From Social Media to Generative AI: How Do We Keep Society in the Loop?

In the last 20 years alone, the digital media and information environment has changed dramatically – from the early days of Web 2.0, to a recent past dominated by social media platforms, and our present and rapidly emerging future in which data and AI play a central role. At different points in this history, particular issues have been of public concern (from digitisation, to copyright, to misinformation), and at each point our knowledge systems have adapted and innovated in order to understand and address them. In this talk, I showcase several large collaborative research and infrastructure projects that have enabled Australian researchers, institutions and citizens to work together observe and influence issues such as social media use, the impact of search engines, and the targeting of online ads to consumers, as well as providing a preview of the proposed Australian Internet Observatory. I conclude by making some suggestions as to how public interest researchers and cultural institutions might work together to secure society’s ability to stay in the loop in the context of Generative AI.