Indigenous/digital heterogeneities : an actor-network-theory approach

This thesis analysed the theoretical and ontological issues of previous scholarship concerning information technology and indigenous people. As an alternative, the thesis used the framework of actor-network-theory, especially through historiographical and ethnographic techniques. The thesis revealed an assemblage of indigenous/digital enactments striving for relevance and avoiding obsolescence. It also recognised heterogeneities- including user-ambivalences, oscillations, noise, non-coherences and disruptions - as part of the milieu of the daily digital lives of indigenous people. By taking heterogeneities into account, the thesis ensured that the data “speaks for itself” and that social inquiry is not overtaken by ideology and ontology.

An actor-network research frame for analysing complex socio-technical situations

This paper presents a “research frame” which we have found useful in analyzing complex socio- technical situations. The research frame is based on aspects of actor-network theory: “interressment”, “enrollment”, “points of passage” and the “trial of strength”. Each of these aspects are described in turn, making clear their purpose in the overall research frame. Having established the research frame it is used to analyse two examples. First, the use of speech recognition technology is examined in two different contexts, showing how to apply the frame to compare and contrast current situations. Next, a current medical consultation context is described and the research frame is used to consider how it could change with innovative technology. In both examples, the research frame shows that the use of an artefact or technology must be considered together with the context in which it is used.

Constructing a research network : accounting knowledge in production

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the sociology-of-science type of accounting literature, addressing how accounting knowledge is established, advanced and extended. Design/methodology/approach – The research question is answered through the example of research into linkages between accounting and religion. Adopting an actor-network theory (ANT) approach, the paper follows the actors involved in the construction of accounting as an academic discipline through the controversies in which they engage to develop knowledge. Findings – The paper reveals that accounting knowledge is established, advanced and developed through the ongoing mobilisation of nonhumans (journals) who can enrol other humans and nonhumans. It shows that knowledge advancement, establishment and development is more contingent on network breadth than on research paradigms, which appear as side-effects of positioning vis-a-vis a community. Originality/value – The originality of this paper is twofold. First, ANT is applied to accounting knowledge, whereas the accounting literature applies it to the spread of management accounting ideas, methods and practices. Second, an original methodology for data collection is developed by inviting authors from the network to give a reflexive account of their writings at the time they joined the network. Well diffused in sociology and philosophy, such an approach is, albeit, original in accounting research.

Governing self : SNSs as tools for self-formation

This thesis investigates how modern individuals relate to themselves and others in the service of shaping their ethical conduct and governing themselves. It considers the use of online social networking sites (SNSs) as one particular practice through which people manage their day-to-day conduct and understandings of self. Current research on the use of SNSs has conceptualised them as tools for communication, information-sharing and self-presentation. This thesis suggests a different way of thinking about these sites as tools for self-formation. A Foucaultian genealogical, historical and problematising approach is applied in order to explore processes of subjectivation and historical backgrounds involved in the use of SNSs. This is complimented with an ANT-based understanding of the role that technologies play in shaping human action. Drawing new connections between three factors will show how they contribute to the ways in which people become selves today. These factors are, one, the psychologisation and rationalisation of modern life that lead people to confess and talk about themselves in order to improve and perfect themselves, two, the transparency or publicness of modern life that incites people to reveal themselves constantly to a public audience and, three, the techno-social hybrid character of Western societies. This thesis will show how some older practices of self-formation have been translated into the context of modern technologised societies and how the care of self has been reinvigorated and combined with the notion of baring self in public. This thesis contributes a different way of thinking about self and the internet that does not seek to define what the modern self is and how it is staged online but rather accounts for the multiple, contingent and historically conditioned processes of subjectivation through which individuals relate to themselves and others in the service of governing their daily conduct.

A case of community safety : displacing complex ‘social’ problems in Fortitude Valley

Public dialogue regarding the high concentration of drug use and crime in inner city locations is frequently legitimised through visibility of drug-using populations and a perception of high crime rates. The public space known as the Brunswick Street Mall (Valley mall), located in the inner city Brisbane suburb of Fortitude Valley, has long provided the focal point for discussions regarding the problem of illicit drug use and antisocial behaviour in Brisbane. During the late 1990s a range of stakeholders in Fortitude Valley became mobilised to tackle crime and illicit drugs. In particular they wanted to dismantle popular perceptions of the area as representing the dark and unsafe side of Brisbane. The aim of this campaign was to instil a sense of safety in the area and dislodge Fortitude Valley from its reputation as a =symbolic location of danger‘. This thesis is a case study about an urban site that became contested by the diverse aims of a range of stakeholders who were invested in an urban renewal program and community safety project. This case study makes visible a number of actors that were lured from their existing roles in an indeterminable number of heterogeneous networks in order to create a community safety network. The following analysis of the community safety network emphasises some specific actors: history, ideas, technologies, materialities and displacements. The case study relies on the work of Foucault, Latour, Callon and Law to draw out the rationalities, background contingencies and the attempts to impose order and translate a number of entities into the community safety project in Fortitude Valley. The results of this research show that the community safety project is a case of ontological politics. Specifically the data indicates that both the (reality) problem of safety and the (knowledge) solution to safety were created simultaneously. This thesis explores the idea that while violence continues to occur in the Valley, evidence that community safety got done is located through mapping its displacement and eventual disappearance. As such, this thesis argues that community safety is a =collateral reality‘.

