Ausma Bernot
Biographic Data
| ID | 4405201 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ausma Bernot |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ausma |
| FAMILY NAME | Bernot |
| SIGNATURE | BERNOT A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2663-1834 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Typology of transparency as best practice: Evidence from facial recognition technologies in Australia
Facial recognition technologies (FRTs) are commonly used in Australia in an under-regulated environment. Only two regulatory mechanisms currently direct FRT use – industry self-regulation and Australia’s privacy laws. Currently, best practices for FRT development and adoption are a key governance mechanism, including the recent guide to FRT privacy risks evaluation published by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in 2024. Transp…
Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics
WeChat‐as‐a‐Police Service
WeChat exemplifies a unique entanglement of private and public data infrastructures. As China's “super app,” WeChat (微信) integrates seamlessly into daily life, enabling communication, shopping, utility payments, and access to government services. Prior research has thoroughly explored how WeChat has supported the information censorship regime in China. However, WeChat's impact on public security capabilities and services has not been previously e…
The glowing fireflies: Invisible activism under China’s queer necropolitics
In China, the escalating repression of gender and sexual diversity has given rise to ‘queer necropolitics’. ‘Queer necropolitics’ – a concept we build on – refers to the hegemonic ability to determine who is allowed to suffer, survive, or thrive. We examine China’s sustained re-enforcement of traditional gender norms, which has rendered queer communities non-existent from official recognition. In this context, we aim to understand how China’s sta…
Governing Chinese technologies: TikTok, foreign interference, and technological sovereignty
In this article, we analyse attempts to regulate and control TikTok through the lens of foreign interference and technological sovereignty in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union
Government and Commercial Interests in Genomics: Improving Data Security and Regulation
The relationship between new technologies and security is well established in the fields of defence, law enforcement, communications and public health. This has been highlighted by recent public debate about the security implications of data held by companies operating in social media and information technology (such as TikTok and Huawei). While genomic technology had been less high profile in the context of security, this changed following the C…
The platformisation of illicit drug markets: How datafication, technological affordances, and platform-mediated labour practices shape illicit drug markets
Digital technologies go beyond merely facilitating illicit drug exchanges; they actively reconfigure and reorganise interactions in illicit drug markets. In this article we consider the ongoing evolution of illicit drug markets against the backdrop of platform capitalism in order to conceptualise the platformisation of illicit drug markets. The platformisation of illicit drug markets illustrates how drug markets are becoming contingent on the tec…
Police Cloud: Functional modularity in China's cloud public security infrastructure
Globally, China's Ministry of Public Security has one of the largest appetites and regulatory scopes for new technology use in policing. Using the case study of Police Cloud—a cloud infrastructure project, this paper examines a national wave of cloud migration initiated in Shandong in 2013. Police Cloud began to tackle the deep‐rooted challenges of information sharing across all levels of government. The analysis draws upon a dual dataset of gove…
Health security intelligence capabilities post Covid-19: Resisting the passive “new normal” within the Five Eyes
This paper spotlights lessons for health security intelligence across the ‘Five Eyes’ countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent worldwide patterns related to climate change have highlighted the crucial supporting role intelligence analysis may play in comprehending, planning for, and responding to such global health threats. In addition to the human lives lost, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed serious national security concerns, notably for e…
Surveillance infrastructure in China: Key concepts and mechanisms enhancing the Party-state’s governance ambitions
Surveillance infrastructure in China monitors and enables authorities to react to potential risky, miscreant or criminal behaviour. What type of behaviours are perceived to be so, is determined in large part by ideology. Therefore, surveillance infrastructure relies on the machinery of ideology to define the boundaries of its use. In this paper, we outline six key ideological concepts relating to governance in Xi Jinping’s China that have helped …
Perceived stigma of Covid-19 patients in Shanghai, China, in the third year of the pandemic: A cross-sectional social impact survey
The study finds that the overall level of self-reported stigma during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai in 2022 was at a lower level than that compared to the self-reported perceived stigma study in Wuhan in 2020. In Shanghai, the severity of the disease and hospitalization length had most impact on financial insecurity and feelings of social isolation. These experiences were not gendered. Recovery measures, including economic considerations, ne…
The “fish tank”: Social sorting of LGBTQ+ activists in China
Since 2013, LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and other) activism in China has existed in a gray area between noncriminalization in legal terms and fragmented strategies of suppression.The expansion of home-grown social media platforms has provided a (relatively) safe haven for LGBTQ+ people to connect, and a growing number of LGBTQ+ groups have established themselves in the country.However, in recent years, laws, po…
Understanding the risks of China-made CCTV surveillance cameras in Australia
In the global interconnected economy, China-made information-collecting technologies such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras have become popular products for routine video-based surveillance. Hikvision and Dahua are the two largest global suppliers of CCTV cameras, with both companies supplying their products to over 200 countries. Despite their popularity, national security concerns are commonly cited when adopting these ca…
Decentralising Data Collection and Centralising Information in the People’s Republic of China: Decentralise, Manage, and Service Reforms
Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage, and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market re…
