The Australien Government has made an ad about the Social Media Ban for Under-16s, and it's surprisingly honest and informative.

A link to my new book cover and table of contents. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

Blaqademics/Indigiqueers We made this for us to celebrate queer Indigenous scholarship lies, but it also counters the many non-Indigenous queer and gender studies scholars that tell us that they can’t find the work of any IndigiQueers. Here's a few hundred citations. queer-as.org/blaqademics/

The Right to Delete would just solve so many persistent problems in the ways personal data is misused or left open to attacks/hacks/poor security etc. As a Right it wouldn't HAVE to be used in every case (that's part of the point), but having the option is so very powerful. 100% backing this!

For anyone still wondering: THIS IS WHY WE’RE HERE. Welcome to our family, and thank you for welcoming us to yours. #AoIR2025

And so we learn that the Portuguese word for enshittification is merdificacão. 🤣 #AoIR2025

Aidan Walker on why "now is *not* the time to ban phones ... why Jonathan Haidt sucks" howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/now-is-not...

last week, I wrote about how the rushed/bizarre teen social media ban policy process could lead to bad outcomes for Australians. One scenario? Platforms forced to check users ages leak private data. Anyway, there's now a leak of some Discord user's passports www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/30/a...

New article in @theconversation.com today reflecting on Australia’s 2024 loot box regulations and how, 1 year later, there remains widespread non-compliance - and generally really confusing age ratings for mobile games on the App Stores! theconversation.com/loot-boxes-a...

✨I’m recruiting for a research project on game monetisation!✨ I’m keen to chat to game devs about how monetisation shapes the dev process. Interviews will be 60mins via Zoom. To learn more, head to bit.ly/40mOB3f if you'd like to participate, shoot me a DM or email [email protected] 😊

Wonderful profile of Raewyn Connell just published in the SMH www.smh.com.au/national/rae... - her Wheelwright Lecture, “Should we abolish universities?” is on tomorrow night! www.ppesydney.net/2025-wheelwr...

🚨 New article in The Conversation from Callum Jones and myself. We wanted to focus specifically on how the white nationalist rallies were supported and amplified online by far-right actors like Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson theconversation.com/how-australi...

From Darkness to Hypervisibility! A one day symposium on the promotional and creator cultures of social media at UQ in November. CFP and details here: hass.uq.edu.au/event/sessio... @bradyjay.bsky.social @antmandan.bsky.social

✨ Digital Intimacies 11: The Love of Machines is here! Explore how machines reshape intimacy. Submission deadline: 29 Aug 2025. Join the conversation: 🖥️🤖❤️ 👉 digitalintiamcies11.wordpress.com #digint11 #TheLoveOfMachines

Glad to share my new publication in The Sociological Review: "Queer milestones: Intergenerational relations and youth transitions of Chinese queer female students residing overseas" (open access). doi.org/10.1177/0038...

We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.

A new paper co-authored with R. Reschiglian & @bradyjay.bsky.social We explored how Italian LGBTQ+ young adults navigate safety on dating apps in a challenging sociocultural climate. If you’re interested in LGBTQ+ digital cultures, safety, have a look! 👉 rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa03/media...

I am THRILLED to have a new article with Emma Kirby in @societyandspace.bsky.social Focused on Queering the Map, we analyse how people contribute to this queer mapping of life – and become cartographic queers 📍💜 Open access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @emmawatsonkirby.bsky.social

In our new paper 'Qualified Hope' we counter concern for a 'COVID generation' of young people with upended work and study plans. Despite hardship, hope is a psychosocial resource for sense-making and reflects young people’s resourcefulness and adaptability. 👀📃⤵️

‘Hang on, why am I editing my photos?’ Disrupting the virtual gaze through selfie-editing workshops - Julia Coffey, Akane Kanai, Amy S Dobson, Rosalind Gill, Niamh White, 2025 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Necessary reminder that literally every digital media expert in the country have been saying exactly this since this whole sorry ordeal started. None of this is a surprise.

I think a lot about how Aaron Swartz committed suicide while facing a probably long jail sentence for download some of JSTOR, but no one at Meta is going to face any repercussions for using all of Libgen to train its AI.

Murray Watt is a perfect model of the modern Labor politician. President of Young Labor. Chief of staff for a Premier. Boss of the Qld Left. Now he’s the Environment Minister with responsibility for a critical decision. He chose to destroy the environment. www.crikey.com.au/2025/05/29/m...

she did the meme

"She was also Gaza’s youngest influencer, offering practical survival tips for daily life under bombardment, such as advice on how to cook with improvised methods when there was no gas. 'I try to bring a bit of joy to the other children so that they can forget the war. '”

The crazy thing is just how manufactured this Welcome to Country debate is. This wasn't a grassroots campaign during a cost-of-living election: Clive Palmer paid millions for newspaper ads attacking it, Advance has been running ads about it a bunch of neo-Nazis hijacked a high-profile event.

