Definitions of cancel culture are contested; its meanings and effects are understood in often polarised ways as either an empowering tool for social justice or a dangerous demonising trend. Social media are central to cancel culture as the source of "incriminating" material, the channels through which call-outs and cancellations occur, and sites of meta discussion, debate, and commentary on cancellation, with posts often referred to in reports of cancellation events. This article examines how these dynamics operate in media reporting of the purported "cancellation" of US singer-songwriter Billie Eilish in response to the viral sharing of a video of her mouthing a racist slur when she was 14 years old. Combining Annemarie Mol's conceptualisation of "ontological politics" with a narrative analysis approach, we analyse news media articles to identify how cancel culture emerges through an assemblage of encounters between media reporting of story, plot, and character, social media data, "trolling" practices, identity politics, and breaches of contemporary social norms. We term this process a "narrative anatomy of cancel culture" and consider the role and implications of news media in producing "cancel culture" as a contemporary socio-cultural phenomenon.

The algorithmic and individualised nature of advertising on social media - and the intentionally opaque and unobservable design of advertising algorithms - makes them difficult to study. We turn to participatory methods, working with 204 young Australians as 'citizen scientists' to collect 5169 screenshots of 'unhealthy' advertising on social media. Through SMS chat over a one week period, we engaged our participants in 'algorithmic gossip' to theorise why certain ads appeared on their feeds, how the algorithms serving ads worked, and what they thought about them. Some believed ‘the algorithm’ accurately targeted ads based on their interests and behaviors, while others felt these algorithms 'missed the mark'. Participants theorised the impact of search histories, friendship networks, interests, time of day/week/year, location, age, gender, and more in how advertising algorithms worked. Our study revealed complexities in participants' perceptions of ad targeting and how algorithms function. We highlight the need for greater transparency and regulation regarding advertising on social media, especially concerning unhealthy industries. Participants expressed concerns about manipulative and intrusive advertising practices, emphasising the importance of platform responsibility and centering young people's expertise in discussions on advertising regulation.

This paper presents three projects where we have developed participatory digital research methods designed to extend observability of digital advertising on social media platforms and engage with users’ individual experiences with digital advertising. In each approach, participants collected instances of digital advertising from social media apps by taking screenshots or using a screen-capture mobile app. Participants also assumed active roles in the interpretation and analysis of the collected ads through dialogue with research teams in the form of SMS chats, surveys and interviews. We then critically reflect on the politics and ethics of participatory screen capture as a method that emerges as a response to ‘platform opaqueness’. Because of the lack of platform transparency, one of the only reliable ways for researchers to study advertising in these spaces is to work directly with users to capture what they see. In our projects, the practice of screenshotting facilitated scaffolded consent as participants chose the images to send and discuss with researchers. These approaches also position participants as experts on their own experience with and theories of algorithmic, digital platform advertising. We conclude by considering the significance of collected data: collections of ads that illustrate the relationships between users and digital advertising models. The ads targeted to individual users reflect platform ad models’ attempts to respond and pre-empt user engagement, and in the process, construct digital subjectivities. By co-analysing digital advertising with users, we observe the ways social media platform users and algorithmic advertising models continuously enact and react to each other.

Young people's social media use has long been scrutinised, contested, and the subject of sustained moral panics. Schools play an important role in socialising young people into specific forms of social media use, both in and out of the classroom. In this paper we examine 38 secondary school ('high school') policies that seek to govern how social media is used by students in Australia. We examine the themes and issues covered, and the broader discursive construction of social media within these documents. Our analysis reveals both opportunities and risks identified within these documents: from opportunities like social connection, self-expression, citizenship, and 'digital skills' through to an extensive focus on supposed 'risks' including sexting and child pornography, the consumption of alcohol and other drugs, mental health concerns, teacher-student relationships, and broad concerns about privacy and the persistence of digital disclosures. Narratives about young people's imagined futures also emerge in these policy documents, centred on risk and proactive reputation management (for schools and individual students), pointing to a hidden curriculum of surveillance where reputational damage is linked to irreversable harm to professional and personal futures.

