Every day, citizens, publics, media and organisations co-create meaning in contexts embedded, implicated, and problematised by digital technologies, and the political, economic, and cultural forces that sustain them. The UTS Technology, Media & Strategy (TMS) Group seeks to make sense of these forces through engaged scholarship and theorising.
The Technology, Media, and Strategy Research Group at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a dedicated team of researchers who study how technology shapes cultural and creative media industries; impacts consumer and audience experiences; and influences strategic choices for businesses, governments, and community groups.
This group engages in both theoretical and applied research, collaborating with industry partners and contributing to academic discourse through publications, conferences, community outreach and other public facing projects. Our work is informed by, and informs the future of, industry practices, policy, and public understandings of the impact of technology and media in a variety of forms.
When conducting research, the Technology, Media, and Strategy Research Group draws on the guiding principles of interdisciplinary collaboration, impactful research, and industry engagement. Our research outputs and outcomes include traditional high-quality peer reviewed academic publications, non-traditional creative research pieces, industry reports, public facing events and expert consultancy.
We invite collaboration with external partners and can offer expertise in research design, media analysis, qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, critical and creative thinking, and public outreach.
Research themes
Some of the research themes covered by the group includes:
- Audience and community (including consumer insights and processes)
- Creative and cultural industries (including media forms from across and beyond Australia)
- Cultural histories (including historically informed analyses of contemporary issues relating to technology and media)
- Culturally appropriate communication in community engagement
- Digital literacies (including problem solving with and beyond artificial intelligence (AI))
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion in media, journalism and strategic communication
- Emergency and disaster risk resilience
- Health and wellbeing communication (including mental health and LGBTIQA support)
- Organisational and crisis communication, public diplomacy, and strategic communication
- Social media influence and engagement (including mis/disinformation and hate speech)
Group members
Current research projects
| #MeToo; #HimToo: Popular Feminism and Hashtag Activism in the Kavanaugh Hearings, 1 Jul 2020, International Journal of Communication | Tisha Dejmanee |
| Alliance or/and enemy? Debunking perceptual antecedents, attitudinal changes and behavioural outcomes toward diplomatic relationships with China (ACRI fund) | Soojin Kim |
| ARC Discovery Project: Fostering Global Digital Citizenship: Diaspora Youth in a Connected World | Amelia Johns |
| Austrade in Asia – Pacific: Post COVID. | Sameera Durrani |
| Bodies in Journalism | Belinda Middleweek |
| Branding and Crises: Resilience and Adaptability in an Interconnected World (Forthcoming, Routledge) | Susie Khamis |
| Climate Technologies: Mobile apps and sustainable community engagement in disaster risk communication in Australia | Kate Delmo, Natalie Krikowa |
| Co-designing interactive experiences | Natalie Krikowa |
| Community determined data: The ethical, legal and social implications of collecting and linking data for LGBTQ+ population health and wellbeing (UTS cross-faculty grant) | Paul Byron |
| Digital/Social Chinese-language Media in Australia: the Making of a New Transnational Subject | Wanning Sun |
| Diversity in Australia’s Advertising & PR Agencies. cross faculty collaboration with Professor Maureen Taylor, Dr Kaye Chan, Associate Prof David Waller, and the Media Federation of Australia. | Susie Khamis |
| Domestic Tourism in the COVID era. | Sameera Durrani |
| From #BlackLivesMatter to #BlackOutTuesday: Race and Mainstream Digital Engagement on Instagram, Research Cultivation Grant, National Communication Association | Tisha Dejmanee |
| Future of Travel. | Sameera Durrani |
| LGBTQ+ young people, mental health and digital peer support | Paul Byron |
