Ben Lyall
Biographic Data
| ID | 145473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Lyall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Lyall |
| SIGNATURE | BEN LYALL |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0283-3797 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Qualified Hope: Young People’s Education and Employment Pathways in Times of Disruption
The pandemic and its aftermath have prompted an extended public and academic conversation about young people, with concerns about the increasing uncertainty of youth employment and education trajectories into the near future. Despite the varying policy approaches surrounding the pandemic, a discourse of concern for a “COVID generation”, allegedly characterized by the complete upending of young people’s futures, has been widely popularized. This i…
Public service sentiment in Australian digital communities on Reddit and Whirlpool during the Covid-19 pandemic
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 Fe…
Generative AI and Broken Futures
In this article we consider and demonstrate the use of Generative AI (GenAI) in the design of qualitative futures research materials. We discuss how GenAI, and the speculative futures stories that it can be trained to generate, can be engaged to invoke people's experiences and imaginaries of possible futures. We focus on how GenAI stories can be employed to enable a corrective perspective of anticipatory realism , to disrupt dominant narratives, …
Parliament, petitions and pandemic: Conspiracism in Australia's federal e‐petitions system, 2020−2021
During the COVID‐19 pandemic, some groups and individuals rearticulated state power through conspiracy theories. Despite their fringe status, conspiracy theory beliefs can directly animate citizen's engagements with institutions. Drawing on Barkun's ‘conventional’ and ‘stigmatised’ knowledge types, we analyse the appearance of conspiracism in citizen e‐petitions, and their rebuttal by government ministries. Our data are e‐petitions submitted to t…
Narratives in numbers: Sociotechnical storytelling with self-tracking
This paper explores self-tracking as a social practice with significant relationships to human memory. The history of data and memory is fraught with a concern that specifics of qualia are subjugated to datafication. Yet, historical perspectives linking paper diaries and digital tracking show that rich accounts can be preserved in media. Cognisant of both perspectives, this paper argues that rather than delegating reflection to algorithms, users …
Antibiotics online: Digital pharmacy marketplaces and pastiche medicine
The internet enables access to information and the purchasing of medical products of various quality and legality. Research and regulatory attention have focused on the trafficking of illicit substances, potential physical harms of pharmaceuticals, and possibilities like financial fraud. However, there is far less attention paid to antibiotics and other antimicrobials used to treat infections. With online pharmacies affording greater access, caut…
Build a future champion: Exploring a branded activity-tracking platform for children and parents
This article explores a specific - but highly plastic - activity-tracking platform. Marketed to parents, 'Milo Champions' encourages the monitoring and rewarding of children, based on their activities and behaviours. The platform incorporates a popular Australian food brand - Nestlé's Milo - and is designed for children aged between 6 and 12. Utilising walkthrough and software studies methodologies, the platform is traced by analysing app interfa…
The ambivalent assemblages of sleep optimization
In the last decade, self-tracking technologies have encouraged users to optimize various biosocial practices. Through a wide array of smart digital devices and apps, users are put on notice: are they aware of the screen time they accrue each day, the steps they have (not) walked, or the last time they stood up? In the resulting sphere of mediated self-awareness, sleep is ripe for calculation, analysis, and optimization. Essential yet unconscious,…
Confessional data selfies and intimate digital traces
Data selfies are representations of self through personal quantitative data: from graphs of Tinder dating outcomes, through to the story of brain surgery told through daily step counts. In this article, we explore practices around what we call ‘confessional data selfies’ shared on the reddit forum r/DataIsBeautiful, where more than 14 million subscribers – predominantly straight men – share often complex and intimate quantitative self-representat…
A year in the public life of superbugs: News media on antimicrobial resistance and implications for health communications
Fitness for sale: The value of self-tracking in secondhand exchange
This article uses online advertisements to gain retroactive insights into the use and disuse of wearable self-tracking technologies in everyday life. This is achieved by examining over 2700 listings for devices from manufacturers like Apple, Fitbit, and Garmin. These listings are sourced from an online secondhand marketplace—Gumtree Australia. In this exchange space, sellers often draw on existing retail product descriptions and aim to encourage …
Tool, toy and tutor: Subjective experiences of digital self-tracking
Since the advent of the smartphone, users have become accustomed to alerts, notifications and reminders to interact with their internet-connected devices. But how do people make sense of prompts to exercise, eat or sleep? Digital self-tracking is a phenomenon that has grown substantially in recent years. However, despite some notable exceptions, there is still little sociological research into how users of wearable devices and apps subjectively e…
Tool, toy and tutor: Subjective experiences of digital self-tracking
Since the advent of the smartphone, users have become accustomed to alerts, notifications and reminders to interact with their internet-connected devices. But how do people make sense of prompts to exercise, eat or sleep? Digital self-tracking is a phenomenon that has grown substantially in recent years. However, despite some notable exceptions, there is still little sociological research into how users of wearable devices and apps subjectively e…
Generative AI and Broken Futures
In this article we consider and demonstrate the use of Generative AI (GenAI) in the design of qualitative futures research materials. We discuss how GenAI, and the speculative futures stories that it can be trained to generate, can be engaged to invoke people's experiences and imaginaries of possible futures. We focus on how GenAI stories can be employed to enable a corrective perspective of anticipatory realism , to disrupt dominant narratives, …
Confessional data selfies and intimate digital traces
Data selfies are representations of self through personal quantitative data: from graphs of Tinder dating outcomes, through to the story of brain surgery told through daily step counts. In this article, we explore practices around what we call ‘confessional data selfies’ shared on the reddit forum r/DataIsBeautiful, where more than 14 million subscribers – predominantly straight men – share often complex and intimate quantitative self-representat…
A year in the public life of superbugs: News media on antimicrobial resistance and implications for health communications