The multifaced nature of online dating practices and experiences highlights both its empowering potential and the challenges it poses, including stigma and violence, particularly within the contexts of queer and LGBT+ communities and the subjectivities they contain. This paper aims to explore perceptions and responses to risks and fears in online dating experiences among queer young adults in Italy and Australia, utilising a qualitative approach through focus groups (15 in total, 8 in Italy and 7 in Australia). Initial findings from Italy reveal concerns about outing, appearance-based judgments, and hierarchies of intimacies, with participants employing various strategies for safety. Similar strategies for risk mitigation during offline encounters are observed across both contexts. As the analysis of Australian focus groups remains ongoing, anticipation mounts for further elucidation of the nuanced dynamics at play within this cultural setting. Overall, the study underscores the resilience and resourcefulness of queer individuals in navigating online dating complexities while emphasizing the need for safer and more inclusive digital spaces for these communities.

Moderating harmful and offensive content on social media is challenging for digital platforms that seek to balance regulation and censorship across a diverse user group. It is further complicated by discrepancies between platform policies, user expectations and user experiences. Informed by focus groups with 104 Australians aged 13-74 years, and a walkthrough analysis of three social media platforms, this article examines users' experiences reporting harmful and offensive content on Facebook, Instagram and X. It explores user expectations and the complexities that arise when platforms claim to maintain Community Standards, while prioritising (only some) users' freedom of expression and wellbeing. It argues that existing platform policies and content moderation relating to reporting harmful and offensive content are inconsistent, contradictory and non-transparent, and this is most acutely felt by users from marginalised communities who are most likely to be the targets of harmful and offensive content. We argue that moderation of harmful and offensive content should expand beyond binary retaining or removal. Rather, it could utilise innovative, context and socially-specific prospective outcomes, which could contribute towards user autonomy, freedom of expression, shared community learning of social norms and a reduction in the silencing of marginalised users. (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)104(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)13(sic)74(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)Facebook,Instagram(sic)X(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic) ((sic)(sic)(sic)) (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic). Moderar contenido da & ntilde;ino y ofensivo en redes sociales es un desaf & iacute;o para las plataformas digitales que buscan equilibrar la regulaci & oacute;n y la censura en un grupo diverso de usuarios. Se complica a & uacute;n m & aacute;s por las discrepancias entre las pol & iacute;ticas de la plataforma, las expectativas de los usuarios y las experiencias de los usuarios. Informado por grupos focales con 104 australianos de 13 a 74 a & ntilde;os, y un an & aacute;lisis paso a paso de tres plataformas de redes sociales, este art & iacute;culo examina las experiencias de los usuarios que reportan contenido da & ntilde;ino y ofensivo en Facebook, Instagram y X. Explora las expectativas de los usuarios y las complejidades que surgen cuando las plataformas afirman mantener los Est & aacute;ndares Comunitarios, mientras que priorizan (solo algunos) la libertad de expresi & oacute;n y el bienestar de los usuarios. Argumenta que las pol & iacute;ticas existentes de la plataforma y la moderaci & oacute;n de contenido relacionadas con el reporte de contenido da & ntilde;ino y ofensivo son inconsistentes, contradictorias y no transparentes, y esto es m & aacute;s sentido por los usuarios de comunidades marginadas que son m & aacute;s propensos a ser objeto de contenido da & ntilde;ino y ofensivo. Argumentamos que la moderaci & oacute;n de contenido da & ntilde;ino y ofensivo debe expandirse m & aacute;s all & aacute; de la retenci & oacute;n o eliminaci & oacute;n binaria. M & aacute;s bien, podr & iacute;a utilizar resultados prospectivos innovadores, contextuales y socialmente espec & iacute;ficos, que podr & iacute;an contribuir a la autonom & iacute;a del usuario, la libertad de expresi & oacute;n, el aprendizaje comunitario compartido de las normas sociales y una reducci & oacute;n del silenciamiento de los usuarios marginados.