Games for change and transformative learning : an ethnographic case study

This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of how serious games/games for change function as learning frameworks for transformative learning in an educational setting. This study illustrates how the meaning-making processes and learning with and through computer gameplay are highly contingent, and are significantly influenced by the uncertainties of the situational context. The study focuses on SCAPE, a simulation game that addresses urban planning and sustainability. SCAPE is based on the real-world scenario of Kelvin Grove Urban Village, an inner city redevelopment area in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The game is embedded within an educational program, and I thus account for the various gameplay experiences of different school classes participating in this program. The networks emerging from the interactions between students/players, educators, facilitators, the technology, the researcher, as well as the setting, result in unanticipated, controversial, and sometimes unintended gameplay experiences and outcomes. To unpack play, transformative learning and games, this study adopts an ecological approach that considers the magic circle of gameplay in its wider context. Using Actor-Network Theory as the ontological lens for inquiry, the methods for investigation include an extensive literature review, ethnographic participant observation of SCAPE, as well as student and teacher questionnaires, finishing with interviews with the designers and facilitators of SCAPE. Altogether, these methods address my research aim to better understand how the heterogeneous actors engage in the relationships in and around gameplay, and illustrate how their conflicting understandings enable, shape or constrain the (transformative) learning experience. To disentangle these complexities, my focus continuously shifts between the following modes of inquiry into the aims „h To describe and analyse the game as a designed artefact. „h To examine the gameplay experiences of players/students and account for how these experiences are constituted in the relationships of the network. „h To trace the meaning-making processes emerging from the various relations of players/students, facilitators, teachers, designers, technology, researcher, and setting, and consider how the boundaries of the respective ecology are configured and negotiated. „h To draw out the implications for the wider research area of game-based learning by using the simulation game SCAPE as an example for introducing gameplay to educational settings. Accounting in detail for five school classes, these accounts represent, each in its own right, distinct and sometimes controversial forms of engagement in gameplay. The practices and negotiations of all the assembled human and non-human actors highlight the contingent nature of gameplay and learning. In their sum, they offer distinct but by no means exhaustive examples of the various relationships that emerge from the different assemblages of human and non-human actors. This thesis, hence, illustrates that game-based learning in an educational setting is accompanied by considerable unpredictability and uncertainty. As ordinary life spills and leaks into gameplay experiences, group dynamics and the negotiations of technology, I argue that overly deterministic assertions of the game¡¦s intention, as well as a too narrowly defined understanding of the transformative learning outcome, can constrain our inquiries and hinder efforts to further elucidate and understand the evolving uncertainties around game-based learning. Instead, this thesis posits that playing and transformative learning are relational effects of the respective ecology, where all actors are networked in their (partial) enrolment in the process of translation. This study thus attempts to foreground the rich opportunities for exploring how game-based learning is assembled as a network of practices.

Product ecosystems : an emerging methodological approach to study the implementation of disruptive innovations : the case of the CityCar

The car has arguably had more influence on our lifestyle and urban environment than any other consumer product; allowing unprecedented freedom for living, working and recreation where and when we choose. However, problems of pollution, congestion, road trauma, inefficient land use and social inequality are associated with car use. Despite 100 years of design and technology refinements, the aforementioned problems are significant and persistent: many argue that resolving these problems requires a fundamental redesign of the car. Redesigned vehicles have been proposed such as the MIT CityCar and others such as the Renault Twizy, commercialized. None however have successfully brought about significant change and the study of disruptive innovation offers an explanation for this. Disruptive innovation, by definition, disrupts a market. It also disrupts the product ecosystem. The existing product ecosystem has co-evolved to support the conventional car and is not optimized for the new design: which will require a redesigned ecosystem to support it. A literature review identifies a lack of methodology for identifying the components of product ecosystems and the changes required for disruptive innovation implementation. This paper proposes such a methodology based on Design Thinking, Actor Network Theory, Disruptive Innovation and the CityCar scenarios.

