Introduction

Abstract

The 2022 Australian and New Zealand Communications Association (ANZCA) conference was held in November at the University of Wollongong. Over 4 days the conference showcased new directions for research focusing on fundamental changes occurring across the broad sectors of communication, journalism, digital health, and digital media. This included burgeoning research and methodological frameworks in public and health communication, civic participation, and community building. The conference focused on the specific theme of “Communicating through Chaos: Connection, Disruption, Community,” which garnered much interest within the ANZCA community. Due to the apparent wane of the pandemic, we were finally able to hold an in-person conference again after 2 years of gathering virtually amid Covid-19 lockdowns and travel and social restrictions. As such, the event attracted more than 550 participants representing 16 countries, who contributed to more than 200 conference presentations and panels.

The 2022 Australian and New Zealand Communications Association (ANZCA) conference was held in November at the University of Wollongong. Over 4 days the conference showcased new directions for research focusing on fundamental changes occurring across the broad sectors of communication, journalism, digital health, and digital media. This included burgeoning research and methodological frameworks in public and health communication, civic participation, and community building. The conference focused on the specific theme of “Communicating through Chaos: Connection, Disruption, Community,” which garnered much interest within the ANZCA community. Due to the apparent wane of the pandemic, we were finally able to hold an in-person conference again after 2 years of gathering virtually amid Covid-19 lockdowns and travel and social restrictions. As such, the event attracted more than 550 participants representing 16 countries, who contributed to more than 200 conference presentations and panels. Together, we tackled the conference theme both in terms of turbulence caused by the pandemic in the recent past and existing and proliferating future issues around misinformation, online abuse, digital communities, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and the lingering problem of regional connectivity. ¹

The conference featured two thought-provoking keynotes from Lev Manovich, Presidential Professor at the City University of New York, and Amanda D. Lotz, Professor of Digital Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology. Professor Manovich's presentation, “One Billion Rembrandts? Generative AI Revolution and Media Culture” explored the unprecedented cultural and artistic revolution brought on by the rapid advances in AI technology. Manovich's work underscored crucial developments and posited future prospects of AI development as a key area of developing analysis in communications and media. Meanwhile, Professor Lotz's keynote “Streaming, drama and Australia: Findings to date” unpacked the ways in which streaming has radically altered the television industry in Australia and globally, positing that a shift in audience catering that moves away from the mass and towards the niche has fundamentally reshaped television consumption behaviors. Lotz’ keynote addressed the progression of her landmark decades-long television research parallel to the evolution of the production strategies and macroeconomics of television in Australia prior to and during the introduction of streaming, situating her work between the developing scholarships of both digital television and Australian television in the 21st century.

As Australia and the world are slowly regaining a sense of new “normalcy” post-pandemic, communicators continue to reflect on learnings from—yet another—crisis that highlights issues surrounding misinformation on social media. Launching this special issue of outstanding conference papers is Souleymane Coulibaly's investigation of the ways in which health misinformation spread among the South East Queensland African migrant and refugee community on WhatsApp. Coulibaly notes how low-level English language literacy among community members can lead to misplaced trust, which can lead to fear and distrust in officially disseminated information. Despite the technological affordances of WhatsApp, there is a lack of content moderation by some African leaders who normally and informally establish content rules while playing a key gatekeeping role in various WhatsApp groups. This is a missed opportunity as health misinformation varies in rhetorical severity on WhatsApp and can negatively impact community members. The article advocates for stakeholders in health to be trained in information sharing culture and management of misinformation on the app, and further notes the untapped potential in addressing the issue by leveraging the gatekeeping roles of community leaders. In 2022, Souleymane's paper received the Christopher Newell Award, which represents the best paper dealing with matters relating to disability and communication, or to questions of equity, diversity, and social justice as they pertain to communication.

The Christopher Newell Award both commemorates Christopher Newell's contribution to the field of disability and communications research and aims to advance research and scholarship in this field. Christopher Newell AM (1964–2008) was a leading researcher and advocate on disability and communications. As a person with disability, he undertook pioneering work in the field to foreground questions of disability and accessibility in Australian telecommunications. His many government and industry roles include being Chair of the Australian Communications Industry Forum Disability Advisory Body and a member of the council of the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. He was a delegate to the 2020 Summit convened by the Prime Minister, Hon. Kevin Rudd, in April 2008 in Canberra. He also researched and published extensively in fields such as medical ethics, spirituality, pastoral theology, and bioethics and was awarded the Order of Australia in 2001 “for service to people with disabilities, particularly through advocacy and research, to the development and practice of ethics and to health consumers.” He was awarded the Australian College of Educators highest award, the College Medal, in 2008. He was a regular participant in ANZCA conferences and associated journals and was a pioneer in establishing disability and communication research in Australia. He was the author, with Gerard Goggin, of Digital disability: the social construction of disability in new media (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and Disability in Australia: exposing a social apartheid (UNSW Press, 2005).

In the second article, which is based on a comprehensive study of Far North Queensland in the wake of the devastating 2019 flood, Amber Marshall, Carrie-Ann Wilson, and Allan Dale offer practical solutions to confronting the digital divide and improving connectivity and crisis resilience in rural areas. Their research highlights how lacking infrastructure renders rural areas particularly vulnerable by limiting their communities’ ability to respond to crises. Despite recent investments in telecommunications infrastructure in regional and rural Australia, there remain significant barriers to accessing services and information—especially during emergencies and recovery—for about one-third of the population who are living outside of urban centers. And as Covid-19 further highlighted, the more sparsely populated areas have fewer opportunities for economic participation because of connectivity issues, particularly given inequities in the provision of broadband and mobile infrastructure. While developments for the National Broadband Network have plateaued, the fixed wireless and satellite solutions offered to rural consumers remain grossly inadequate. Through extensive consultations with stakeholders—ranging from local governments, telecommunications providers, businesses, farmers, Indigenous representatives, and residents—the authors present three digital connectivity solutions to meet the acute and rigorously documented needs of homes, businesses, and communities in rural Australia.

