Kate writes about the results of forthcoming research with DMRC colleagues investigating how chatbot systems respond to conspiratorial questions and prompts and what safety guardrails - if any - are in place to keep users safe.

Thank you to @snurb.info, @dezuanni.bsky.social, @pwik.bsky.social, @jeanburgess.bsky.social and Distinguished Emeritus Professor Stuart Cunningham for their time and insights.

Expected outcomes include the refinement of deliberative thinking and practices to strengthen democratic resilience in Australia. We look forward to seeing the results from Professor Selen Ercan, Professor John Dryzek, Dr Jordan McSwiney, Dr Ehsan Dehghan, Dr Sofya Glazunova and Dr Kurt Sengul!

Adapting a mixed-method strategy, the project will analyse communications on foreign conflicts across multiple sites, including digital platforms, and explore the roles of actors from political leaders and journalists to everyday citizens in fostering or hindering deliberation across difference.

It will extend the application of deliberative democracy to address de-territorialized conflicts in multicultural societies. It will examine public sphere responses in Australia to two major conflicts—the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars—aiming to test and enhance the deliberative approach.

Well done to @carlylubicz.bsky.social, @atavist13.bsky.social, @snurb.info, @phzerosounds.bsky.social and @riedlinm.bsky.social for putting this Explainer together!

📚 This explainer is the latest resource in our Digital Media Demystified series, where researchers at QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre tackle specific questions, ideas, issues, and technologies related to digital media with the aim to inform and empower users of contemporary online environments.

What harm can problematic info cause? And how can you equip yourself and others to evaluate content and claims before you share them? ➡️ We also discuss what governments, platforms, civil society, educators, and communities can do to strengthen our information environment.

The terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ have become household names. But what’s the difference? What are other types of problematic information? Why and how does it spread?

This study considers how Travis Kelce serves as just one of many flashpoints in the Taylor Swift fandom, and includes an analysis of user practices across 8 Taylor Swift and 3 pop culture subreddits. Check out the presentation if you have an interest in fan or anti-fan studies!

This theoretical concept is illustrated through the analysis of 13,500 X posts relating to the Maui wildfires in 2023 which demonstrate how a conspiracy theory can grow and connect to existing beliefs. Thank you Ihsan Yilmaz and Shahram Akbarzadeh for your editorial guidance.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a theoretical concept that explains the productive and participatory labour of conspiracy theorists who iteratively add to a shared conspiratorial belief system.

This presentation includes reflections on how one might study election discussions across a wide range of social media platforms in an increasingly fragmented online platform environment, where data access is difficult. We included data from Meta, Reddit, YouTube, and news media outlets.

This study will be of interest to those who utilise frame analysis, or are eager to see if LLMs can bridge current methodological gaps in coding. The findings indicate that LLMs have potential for use in inductive frame analysis but further validation and discussion is needed.

The team uses a case study of Australian news coverage of climate activism to demonstrate if automating frame analysis is possible, and compares human vs LLM coders.