Dr Frances Shaw

Frances has an interdisciplinary background, working variously across the disciplines of Media and Communication, Politics, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Sociology.

She has an overarching interest in the ways that online media are used to re-shape political subjectivities, embodiment, and identity; and in the ways that emotions shape online interactions and identifications.

She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (supervised by Associate Professor Sarah Maddison and Associate Professor Kate Crawford), with a study of feminist blogging networks in the Australian context. This was part of an ARC (Australian Research Council) funded project looking at the Australian women’s movement, past and present.

Her work focused on contemporary feminist activism in online spaces, and combined qualitative interviews with network analysis and discourse analysis of community texts.

Since completing her PhD, Frances worked on an ARC-funded project on Asia-Pacific Internet Histories at the University of Sydney, working with Professor Gerard Goggin.

Within this project, she designed and implemented a study of early telecommunications hobbyists and bulletin board system users in Australia, as well as researching representations of the internet in popular culture, mainstream and computer consumer media, and in political debate.

She also researched Twitter use during crisis events with Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, and Kate Crawford.