Hacks/Hackers February 2016

We're back in action for 2016 and planning to hold monthly meetups from February through November on the fourth Wednesday of the month—put it in your diary now.

For our first meetup, Dr Nicholas Carah will be coming to tell us all about algorithmic culture.

As well as the formal presentations, there will be ample opportunity to socialise and discuss our own projects over drinks and nibbles.

Agenda

6:00pm Arrive / Socialise / Grab a drink

6:30pm Dr Nicholas Carah: The feedback loop between algorithmic judgment and cultural life (more detail below)

7:00pm More socialising / Drinks / Food

7:30pm Eru Penkman: Digital security for journalists

8:00pm Close / Socialise

The ABC has been kind enough to provide space for us to hold this event. It's important that you RSVP so we have a good idea of numbers.

If you have any other questions or suggestions for this event or to make 2016 a great year for Hacks/Hackers Brisbane, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

You can email me ( simon@elvery.net ) or get in touch via Twitter (@hackshackersbne (https://twitter.com/hackshackersbne)).

More on the February event

Dr Nicholas Carah is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. His research examines social media, popular culture and alcohol consumption. He has published research on the brands, promotion and social media in the leading international journalsConvergence, New Media and Society and Television and New Media. He has worked with the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education on Like, Comment, Share: alcohol brand activity on Facebook. He also works with the social change organisation Hello Sunday Morning, assisting with the development of their research and evaluation. He is the author of Pop Brands: branding, popular music and young people (Peter Lang, 2010)and Media and Society: production, content and participation (Sage, 2015) and the forthcoming Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture.

Nicholas's talk will examine some of the ways in which the algorithms that orchestrate content and interaction on media platforms like Facebook and Google are entangled in a dynamic relationship with the cultural spaces and practices of users. There has been much debate in the media, civil society and academy about how digital media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram enable new forms of participation in public life and how data analytics and visualisation new kinds of storytelling and engagement. But, less attention has been paid so far to the feedback loop emerging between the machine-like judgments platforms make and the way cultural life unfolds. Nicholas suggests each responds to the other in increasingly complicated ways. He will attempt to illustrate this by looking at how this feedback loop between platforms and users is affecting the promotion of nightlife, the visibility of our bodies, the nature of political debate, and the layout and design of music festivals and art galleries. Nicholas suggests that to take account of how media shape public life we need to contend with how brands, journalists, cultural producers, politicians and everyday users are learning to talk to algorithms as a key ‘audience’ as much as they are other humans.

ABC Employees are reminded of the ABC’s Drug and Alcohol Policy, and to be responsible in their consumption of alcohol, including ensuring they do not drink and drive. If you have any questions about this, please ask your Manager.