| Nostalgic nationalism and the banal Anthropocene on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, 8 Apr 2021, Screen62(1):83-91Oxford University Press (OUP) | Tisha Dejmanee |
| Innovative approaches to journalism education: Combining constructive journalism and work-integrated learning | Christine Kearney |
| Kidfluencers (children of social media influencers) and Strategic Communication Practice with Dr Catherine Archer, Edith Cowan University | Kate Delmo |
| Nostalgic nationalism and the banal Anthropocene on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives | Tisha Dejmanee |
| Oaths and the ethics of automated data: limits to porting the Hippocratic oath from medicine to data science | Suneel Jethani |
| QMAP: Mapping journeys of digital and face-to-face mental health support in LGBTQA+ young people living in Australia (INQYR) https://www.inqyr.org/projects/qmap) | Paul Byron |
| Queer Interruptions (2021) - An online documentary exploring queer time, melancholy and queer death onscreen. | Evangeline Aguas |
| Queer Representation Matters (2023) – online interactive documentary exploring trauma and tropes in LGBTIQA+ screen representation | Belinda Middleweek |
| Cultural Competency of Emergency Responders in engaging with CALD communities - a joint research project with Fire and Rescue NSW | Kate Delmo, Natalie Krikowa, Melinda McDonald |
| Sexual harassment of LGBTQ young people in the workplace and workplace training (ANROWS) | Paul Byron |
| Social media and crisis communication | Kate Delmo |
| Spontaneous Volunteerism in Emergencies and Disasters in Australia | Kate Delmo |
| The Food Network’s Heartland Kitchens: Cooking up neoconservative comfort in the United States | Tisha Dejmanee |
| The Intimate Consequences of Inequality: China’s Young Rural Migrants | Wanning Sun |
| The semiotics of analgesic intervention | Sameera Durrani |
| Vaccine Messaging in Australia | Sameera Durrani |
| Webcare: exploring online complaint management practices of tourism and hospitality organisations in Australia | Kate Delmo |
| WeChat and Chinese diaspora | Wanning Sun |
| WhatsApp: from a one-to-one messaging app to a Global Communication Platform | Amelia Johns |
| Climate change politics and the building of (dis)information | Jonathan Marshall |
| Gen AI and Journalism | (Monica Attard, Centre for Media Transition) |
| Information systems and modeling for community energy | Jonathan Marshall |
Funded research
ARC funding:
- ARC Discovery Project: Fostering Global Digital Citizenship: Diaspora Youth in a Connected World
- ARC Discovery Project: Media Pluralism and Online News
- ARC Grant: Chinese-language Digital/Social Media in Australia: Rethinking Soft Power
- ARC Grant: Inequality in Love: Romance and Intimacy among China's Young Migrant Workers
Other external funding:
- Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)
- Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC
- Facebook Australia
- International Partnership for Queer Youth Resilience
- National Communication Association (USA)
- NSW Reconstruction Authority Disaster Risk Reduction Fund
- Office of the eSafety Commissioner
- Office of the Inspector-General of Emergency Management (IGEM) QLD
- UNESCO
- UTS ACRI - Australia-China Relations Institute
Current HDR projects
| Screenwriting from a transnational position | Azade Falaki |
| Towards Cultural Humility in Australian Fire Services: Communication, curiosity, and collaboration as transformative tools | Melinda McDonald |
| Co-experiencing conversational voice AI: An ethnographic exploration of affective and embodied interaction in individual and collaborative voice assistant use | Indra McKie |
| How does China's Internet censorship challenge the LGBT+ communities' willingness to fight for their equal rights? | Xuanyu Bai |
| Digital Safety Influences on Chinese LGBTQ People on Social Media Platforms | Yuanzheng Zhang |
| Marketing the self: advertising and women 35-50 in the complex search for intimate online relationships | Narelle Lancaster |
Industry and government partnerships
- CommandPost
- Fiftyfive-5 Agency (Sydney)
- Fire and Rescue NSW
- Media Forum Australia
- World Health Organisation (WHO) International
- Resilient Lismore
- World Health Organisation Western Pacific Region (WPRO)
Contact us
Research Group convenor: Suneel.Jethani@uts.edu.au