream media outlets, regardless of their political leaning...

The ACCC has released this issues paper, which seeks views on the operation of social media services in Australia from interested stakeholders. The ACCC invites submissions on the matters outlined in this paper by 9 September 2022.

Relying on intensive community consultation, as well as independent research, this report provides a series of recommendations for Twitter and policy-makers, aimed at ensuring that users are adequately protected against anti-Muslim content on social media.

This study finds that despite drawbacks, the Chinese messaging app, WeChat, plays a vital role in the democratic participation of Chinese-Australians. It argues that the greatest challenge with WeChat remains a lack of regulatory oversight from the Australian government and the platform’s niche role within...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using technology to enforce transnational digital repression and influence unwitting audiences beyond China’s territory. The impact of these operations isn’t widely understood, and the international community has failed to adequately respond to the global challenges posed by the CCP’s...

This paper is designed to provide background information on the aims and methods of the Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) Australian Ad Observatory research project.

Efforts to rebalance the relationships between journalism and 'big tech' are focused primarily within three distinct, yet at times overlapping, policy areas: digital taxation, competition policy and intellectual property. This report analyses the evidence and justification for these various policies and examines the implications for...

This paper reviews open-source materials, including electronic service provider (ESP) transparency reports, to provide an overview of the contemporary problem of child sexual abuse material offending on ESP platforms.

The research in this report reveals that political parties spent at least $12.5 million on Facebook and Instagram advertising in the final two months of the 2022 election campaign, with Labor and the Greens successfully engaging women voters to a far higher degree than the...

This report is part of a long-running international survey coordinated by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, an international research centre in the comparative study of journalism based at Oxford University. This year’s report contains positive signs for the Australian news industry.

This study explores how the presence of social media in humanitarian crises intersects with efforts to make humanitarian aid more inclusive. It finds that, despite almost a decade of bold claims regarding the potential for social media to support humanitarian action, practical engagements among humanitarian...

Increasingly, the use of technologies such as the internet, smartphones and social media is amplifying the power of local community action and knowledge. This brief addresses the need for policy change to overcome key barriers in this space.

This briefing highlights key details of whistleblower revelations about Facebook’s unprecedented tactical response to the development of Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code in February 2021, and the concurrent reforms that were made to the Code, all of which handed significant power to Facebook.