Tom O'Regan Visiting Fellowship

Thomas (Tom) Andrew O’Regan was Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland. He was a beloved teacher and mentor, a cherished colleague, and an internationally recognised scholar.

The aim of this fellowship is to honour the spirit of Tom’s important and enduring legacy of cross-disciplinary research in media, communication, and culture. For Tom, meeting in public lectures, talks and roundtables was the heart of the intellectual life of the university. He attended every talk and lecture he could and was the first to suggest the conversation should continue.

The fellowship will ensure Tom’s legacy of inviting people to share their ideas, listen thoughtfully and engage with great enthusiasm endures at UQ and in the field.

The selected scholars may explore Tom’s interest areas, including media and cultural studies, criticism and film, and build upon his work. The Fellowship will run annually in close collaboration with his family and friends.

2023: Professor Ted Striphas, University of Colorado Boulder

From Books and Barcodes to Algorithmic Culture and Beyond: A Research Journey

Presented by Professor Ted Striphas

In this talk, Professor Ted Striphas will explore the intellectual pathways leading to and out of his latest book, Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet (Columbia University Press, 2023). From Cambridge, England to Cambridge, Massachusetts by way of medieval Baghdad, Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet explores the critical junctures at which “algorithmic culture”—the application of computational decision-making to movies, music, news, knowledge, human relationships, and more—came to be defined in language long before it materialized in the technological wizardry of Silicon Valley. Striphas will provide a brief overview of the book, reflect on how the project shifted from its inception to the published volume, and explore some of the research challenges he faced (and continues to face) in his ongoing effort to map the political, historical, and semantic entailments of algorithmic decision-making.

Professor Ted Striphas is Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, and coeditor of the journal Cultural Studies. His first book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control, was published in 2009 by Columbia University Press.

He is also coeditor (with John N. Erni) of The Cultural Politics of COVID-19 (Routledge, 2022).

2025: Assistant Professor Kelley Cotter

Platform Epistemology: Shaping Algorithmic Knowledge in the Visibility Game

Presented by Assistant Professor Kelley Cotter

Understanding of platform algorithms is central to the creative and strategic work of achieving and sustaining an audience online, as they determine who and what becomes visible in feeds. Platforms have long been criticized for concealing details about their algorithms in ways that limit creators’ agency. This talk extends those critiques by introducing the concept of platform epistemology, an additional vector of platform power shaping creativity, labour conditions, and inequity within promotional cultures. Kelly will illustrate platform epistemology through a case study of Instagram influencers, demonstrating platforms’ control over the epistemic resources shaping the practices by which influencers construct and legitimate knowledge about algorithms. Influencers learn about algorithms via observation, experimentation, desk research, social connections—particularly with platform employees—and training from self-proclaimed algorithm experts. Throughout these learning processes, Instagram, as both an infrastructure and commercial entity, shapes the availability, distribution, and perceived legitimacy of information, influencing how the community constructs and values knowledge about its algorithms. Here, the “visibility game” structures not only pursuits of visibility but also the community of practice through which influencers come to know algorithms. Platform design and disclosure decisions thus do more than constrain and enable creators’ strategies; they actively shape the production and distribution of knowledge about how visibility works.

Kelley Cotter is an Assistant Professor at Penn State University whose research explores how data-centric technologies (especially algorithms) shape social, cultural, and political life. Her research examines how everyday users understand and interact with algorithmic systems, and how these insights can inform more equitable forms of platform governance.