Naomi Smith

Military spouses have frequently turned to social media platforms to navigate the complexities of military life. As civilians who are connected to, but not formally part of, the military, they experience many of the impacts of service and can feel unseen and unsupported. This paper draws on a qualitative analysis of TikTok and Instagram content produced by military spouses to reveal how this social media content serves as both a performative space and an instructional network, where spouses navigate the tension between seeking visibility and community support while reinforcing the very normative expectations of military wifehood that contribute to their marginalization. Content creators navigate and reproduce this tension through humor, satire and candid revelations to both challenge their invisibility and produce constraining norms. This analysis contributes to broader social media discourses of how social media platforms mediate identity performance, transformed by the communicative affordances of short-form video platforms.

In this comment piece, we argue that mass-produced generative AI (GenAI) images, commonly referred to as "AI slop" should be considered a form of aesthetic alienation. Specifically, we focus on GenAI images of fall, arguing that GenAI images alienate not only artists from their art, but produces an alienating aesthetic in and of itself. Closely attending to the aesthetic registers of GenAI images opens up important sociological questions about the role of the image in contemporary society, and the affective logics of late capitalism. Finally, we highlight how GenAI images are profoundly implicated in the extractive and destructive materialities of late capitalism.

This article examines the technological emergence trajectory of Art Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), exploring their initial promise and then failure as transformative commodities disrupting art economies. Operating within an analytical framework of hope, hustle and hype, death and taxes, we investigate the interplay of technological, cultural, and economic trends shaping this trajectory towards failure. We identify the sociotechnical imaginaries clothing art NFTs and consider their relationship to both the acceptance and rejection of this technology. Our analysis contends that the desire to escape economic exclusion created a collective hope through which social adoption occurred. However, delving into the digital graveyards of Art NFTs, we identify external forces such as cultural shifts, social backlash, and regulatory interventions extinguishing the public’s ‘cruel optimism’, leading to the revocation of the social licence to operate for this emerging technology.

Last Monday, March 3, the Bureau of Meteorology warned residents of Queensland and New South Wales that Tropical Cyclone Alfred was coming their way. The storm was expected to hit the coast on Thursday or Friday.

By Wednesday, landfall was expected on Thursday night, and residents braced for impact. And then the waiting began.

The storm stalled, dithered and eventually weakened before reaching land early on Saturday morning. But alongside punishing winds, rain and flooding, another kind of damage spread during the long wait: conspiracy theories and misinformation were rife on social media.

They were part of a growing worldwide trend. As climate change ramps up, extreme weather proliferates and trust in authorities declines. Every large natural disaster triggers a wave of conspiracy theorising.

Paris 2024 might go down in history as the most meme-d sporting event ever. Traditionally, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has focused on broadcast media such as free-to-air television as its primary medium, with rights holders paying big bucks.

In Australia, Channel 9 reportedly paid A$305 million to secure the rights to broadcast the next five games, through to Brisbane 2032.

In previous games, the IOC has also taken a strict approach to sharing and resharing content across platforms. However, this is beginning to change, with the committee unveiling a new social media policy for athletes, coaches and other staff ahead of Paris 2024. Importantly, this new strategy allows athletes to post about their sponsors, which helps them build their brand and make money.

It is impossible not to be affected at some level when watching, even just the highlights, the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris. The endorphin-pumping procession enrolled multiple music cultures, spectacular and theatrical light shows, and played to Paris’s sardonic historical relations and geographical strengths while generating a ‘spectacle’ that would be hard to match or forget (even if we wanted to). This truly was a city that gave itself up and delivered a spicy ‘full-court press’ for the Olympic imagination. However, closer to home, in the wake of the emerging controversies with the development cycle for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics and the cancellation of the 2026 Summer Commonwealth Games by the Victorian government due to projected cost overruns, we feel that more conversation should be occurring around what the Olympic model should be into the future. We offer four propositions or thinking points that are not necessarily new, but collectively suggest, a re-visioning in light of the realities of the poly crisis that looms. The propositions circle around a shift towards a fixed site for the Games.