Inaugural Meeting of Digital Data and Society Consortium

ICS members Brett Neilson, Ned Rossiter, Tanya Notley, Liam Magee are members of a new Digital Data and Society Consortium. The Consortium takes a social and cultural perspective on digital data and brings together expertise from a range of disciplines to engage in critical studies on the topic.

Representatives from 15 Australian universities met in Melbourne on Tuesday 4 October for the inaugural meeting of the Consortium.

In addition to the consortium institutions, the meeting brought together social science, humanities, legal studies and creative arts leaders to strengthen academic and industry collaboration and explore opportunities for digital research.

The Consortium is ideally positioned to provide government, industry and other sector organisations with timely, expert advice and innovative thinking and insights on issues relating to Digital Data and Society in Australia.

Researchers in the Consortium bring together world leading expertise in social, cultural, legal, security, privacy and human rights issues relating to digital data and platforms.

"The humanities, creative arts and social sciences are home to some of the most creative minds in digital data research," said Deb Verhoeven, a leading digital humanities researcher at Deakin University and co-chair of the summit. "And yet they are frequently overlooked in STEM driven approaches to innovation and entrepreneurship in Australian government and business."

Co-chair Deborah Lupton, an expert on digital sociology in the News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra, noted, "This Consortium meets the pressing need for researchers who can identify the potential and risks of big data. We look forward to productive meetings and advocacy opportunities to enable us to develop critical perspectives on digital data in Australia."

"This Consortium enables us to develop new interdisciplinary insights into how to engage with the complex challenges and opportunities that digital data presents in contemporary society, business and policy" said Sarah Pink, co-chair and director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University.

Original media release by Digital Data Consortium (opens in a new window).

Posted: 7 October 2016.

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The Institute for Culture and Society is located in Parramatta, “the place where the eel sets down” in Dharug language,
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