ROBBIE FORDYCEAbout, Contact, Blog, Resources, Curriculum Vitæ
Complete CV available on request. Last updated 19 November 2024. 


Robbie Fordyce - Curriculum Vitæ


CAREER HISTORY

CURRENT APPOINTMENTS
2018 - Present

Senior Lecturer, (Big Data/Quantitative Analysis and Research Methods.)
School of Media, Film, and Journalism; Faculty of Arts;
Monash University

PRIOR APPOINTMENTS
2018/07 - 2018/10
Research Associate
Swinburne Institute of Social Research.
Swinburne University of Technology.2017/01 - 2019/01

Research Fellow
Melbourne Networked Society Institute
University  of Melbourne

2017/06 - 2018/12

Research Assistant, 
ARC Discovery Projects “Digital Commemoration” and “Avatars and Identity”
University of Melbourne

EDUCATION
2019
 Doctorate of Philosophy in Culture and Communication, (University of Melbourne).
2009Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Film and Media Studies, First Class (University of Otago).

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
2024-presentHead; Information Nations Research Group, Monash University.
2023-presentAssociate Investigator; ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

2022-present Affiliate; ARC Centre of Excellence for the Study of Automated Decision-Making and Society.

2021-present Panellist. ACCAN Advisory Panel, Grants Program.

RESEARCH
DOCTORAL SUPERVISIONS
Current
Dante Aloni (2023-)Dante is studying the politics and technicity of blockchain systems. Dante’s work aligns questions of information and computation to the politics of the groups that design, develop, and agitate for blockchain solutions of various sorts. At present, Dante is particularly interrogating the notion of ‘trust’ and ‘trustlessness’ as contested phenomena in the Bitcoin network, and the Oracle problem in distributed computing for ethereum.Jenn Wilson (2024-)Jenn’s work involves developing and studying direct applications of generative AI to the task of openness and accountabiltiy in democratic contexts. They have developed a novel tool for generating summaries of legislation to test how we might improve public access to legislation, and is examining Zainab Darbas (2025-)Zainab is studying the state and scope of funding in the Australian games sector, exploring the connection between aesthetics, governmentality, and policy. Through this work they are studying who gets to make games, and how their identities get foregrounded in the development process for policy ends.Yujin Chao (2025-)Yujin is studing care labour, in terms of how this is performed, distributed, and engaged in real-world and in digital contexts. Yujin adopts a variety of rich theoretical positions that broadly fall under the umbrella of critical theory, and deploys these in the context of an anthropological mode of analysis.
Completed
Eylem Kim (2025)Eylem’s research examined the development of the iPhone from a novel accumulation of technologies in a handheld device, into a locus for the accumulation and deployment of various kinds of non-financial capitals (i.e. social, cultural, semiotic capital), which - following Bourdieu - she refers to as the metacapital of the iPhone.Lu Lax (2024)Lu’s research examined games, in particular looking at visual novels that allow for a reading stratgy of what he calls ‘necromantics’. Necromantics focuses on the kinds of bodily troubling that emerges in its most apparent form in Japanese visual novels that feature gay protagonists in relationships that involve death, horror, and cannibalism.
Sophia Sijun Shen (2023)Sophia’s thesis analysed Chinese government internet policies and their impacts on the digital economy. Sophia’s project first investigated streaming cultures that developed in response to increased access to internet infrastructures in rural areas of China, before identifying extreme versions of mukbang culture that included people live-streaming the act of eating dangerous and abject materials, including feces and industrial waste.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
In progressR Fordyce, F Yang, and L Heemsbergen. Anonymised. Qualitative Research. [Submitted]
2024 a.F Yang, R Fordyce, and L Heemsbergen. Towards a Translational News Ecology: Covering the 2022 Australian Federal Election on WeChat. International Journal of Communication 18 [Link]

2024 b.D Angus, L Hayden, A Karim Obeid, X Y Tan, N Carah, J Burgess, C Parker, M Andrejevic, R Fordyce, L Cellard, and J Bagnara. Computational Methods for Improving the Observability of Platform-Based Advertising. Journal of Advertising.  DOI: 10.1080/00913367.2024.2394156 [Online First - Link]

