Avatar Image

Associate Professor Axel Bruns

Creative Industries Faculty,
School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts,
Media and Communication

Personal

Name
Associate Professor Axel Bruns
Position(s)
Associate Professor
Creative Industries Faculty,
School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts,
Media and Communication
Discipline *
Communication and Media Studies, Journalism and Professional Writing
Phone
+61 7 3138 5548
Fax
+61 7 3138 3723
Email
Location
View location details (QUT staff and student access only)
Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy (University of Queensland)

Professional memberships
and associations

Association of Internet Researchers

Keywords

Internet studies, blogs, citizen journalism, creative industries, cultural studies, media studies, online communities, produsage, social media, user-led content creation

* Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008

Biography

Dr Axel Bruns is an Associate Professor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi). He 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  A Companion to New Media Dynamics (2012, with John Hartley and Jean Burgess) and Uses of Blogs (2006, with Joanne Jacobs). 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.

This information has been contributed by Associate Professor Axel Bruns.

Publications


For more publications by this staff member, visit QUT ePrints, the University's research repository.

Awards

Awards and recognition

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
2009
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

Research projects

Grants and projects (Category 1: Australian Competitive Grants only)

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.

Supervision

Completed supervisions (Doctorate)