Really interesting and important report out today on deceptive design practices in games and how they impact players from @cprc-research.bsky.social @coolrobbie.bsky.social and @bradyjay.bsky.social - some really great recommendations on making games safer for everyone! cprc.org.au/report/playi...

I am super proud to see this article on underemployment and mental health published in @healthpromint.bsky.social. We did a lot of good work theorising the relationship between time—and skills-related underemployment and mental health using HILDA. #Sociology #underemployment #mentalhealth

New article in @theconversation.com today by myself and @marcuscarter.com on how kids talk about when spending money in Roblox is harmful to them. TLDR; virtual currencies and random reward features should be better regulated! theconversation.com/literally-ju...

This is their plan: Step 1: exploit legitimate pain suffered by young people and families caused by online harm Step 2: implement government-mandated online ID checks to "keep kids away from harmful content" Step 3: define all LGBTQ content as "harmful to kids" Age verification is a trojan horse

New paper from me and Lisa McDaid: "Informal digital peer support for mental health: understanding the digital support practices of LGBTQ+ young people in Australia" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

NEW ARTICLE ALERT! Guiding young people’s social media use in school policies: opportunities, risks, moral panics, and imagined futures: Brady Robards, James Goring & Natalie Ann Hendry www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Please read and know that the rush to make the internet 'safe' through bad legislation and platform censorship policies will make the internet worse for many - especially LGBTQ+ teens and young people who rely on digital media for crucial information and support

Vibes-based methods Something new from me: people are (still) using ‘vibes’ to talk about generative ambiguities and this says something interesting about social life and social research. Here I look across conceptual trends to consider why vibes are the vibe journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Worried about how Meta's new moderation policies will impact online sexual and reproductive health promotion? So am I! This piece is co-authored with my expert colleague & HDR student Joanna Williams: theconversation.com/metas-shift-...

JUST PUBLISHED: It has been the honor of my career to co-author "Queer, HIV+ and Running Out of Medication in Gaza" with Afeef Nessouli @theintercept.com —a story about Palestine, AIDS, genocide, and an extraordinary survivor named E.S. Please read & share. theintercept.com/2025/01/13/i...

🔥 piece on Meta's global responsibility: "Rather than investing in culturally informed moderation with local language and regional expertise, Meta opts for a hands-off strategy, leaving fragile ecosystems to navigate a worsening crisis of truth." @jonathanong.bsky.social @tomdivon.bsky.social

Check out this CFP for a Special Issue in the Journal of Media and Cultural Studies titled "The Future of Nonbinary". Abstracts due Jan 31 🌈🎓 think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

The symbolic violence and regressive effort to erase and marginalise queer, trans, and nb people here is abhorent. This will embolden bigots. BUT queer people do exist, thrive, love/are loved, and we'll continue to find + build spaces to connect, depsite these efforts of Zuckerberg and his MAGA ilk.

Genuinely baffled by the unempirical assertion that Community Notes “works.” Does it? How do Meta know? The best available research is pretty mixed on this point. And as they go all-in on an unproven concept, will Meta commit to publicly releasing data so people can actually study this?

This is always the goal of these pushes. When the ban was pushed in Australia, the government was dismissive of the impact on LGBTQ teens, instead focusing on kids playing soccer or netball instead. 🙃 Also didn't realise Haidt was on the "social contagion" rubbish bandwagon but not surprised.

hi Bluesky sociologists - twice a year I make So Fi Zine, an indie publication for sociological fiction, poetry and visual art. The zine has had a big life since 2017 thanks mostly to twitter and I am hoping this place can now offer it a new reach. Please share if this is your jam 🙏✨ sofizine.com

reading a journal article and noticing all the weird bits that seem defensive or awkwardly wedged in is like that scene in LOTR with Aragorn tracking the hobits, where you're piecing together a battle between author/s and reviewer 2 and realising how they cut their bonds and escaped into the woods

Here's my analysis on the rushing of the social media ban bill. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

This time next week we will be welcoming an incredible line-up of researchers to Monash's Caulfield campus in Naarm/Melbourne and via Zoom, for our tenth (!!) Digital Intimacies conference! Draft program here: drive.google.com/file/d/1o3A5...

The proposed 'social media ban' legislation is being pushed through Australian parliament tomorrow with zero consultation with the young people it impacts most, and zero input from digital, youth and mental health researchers, practitioners and advocates. See this thread for more info:

We are seeking advanced PhD students for a well-paid and nurturing research internship on topics that we can meaningfully mentor. Apps due Dec 6 socialmediacollective.org/2024/11/01/2...

A cool thing about spending a bit of time on bluesky is that you're not just getting fed endless garbage by dodgy, click-baity, Musk-brained recommender algos and bots. There's a sense you have to build from scratch, and that you can be 'caught up' and then dip. Hope it stays like this.