Google Glass as a technique of self and the revitalisation of the monad

As the boundaries between public and private, human and technology, digital and social, mediated and natural, online and offline become increasingly blurred in modern techno-social hybrid societies, sociology as a discipline needs to adapt and adopt new ways of accounting for these digital cultures. In this paper I use the social networking site Pinterest to demonstrate how people today are shaped by, and in turn shape, the digital tools they are assembled with. Digital sociology is emerging as a sociological subdiscipline that engages with the convergence of the digital and the social. However, there seems to be a focus on developing new methods for studying digital social life, yet a neglect of concrete explorations of its culture. I argue for the need for critical socio-cultural ‘thick description’ to account for the interrelations between humans and technologies in modern digitally mediated cultures.

Live from the Sydney Opera House: Remote musical interactions for teacher professional development

A significant challenge for the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts is the professional development of primary school teachers in all parts of the country. During 2012, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) conducted a remote music professional development workshop as part of the Sydney Opera House’s Digital Education Program for teachers in New South Wales using the Department of Education’s Connected Classroom system which allows live synchronous interaction between facilitators and participants in multiple sites. In this article, we analyse observational and videotape data collected during this live professional development event to consider the opportunities and challenges presented by this type of professional learning experience in the arts. In particular, consideration is given to the impact of a remote musical interaction on embodied learning and aesthetic experience. We draw on actor-network theory to consider the ways in which a remote professional development experience differs to one in which all participants are present in the same space. Finally, we conclude that although there are significant differences in the type of learning that occurs in a remote music interaction, the online space provides a legitimate and potentially transforming experience for primary school teachers.

Is being #instagay different from an #lgbttakeover? A cross-platform investigation of sexual and gender identity performances

This paper introduces research in progress that examines how queer women perform sexual identity across social media platforms. Applying a lens of queer theory and Actor Network Theory, it discusses women’s embodied self-representations as taking on forms that both conform to and elaborate upon the selfie genre of digital representation. Acknowledging similarities and differences across platforms, specifically between Instagram and Vine, a novel walkthrough method is introduced to identify platform characteristics that shape identity performances. This method provides insights into the role of platforms in identity performances, which can be combined with analysis of user-generated content and interviews to better understand digital media’s constraints and affordances for queer representation.

Taken for granted: Material relations between disability and codes/guidelines

This paper provides a critical examination of the taken for granted nature of the codes/guidelines used towards the creation of designed spaces, their social relations with designers, and their agency in designing for people with disabilities. We conducted case studies at three national museums in Canada where we began by questioning societal representations of disability within and through material culture through the potential of actor-network theory where non-human actors have considerable agency. Specifically, our exploration looks into how representations of disability for designing, are interpreted through mediums such as codes, standards and guidelines. We accomplish this through: deep analyses of the museums’ built environments (outdoors and indoors); interviewed curators, architects and designers involved in the creation of the spaces/displays; completed dialoguing while in motion interviews with people who have disabilities within the spaces; and analyzed available documents relating to the creation of the museums. Through analyses of our rich data set involving the mapping of codes/guidelines in their ‘representation’ of disability and their contributions in ‘fixing’ disability, this paper takes an alternative approach to designing for/with disability by aiming to question societal representations of disability within and through material culture.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer visibility through selfies: Comparing platform mediators across Ruby Rose’s Instagram and Vine presence

This article investigates the relationship between social media platforms and the production and dissemination of selfies in light of its implications for the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Applying an Actor Network Theory lens, two popular visual media apps, Instagram and Vine, are examined through a comparative walkthrough method. This reveals platform elements, or mediators, that can influence the conversational capacity of selfies in terms of the following: range, the variety of discourses addressed within a selfie; reach, circulation within and across publics; and salience, the strength and clarity of discourses communicated through a selfie. These mediators are illustrated through LGBTQ celebrity Ruby Rose’s Instagram selfies and Vine videos. Instagram’s use expectations encourage selfies focused on mainstream discourses of normative beauty and conspicuous consumption with an emphasis on appearance, extending through features constraining selfies’ reach and salience. In contrast, Vine’s broader use expectations enable a variety of discourses to be communicated across publics with an emphasis on creative, first-person sharing. These findings are reflected in Rose’s Instagram selfies, which mute alternative discourses of gender and sexuality through desexualized and aesthetically appealing self-representations, while Vines display her personal side, enabling both LGBTQ and heterosexual, cisgender people to identify with her without minimizing non-normative aspects of her gender and sexuality. These findings demonstrate the relevance of platforms in shaping selfies’ conversational capacity, as mediators can influence whether selfies feature in conversations reinforcing dominant discourses or in counterpublic conversations, contributing to everyday activism that challenges normative gender and sexual discourses.