
Doctor of Philosophy (University of Queensland)
Dr Axel Bruns is a Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and was a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi). He is the President of the Association of Internet Researchers. Bruns is the author of Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (2008) and Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production (2005), and a co-editor of Twitter and Society (2014), A Companion to New Media Dynamics (2012) and Uses of Blogs (2006). Bruns is an expert on the impact of user-led content creation, or produsage, and his current work focusses on the study of user participation in social media spaces such as Twitter, especially in the context of acute events. His research blog is at http://snurb.info/, and he tweets at @snurb_dot_info. See http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ for more details on his current social media research. Bruns has coined the term produsage to better describe the current paradigm shift towards user-led forms of collaborative content creation which are proving to have an increasing impact on media, economy, law, social practices, and democracy itself. Produsage provides a new approach to conceptualising these phenomena by avoiding the traditional assumptions associated with industrial-age production models. His study of these environments builds on his work in the area of participatory or citizen journalism and blogging. For more information about produsage, see Produsage.org. In 1997, Bruns was a co-founder of the premier online academic publisher M/C – Media and Culture, which publishes M/C Journal and M/C Reviews, and he continues to serve as M/C’s General Editor. Bruns has served as an Executive Member in the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) and as a Project Leader in the Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre. He is a member of the editorial boards of Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, and Digital Journalism, amongst others. He also publishes a column on social media at The Conversation. Bruns’s main research interests are in social media, ‘big data’ research methods, produsage, citizen journalism, and online communities.
Projects
- Amplifying public value: Scholarly contributions' impact on public debate
- ARC Centre of Excellence - Australian Creative Innovation System
- Emergent music engagement practices via SoundCloud
- Journalism beyond the crisis: Emerging forms, practices and uses
- Music usage metrics and the future of the Australian music industry
- New media and public communication: Mapping Australian user-created content in online social networks
- Social media and agenda-setting in election campaigns
- Social media in times of crisis: learning from recent natural disasters to improve future strategies
- TrISMA - Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis
- Understanding intermedia information flows in the Australian online public sphere
Additional information
- Type
- Editorial Role for an Academic Journal
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Editorial Board Member of Information, Communication & Society
- Type
- Editorial Role for an Academic Journal
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- General Editor of M/C - Media and Culture (http://www.media-culture.org.au/)
- Type
- Editorial Role for an Academic Journal
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- International Editorial Board Member for New Media & Society
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2011
- Details
- QUT Creative Industries Faculty Dean's Award for Excellence in Research and Innovation - awarded to the Mapping Online Publics team: Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Tanya Nitins, Stephen Harrington, and Tim Highfield
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2011
- Details
- Winner of the Vice-Chancellor's Performance Fund Award for outstanding achievement in research and commercialisation.
- Type
- Committee Role/Editor or Chair of an Academic Conference
- Reference year
- 2006
- Details
- Conference chair of the international conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, held in Brisbane on 27-30 Sep. 2006. AoIR is the peak international association for researchers in the field of Internet studies, and 2006 marked the first time that the conference was held outside of Europe or North America. I was invited to serve as conference chair by the Association's President, Professor Matthew Allen.
- Type
- Committee Role/Editor or Chair of an Academic Conference
- Reference year
- 2007
- Details
- Elected Member of the AoIR Executive
- Type
- Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2007
- Details
- Visiting Scholar, Institute for Communication and Media Studies, Leeds University.
- Type
- Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2007
- Details
- Visiting Scholar, MIT.
- Type
- Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2009
- Details
- Alcatel-Lucent Foundation Visiting Fellow at the Hans-Bredow-Institut, Hamburg, May/June 2009
- Hartley J, Burgess JE, Bruns A, (2013) A companion to new media dynamics, John Wiley and Sons Australia
- Bruns A, (2012) Journalists and Twitter: How Australian news organisations adapt to a new medium, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources p97-107
- Highfield T, Bruns A, (2012) Confrontation and cooptation: A brief history of Australian political blogs, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources p89-98
- Bruns A, Burgess JE, Crawford K, Shaw F, (2012) #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland floods - Research Report, http://www.cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf p1-58
- Bruns A, Burgess JE, (2012) Researching news discussion on Twitter: New methodologies, Journalism Studies p801-814
- Bruns A, Liang Y, (2012) Tools and methods for capturing Twitter data during natural disasters, First Monday p1-8
- Bruns A, (2012) How long is a tweet? Mapping dynamic conversation networks on Twitter using Gawk and Gephi, Information, Communication and Society p1323-1351
- Bruns A, (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From production to produsage p1-418
- Bruns A, Jacobs JS, (2006) Uses of Blogs, Peter Lang
- Bruns A, (2005) Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production p1-330
- Title
- Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- FT130100703
- Start year
- 2014
- Keywords
- public sphere; social media; big data
- Title
- Music Usage Metrics and the Future of the Australian Music Industry
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP150100156
- Start year
- 2016
- Keywords
- Title
- Social media in times of crisis: learning from recent natural disasters to improve future strategies
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP120100627
- Start year
- 2012
- Keywords
- Natural Disasters; Social Media; Communication; Media; Internet
- Title
- New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- DP1094281
- Start year
- 2010
- Keywords
- User Created Content; New Media; Public Communication; Internet Studies; Social Networks; Web 2
- Title
- Investigating Innovative Applications of Digital Media for Participatory Journalism and Citizen Engagement in Australian Public Communication
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP0669434
- Start year
- 2007
- Keywords
- journalism; media; citizenship; Internet; electronic democracy; peer to peer online publishing;
- Title
- Mapping the Missing Grassroots: Ethnographic Action Study of Local Grassroots Broadband Content (co) Creation and Consumption
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP0668357
- Start year
- 2006
- Keywords
- Digital media; Action research; Grassroots creativity; Online community; User led production;
- Title
- ARC Centre of Excellence - Australian Creative Innovation System
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- SR0590002
- Start year
- 2005
- Keywords
- Creative Industries; Digital Content; Creative Workforce; Intellectual Property; Innovation; International Creative Markerts