Ariadne Vromen
Biographic Data
| ID | 297186 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ariadne Vromen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ariadne |
| FAMILY NAME | Vromen |
| SIGNATURE | VROMEN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2398-632X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 334 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Storytelling in the Australian 2023 voice referendum campaign
Personal stories are a strategic tool often used by advocacy movements to pursue claims for equality. In the 2023 Voice referendum campaign in Australia, personal storytelling was used by the conservative No campaign to argue against the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Through narrative analysis of the Yes and No campaigns, we highlight two storytelling dynamics. First, the autobiographical hero narrat…
Policy interventions for the future of work: Do Australians want government compensation, guidance, or investment to manage technological change
This paper examines how Australian attitudes toward the future of work shape support for policy interventions, drawing on nationally representative survey data (n = 1,035). We focus on three dimensions of technological change: displacement, deskilling, and de-intensification, and analyse how these expectations map onto preferences for investment, compensation, and steering policies. Our findings show that those concerned about displacement suppor…
Caring Futures: Australian Attitudes About the Desirability of Care Work
Amid increasing public and policy attention on the care and support sector, which millions of Australians rely upon for essential services, care workers continue to advocate for better pay and fairer conditions. This article draws on the concepts of recognition, value and social distribution from feminist ethics of care scholarship to explore how public perceptions of pay, job security, and working conditions shape attitudes towards care work. It…
Everything now, all the time’: The connectivity paradox and gender equality in the legal profession
Digital workplace technologies have created a connectivity paradox in professional workplace settings. These technologies allow professionals greater spatial‐temporal control over their work, but also elevate expectations regarding responsiveness outside of working hours. This study examines how lawyers in Australia understand and navigate the connectivity paradox, given the rapid expansion of digital technologies during and after the Covid‐19 pa…
The Role of Novel Citizenship Norms in Signing and Sharing Online Petitions
Ideas about what makes a ‘good citizen’ continue to evolve alongside the digitalisation of political participation. We examine these interrelated trends through an in-depth analysis of the normative basis for contemporary online petitioning. This article uses original survey data in Australia and Germany to confirm the emergence of distinctive ‘contribution’ citizenship norms which emphasise the importance of sharing content through networked com…
The effects of narratives and popularity cues on signing online petitions in two advanced democracies
Online petitions have become a widespread vehicle for contemporary political participation. While research tends to focus on individual factors for potential petitioners that influence signing, less attention has been paid to the influence of the actual text of petitions. This paper uses data from an original web-based survey experiment in Australia and Germany to test the influence of content factors: narratives (i.e., stories based on individua…
Between Frustration and Invigoration: Women Talking about Digital Technology at Work
This study addresses the dearth of gender analysis within debates about technological innovation and workplace change. Qualitative analysis of 12 focus groups conducted with women in 'frontline' and 'professional' roles discussing their use and engagement with digital technologies at work reveals contrasting narratives of 'digital frustration' and 'digital invigoration'. To explain these distinct narratives, we synthesise insights from science an…
Crowdsourced Politics: The Rise of Online Petitions & Micro-Donations
Undoing the disconnect: New pathways to engaging young people in politics
Crowdsourced Politics: The Rise of Online Petitions and Micro-Donations
Sceptics or supporters? Consumers’ views of work in the gig economy
Labour‐management practices and workers’ experiences in the gig economy are topics of major interest for researchers, regulators and the general public. Platform companies project a vision of gig workers as autonomous freelancers, but pervasive features of their own labour practices, along with workers’ traits, create new vulnerabilities and risks. Efforts to improve gig workers’ conditions to date have made in‐roads without achieving a general s…
Mobilizing personal narratives: The rise of digital “story banking” in U.S. grassroots advocacy
This article interrogates digital “story banking,” a storytelling practice that has become increasingly popular among U.S. grassroots advocacy organizations. Through the examination of LinkedIn data and in-depth interviews with story banking professionals, this technique emerges as the centerpiece of the growing institutionalization, professionalization, and datafication of storytelling in progressive advocacy. Following the 2016 election, politi…
Young women and men: Imagined futures of work and family formation in Australia
In the debates about the future of work there is a lack of analysis on how young women and men are approaching their future work and family lives. In this article we use data collected in the Australian Women's Working Future (AWWF) Project 2017 to analyse what young workers imagine will be important to their future success in work and family. We find that formal workplace supports for care, such as paid parental leave and childcare, and workplac…
Engagement and interaction with online news: A case study of housing affordability discussions on Facebook
Concerns about housing affordability in Australian capital cities have captured the public and political imagination. How, then, do ordinary citizens discuss the causes of and solutions to the increasing unaffordability of housing? This article examines evidence that branded Facebook channels provide a space for citizens to engage in everyday engagement and interaction on housing issues. We argue that studying branded, public Facebook pages, desp…
Online petitioning and politics: The development ofChange.orgin Australia
Online petitions are an important feature of contemporary political engagement in advanced democracies. In this paper we report on a unique data set – covering a five year period and over 17,000 petitions – documenting the development of the Change.org platform in Australia. Australia presents an interesting case as, until very recently, there was no national government hosted online petition site. Our analysis results in three findings that adva…
Introduction: International Approaches to Online Political Participation and Connective Action
This symposium highlights how scholars are engaging with cutting edge research questions on the transformative effects of online political participation and new forms of online collective action. F
Hybrid social and news media protest events: From #MarchinMarch to #BusttheBudget in Australia
Public protest events are now both social media and news media events. They are deeply entangled, with news media actors – such as journalists or news organisations – directly participating in the protest by tweeting about the event using the protest hashtag; and social media actors sharing news items published online by professional news agencies. Protesters have always deployed tactics to engage the media and use news media agencies’ resources …
Politicians, celebrities and social media: A case of informalisation
With electoral politics no longer organised by social class, politicians increasingly seek to relate to a broad spectrum of citizens and part of their relatability is conjured through more casual, informal performances aimed at cultivating authenticity. The various platforms of social media promote forms of authentic communication by blurring the public/private divide, creating ‘spontaneous’ and instant access to ‘real life’. This article seeks t…
Performing for the young networked citizen? Celebrity politics, social networking and the political engagement of young people
The use of social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, by politicians and entertainers to engage young citizens can be seen as a further example of the emergence of celebrity politics. While regarded by some commentators as further evidence of the trivialization of political life, this article adopts the alternative approach of those scholars who foreground the potential for popular culture and media entertainment to be more socially in…
Everyday Making through Facebook Engagement: Young Citizens’ Political Interactions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States
The emergence of personalised, interactive forms of social media has led to questions about the use of these platforms for engagement in politics. Existing research focuses on whether political actors successfully engage citizens, and how social media platforms mobilise young people into offline participation. In this article, we present original survey data on how many young people use social media to do politics: share information, express them…
The study of Australian politics in the 21st century: A comment on Melleuish
The academic reality is that there are few political scientists working on the study of Australian politics who are interested in considering its longue duree, and this is reflected in the AJPS. Mo
Beyond lifestyle politics in a time of crisis: Comparing young peoples’ issue agendas and views on inequality
Contemporary research on young people and politics portrays their political engagement as: individualised not collectivist; issue-driven not ideology-driven and postmaterialist instead of materialist. This shift towards ‘lifestyle politics’ is assumed to be universal among young people, rather than shaped by traditional social cleavages and structures. This paper investigates these assumptions and asks whether young people's experience of nationa…
Campaign Entrepreneurs in Online Collective Action: GetUp! in Australia
In recent years, multi-issue, online campaigning organisations have emerged and mobilised citizens on, mostly, progressive issues. For example, MoveOn in the United States is a renowned leader in the field, and similar organisations now exist in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and at the transnational level. In Australia, GetUp!, with over 600,000 members, has become part of mainstream political debate, while also bringing a disruptive social movemen…