This paper explores the role of digitally networked local communities on the platforms Reddit and Whirlpool in helping citizens navigate and understand Australian public services during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study incorporates an analysis of six location-based Australian subreddits and nine discussion forums on the platform Whirlpool. An inductive content analysis on a dataset of 14,000 posts and comments collected across February to April of 2020 was conducted resulting in a dataset of 2012 posts that mentioned public services. Following this, a bipartite network analysis combined with a sentiment analysis was employed. The findings highlight how localised online spaces work as peer-to-peer information aggregates that curate and make visible citizen understandings of Australian public services. This research contributes an understanding of how online communities intersect with urban and regional localities and the implications of these spaces for civic engagement and access to support during times of crisis.

Digital advertising’s cultural surround is algorithmically tuned. The popular narrative about digital advertising is that it is hyper-targeted and customized. In this article, we argue that digital platforms’ targeted advertising is more productively understood as tuned advertising, where algorithmic models optimize the resonance between ads and consumers in a continuous rhythmic flow of images, videos, and text. We develop the concept of tuned advertising by drawing on a study conducted with 204 young people from the Australian state of Victoria, where they sent us over 5,169 screenshots of alcohol, gambling, and unhealthy food ads they saw in their digital feeds. We identify five different “vibes” in the collections of ads they sent us that reflect different subjectivities and practices of consumption. We argue that digital platforms create a mode of advertising organized around tuning the vibe between ads, content, and users.

Queering the Map ( queeringthemap.com ) is a novel digital platform: a storymap, an anonymous collaborative record, an archive of queer experiences. To contribute to the platform, visitors make their own mark by clicking on an empty space on the map. As to what visitors contribute, the platform’s About section suggests, simply, ‘If it counts for you, then it counts for Queering the Map’. In this article, we probe this guiding principle. What does count in this context? What matters in the queer archive? Drawing on interviews with 14 site users and an analysis of nearly 2000 stories pinned to Australia on the map, we consider what platform practices reveal about queer collective memory-making, to illuminate the how and why of a queer archive. We see that relatability matters because of the affective, affirming and community-building seeds it can generate; situation matters because it is through participatory practices that recognition, visibility and community place- making are enacted; and, the everyday matters as the archive’s visitors collectively claim and gift their varied personal experiences. Through these themes we explore queer contributions or how site visitors are oriented towards giving something of themselves to the archive. We discuss how archival properties of the platform are key to (queer) participation, and to meaning-making – as distinct, as queer, as a valued record. Queering the Map, we argue, is significant in how space is made for queer representation, carving new contours for archival ‘evidence’ and community histories.

The 'social media scroll back' (Robards & Lincoln, 2017) is a qualitative research method where a researcher and participant together 'scroll back' through the participant's social media platform to co-analyse social media data. This chapter brings together four authors (Moran, Renaud, Annabell and Yang) who reflect on their use of the scroll back method in their projects. The four case studies cover a range of different research topics (identity, race, sexuality, gender, and media industries), groups of participants (migrants, women, queer femmes, and media workers), different social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and WeChat), and a variety of modes of engaging with participants (in-person and via video conferencing). Within these case studies these authors offer a set of examples as to how the scroll back method may be utilized within different research contexts and in doing so, identify some of the opportunities, challenges and limitations involved with using this method.

The hyper-targeted advertising that emerged on digital platforms over the past two decades is now more productively understood as tuned advertising, a dynamic and unfolding process where ads are continuously algorithmically “optimised” to users in real time. Following Rieder and Hofmann (2020), we aim to develop a framework for the “conditions for the practice of observing” algorithmically-tuned digital advertising. We draw on our research across the Australian Ad Observatory and a multi-year research project on digital alcohol advertising. Across these projects we build customised tools to collect ads from platform ad libraries and through data donation from citizen scientists. We argue that the power of digital advertising is increasingly located in its capacity to tune. Platforms’ ad transparency tools draw our attention to ads, but we need to develop the capacity to observe the dynamic socio-technical process of tuning. We conceptualise and present visualisations of “tuned sequences” of ads, as an alternative to “libraries” of ads. We argue that developing the capacity to observe these tuned sequences better articulates the mode of observation required to develop the forms of public understanding and accountability both civil society organisations and researchers are looking for.

