Australians’ daily reliance on digital communications infrastructures – from smartphones and social media platforms to the National Broadband Network – has introduced new layers of complexity to the national defence landscape by making security risks increasingly diffused – geographically dispersed, nonlinear in their causes and outcomes, and difficult to predict and contain.
Mapping the digital influence ecosystem brings humanities and social science expertise to bear on a set of problems generally approached from technological or psychological perspectives, foregrounding the importance of the contexts, affordances, and literacies with which users (both military and civilian) navigate digital information environments.
This project is supported by the Sydney Research Accelerator Prize (SOAR) and aims to establish University-wide interdisciplinary collaboration and a culture of research excellence surrounding information warfare and develop strategic partnerships between the University of Sydney and Australian industry and government, as well as new media platforms that have become a site of information warfare both in Australia and globally.