Campus Politics, Student Societies and Social Media
The university campus has often been seen as an important site for the politicization of young people. Recent explanations for this have focused attention upon the role of the student union as a means to enable a 'critical mass' of previously isolated individuals to produce social networks of common interest. What is missing from these accounts, however, and what this article seeks to address, is how these factors actually facilitate the developm…
The great equalizer? Patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies
Recent developments suggest a strong relationship between social media use and political engagement and raise questions about the potential for social media to help stem or even reverse patterns of political inequality that have troubled scholars for years. In this paper, we articulate a model of social media and political engagement among young people, and test it using data from representative samples of young people in Australia, the USA, and …
People Try to Put Us Down: Participatory Citizenship of 'Generation X
This article evaluates the participatory citizenship of Australian young people. Its argument is that in the utilisation of empirical research 'contemporary citizenship needs to recognise what people actually do' (R. Prokhovnik, Feminist Review 60(2) 1998: 95). For this research, an alternative approach to the exploration of participation has been developed which questions the traditional, institutionalised measures of political participation and…
Young people, social media and connective action: From organisational maintenance to everyday political talk
Social media is pervasive in the lives of young people, and this paper critically analyses how politically engaged young people integrate social media use into their existing organisations and political communications. This qualitative research project studied how young people from a broad range of existing political and civic groups use social media for sharing information, mobilisation and, increasingly, as a means to redefine political action …
Everyday Making through Facebook Engagement: Young Citizens’ Political Interactions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States
The emergence of personalised, interactive forms of social media has led to questions about the use of these platforms for engagement in politics. Existing research focuses on whether political actors successfully engage citizens, and how social media platforms mobilise young people into offline participation. In this article, we present original survey data on how many young people use social media to do politics: share information, express them…
Everyday youth participation? Contrasting views from Australian policymakers and young people
Youth participation, as a form of consultation within policymaking processes in Australia, has been largely critiqued for its reliance on formal participation mechanisms that are rarely inclusive or representative of a range of young people’s experiences. This article shows that policymakers who are critical of formal methods of youth participation can identify contemporary effective practice and believe initiatives ought to be youth-led, purpose…
Politicians, celebrities and social media: A case of informalisation
With electoral politics no longer organised by social class, politicians increasingly seek to relate to a broad spectrum of citizens and part of their relatability is conjured through more casual, informal performances aimed at cultivating authenticity. The various platforms of social media promote forms of authentic communication by blurring the public/private divide, creating ‘spontaneous’ and instant access to ‘real life’. This article seeks t…
Building virtual spaces: Young people, participation and the Internet
The Internet is often portrayed as a democratising force that facilitates new participatory practices. It is often assumed that young people have been the big 'winners', even the leaders, in the advent of participation via the Internet. It is argued here that an in-depth analysis of existing participatory spaces is able to expand our understanding of how Australian young people are being mobilised into new Internet-based political practices. The …
A New Era for Think Tanks in Public Policy? International Trends, Australian Realities
Although the powerful have always sought advice from the knowledgeable, it took the appeal of the policy sciences movement of the late 1940s and onward to build and consolidate a veritable industry of policy analysis and advice. 1 One of the hallmarks of this development was the advent of institutes that were exclusively devoted to produce research‐based policy arguments and to inject these into the policy‐making process. These organisations were…
Sceptics or supporters? Consumers’ views of work in the gig economy
Labour‐management practices and workers’ experiences in the gig economy are topics of major interest for researchers, regulators and the general public. Platform companies project a vision of gig workers as autonomous freelancers, but pervasive features of their own labour practices, along with workers’ traits, create new vulnerabilities and risks. Efforts to improve gig workers’ conditions to date have made in‐roads without achieving a general s…
Paul Keating is the prime minister, but who delivers the mail? A study of political knowledge amongst young people