In the public imaginary, drinking is often thought of as a behaviour separate from individuals' formal labour practices, but studies increasingly highlight the complex ways alcohol is entwined with work. Building on recent conceptual developments in the sociological fields of youth, health and work, we illustrate how drinking can be productively understood as 'affective labour', and thus itself a form of work that generates valuable embodied states and atmospheres. To do so, we draw on data from six focus groups with men coworkers from three hospitality workplaces and three corporate workplaces in Victoria. For the corporate groups, work-related drinking was tied to an unravelling of certain professional affects and facilitated harmonious and productive workplace relationships, but also introduced risks ranging from embarrassment to sexual harassment. For hospitality workers, drinking was more deeply enmeshed in workplace relationships and, for one group, drinking on-shift was positively framed as creating an affect and atmosphere that appealed to clientele, despite taking a toll on workers' wellbeing. In both settings not drinking risked limiting one's ability to get on colleagues' affective 'level'. Our data deepens current understandings of how drinking cultures may be woven through occupational settings, produce value for organisations and introduce unique potential for exclusion.

Building on calls for more analyses of constructions of gender within extremist groups, this study examines Australian neo-Nazis' construction of hegemonic masculinity on the digital media platform, Telegram. Undertaking a keyword co-occurrence analysis of 3,279 posts and a qualitative analysis of 624 posts from 6 Australian neo-Nazi Telegram Channels, we empirically validate how Australian neo-Nazis use this media platform to idealise a strong, white and combat-ready masculinity. This masculinity is centred on protecting 'vulnerable' white women and girls from non-white men and simultaneously casts alternative masculinities, in particular those associated with the LGBTQIA + community, as weak and deviant.

Alternative news media, which opposes mainstream news media, has been utilised by the far right to proliferate their ideology. This study explores how the scale of discussion, and negative framing, of different groups that are commonly targeted by the far right changes over time. Taking 7089 articles published by a prominent Australian far-right alternative news media outlet over a 7.5-year period, and a corpus of 311 keywords, a keyword frequency analysis and sentiment analysis establish the scale of discussion and negative framing of groups across four time states. Additionally, a computational word frequency analysis in tandem with a qualitative close-reading explores the context of discussions. The findings identify a range of targets of the far right, each centred around different political, racial, religious, gendered and sexual identities. A long-term shift towards extreme right ideologies is found, through increasingly hostile attitudes towards LGBTQIA + people, escalating antisemitism and direct engagement with neo-Nazism.

Notions of masculinity have played a central role in social and cultural research on men’s drinking events. Within this context, masculinity is regularly called on to explain the problematic disparities that mark men’s alcohol consumption, including men’s disproportionate involvement in drinking and a range of alcohol-related harms. More recently, however, researchers have begun to emphasize men’s drinking events as sites of care and support, leading some to suggest that men’s drinking masculinities are evolving in affirmative and health promoting ways. While unsettling the tendency of scholars to problematize men’s drinking masculinities, foregrounding the possibilities of men’s care potentially obscures its complexities and constraints. In this paper, we are concerned to critically re-examine the relationship between masculinity, care, and events of men’s alcohol consumption. Where some authors have positioned men’s care as an innate or uncomplicated good, we draw on a feminist ethics of care approach to explore its complexities, constraints, and exclusions. Through focus group discussions with 101 men, our analysis describes how ideals of masculine autonomy emerged through men’s accounts of drinking events, fundamentally shaping the constitution, practice, and possibilities of care. For the men in our study, the valorization of autonomy fostered ambivalence and tension around care, hindering their capacity as care givers and receivers. In turn, opportunities and accountability for care were overlooked, avoided, or displaced onto women. By highlighting the complexity of men’s care, our account complicates existing scholarship on men’s drinking while also gesturing toward new avenues for public health practice. We conclude by outlining how a more concerted focus on care may be integrated into public health policy, research, and programming and, in the process, contribute to the promotion of more health affirming and ethical modes of masculinity.

