[Air-L] Announcing our 2019 AoIR Conference Keynote Speaker!!

[Jonathon Hutchinson]

Dear AoIRists,

We are pleased to announce Professor Bronwyn Carlson from Macquarie University is our 2019 Keynote Speaker for the upcoming AoIR Conference in Brisbane.

Professor Carlson is a leading scholar in the field of Indigenous Studies and her research interests include Indigenous identities, Digital Indigenous Humanities and Global Indigeneity. Her latest project, Aboriginal Help-Seeking Behaviours on Social Media explored the rapid uptake of social media by Indigenous people, informal help-seeking and the way Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people engage digital communication technologies.

Professor Carlson will address the 2019 conference theme of Trust in the System with her Keynote, Indigenous Internet users: Learning to trust ourselves. She describes the presentation as:

“Trust in the System” is contentious, if not spurious for many Indigenous Internet users. “Trust” signifies as a term that embodies (and disembodies) our experiences from over two hundred years of colonisation. Research has shown that Indigenous people have always been early adopters of technology. Over the last decade or so, social media technologies have gradually become a central part of our everyday lives. It offers opportunities to connect across vast distances and diverse populations. It provides a platform to express one’s identity, connect with community, learn, play, seek love, organise political action, find lost friends and family, search for employment, seek help in times of need—and much more. Almost every aspect of everyday life has in some way been shaped, modified or enhanced by social media technologies. Indigenous people have made particular use of social media for agitating for social justice. Information can be distributed, events coordinated and alliances spontaneously forged across great distances largely outside of the surveillance and control of state actors. Assessing the actual impact of online activism is not a straightforward matter—any concept of ‘trust in the system’ demands that we begin to infiltrate that system in order to force ‘it’ to incorporate the views and experiences of Indigenous actors and activists online.

We are incredibly honoured to have Professor Carlson deliver our Keynote Address this year and we welcome her to the AoIR Community.

You can check out her Academic profile here<https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/bronwyn-carlson/projects/> and she tweets from @BronwynCarlson.

Warm Regards

Jonathon Hutchinson
2019 AoIR Program Chair


DR JONATHON HUTCHINSON | Lecturer Online Communication and Media
Department of Media and Communication | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
2018-2019 Visiting Research Fellow Hans Bredow Institute

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