QUT Digital Media Research Centre

This study raises important questions about AI regulation and the potential harms involved in the use of chatbots. Contact Kate FitzGerald, Michelle Riedlinger, Axel Bruns, Stephen Harrington, Timothy Graham or Daniel Angus if you want to know more!

DMRC researchers prompted seven chatbots with questions related to nine conspiracy theories to test the efficacy of safety guardrails against conspiratorial ideation. The results were mixed, with different conspiracy theories and different chatbots varying widely in performance.

“Just Asking Questions”: Doing Our Own Research on Conspiratorial Ideation by Generative AI Chatbots | Article | Media and Communication Katherine M. FitzGerald, Michelle Riedlinger, Axel Bruns, Stephen Harrington, Timothy Graham, Daniel Angus

New article alert!

“Just Asking Questions”: Doing Our Own Research on Conspiratorial Ideation by Generative AI Chatbots is now available to read open access! This study examined how a selection of popular chatbots responded to conspiratorial prompts.

The DMRC hosted visitors Lisa, Ahrabhi, and Helena as part of our UA-DAAD program, which involves exchanges between Australian and German universities. This collaboration is working on mapping destructive polarisation across news media. We look forward to seeing our colleagues in Germany soon!

A few weeks of X’s algorithm can make you more right-wing – and it doesn’t wear off quickly Elon Musk’s social media platform is boosting conservative content – and it’s having long-lasting effects on how users see the world.

Well done to Tim Graham for his new piece in The Conversation! Tim discusses recent studies that investigate the X (formerly Twitter) algorithm, its ability to push far-right content onto users, and the implications. Read at the link below!

A team from the DMRC, led by Caroline and Carly, responded with a submission and were then invited to speak in Canberra to the Senate. This episode discusses misinformation about climate change in the Australian context, and the Senate Inquiry itself, which continues this week.

In 2025, the Australian Government appointed a committee to investigate the prevalence and impacts of misinformation and disinformation which relates to climate change and energy.

Misinformation on Climate Change and Energy w/ Caroline Gardam & Carly Lubicz-Zaorski Read Them Sideways · Episode

New podcast episode available!

Your host Klaus Groebner chatted with Caroline Gardam and Carly Lubicz-Zaorski about misinformation on Climate Change and Energy.

And that's a wrap on the 2026 Summer School.

Workshops galore on the final day and we ended formal proceedings with a Bake Your Thesis - Cake Decorating, and social activities with a movie night.

Thank you to delegates and presenters for your attendance and contributions. See you again next year!

Aljosha, along with Vasco Avides Moreira and Jonathan Hendrickx, argue that this finding also has significant implications for legacy media, which will need to continue to adapt to keep up with young people’s ever-changing media and news consumption habits and preferences.

They prefer those who talk to them “as a friend”, emphasizing authenticity, emotional proximity, and conversational clarity over traditional, formal modes of reporting.

“Talk to Me as a Friend!”: How Teenagers Prefer Their Newsfluencers on Social Media This study investigates how Portuguese teenagers (aged 13–18) perceive and prefer the communication characteristics of so-called “newsfluencers” on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Through 20 semi-structured interviews, the research explores how verbal and non-verbal traits shape adolescents’ engagement with news in a media ecosystem increasingly dominated by digital intermediaries. Drawing on literature on brand journalism, the study categorizes preferences into four key elements: character, tone, language, and purpose. The findings reveal that teenagers favor newsfluencers who are inspiring and friendly (character), are honest and direct (tone), use simple and fun speech (language), and aim to educate and inform (purpose). Participants express a desire for journalists who “talk to me as a friend”, emphasizing authenticity, emotional proximity, and conversational clarity over traditional, formal modes of reporting. These insights suggest that effective youth-oriented journalism on social media must balance factual accuracy and emotional engagement, blending education with entertainment. The research contributes to emerging scholarship on social media journalism and youth news consumption by highlighting how relational and affective communication strategies can enhance young audiences’ trust, understanding, and participation in news.

NEW PUBLICATION!

In a new article in Journalism and Media, the DMRC's Aljosha Karim Schapals and colleagues consider communicative traits young people prefer in a "newsfluencer".

Available to read in open access here:

On day 2 of DMRC Summer School, delegates joined workshops on data donation, online safety, socio-technical grounded theory, and intersectional approaches to digital media research.