Next, Joscelyn Gleave and Lisa Waller investigate the rising issue of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA)—the creation or distribution of private sexual or nude images. Although the incidence of IBSA continues to expand across the world via the internet and mobile platforms, the general public is still grappling to understand it as a form of sexual violence, let alone its impact on society. The authors argue this is partly caused by news media and journalists’ lack of education on the issue. Notwithstanding, the news media is often the first site where the general public hears about new issues. To overcome the gap in research on journalistic practice, Gleave and Waller create and apply an experimental and interactive work of explanatory journalism—hosted on a website, where the audience can engage with perspectives of victims affected by IBSA. In doing so, they have created a leading light for future journalism about sexual abuse and, in the absence of consistent guidelines, a reference point for reporters to improve public understanding of IBSA. In 2022, Josie Gleave's conference paper on IBSA received the Grant Noble Prize, which honors both the contribution of Australian scholar Grant Noble to ANZCA and his pioneering work in the field of Communications in this country.

The inaugural Grant Noble Prize was announced for the 1996 Brisbane ANZCA conference, open to all postgraduate/honors students and graduands (excluding academic staff) [see MIA 79 (1996): 58]. After a brief hiatus, it was re-launched for the 1999 conference as the Grant Noble Award for best paper submitted by a postgraduate student (excluding full-time academic staff) and judged by the ANZCA Executive [see MIA 88 (1998): 5]. In early 2002, the Faculty of Arts at the University of New England, where Noble worked from 1976 to 1994, agreed to sponsor the Award and this support has been extended, thereby recognizing Grant's scholarly commitment and leadership. By way of background, Grant Noble was, along with Henry Mayer and Bill Bonney, a significant scholar at a time when there were few avenues for postgraduate training in communication studies in Australia. Many media and communication postgraduates at this time worked in other disciplines such as education, psychology, or linguistics. Although Grant Noble's disciplinary training was in psychology, he retained a major interest in media and communications. His studies of children's media and telephone use are still valuable today. An interdisciplinary approach was characteristic of his work, and indeed typical of much Australian work in communication studies at that time.

In the fourth article, Chris Chesher and César Albarrán-Torres examine the emergence of autolography, that is, the practice of using AI text-to-image generators, which experienced unprecedented uptake in mid-2022. As the authors observe, many have compared this Internet phenomenon and moment to magic, invoking the mysterious ways of a skilled artist-magician. They place it in a historical context by tracing a line back to the ancient Greek artists’ practice of invocation of muses, gods, and goddesses, and through similarities in the marvel and skepticism that photography was met within the nineteenth century. By applying a discourse analysis of online publications that specifically compare autolography to magic, Chesher and Albarrán-Torres analyze some of the excitement, debates, and controversies surrounding this technology to date and critique its reflections on what some readers may see as the zeitgeist of a technology-driven world. While hailed enthusiastically by some as a leap in visual culture and a tool that has the power to democratize media-making, the rapid and expansive developments in accessible AI tools and platforms not only disrupt the status quo but are also perceived to threaten the interests of innovative creative communities and practitioners. At the center of this phenomenon, as the authors argue, are deeply ethical and legal debates around IP, copyright and ownership; likeness and cultural perceptions; algorithmic biases and stereotypes; transparency; and the value of creative labor. When one can notionally paint, or generate, a thousand pictures in a single day, can it ever be considered as “art”? Is it cheating? A magic trick? A potential copyright infringement? Are AI-generative tools and platforms going to make us all redundant? Can AI be regulated somehow? And should it?

Finally, the historical overview and analysis provided by Steven Maras, David Nolan, Gerard Goggin, Kate Fitch, Diana Bossio, Jonathon Hutchinson, Stephanie Brookes, and Julie Freeman breathes some new life into the 40-year history of ANZCA and the Australian Communication Association (ACA). In this final article of our guest-edited feature topics, reflections from a range of Australian scholars are used to shed light on the research and teaching nexus underpinning the communications field, especially in the context of a roundtable held in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the ACA, which was the precursor organization to ANZCA. Revisiting this historical record is always an important endeavor because it reminds the next generation of scholars about the range and diversity of approaches and epistemologies in this field, and the frameworks and theoretical perspectives that offer much utility for expanding the boundaries of our discipline. The authors, who share well over 40 years of combined history with ACA and ANZCA, expose various challenges and agendas for research and teaching communications, particularly with future-oriented and reformist perspectives that emphasize responsible practice and social change.

The articles in this feature topic are a small but important representation of the wide variety of provocative presentations delivered at the 2022 ANZCA conference. So much new and stimulating ground was covered by so many engaging HDRs, ECRs, established scholars, and community partners joining us at this event. As the attendees at the event dinner know, much joy was experienced too. Hopefully, readers of this journal issue will gain some new insights into the research directions and methodologies being extended across the broad domains of communication, journalism, digital health, and digital media, particularly concerning issues exacerbated by crises. As always, more engagement and collaboration between scholars, community enterprises, industry practitioners, policymakers, and members of the general public—of the kind that ANZCA fosters, will provide opportunities for meaningful dialogue and practical guidance for communicating through the chaos and reconnecting our communities. The five articles selected for this feature topic make a step in this direction.