Image taken from the crowd of a presenter speaking behind a lecturn. In the background there is a slideshow presentation
Had a great time yesterday presenting my PhD research at #DiGRAA2025 on VR, embodiment, and how we can rethink how we talk about VRs embodiment in mainstream discourses - looking forward to another fun day today!
Shot of Cass Barkman gesturing at slide show on a projector during a presentation. The slide is titled 'white paper report'.
At DiGRA Australia's 2025 conference today presenting on my work looking into ways to make games more available in higher education! Excellent opportunity to tap into everyone's expertise and experiences in this area.
I am in Adelaide for DiGRA Australia’s national conference the next three days! There probably won’t be any liveposting because no one really does that any more but here is the great program: digraa.org/post/digraa-...
Can't wait for this book to come out! I have a chapter in here about VR embodiment along with an excellent list of VR scholars. Also amazing work Leighton putting it all together 👏
Monash University has today admitted to a fresh round of wage theft from casual teachers. Australia’s largest uni has underpaid teachers a further $7.6m, taking Monash’s total underpayments to $17.6m since 2021
If you are a journalist who is covering OpenAI and its product launches this week, consider also covering this report from myself and AI Now, which sheds light on OpenAI's origins, and how it wields a story about emergent AGI to sell those products and services
Should other countries follow Australia’s example and ban under-16s from social media?
I was thrilled to finally have @cameronwilson.bsky.social on the show to get the scoop on what’s driving the policy and why it would be better to take a different approach.
Not yet unfortunately but I have two book chapters coming out in the new year. I'll post about them when they come out!
My talk today focused on the western, masculine perspectives on embodiment and 'mastering' VR and how these ways of looking at VR often limits how we understand the potential possibilities of the medium
Had a great time at Digital Intimacies today, where I got the chance to talk about some of my PhD research! It was my first conference post-submission and it's so great to finally get my research out there
Three people sit at a long table, screens behind them with photos displayed
Seven people standing in a row inside a conference room, looking happy
Digital Intimacies X in full swing!
We were so lucky to hear from our original conference organisers about the event and the field of digital intimacies, with excellent provocations from current scholars in the field: Embrace vulnerability. Think community, not citations. Open up the space.
In session in the Federal Court for Monash Uni’s wage theft case. I’ll be live posting from this hearing today. The NTEU alleges Australia’s largest university has not lawfully paid hundreds, perhaps thousands, of its casual teachers going back to 2016. Justice Snaden is the judge.
A screenshot of the Nintendo eShop, showing the store icon for the acclaimed 2021 game Unpacking, and several similarly-named items with plain text titles and AI-generated store images.
Wrote a little thing about the Unpacking scam game situation on the Nintendo eShop, with a few words from the Witch Beam folks and @vook64.bsky.social.
These are all still up in the store, one week later.
www.patreon.com/posts/unpack...
Excellent overview of key findings from our study of LGBTQ+ young people's experiences of workplace sexual harassment. The full report is out today (see link in the article) theconversation.com/new-research...
Aww Paulie! Poor little guy 💖
A big win for the NTEU. Australia’s vice-chancellors are amongst the highest paid in the world but they’ve been poor stewards of higher education, unable to explain its national importance or to advocate effectively for HASS. This is long overdue:
www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/ne...
Scrolling through user reception to this (very long-awaited) feature in VRC and seeing obvious concerns about data privacy, desires for adult social spaces (safe spaces away from children!), and expectations for the silo-ing of players (fears of being stuck in ‘Quest kid day care’).
Congrats! Very well deserved!
"Germany bears considerable complicity."
A group of prominent German intellectuals say their country should be held accountable for Israeli crimes in Gaza and be forced to pay reparations for the massive destruction.
🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/3s86v8
The Australian government rushed through legislation to ban under 16s from using social media - a measure widely criticised by experts.
But after 18 months they haven't been able to implement a total ban on gambling ads to protect children - a measure almost unanimously supported by experts.
🤷♀️
Shameful. If this actually translates to any meaningful action, those who support it now will quickly come to regret it. I also suspect this will be extremely difficult to undo.
All you need to know about how much the government actually understands youth online safety: Apparently YouTube is "primarily for the purposes of education and health support"
www.pm.gov.au/media/social...
Excited to be speaking on my PhD research at Digital Intimacies this week 🤓
Hi, so I've spent the past almost-decade studying research uses of public social media data, like e.g. ML researchers using content from Twitter, Reddit, and Mastodon.
Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵
Elon Musk’s X/Twitter is claiming ownership of all accounts on its platform in the Infowars bankruptcy case, where The Onion has purchased all assets
This reminds you that you do not own your social media accounts
"X CORP. OWNS THE X ACCOUNTS."
🔗 www.404media.co/xs-objection...
ADM+S researchers from our ‘Critical Capabilities for Inclusive #AI’ project recently hosted a workshop at the Australian Red Cross 2024 Humanitech Summit, inviting participants to consider the potential of community data for building community resilience.
🔗 www.admscentre.org.au/critical-cap...