A highlight was the research translation panel discussion.

Tonight, delegates are enjoying the annual quiz night.

QUT - Strengthening Public Opinion Formation Amid Digital Threats (PhD scholarship)

PhD scholarship applications are open for a project investigating how public opinion is formed in online spaces, with a focus on the deliberative quality of discussions, social influence dynamics, and platform affordances and governance across major digital platforms.

www.qut.edu.au/study/fees-a...

Online topical communities actively exploit Instagram’s affordances to amplify conspiratorial and political worldviews, making fully automated detection of problematic climate change content unworkable without human-in-the-loop interpretation.

She noted that climate hoax discourse is not always just about climate denial or climate science in itself; rather, topical communities exploit Instagram’s multimodal affordances to amplify conspiratorial and political worldviews.

Instagram posts can be considered discursive articulations of images, text, hashtags, layout, intertextuality, and affect. Caroline identified and described the multimodal discursive strategies and common visual signatures associated within Instagram posts featuring climate hoax hashtags.

In this video, Caroline describes the real world potential impact of her research, which examines climate change denial discourse. Her PhD thesis develops a novel multimodal methodology for critical discourse analysis of problematic climate change information on Instagram.

PhD candidate Caroline Gardam was a finalist in the 2026 Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research (ACSPRI) Fellowship. For Stage Two of the application, she was invited to submit a video describing her research project. In this video, Caroline describes the real world potential impa DMRC PhD candidate and 2026 ACSPRI Fellowship Finalist, Caroline Gardam

Congratulations to PhD Candidate Caroline Gardam (Caroline Gardam), who was recently a finalist in the 2026 Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research (ACSPRI). As part of her application, Caroline created a video describing her PhD project.

The 2026 DMRC Summer School is officially underway!

With 72 delegates in attendance, today's sessions explored a diverse range of topics with the highlight being a keynote address by Nina Jankowicz, internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization.

Media Explained: Misinformation - ABC Education Join us as we explore one of today’s biggest media and information challenges: misinformation. Learn about the important role of media in society, reflect on our unconscious biases, debate the value of artificial intelligence and build our skill in identifying and responding to misinformation.

Research Fellow Dr Aimee Hourigan has recently been featured in some fantastic media literacy videos, produced by ABC Education. These are appropriate for both primary and high school aged students, with some excellent questions, particularly around generative AI.

The Iranian digital blackout, and how you can help (#37) Read Them Sideways · Episode

The Read Them Sideways podcast is back from summer hiatus! Our first episode of 2026 welcomes Ehsan Dehghan and Pardis Yarahmadi to discuss the ongoing Iranian digital blackout, its implications, and how digital activism can assist. An important listen for your Monday!

PhD scholarship applications are open for a project investigating how public opinion is formed in online spaces, with a focus on the deliberative quality of discussions, social influence dynamics, and platform affordances and governance across major digital platforms.
www.qut.edu.au/.../strength....

Congratulations to PhD candidate, Klaus Groebner, for his acceptance into the Bluebook Traineeship Program at the EU Commission this year! Klaus will be contributing his expertise to regulatory frameworks for electronic communications and digital initiatives, such as the Digital Decade. 🎉

Catch up on all the conference updates from the Digital Media Research Centre in 2025 before we launch into 2026!

This paper considers the digital form of Sky News Australia and uses a unique combination of digital methods examine its growth during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 United States presidential election.

Starting 2026 by sharing a new paper from Prof Axel Bruns, A/Prof Tim Graham and DMRC colleague Simon Copland. You can check out "Sky News Australia as network propaganda: how a niche cable channel became an international right-wing propaganda machine" here!

journals.sagepub.com...

Their article, "Division, not reconciliation: Mapping news media polarisation during Australia's indigenous voice to parliament referendum" is the first to examine how issue, affective, and value-based polarisation appeared in the Australian news landscape during the Voice referendum.

Congratulations to DMRC scholars @kathaesa.bsky.social, @snurb.info, @riedlinm.bsky.social, @vilkins.bsky.social, Laura Vodden, and Thet Zin Myint for their new publication in Media International Australia as part of the AANZCA special issue!

journals.sagepub.com...

Incredible work and congratulations to all DMRC researchers who were awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award! 🎉