2024 c.S Shen, M Andrejevic, and R Fordyce. Banning “braingasm”: an investigation of misogynistic politics in 8Chan’s, US platforms’ and CCP’s regulation of ASMR. Feminist Media Studies. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2024.2333378 [Online First - Link]
2023K Mannell, R Fordyce and S Jethani. ‘Oaths and the ethics of automated data: limits to porting the Hippocratic oath from medicine to data science’ Cultural Studies. 37 (1): 168–189. [Link]
2022 a.R Fordyce and S Jethani. ‘Critical data provenance as a methodology for studying how language conceals data ethics’ Continuum. 35 (5): 775–787. [Link]
2022 b.V Trott, L Li, R Fordyce and M Andrejevic. ‘Shedding light on “dark” ads’ Continuum. 35 (5): 761–774. [Link]
2021 a.
R Fordyce. ‘Play, History and Politics: Conceiving Futures Beyond Empire’ Games and Culture. 16 (3) DOI: 10.1177/1555412020962430. [Link]

2021 b.
V Verdoodt, R Fordyce, L Archbold, F Gordon and D Clifford. ‘Esports and the Platforming of Child’s Play During covid-19’ The International Journal of Children's Rights. 29 (2): 496–520. [Link]

2021 c.
F Yang, L Heemsbergen and R Fordyce. ‘Comparative analysis of China’s Health Code, Australia’s COVIDSafe and New Zealand’s COVID Tracer Surveillance Apps: a new corona of public health governmentality?’ Media International Australia. 178 (1): 182–197. [Link]

2021 d.
S Jethani and R Fordyce. ‘Darkness, Datafication, and Provenance as an Illuminating Methodology’ M/C Journal. 24 (2). [Link]

2021 e.
R Fordyce and TH Apperley. ‘Exhausting Choices’ Reading Black Mirror. Transcript Verlag.

2021 f.
R Fordyce, B Nansen, M Arnold, T Kohn and M Gibbs. ‘Automating Digital Afterlives’ Disentangling: The Geographies of Digital Disconnection. Oxford University Press.

2020 a.
L de Wildt, TH Apperley, J Clemens, R Fordyce and S Mukherjee. ‘(Re)Orienting the Video Game Avatar’ Games and Culture. 15 (8): 1–19. [Link]

2020 b.
R Fordyce. Media and Time. Oxford Bibliographies. [Link]
2018
R Fordyce. ‘Dwarf Fortress: Laboratory and Homestead’ Games and Culture. 13 (1): 3–19.

2016 a.
R Fordyce, L Heemsbergen, TH Apperley, M Arnold, T Birtchnell, M Luo and B Nansen. ‘Things, tags, topics: Thingiverse’s object-centred network’ Communication Research & Practice. 2 (1): 63–78.

2016 b.
R Fordyce, T Neale and TH Apperley. ‘Modelling Systemic Racism: Mobilising the Dynamics of Race and Games in Everyday Racism’ Fibreculture 27. 

2016 c.
L Heemsbergen, R Fordyce, B Nansen, TH Apperley, M Arnold and T Birtchnell. ‘Social practices of 3D printing: Decentralising control and reconfiguring regulation’ Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy 4 (3): 110–125. 

2015 a.
R Fordyce. L Heemsbergen, P Mignone and B Nansen, ‘3D printing and university makerspaces: Surveying countercultural communities in institutional settings’ Digital Culture and Education. 7 (2).

2015 b.
R Fordyce. ‘Manufacturing Imaginaries: Neo-nazis, Men’s Rights Activists, and 3D printing’ Journal of Peer Production. 
6 (1).

2014 a.
R Fordyce and L van Ryn. ‘Ethical Commodities as exodus and refusal’ ephemera. 14 (1). 

2014 b.
R Fordyce, ‘The Kulturtechniken of post-autonomist media theory’, Proceedings of the Australia and New Zealand Communications Association 2014 Conference. 

2013 a.
R Fordyce. ‘Grasping at threads, and finding power in networks’ Asia Pacific Media Educator. 22 (1): 229–244.

2013 b.
R Fordyce. ‘Code, DDoS attacks, and Democracy’ SCAN: Journal of Media Arts Culture. 10 (2).

2013 c.
R Fordyce. ‘DDoS attacks as political assemblages’ PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication. 5 (1): 6–22.

2013 d.
R Fordyce, ‘Discourses of power: comparing Castells and Negri on global networks of power’, Proceedings of the Australia and New Zealand Communications Association 2013 Conference.

2013 e.
R Fordyce, ‘Collapsing action; or, games of life and death’, Association of Computing Machinery: Interactive Entertainment Conference 5 ‘Matters of Life and Death’.