Very little research in Australia has attempted to evaluate the level of political knowledge of young people. Explanations as to why young people have a low interest in, and little knowledge of, politics have been even rarer. Assessing the political knowledge of Australian young people provides a step toward understanding their responses to the political system. The present study examines the political knowledge of final year school students and …
Online petitioning and politics: The development ofChange.orgin Australia
Online petitions are an important feature of contemporary political engagement in advanced democracies. In this paper we report on a unique data set – covering a five year period and over 17,000 petitions – documenting the development of the Change.org platform in Australia. Australia presents an interesting case as, until very recently, there was no national government hosted online petition site. Our analysis results in three findings that adva…
Performing for the young networked citizen? Celebrity politics, social networking and the political engagement of young people
The use of social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, by politicians and entertainers to engage young citizens can be seen as a further example of the emergence of celebrity politics. While regarded by some commentators as further evidence of the trivialization of political life, this article adopts the alternative approach of those scholars who foreground the potential for popular culture and media entertainment to be more socially in…
Campus Politics, Student Societies and Social Media
The university campus has often been seen as an important site for the politicization of young people. Recent explanations for this have focused attention upon the role of the student union as a means to enable a 'critical mass' of previously isolated individuals to produce social networks of common interest. What is missing from these accounts, however, and what this article seeks to address, is how these factors actually facilitate the developm…
Young women and men: Imagined futures of work and family formation in Australia
In the debates about the future of work there is a lack of analysis on how young women and men are approaching their future work and family lives. In this article we use data collected in the Australian Women's Working Future (AWWF) Project 2017 to analyse what young workers imagine will be important to their future success in work and family. We find that formal workplace supports for care, such as paid parental leave and childcare, and workplac…
Beyond lifestyle politics in a time of crisis: Comparing young peoples’ issue agendas and views on inequality
Contemporary research on young people and politics portrays their political engagement as: individualised not collectivist; issue-driven not ideology-driven and postmaterialist instead of materialist. This shift towards ‘lifestyle politics’ is assumed to be universal among young people, rather than shaped by traditional social cleavages and structures. This paper investigates these assumptions and asks whether young people's experience of nationa…
Campaign Entrepreneurs in Online Collective Action: GetUp! in Australia
In recent years, multi-issue, online campaigning organisations have emerged and mobilised citizens on, mostly, progressive issues. For example, MoveOn in the United States is a renowned leader in the field, and similar organisations now exist in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and at the transnational level. In Australia, GetUp!, with over 600,000 members, has become part of mainstream political debate, while also bringing a disruptive social movemen…
Protesters, Parliamentarians, Policymakers: The Experiences of Australian Green MPs
This article details the distinctive style and political commitments that Green members of parliament (MPs) bring to representative democracy in Australia. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 sitting federal and state Green MPs, it examines the extent to which the political culture, grassroots organisation and values of this left-libertarian party influence the parliamentary role orientations and legislative behaviour of its MPs, and how this fi…
Traversing time and gender: Australian young people's participation
This paper details the participatory behaviour of Australian young people through an examination of the relationship between gender, awareness of time constraints and participation. It engages with existing feminist critiques of how participation is conceptualized and recent research that looks at the effects of both structure and agency in the lives of young people. The paper is based on an original survey of 18-year-old 34-year-old Australians …
Recent research Politicizing community: The Private Sphere and Political Participation
This article provides an overview of patterns of participation in community-based activism. In examining political participants' multiple roles and responsibilities as citizens it is argued that individuals are simultaneously constituted as activist, worker, and parent. It is assumed that the practice of these roles is, to some extent, shaped by gender. By looking qualitatively at individual histories we can see the everyday practice of citizensh…
The Role of Novel Citizenship Norms in Signing and Sharing Online Petitions