Fitness for sale: The value of self-tracking in secondhand exchange
This article uses online advertisements to gain retroactive insights into the use and disuse of wearable self-tracking technologies in everyday life. This is achieved by examining over 2700 listings for devices from manufacturers like Apple, Fitbit, and Garmin. These listings are sourced from an online secondhand marketplace—Gumtree Australia. In this exchange space, sellers often draw on existing retail product descriptions and aim to encourage …
Narratives in numbers: Sociotechnical storytelling with self-tracking
This paper explores self-tracking as a social practice with significant relationships to human memory. The history of data and memory is fraught with a concern that specifics of qualia are subjugated to datafication. Yet, historical perspectives linking paper diaries and digital tracking show that rich accounts can be preserved in media. Cognisant of both perspectives, this paper argues that rather than delegating reflection to algorithms, users …
Build a future champion: Exploring a branded activity-tracking platform for children and parents
This article explores a specific - but highly plastic - activity-tracking platform. Marketed to parents, 'Milo Champions' encourages the monitoring and rewarding of children, based on their activities and behaviours. The platform incorporates a popular Australian food brand - Nestlé's Milo - and is designed for children aged between 6 and 12. Utilising walkthrough and software studies methodologies, the platform is traced by analysing app interfa…
Tool, toy and tutor: Subjective experiences of digital self-tracking
Since the advent of the smartphone, users have become accustomed to alerts, notifications and reminders to interact with their internet-connected devices. But how do people make sense of prompts to exercise, eat or sleep? Digital self-tracking is a phenomenon that has grown substantially in recent years. However, despite some notable exceptions, there is still little sociological research into how users of wearable devices and apps subjectively e…
Fitness for sale: The value of self-tracking in secondhand exchange
This article uses online advertisements to gain retroactive insights into the use and disuse of wearable self-tracking technologies in everyday life. This is achieved by examining over 2700 listings for devices from manufacturers like Apple, Fitbit, and Garmin. These listings are sourced from an online secondhand marketplace—Gumtree Australia. In this exchange space, sellers often draw on existing retail product descriptions and aim to encourage …
Confessional data selfies and intimate digital traces
Data selfies are representations of self through personal quantitative data: from graphs of Tinder dating outcomes, through to the story of brain surgery told through daily step counts. In this article, we explore practices around what we call ‘confessional data selfies’ shared on the reddit forum r/DataIsBeautiful, where more than 14 million subscribers – predominantly straight men – share often complex and intimate quantitative self-representat…
A year in the public life of superbugs: News media on antimicrobial resistance and implications for health communications
The ambivalent assemblages of sleep optimization
In the last decade, self-tracking technologies have encouraged users to optimize various biosocial practices. Through a wide array of smart digital devices and apps, users are put on notice: are they aware of the screen time they accrue each day, the steps they have (not) walked, or the last time they stood up? In the resulting sphere of mediated self-awareness, sleep is ripe for calculation, analysis, and optimization. Essential yet unconscious,…
Antibiotics online: Digital pharmacy marketplaces and pastiche medicine
The internet enables access to information and the purchasing of medical products of various quality and legality. Research and regulatory attention have focused on the trafficking of illicit substances, potential physical harms of pharmaceuticals, and possibilities like financial fraud. However, there is far less attention paid to antibiotics and other antimicrobials used to treat infections. With online pharmacies affording greater access, caut…
Build a future champion: Exploring a branded activity-tracking platform for children and parents
This article explores a specific - but highly plastic - activity-tracking platform. Marketed to parents, 'Milo Champions' encourages the monitoring and rewarding of children, based on their activities and behaviours. The platform incorporates a popular Australian food brand - Nestlé's Milo - and is designed for children aged between 6 and 12. Utilising walkthrough and software studies methodologies, the platform is traced by analysing app interfa…
Parliament, petitions and pandemic: Conspiracism in Australia's federal e‐petitions system, 2020−2021
During the COVID‐19 pandemic, some groups and individuals rearticulated state power through conspiracy theories. Despite their fringe status, conspiracy theory beliefs can directly animate citizen's engagements with institutions. Drawing on Barkun's ‘conventional’ and ‘stigmatised’ knowledge types, we analyse the appearance of conspiracism in citizen e‐petitions, and their rebuttal by government ministries. Our data are e‐petitions submitted to t…
Narratives in numbers: Sociotechnical storytelling with self-tracking
This paper explores self-tracking as a social practice with significant relationships to human memory. The history of data and memory is fraught with a concern that specifics of qualia are subjugated to datafication. Yet, historical perspectives linking paper diaries and digital tracking show that rich accounts can be preserved in media. Cognisant of both perspectives, this paper argues that rather than delegating reflection to algorithms, users …
Qualified Hope: Young People’s Education and Employment Pathways in Times of Disruption
The pandemic and its aftermath have prompted an extended public and academic conversation about young people, with concerns about the increasing uncertainty of youth employment and education trajectories into the near future. Despite the varying policy approaches surrounding the pandemic, a discourse of concern for a “COVID generation”, allegedly characterized by the complete upending of young people’s futures, has been widely popularized. This i…
Public service sentiment in Australian digital communities on Reddit and Whirlpool during the Covid-19 pandemic
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 Fe…
Generative AI and Broken Futures
In this article we consider and demonstrate the use of Generative AI (GenAI) in the design of qualitative futures research materials. We discuss how GenAI, and the speculative futures stories that it can be trained to generate, can be engaged to invoke people's experiences and imaginaries of possible futures. We focus on how GenAI stories can be employed to enable a corrective perspective of anticipatory realism , to disrupt dominant narratives, …
Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Internet privacy (6 works) · Medicine (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction (4 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (4 works) · Public relations (4 works)