Professor Michael Dezuanni has received an $898,788 ARC Linkage grant for the project, Promoting low-income parents’ digital media literacies, which will partner with several community organisations.
Professor Dezuanni, from QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre in the School of Communication and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, said the digital exclusion of low-income families was a significant problem for Australia with more than three million Australians living below the poverty line.
“Helping their children to successfully navigate the digital world has become an essential parenting skill but many low-income parents and carers find this challenging due to a lack of confidence in their own digital media abilities,” he said.
“Because these parents have few community-based opportunities to develop their digital skills, our project will bring together leading Australian digital inclusion researchers and organisations to investigate new ways to enhance low-income parents’ digital ability, in five diverse Australian communities.
“This project will use a social living labs approach to place low-income parent voices at the centre of new community-led solutions.”
The Smith Family research and advocacy head Anne Hampshire said the project was timely given the critical role parents played in supporting their children to develop the digital media skills needed to successfully and safely navigate the digital world.
“The project’s strong equity focus, the central role it gives to the voices of low-income parents and the collaboration of outstanding researchers and diverse organisations involved promise to deliver real outcomes for low-income parents and children across Australia,” Ms Hampshire said.
Chief investigators are Professor Dezuanni, Professor Marcus Foth, Professor Peta Mitchell, the project’s senior research fellow Dr Kim Osman, all from QUT; Associate Professor Tanya Notley from Western Sydney University; Professor Julian Sefton-Green, Dr Xinyu Zhao, and Dr Kate Mannell from Deakin University; Dr Amber Marshall from Griffith University; and, partner investigators: Michelle Carter from the State Library of Queensland and Anne Hampshire from The Smith Family.
Participant organisations are: The Smith Family; Good Things Australia; State Library of Queensland; Australian Library and Information Association; WorkVentures.
Main image, from left: Professor Michael Dezuanni, Professor Peta Mitchell, Dr Kim Osman, and Professor Marcus Foth.
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