Ideas about what makes a ‘good citizen’ continue to evolve alongside the digitalisation of political participation. We examine these interrelated trends through an in-depth analysis of the normative basis for contemporary online petitioning. This article uses original survey data in Australia and Germany to confirm the emergence of distinctive ‘contribution’ citizenship norms which emphasise the importance of sharing content through networked com…
Between Frustration and Invigoration: Women Talking about Digital Technology at Work
This study addresses the dearth of gender analysis within debates about technological innovation and workplace change. Qualitative analysis of 12 focus groups conducted with women in 'frontline' and 'professional' roles discussing their use and engagement with digital technologies at work reveals contrasting narratives of 'digital frustration' and 'digital invigoration'. To explain these distinct narratives, we synthesise insights from science an…
Community–Based Activism and Change: The Cases of Sydney and Toronto
How do community–based political activists justify the ongoing effectiveness of their chosen location for political activity? How do they describe the shifts in relationships between community–development activism and the state? This article presents findings from case studies undertaken with two community–development organizations based in Sydney, Australia, and Toronto, Canada. The focus of the analysis is 40 in–depth interviews conducted with …
Storytelling in the Australian 2023 voice referendum campaign
Personal stories are a strategic tool often used by advocacy movements to pursue claims for equality. In the 2023 Voice referendum campaign in Australia, personal storytelling was used by the conservative No campaign to argue against the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Through narrative analysis of the Yes and No campaigns, we highlight two storytelling dynamics. First, the autobiographical hero narrat…
Everything now, all the time’: The connectivity paradox and gender equality in the legal profession
Digital workplace technologies have created a connectivity paradox in professional workplace settings. These technologies allow professionals greater spatial‐temporal control over their work, but also elevate expectations regarding responsiveness outside of working hours. This study examines how lawyers in Australia understand and navigate the connectivity paradox, given the rapid expansion of digital technologies during and after the Covid‐19 pa…
Mobilizing personal narratives: The rise of digital “story banking” in U.S. grassroots advocacy
This article interrogates digital “story banking,” a storytelling practice that has become increasingly popular among U.S. grassroots advocacy organizations. Through the examination of LinkedIn data and in-depth interviews with story banking professionals, this technique emerges as the centerpiece of the growing institutionalization, professionalization, and datafication of storytelling in progressive advocacy. Following the 2016 election, politi…
Engagement and interaction with online news: A case study of housing affordability discussions on Facebook
Concerns about housing affordability in Australian capital cities have captured the public and political imagination. How, then, do ordinary citizens discuss the causes of and solutions to the increasing unaffordability of housing? This article examines evidence that branded Facebook channels provide a space for citizens to engage in everyday engagement and interaction on housing issues. We argue that studying branded, public Facebook pages, desp…
Paul Keating is the prime minister, but who delivers the mail? A study of political knowledge amongst young people
Very little research in Australia has attempted to evaluate the level of political knowledge of young people. Explanations as to why young people have a low interest in, and little knowledge of, politics have been even rarer. Assessing the political knowledge of Australian young people provides a step toward understanding their responses to the political system. The present study examines the political knowledge of final year school students and …
Community–Based Activism and Change: The Cases of Sydney and Toronto
How do community–based political activists justify the ongoing effectiveness of their chosen location for political activity? How do they describe the shifts in relationships between community–development activism and the state? This article presents findings from case studies undertaken with two community–development organizations based in Sydney, Australia, and Toronto, Canada. The focus of the analysis is 40 in–depth interviews conducted with …
Traversing time and gender: Australian young people's participation
This paper details the participatory behaviour of Australian young people through an examination of the relationship between gender, awareness of time constraints and participation. It engages with existing feminist critiques of how participation is conceptualized and recent research that looks at the effects of both structure and agency in the lives of young people. The paper is based on an original survey of 18-year-old 34-year-old Australians …
People Try to Put Us Down: Participatory Citizenship of 'Generation X
This article evaluates the participatory citizenship of Australian young people. Its argument is that in the utilisation of empirical research 'contemporary citizenship needs to recognise what people actually do' (R. Prokhovnik, Feminist Review 60(2) 1998: 95). For this research, an alternative approach to the exploration of participation has been developed which questions the traditional, institutionalised measures of political participation and…
