Please click on the links above to view the 2018 AGM Documentation.

The Ian Woolf Auditorium is located in Building L dark blue (De Young Centre for Performing Arts)

SPECIAL ADDRESS TO IB SCHOOLS AUSTRALASIA MEMBER SCHOOLS (11.00am – 12:30pm)

Supported by Reshaping Schools

The official close of the AGM will be followed by a special address to IB Schools Australasia Member Schools supported by Reshaping Schools.  All member schools are invited to attend this complimentary session.

During this presentation Professor Andrejevich will address the role played by digital media in schools and the type of education that we need to work toward for the 21st Century (questions of citizenship, media literacy around questions of big data, Artificial Intelligence and more).

Democracy and the Automated Public Sphere  

Professor Mark Andrejevic

This talk explores the societal impact of the transition from the mass media era of print and broadcast journalism to the digital age of automated media, which is dominated by commercial platforms like Facebook and Twitter that play an increasingly important role in shaping our news and information worlds. It explores the social and cultural impact of the new forms of algorithm-driven curation that decide what information we see, and how this model differs from the forms of human curation that it supersedes. The talk further considers the sources of political polarization that characterize this new media environment and proposes measures for tempering the detrimental impact of automated curation on democratic deliberation.

Professor Mark Andrejevic (Professor, School of Media, Film, and Journalism, Monash University) contributes expertise in the social and cultural implications of data mining, and online monitoring. He writes about monitoring and data mining from a socio-cultural perspective, and is the author of three monographs and more than 60 academic articles and book chapters. He was the Chief Investigator for an ARC QEII Fellowship investigating public attitudes toward the collection of personal information online ($390,000; 2010-2014).

Andrejevic has experience conducting both quantitative and qualitative research and is experienced in the focus group and interview methodologies. His work on the personal information project, for example, generated a book, 11 articles and book chapters, and a report on Australian attitudes toward online privacy that was launched by the Federal Privacy Commissioner.

Research interests:

Andrejevic is involved in the Monash Focus Programme on Culture, Media and Economy, which involves researchers based mostly in the School of Media, Film & Journalism. Organised around four themes – mediatisation and social change; media publics; cultural economy; and cultures, identities, subjectivities – Culture, Media, Economy will have a strong policy and industry focus alongside its commitment to high level academic research.

His research interests encompass digital media, surveillance and data mining in the digital era.  He is particularly interested in social forms of sorting and automated decision making associated with the online economy.  He believes regulations for controlling commercial and state access to and use of personal information is becoming an increasingly important topic, and that the academy has an important role to play in finding new ways to take advantage of new technologies whilst preserving a commitment to democratic values and social justice.