Advertising shapes our larger public culture but the typical experience of advertising is now confined to our private and algorithmically-customised social media feeds. In this project, with our partner VicHealth, we used a participatory digital method to work with 204 young Australians aged 18 to 25 to collect 5169 examples of alcohol, gambling and fast food advertising from their social media feeds. We analyse the collections of advertisements each participant sent us. The patterns across participants’ collections illustrate how social media platforms’ advertising models ‘learn’ to reflect and reproduce the identities and subject positions of participants. The collections of ads we see on social media are an important object of study because they reveal not just the symbolic content and targeting patterns of particular ads, but also because they illustrate how advertising on social media algorithmically-curates an immersive cultural experience. Our study demonstrates how social media continues the larger social role advertising plays in the construction and maintenance of consumer subjectivities. The algorithmic flow of advertising on social media is now the basis of our everyday engagement with advertising. We need to conceptualise advertising on social media not only using concepts of ‘targeting’ that imply the precise identification of our characteristics, but instead as a complex feedback loop between the refinement of ad content and themes, the data-driven optimization of audiences, and our reflexive and fluid identities, interests and aesthetic sensibilities.

The policy orientations of advanced neoliberal democracies situate young people as rational actors who are responsible for their own career outcomes. While career scholars have been critical of how this routinely ignores the unequal effects of structural constraints on personal agency, they have long suggested that young people should have access to the best available ‘roadmaps’ and advice to navigate the uncertainties baked into the contemporary economic landscape. Complementing the significant attention that is given to the (potentially emancipatory) experience of formal careers guidance, we present findings from a multi-method study. We explore young Australians’ (aged 15–24) navigation of careers information through a nationally representative survey (n = 1103), focus groups with 90 participants and an analysis of 15,227 social media comments. We suggest that the variety of formal and informal sources pursued and accessed by young people forms a relational ‘ecology’. This relationality is twofold. First, information is often sequential, and engagements with one source can inform the experience or pursuit of another. Second, navigation of the ecology is marked by a high level of intersubjectivity through interpersonal support networks including peers, family and formal service provision. These insights trouble a widespread, but perhaps simplistic, reading of young people having largely internalised a neoliberal sensibility of ‘entrepreneurial selfhood’ in their active pursuit of a range of career advice. Throughout our analysis, we attend to the ways that engagement in the career information ecology is shaped by social inequalities, further underscoring challenges facing careers guidance and social justice goals.

Accurate data collection from LGBTIQ+ communities is crucial for public health research and the provision of equitable services. Emergent fluid, multiple, trans and non-binary gender identities complicate data collection in ways that make an excellent case-study for rethinking the categorization of such data. In this article, we explore some of the obstacles to collecting data from trans, gender-diverse and non-binary (TGD) communities, and the difficulties in synthesizing meaning about fluid or multiple identity categories. We review a selection of international surveys from the last 10 years and then present a case-study of data collection in an Australian mixed-methods study of LGBTQ+ young people's uses of social media. In doing so we draw upon trans and gender diverse people's lived experiences to reinterpret our survey dataset in which responses that 'refused categorisation' were initially removed. We argue that theorizing the 'social life of data' - that is analysing the disciplinary orientation and purpose of research, while also acknowledging the moment and site of data collection, the methods used, and the mutable meanings in play - better accounts for the lived experiences of gender beyond binary and static identities.

Analysing survey data from 1,304 LGBTQ + young people in Australia collected in 2016, this paper considers key distinctions between the experiences of bisexual and pansexual participants, and lesbian and gay participants in relation to social media use and aspects of connection, harassment and mental health. Presenting quantitative data, illustrated by qualitative extracts, we found broad similarities in motivations for using social media and how participants connected to peers and communities. There were some statistically significant differences, however, in respondents' motivations for using social media and who they connected with on these platforms. Importantly, bisexual and pansexual participants reported more negative experiences of harassment and exclusion across all major social media platforms when compared to their lesbian and gay peers. Bisexual and pansexual respondents also reported poorer mental health experiences. These findings speak to the different impacts of discrimination and oppression that young people experience in everyday life. There is a need for focused attention on bisexual and pansexual young people in academic, policy and youth-work domains. Young people will benefit from more substantial school-based education on LGBTQ + identities - beyond the experiences of gay and lesbian people - to 'usualise' varieties of difference in gender and sexual identity.