China’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Surveillance and Autonomy
Pandemics bring the specter of death, disruption, and despair, but historically they have also been engines for social transformations visible at almost every level of society For scholars interested in understanding contemporary surveillance dynamics, the COVID-19 pandemic encourages thinking about how different forms of monitoring have altered aspects of the global infectious disease response and what these developments might suggest about the …
Handling Covid-19 with big data in China: Increasing ‘governance capacity’ or ‘function creep’
Building a national system of social governance (guojia zhili tixi), which is the long-running governance dream of Xi Jinping, has triggered the creation of China’s ‘smart state’ using the tools of new information technologies to advance governance capacity (zhili nengli). These systems were already deployed nationally when the COVID-19 pandemic hit China, but were connected at a lesser capacity, targeting specific domains of security, industry o…
Chinese Trans Advocates Organize Nationally
The trans movement in mainland China is at its early stages and rapidly growing. Particularly in the past two years, there has been a strong rise in trans activism and advocacy. There have been more trans individuals willing to be publicly visible, and more efforts are being made within the larger LGB community to support the articulation of trans communities. In December 2016, a two-day conference with trans activists and advocates was held in t…
The platformisation of illicit drug markets: How datafication, technological affordances, and platform-mediated labour practices shape illicit drug markets
Digital technologies go beyond merely facilitating illicit drug exchanges; they actively reconfigure and reorganise interactions in illicit drug markets. In this article we consider the ongoing evolution of illicit drug markets against the backdrop of platform capitalism in order to conceptualise the platformisation of illicit drug markets. The platformisation of illicit drug markets illustrates how drug markets are becoming contingent on the tec…
The glowing fireflies: Invisible activism under China’s queer necropolitics
In China, the escalating repression of gender and sexual diversity has given rise to ‘queer necropolitics’. ‘Queer necropolitics’ – a concept we build on – refers to the hegemonic ability to determine who is allowed to suffer, survive, or thrive. We examine China’s sustained re-enforcement of traditional gender norms, which has rendered queer communities non-existent from official recognition. In this context, we aim to understand how China’s sta…
Decentralising Data Collection and Centralising Information in the People’s Republic of China: Decentralise, Manage, and Service Reforms
Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage, and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market re…
China’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Surveillance and Autonomy
Pandemics bring the specter of death, disruption, and despair, but historically they have also been engines for social transformations visible at almost every level of society For scholars interested in understanding contemporary surveillance dynamics, the COVID-19 pandemic encourages thinking about how different forms of monitoring have altered aspects of the global infectious disease response and what these developments might suggest about the …
Handling Covid-19 with big data in China: Increasing ‘governance capacity’ or ‘function creep’
Building a national system of social governance (guojia zhili tixi), which is the long-running governance dream of Xi Jinping, has triggered the creation of China’s ‘smart state’ using the tools of new information technologies to advance governance capacity (zhili nengli). These systems were already deployed nationally when the COVID-19 pandemic hit China, but were connected at a lesser capacity, targeting specific domains of security, industry o…
Police Cloud: Functional modularity in China's cloud public security infrastructure
Globally, China's Ministry of Public Security has one of the largest appetites and regulatory scopes for new technology use in policing. Using the case study of Police Cloud—a cloud infrastructure project, this paper examines a national wave of cloud migration initiated in Shandong in 2013. Police Cloud began to tackle the deep‐rooted challenges of information sharing across all levels of government. The analysis draws upon a dual dataset of gove…
The “fish tank”: Social sorting of LGBTQ+ activists in China
Since 2013, LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and other) activism in China has existed in a gray area between noncriminalization in legal terms and fragmented strategies of suppression.The expansion of home-grown social media platforms has provided a (relatively) safe haven for LGBTQ+ people to connect, and a growing number of LGBTQ+ groups have established themselves in the country.However, in recent years, laws, po…
Chinese Trans Advocates Organize Nationally
The trans movement in mainland China is at its early stages and rapidly growing. Particularly in the past two years, there has been a strong rise in trans activism and advocacy. There have been more trans individuals willing to be publicly visible, and more efforts are being made within the larger LGB community to support the articulation of trans communities. In December 2016, a two-day conference with trans activists and advocates was held in t…
Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics
Chinese Trans Advocates Organize Nationally
The trans movement in mainland China is at its early stages and rapidly growing. Particularly in the past two years, there has been a strong rise in trans activism and advocacy. There have been more trans individuals willing to be publicly visible, and more efforts are being made within the larger LGB community to support the articulation of trans communities. In December 2016, a two-day conference with trans activists and advocates was held in t…
Decentralising Data Collection and Centralising Information in the People’s Republic of China: Decentralise, Manage, and Service Reforms
Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage, and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market re…
China’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Surveillance and Autonomy
Pandemics bring the specter of death, disruption, and despair, but historically they have also been engines for social transformations visible at almost every level of society For scholars interested in understanding contemporary surveillance dynamics, the COVID-19 pandemic encourages thinking about how different forms of monitoring have altered aspects of the global infectious disease response and what these developments might suggest about the …
Handling Covid-19 with big data in China: Increasing ‘governance capacity’ or ‘function creep’
