Curtin University

Graduate Student, Internet Studies

Other Affiliations: CFC Media Lab, Interactive Art and Entertainment Programme
Ryerson University, EDGE Lab

Thesis Title: Privacy in the Age of Facebook: Ideology, Architecture, Consequences

About

Research/teaching:
I’m currently a Research Associate at the new Experiential Design and Gaming Environments (EDGE) Lab at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) and a PhD candidate in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University (Perth, Australia). My advisers are Helen Merrick, Matthew Allen, Jason Nolan and Philip Moore.

My thesis is a unique ethnographic study (that was carried out in both physical and virtual space) of a community of 20-something Facebook users, which provides a nuanced and deeper understanding of privacy attitudes and behaviours in the age of Facebook. My thesis also connects the historically rooted philosophies and ideologies of the Bay Area in California (such as radical transparency) with the architecture of privacy in social media. This connection is critical in understanding privacy design yet is almost always missed in its the assessment and enhancement. With Jason Nolan at the EDGE Lab, I’m researching privacy and autonomy in censorware and MMOs for kids. We demonstrated that most commercial efforts to maintain the safety of kids actually compromises their privacy and safety in other ways.

I’m guest faculty at the CFC Media Lab, where I teach social media and internet culture. Before that, I taught Internet Studies at Curtin University.


Pervasive games/Community building:
I’m the co-founder of the award-winning, Toronto-based Atmosphere Industries, makers of fine pervasive and urban games since 2007, and an Associate at Six to Start. Atmosphere’s latest effort, the critically-acclaimed Gentrification: The Game is a celebration of public space which encourages players to mischievously hack their environments. Gentrification has been invited to festivals around the world, including Toronto, London and Berlin and won Best use of Tech and Best of Fest 2010 at Come Out and Play in New York.

I founded of PrivacyCampTO, Canada’s first privacy unconference series funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Ryerson’s EDGE Lab and the Mozilla Foundation. The event is an open forum to discuss privacy issues that anyone can attend and contribute to. The event is part of a larger, loose collective of international PrivacyCamps.

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My publications are here: http://www.k4t3.org/publicationz/

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