REPORTS
2024 a.
F Yang, R Fordyce, and L Heemsbergen. WeChat and the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum: Key actors, public opinions, misinformation and disinformation. DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/76uqf [Analytical Report]
2024 b.
J Meese, C Albarrán-Torres, K Albury, D Angus, A Bruns, J Burgess, N Carah, R Fordyce, J Goldenfein, T Graham, L Hayden, A Matamoros Fernandez, S Montaña-Niño, C O’Neill, C Parker, Z Stardust, N Suzor, K Weatherall. ADM+S Submission to The Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society. [Technical Report]

2024 c.
D Angus, A Obeid, J Burgess, C Parker, M Andrejevic, J Bagnara, N Carah, R Fordyce, L Hayden, K Lewis, C O'Neill, C Albarrárran-Torres, L Cellard. The Australian Ad Observatory Technical and Data Report.  [Technical Report]

2022
J Burgess, D Angus, N Carah, M Andrejevic, K Hawker, K Lewis, A Karim Obeid, A Smith, J Tan, R Fordyce, V Trott and L Li. ‘Critical simulation as hybrid digital method for exploring the data operations and vernacular cultures of visual social media platforms’, SocArXiv. [Working Paper]
2021
G Duffy and R Fordyce “Submission to the Australian Federal Government’s consultation on the Privacy Bill” Online Privacy Bill Exposure Draft, Consultation process. [Government Submission]

2020
M Andrejevic, R Fordyce, L Li, and V Trott. National Facial Recognition Survey. Monash University. [White Paper]

2019 a.
M Andrejevic, R Fordyce, N Li, V Trott, and S Jethani. “Artificial Intelligence: Australia’s Ethics Framework: A Submission in Response to the Discussion Paper” Artificial Intelligence Ethics Framework Consultation. [Government Submission]

2019 b.
L  Heemsbergen and R Fordyce “Submission in response to Data 61’s Artificial Intelligence: Australia's Ethics Framework” Artificial Intelligence Ethics Framework Consultation. [Government Submission]

2018 a.
K Mannell and R Fordyce “Submission to the Review into non-educational use of mobile digital devices in NSW schools” Review into Non-Educational Use of Mobile Devices in NSW Schools. [Government Submission]

2018 b.
M Gibbs, M Carter, D Cumming, R Fordyce and E Witkowski. Esports Spectatorship in Australia. Networked Society Institute. [White Paper]

2016 a.
L Heemsbergen, R Fordyce, TH Apperley, M Arnold, T Birtchnell and B. Nansen. 3D Printing: Civic Practices and Regulatory Challenges. Melbourne Networked Society: Melbourne. [White Paper]

2016 b.
L Heemsbergen, R Fordyce, TH Apperley, M Arnold, T Birtchnell and B. Nansen. 3D Printing Rights and Responsibilities: Consumer perceptions and realities. Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. [White paper]

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTIONS
2023
M Andrejevic, R Fordyce, L Li and V Trott. ‘Automated culture: introduction’ Cultural Studies. 37(1): 1-19.
2016
R Fordyce and TH Apperley. ‘Introduction: Special section on Platform Studies’, Digital Culture and Education. 8 (3).

CODE REPOSITORIES
2024
R Fordyce. ‘headlineparse’. Zenodo. version 0.1.  DOI 10.5281/zenodo.11069623.
2023
R Fordyce. ‘Yet Another Computational HASS Tool for the Investigation of Mobile Platforms’ Zenodo. version 0.2.2-alpha. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10215442.
2021
R Fordyce. ‘WeCapture’, Zenodo. version 0.1.3-alpha. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10215181.


RESEARCH FUNDING

CATEGORY ONE GOVERNMENT FUNDING
2023
R Fordyce. ARC DECRA Fellowship. DE250101553. $479,413.

CATEGORY TWO GOVERNMENT FUNDING
2019“Unregulated and Segmented Dark Ads on Social Media: Consumer Education and Regulatory Options” Australian Communications Consumer Action Network 2019–2020 Funding Round. $49,500. 2015‘“You wouldn’t download a car”: Emerging consumer issues for online access, communication and sharing of 3D printer files’ Australian Communications Consumer Action Network 2015-2016 Funding Round. $49,267. 

SELECT INTERNAL FUNDING
2023Data and Democracy Research Hub. Monash University. $75,000. 

2014Melbourne Networked Society Institute Seed Funding Grant; ‘Domestic 3D Printing Initiative’, $33,660. 


© Robbie Fordyce 2024[-o-] made on Wurundjeri Woi-Wurung country