Building a national system of social governance (guojia zhili tixi), which is the long-running governance dream of Xi Jinping, has triggered the creation of China’s ‘smart state’ using the tools of new information technologies to advance governance capacity (zhili nengli). These systems were already deployed nationally when the COVID-19 pandemic hit China, but were connected at a lesser capacity, targeting specific domains of security, industry o…
Health security intelligence capabilities post Covid-19: Resisting the passive “new normal” within the Five Eyes
This paper spotlights lessons for health security intelligence across the ‘Five Eyes’ countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent worldwide patterns related to climate change have highlighted the crucial supporting role intelligence analysis may play in comprehending, planning for, and responding to such global health threats. In addition to the human lives lost, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed serious national security concerns, notably for e…
Surveillance infrastructure in China: Key concepts and mechanisms enhancing the Party-state’s governance ambitions
Surveillance infrastructure in China monitors and enables authorities to react to potential risky, miscreant or criminal behaviour. What type of behaviours are perceived to be so, is determined in large part by ideology. Therefore, surveillance infrastructure relies on the machinery of ideology to define the boundaries of its use. In this paper, we outline six key ideological concepts relating to governance in Xi Jinping’s China that have helped …
Perceived stigma of Covid-19 patients in Shanghai, China, in the third year of the pandemic: A cross-sectional social impact survey
The study finds that the overall level of self-reported stigma during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai in 2022 was at a lower level than that compared to the self-reported perceived stigma study in Wuhan in 2020. In Shanghai, the severity of the disease and hospitalization length had most impact on financial insecurity and feelings of social isolation. These experiences were not gendered. Recovery measures, including economic considerations, ne…
The “fish tank”: Social sorting of LGBTQ+ activists in China
Since 2013, LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and other) activism in China has existed in a gray area between noncriminalization in legal terms and fragmented strategies of suppression.The expansion of home-grown social media platforms has provided a (relatively) safe haven for LGBTQ+ people to connect, and a growing number of LGBTQ+ groups have established themselves in the country.However, in recent years, laws, po…
Understanding the risks of China-made CCTV surveillance cameras in Australia
In the global interconnected economy, China-made information-collecting technologies such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras have become popular products for routine video-based surveillance. Hikvision and Dahua are the two largest global suppliers of CCTV cameras, with both companies supplying their products to over 200 countries. Despite their popularity, national security concerns are commonly cited when adopting these ca…
Governing Chinese technologies: TikTok, foreign interference, and technological sovereignty
In this article, we analyse attempts to regulate and control TikTok through the lens of foreign interference and technological sovereignty in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union
Government and Commercial Interests in Genomics: Improving Data Security and Regulation
The relationship between new technologies and security is well established in the fields of defence, law enforcement, communications and public health. This has been highlighted by recent public debate about the security implications of data held by companies operating in social media and information technology (such as TikTok and Huawei). While genomic technology had been less high profile in the context of security, this changed following the C…
The platformisation of illicit drug markets: How datafication, technological affordances, and platform-mediated labour practices shape illicit drug markets
Digital technologies go beyond merely facilitating illicit drug exchanges; they actively reconfigure and reorganise interactions in illicit drug markets. In this article we consider the ongoing evolution of illicit drug markets against the backdrop of platform capitalism in order to conceptualise the platformisation of illicit drug markets. The platformisation of illicit drug markets illustrates how drug markets are becoming contingent on the tec…
Police Cloud: Functional modularity in China's cloud public security infrastructure
Globally, China's Ministry of Public Security has one of the largest appetites and regulatory scopes for new technology use in policing. Using the case study of Police Cloud—a cloud infrastructure project, this paper examines a national wave of cloud migration initiated in Shandong in 2013. Police Cloud began to tackle the deep‐rooted challenges of information sharing across all levels of government. The analysis draws upon a dual dataset of gove…
WeChat‐as‐a‐Police Service
WeChat exemplifies a unique entanglement of private and public data infrastructures. As China's “super app,” WeChat (微信) integrates seamlessly into daily life, enabling communication, shopping, utility payments, and access to government services. Prior research has thoroughly explored how WeChat has supported the information censorship regime in China. However, WeChat's impact on public security capabilities and services has not been previously e…
The glowing fireflies: Invisible activism under China’s queer necropolitics
In China, the escalating repression of gender and sexual diversity has given rise to ‘queer necropolitics’. ‘Queer necropolitics’ – a concept we build on – refers to the hegemonic ability to determine who is allowed to suffer, survive, or thrive. We examine China’s sustained re-enforcement of traditional gender norms, which has rendered queer communities non-existent from official recognition. In this context, we aim to understand how China’s sta…
Typology of transparency as best practice: Evidence from facial recognition technologies in Australia
Facial recognition technologies (FRTs) are commonly used in Australia in an under-regulated environment. Only two regulatory mechanisms currently direct FRT use – industry self-regulation and Australia’s privacy laws. Currently, best practices for FRT development and adoption are a key governance mechanism, including the recent guide to FRT privacy risks evaluation published by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in 2024. Transp…
Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics
China (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Business (9 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Corporate governance (5 works) · Global Security and Public Health (5 works)