The Australian Internet Observatory (AIO) announced today and supported by the Federal Government is an initiative of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S) led by RMIT University.
The AIO will harness new ways of collecting and analysing digital social data to support cutting-edge research into pressing issues such as misinformation, the kinds of ads Australians see when they use online platforms, and the lack of regulatory oversight in areas such as gambling, alcohol, or unhealthy foods.
AIO Program Lead and Director of the ADM+S Centre, RMIT Distinguished Professor Julian Thomas, said digital platforms play a critical role in Australia’s economy and society, yet our capacities to collect and analyse data from digital platforms and observe their activities is very limited.
“Over the past decade, there’s been a dramatic transformation in how Australians use digital platforms, how they interact with the automated systems and the digital economy, and how they communicate with machines and each other,” he said.
“Every day, we are now using more platforms, more intensively, for a wider range of activities. But as researchers we’ve had very little visibility of how digital platforms work.”
The AIO comprises a range of new tools which give researchers visibility for the first time, over how people use critical services every day such as search engines, social media, video on demand services, generative AI chatbots, and other digital services.
“We realised there was a real need for new research infrastructure when we were developing some of our projects in the ADM+S Centre,” Thomas said.
“We knew that there were few reliable or accurate tools for gathering that kind of information, and that better tools would be useful for many researchers.”