Neil Selwyn

Interest in AI language models has surged with the advent of GPT. Framing AI as an extractive technology, this study shows how GPT harnesses human labour and sense‑making during training and use. The second phase constitutes unequal ‘affective labour’, as users moderate the model’s biased and constrained outputs. An in‑depth case study of human‑AI writing interactions documents the frictions, emotions and repair work required to sustain the simulation of autonomous performance.

This paper outlines how ideas of ‘degrowth’ might be used to reimagine sustainable forms of education technology. Drawing on principles of conviviality, commoning, autonomy and care, it connects degrowth thinking to ‘radically sustainable computing’ and proposes four directions for EdTech: curtailing manipulative systems; bolstering existing convivial tools; stimulating new convivial technologies; and developing digital tools toward the eventual de-schooling of society. The paper argues for a low‑impact, equitable reorientation of digital technology in education.

During the COVID‑19 shift online, Australian universities rapidly adopted remote exam proctoring. Using the domestication framework and triangulating interviews, documents, news and marketing materials, the paper analyses appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion of proctoring by vendors, managers, staff and students. It surfaces concerns about surrender of control to commercial providers, hidden labour behind ‘automated’ systems and heightened vulnerabilities of remote study, arguing the technology’s normalization poses ongoing challenges for higher education.

Surveying 1,658 undergraduates, the study identifies 11 perceived benefits of digital technologies (e.g., flexibility of time/place, organising tasks, replaying materials, learning visually). While central to students’ experiences, technologies were not transforming teaching and learning. The authors call for tempering ‘enhancement’ claims and better aligning digital provision with the realities of student use.

The paper argues for intensified attention to digital data within education through a critical lens informed by ‘digital sociology’. It foregrounds issues of data inequalities, managerialist control, ‘dataveillance’, and reductionist representations, and proposes a research agenda for the critical study of educational data practices and their implications for learners, educators and institutions.

Rather than focusing only on technology’s learning potential, this paper calls for social‑scientific accounts of the often compromised realities of EdTech ‘on the ground’. It contrasts a critical approach—seeing technologies as socially constructed and negotiated, studying use in situ, and analysing politics and conflicts around use—with prevailing scholarship, and urges engagement with questions of democracy and social justice in EdTech.

Through qualitative analysis of 909 undergraduates’ Facebook ‘wall’ activity, the paper shows how students use social networking around four themes: critiquing learning experiences; exchanging logistical and factual course information; seeking/receiving moral support; and performing identities of academic (dis)engagement. Rather than enhancing or eroding front‑stage study, Facebook activity is situated within the identity politics of being a student and a ‘backstage’ for working through role conflict.

A critical review of literatures in information science, education and media studies challenges popular portrayals of ‘digital natives’. Young people’s engagements with digital technologies are varied and often unspectacular, undermining technological and biological determinism. The paper argues for realistic understandings of generational differences and outlines the roles information professionals can play in supporting youth in the digital age.

Despite extensive policy and institutional efforts, many students and faculty make limited formal academic use of ICT. This paper examines the social relations shaping the curtailed, marginal positioning of university technology use—from national policy discourses to the lived ‘student experience’. It argues that dominant constructions constrain creative, empowering uses of technology and offers directions for fostering more expansive practices in higher education.

This article critiques dichotomous notions of the ‘digital divide’ by problematizing what counts as ICT, ‘access’, the relationship between access and use, and attention to consequences of engagement. It advances a hierarchical, staged model of the divide while emphasizing the mediating role of economic, cultural and social capital. The paper concludes with research themes for studying inequalities in ICT engagement.