Volume 12 (2020): Issue 1 (January 2020)

This article draws from data generated in existing studies in Australia and the U.S. to examine how creators describe themselves and their creative acts when they are recombining or trying to combine copyrighted work with their own work. It finds a surprising congruence of self-perception across very different copyright regimes and creative practices. An undercurrent of Romantic notions about the originality of creative genius runs through even cutting-edge digital practices. This attitude then bolsters strategies used by large media interests to expand copyright monopoly rights and extend them internationally. Results have implications both for policy and advocacy, in particular, how creators respond to campaigns for expanded copyright exceptions, and a reluctance by even remix creators to challenge the legal structures that restrict their creative practice.

This paper explores the concept of ‘open’ knowledge – and the growing importance of digital literacies in supporting a transformation of universities into open knowledge institutions. In order to operate as successful open knowledge institutions, universities must do more than support the transmission of research outcomes from experts located within the university to external communities. They must engage in knowledge-making with communities. This involves questions of equity, diversity and inclusion – who gets to make knowledge; as well the role of productive interactions across boundaries (disciplines/university/wider community) in its growth and spread. There is a genuine desire among many universities, research funders, and researchers themselves, to address the challenges of diversity, equity and impact implicit in the open knowledge agenda. However, open knowledge aspirations are being stymied by comparative rankings that are built on data that excludes the work of entire disciplines, continents and languages; and are not capable of capturing important aspects of the value universities create. Many of the stakeholders using these rankings to inform decision-making are unaware of the prejudices and blind spots that current measurement tools create and perpetuate. They are also unaware that it is possible to interact critically with the tools used to measure and narrate performance; to demand that new questions are asked of the digital traces that universities and research communities create; and build better tools for understanding the role of universities in processes of knowledge-making and sharing. As this paper discusses, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, a major research project funded by Curtin University, is a deliberate effort to support the new forms of digital literacy needed to enable this shift.

This study concerns older gamers, who are often neglected in the gaming world. After reviewing the literature about older gamers, we have found most studies focus on the therapeutic function of videogames for solving problems related to age. Using an intersectional vision of critical gerontology studies and critical disability studies, we find that implicit compulsory youthfulness and compulsory ablebodiedness or ablemindedness colours studies about both older gamers and disabled gamers. These compulsory systems not only put older gamers and disabled gamers into a passive treatment-receiving position but also exclude them from a non-utilitarian style of game playing. Moreover, we recognise there are images of so-called ideal game players in current studies about older gamers and disabled gamers. These images further marginalise older gamers and disabled gamers. It is suggested that scholars undertaking future studies avoid ageism and ableism when studying older gamers or disabled gamers. Instead, researchers need to explore the original motivation of ageing people or people with disability to play video games, the sociocultural environment in which they are exposed to games and the specific social conditions under which games affect them.

University teaching, particularly teaching with and about digital technologies, can play a role in developing and expanding open literacies. At the same time, we face a range of challenges as teachers. The managerial focus on measuring and quantifying teaching and learning outcomes within academia often works against the evidence on pedagogical best practice. Despite claims made about ‘digital natives’, we find that students of all ages frequently have difficulty sorting through the mass of information available online. It is not enough, as teachers, to simply provide content to students, or even to ‘engage’ students through gamified learning and other digitally supported teaching methods. To effectively support open literacies within university education we need to question institutionalized practices, including commitment to discipline canon and to a depoliticized, depersonalized approach to teaching. In order to be effective, I argue that our pedagogies must be diverse, context-dependent, and reflexive.

Human interactions with machines, including computers, consoles, smart devices and robots, are becoming more and more a part of everyday life. However, human–machine relations are often regarded as problematic for people, their interpersonal communication and human society more broadly. This paper provides an analysis of the characteristics that constitute ‘play’ in relation to video games and interactions with robots, arguing it is possible to position time spent on play with machines as valuable in itself, without requiring the outcomes more traditionally regarded as productive. Much of what is valuable in play can be seen to develop from embodied processes of communication within which humans and machines encounter and respond to one other. These encounters are often shaped by stories about the capabilities of machines and humans, while the interactions themselves go on to provoke new narratives. Although human– machine interaction can be theorized as ‘cyborg’ or ‘hybrid’, this paper argues that adopting the idea of the ‘assemblage’ is a better way recognize the flexibility of bringing disparate humans and machines together, whether in relation to playing a game or playing music. In rethinking the value of play, this paper emphasizes how people’s time spent interacting, whether with video games or robots, provides opportunities for them to learn more about themselves and others.

In 2018, James Gunn and Chuck Wendig both lost lucrative jobs as storytellers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Star Wars, respectively, as a result of their aggressively political social media communications. This paper argues that these events can be understood in part by Gunn and Wendig’s social media profiles being blurred with their role as custodians for their respective franchises, and their interactions being out of sync with the aspirational themes associated with the MCU and Star Wars storyworlds. Compounding this issue is the significant structural evolution that modern, popular and commercial stories are undergoing, towards a collective journey model. Collective journey stories are an evolved version of traditional hero’s journey tales, and showcase the importance of listening and negotiating to drive systemic, collective action. Such stories have increased capacity to improve the civic imagination and provide symbols that individuals can draw from to manifest meaningful change. The appearance of these stories in popular commercial entertainment is a reflection of our increasingly digital lives and heightened connectivity, as well as a by-product of our increasing tendency to transmedially tell stories. The professional troubles Gunn and Wendig encountered are a result of them contrasting this storytelling modality, and can be understood in the context of a semiotic cultural shift, as we collectively come to better understand the impact of the Internet and our participatory digital culture.

A Keynote Presentation given at the Open Literacy Digital Games, Social Responsibility and Social Innovation Symposium in celebration of the 20-year anniversary of the founding of Internet Studies at Curtin University. Matthew is Australia’s first Professor of Internet Studies, having established the world-leading Internet Studies department at Curtin University where he worked from 1993 to 2012.

With its rapid uptake among young people around the world, it is no surprise that TikTok is buzzing with cultures and practices of internet celebrity. Most notably, the platform is becoming more commercial and professionalized with the rise of TikTok Influencers, advertising networks, and agencies dedicated to monetizing content and embedding advertising on TikTok, and top TikTok Influencers raking in millions in income annually. However, little is known about the constitution of internet celebrity on TikTok yet, and existing models of internet celebrity on predecessor apps like Instagram and YouTube do not neatly apply to the distinctive terrain of TikTok. As such, this paper is an exploratory study into the makings of internet celebrity cultures on TikTok, focused on how attention economy and visibility labour practices have emerged as a result of the app’s features. With empirical data drawn from an extended period in-depth digital ethnography, and analyses and insights informed and supported by traditional anthropological participant observation and personal interviews with TikTok Influencers and agencies, this scoping paper offers a foundation for how celebrity, attention, and visibility are constituted across TikTok’s platform norms and features.