Recent research Politicizing community: The Private Sphere and Political Participation
This article provides an overview of patterns of participation in community-based activism. In examining political participants' multiple roles and responsibilities as citizens it is argued that individuals are simultaneously constituted as activist, worker, and parent. It is assumed that the practice of these roles is, to some extent, shaped by gender. By looking qualitatively at individual histories we can see the everyday practice of citizensh…
The Australian Greens: Party Organisation and Political Processes
The Greens challenge the Australian two-party system by promoting an alternative political agenda and by facilitating democratic processes. Their recent successes in federal and state elections suggest that the party itself deserves closer scrutiny. This paper shows how the Greens are organisationally different from other parties currently active in Australian politics due to both their internal processes and their parliamentary practices. Recent…
Australian young people's participatory practices and internet use
This paper examines the relationship between Internet use and political participation among Australian young people. Based on original survey data it demonstrates that there clearly exists a ‘digital divide’ amongst 18–34-year-old Australians, which is delineated on demographic characteristics of geography, education level, income level and occupational classification. While the Internet has far from replaced the traditional information sources o…
A New Era for Think Tanks in Public Policy? International Trends, Australian Realities
Although the powerful have always sought advice from the knowledgeable, it took the appeal of the policy sciences movement of the late 1940s and onward to build and consolidate a veritable industry of policy analysis and advice. 1 One of the hallmarks of this development was the advent of institutes that were exclusively devoted to produce research‐based policy arguments and to inject these into the policy‐making process. These organisations were…
Building virtual spaces: Young people, participation and the Internet
The Internet is often portrayed as a democratising force that facilitates new participatory practices. It is often assumed that young people have been the big 'winners', even the leaders, in the advent of participation via the Internet. It is argued here that an in-depth analysis of existing participatory spaces is able to expand our understanding of how Australian young people are being mobilised into new Internet-based political practices. The …
Protesters, Parliamentarians, Policymakers: The Experiences of Australian Green MPs
This article details the distinctive style and political commitments that Green members of parliament (MPs) bring to representative democracy in Australia. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 sitting federal and state Green MPs, it examines the extent to which the political culture, grassroots organisation and values of this left-libertarian party influence the parliamentary role orientations and legislative behaviour of its MPs, and how this fi…
Everyday youth participation? Contrasting views from Australian policymakers and young people
Youth participation, as a form of consultation within policymaking processes in Australia, has been largely critiqued for its reliance on formal participation mechanisms that are rarely inclusive or representative of a range of young people’s experiences. This article shows that policymakers who are critical of formal methods of youth participation can identify contemporary effective practice and believe initiatives ought to be youth-led, purpose…
Suburban Affairs: Groups and Political Communities Across Sydney
According to recent international research, political mobilisation at the local level no longer reflects socioeconomic divisions in society, but is instead based on a post-material oriented ‘politics of choice’. This proposition is applied to group politics within six Sydney communities. We broaden the examination of political activity undertaken by local groups to include lobbying, advocacy and community organising. This leads us to find that th…
Constructing Australian Youth Online: Empowered but dutiful citizens
This paper investigates whether youth-oriented websites can create new spaces for civic and political engagement. Through engagement with two areas of recent debate: the emergence of new forms of political participation through the internet and work on civic youth web spheres, it suggests that the national discursive context matters in understanding the availability of online civic opportunities. General findings show that young people are no lon…
Keywords in Australian Politics
The great equalizer? Patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies
Recent developments suggest a strong relationship between social media use and political engagement and raise questions about the potential for social media to help stem or even reverse patterns of political inequality that have troubled scholars for years. In this paper, we articulate a model of social media and political engagement among young people, and test it using data from representative samples of young people in Australia, the USA, and …
