Jean Burgess is a Distinguished Professor of Digital Media at the QUT Digital Media Research Centre, (which she founded and directed between 2015–2020) and in the

QUT The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point and a historical campus in Kelvin Grove. ...

School of Communication. She is currently Associate Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She was the Deputy Director of the former ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at the

Queensland University of Technology The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point, Brisbane, Gardens Point ...

. From 2010-2013 Jean was an

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

Postdoctoral Fellow (APD), working with

Axel Bruns Axel Bruns (born 1970) is a German-Australian media scholar. He is a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Chief Investigator in the ...

on the ARC Discovery Project 'New Media and Public Communication'. She researches and publishes on issues of cultural participation in new media contexts, with a particular focus on user-created content, online social networks, and co-creative media including

digital storytelling Digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to create and share their stories online. The method is frequently used in schools, museums, libraries, social work and health settings, and communities. ...

. She was elected a Fellow of the

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australi ...

in 2021.

Education

A classically trained musician with an honours degree in flute performance, Burgess completed a Master of Philosophy at the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

before undertaking a PhD at

. Her doctoral thesis, entitled ''Vernacular creativity and new media'', focused on the ways in which everyday practices of symbolic creativity (including storytelling and amateur photography) both pre-date digital technologies and are remediated by them.

Notable publications

In 2009, with Joshua Green, Burgess published the book ''YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture''. The book examines the ways in which

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and explains how these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural ‘production’ and ‘consumption’. It includes specially commissioned chapters by John Hartley and

Henry Jenkins Henry Guy Jenkins III (born June 4, 1958) is an American media scholar and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communicatio ...

. The book was widely reviewed in academic journals including ''Media International Australia'', ''Popular Communication'' and the ''International Journal of Digital Television''. It has since been translated into Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Polish. With Andrew King, Burgess co-edited an edition of ''M/C Journal'' themed "Porn and the Mediasphere", and worked on the ARC-funded ''Understanding Pornography in Australia'' report.

Media appearances

On his blog, Professor Henry Jenkins interviewed Burgess in October 2007 about her doctoral research. Burgess was interviewed in January 2009 by ''The Enthusiast'' magazine about YouTube's difficulties balancing copyright issues with the creative activities of its users. In 2010, Burgess was interviewed about her YouTube research by prime-time Channel Seven current affairs TV program ''

Today Tonight ''Today Tonight'' was an Australian current affairs television program produced by the Seven Network. It aired from January 1995 to November 2019 in Adelaide and Perth. Editions in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were previously produced be ...

''. In February 2011, Burgess spoke to

Radio National ABC Radio National, more commonly known as Radio National or simply RN, is an Australian nationwide public service radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. ...

's Background Briefing on how natural disasters are handled and mishandled by both broadcast and participatory media.

References

External links

Faculty Listing for Jean Burgess at QUT
retrieved 3 January 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Burgess, Jean Living people Australian bloggers Australian women bloggers Queensland University of Technology alumni Academic staff of Queensland University of Technology University of Queensland alumni Journalism academics Year of birth missing (living people) Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities