Rob Cover

Core Members

Professor Rob Cover is Co-Director of the DERC and a media and cultural studies scholar who researches screen and digital cultures in relation to (i) young people’s health, mental health and wellbeing, (ii) minorities, migrants and gender- and sexually-diverse subjects and social change, (iii) suicide prevention, identity and communication.

He is Chief Investigator on several Australian Research Council projects including Digital Hostility: Addressing Online Hostility in Australian Digital Cultures (2023-2026) examining the lived experience of online abuse across contemporary digital platforms, The AusQueerScreen Discovery project investigating the role of on-screen representation of gender- and sexually-diverse themes and narratives in the production of social change, inclusivity and diversity, and the ARC Linkage Project LGBTQ+ Migrations with the History Trust of South Australia on gender/sexual diversity and mobility.

The author of ten books and 100+ articles and chapters, Rob’s recent books include: Vulnerability and Exposure: Footballer Scandals, Masculine Identity and Ethics (2015), Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity: Unliveable Lives? (2016), Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self (2016), Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Gender and Relationships in a Digital Era (2019), Flirting in the Era of #MeToo: Negotiating Intimacies (with A Bartlett and K Clarke; 2019), Population, Mobility and Belonging: Understanding Population Concepts in Media, Culture and Society (2020), Fake News in Digital Cultures (2022), Identity in Digital Communication: Concepts, Theories, Practices (2023) and Identity in the COVID-19 Years (2023).

Visit Rob’s Academia.Edu professional profile for the most recent info

Labs

Digital Hostilities and Disinformation Lab

DERC flagship lab addresses the social and ethical implications of contemporary forms of digital hostility & disinformation.

Method Lab 

DERC's flagship space for testing innovative methods for studying data, digital culture, and disruptive tech.

Digital Inclusion, Mobility, and Activism

The research program examines the challenges and potentials of digital participation as this relates to access and inclusion, connectivity, networks and political activism, gig or micro work, and mobility and migration.

Projects

Methods Masterclass Series

Methods Masterclass Series 2023 offers advanced training in creative practice, digital ethnographic, and social science tools. Co sponsored by the Enabling Impact Platforms at RMIT.

Publications

The corporeality of sound: drag performance, lip-synching and the popular critique of gendered theatrics in Australian film and television

Straight and cisgender actors playing queer and trans characters: the views of Australian screen stakeholders

Making Queer Content Visible: Approaches and Assumptions of Australian Film and Television Stakeholders working with LGBTQ + Content

Digital hostility: contemporary crisis, disrupted belonging and self-care practices

Digital hostility, subjectivity and ethics: Theorising the disruption of identity in instances of mass online abuse and hate speech

Deepfake culture: the emergence of audio-video deception as an object of social anxiety and regulation

Critical suicide studies, between methodology and ethics: Introduction

Australian queer screen stakeholders and creative artists: perceptions of value, motivation and impact of LGBTQ+ Australian film

Fake News in Digital Cultures: Technology, Populism and Digital Misinformation

Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien phenomenon undertaken by bad...

(In Press) Digital hostility, internet pile-ons and shaming: A case study

Competing Contestations of the Norm: Emerging Sexualities and Digital Identities

Memorialising Queer Community: Digital Media, Subjectivity and the Lost Gay # Archives of Social Networking

Queer Generations: Theorizing a Concept

Resistance to the dehumanisation of asylum seekers in Australia’s mediated public sphere: an audience perspective

Understanding Anger: Ethical Responsiveness and the Cultural Production of Celebrity Masculinities

The Proliferation of Gender and Sexual Identities, Catergories and Labels among Young People: Emergent Taxonomies

Gay, Famous and Working Hard on YouTube: Influencers, Queer microcelebrity publics, and Discursive activism

Identity in the disrupted time of COVID-19: Performativity, crisis, mobility and ethics

Placing the Queer Audience: Literature on Gender and Sexual Diversity in Film and Television and Reception

Gender and Sexual Diversity and Suicide on Australian Screens: Culture, Representation, and Health Pedagogies

Populist contestations: Cultural change and the competing languages of sexual and gender identity

Marriage Equality: Two Generations of Gender and Sexually Diverse Australians

Playing recognition politics: Queer theoretical reflections on lesbian, gay and queer youth social policy in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s

The Myth of LGBTQ Mobilities: Framing the Lives of Gender and Sexually-Diverse Australians between Regional and Urban Contexts

Education and Affinity? Pedagogies of Sexual Citizenship in LGBTIQ Youth Support Videos

Queerying Notions of “Difference” among two Generations of Australians who do not Identify Heteronormatively

(In Press) Vulnerability and the discourse of ‘forgotten people’: populism, population and cultural change

Restricted modes: Social media, content classification and LGBTQ sexual citizenship

(In Press) Inclusive health care for LGBTQ+ youth: support, belonging, and inclusivity labour

Subjective Connectivity: Rethinking Loneliness, Isolation and Belonging in Discourses of Minority Youth Suicide