Young people, social media and connective action: From organisational maintenance to everyday political talk
Social media is pervasive in the lives of young people, and this paper critically analyses how politically engaged young people integrate social media use into their existing organisations and political communications. This qualitative research project studied how young people from a broad range of existing political and civic groups use social media for sharing information, mobilisation and, increasingly, as a means to redefine political action …
Beyond lifestyle politics in a time of crisis: Comparing young peoples’ issue agendas and views on inequality
Contemporary research on young people and politics portrays their political engagement as: individualised not collectivist; issue-driven not ideology-driven and postmaterialist instead of materialist. This shift towards ‘lifestyle politics’ is assumed to be universal among young people, rather than shaped by traditional social cleavages and structures. This paper investigates these assumptions and asks whether young people's experience of nationa…
Campaign Entrepreneurs in Online Collective Action: GetUp! in Australia
In recent years, multi-issue, online campaigning organisations have emerged and mobilised citizens on, mostly, progressive issues. For example, MoveOn in the United States is a renowned leader in the field, and similar organisations now exist in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and at the transnational level. In Australia, GetUp!, with over 600,000 members, has become part of mainstream political debate, while also bringing a disruptive social movemen…
Campus Politics, Student Societies and Social Media
The university campus has often been seen as an important site for the politicization of young people. Recent explanations for this have focused attention upon the role of the student union as a means to enable a 'critical mass' of previously isolated individuals to produce social networks of common interest. What is missing from these accounts, however, and what this article seeks to address, is how these factors actually facilitate the developm…
Politicians, celebrities and social media: A case of informalisation
With electoral politics no longer organised by social class, politicians increasingly seek to relate to a broad spectrum of citizens and part of their relatability is conjured through more casual, informal performances aimed at cultivating authenticity. The various platforms of social media promote forms of authentic communication by blurring the public/private divide, creating ‘spontaneous’ and instant access to ‘real life’. This article seeks t…
Performing for the young networked citizen? Celebrity politics, social networking and the political engagement of young people
The use of social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, by politicians and entertainers to engage young citizens can be seen as a further example of the emergence of celebrity politics. While regarded by some commentators as further evidence of the trivialization of political life, this article adopts the alternative approach of those scholars who foreground the potential for popular culture and media entertainment to be more socially in…
Everyday Making through Facebook Engagement: Young Citizens’ Political Interactions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States
The emergence of personalised, interactive forms of social media has led to questions about the use of these platforms for engagement in politics. Existing research focuses on whether political actors successfully engage citizens, and how social media platforms mobilise young people into offline participation. In this article, we present original survey data on how many young people use social media to do politics: share information, express them…
The study of Australian politics in the 21st century: A comment on Melleuish
The academic reality is that there are few political scientists working on the study of Australian politics who are interested in considering its longue duree, and this is reflected in the AJPS. Mo
Hybrid social and news media protest events: From #MarchinMarch to #BusttheBudget in Australia
Public protest events are now both social media and news media events. They are deeply entangled, with news media actors – such as journalists or news organisations – directly participating in the protest by tweeting about the event using the protest hashtag; and social media actors sharing news items published online by professional news agencies. Protesters have always deployed tactics to engage the media and use news media agencies’ resources …
Engagement and interaction with online news: A case study of housing affordability discussions on Facebook
Concerns about housing affordability in Australian capital cities have captured the public and political imagination. How, then, do ordinary citizens discuss the causes of and solutions to the increasing unaffordability of housing? This article examines evidence that branded Facebook channels provide a space for citizens to engage in everyday engagement and interaction on housing issues. We argue that studying branded, public Facebook pages, desp…
Political science (37 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Politics (32 works) · Law (28 works) · Public relations (27 works) · Social Media and Politics (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Media studies (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (12 works)