Rob Cover

Professor Rob Cover is 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 a current Australian Research Council Discovery Project Queer Generations (2015-2019) examining the frameworks of LGBTQ youth belonging, support and health; on an ARC Discovery AusQueerScreen (2018-2020) 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 on an ARC Linkage Project with the History Trust of South Australia on gender/sexual diversity and mobility.

He is currently leading a  project team of scholars from nine countries on Communicating Good Health and Wellbeing in an Era of Digital Media and Populist Anti-Expertise Discourse, and is a founding member of the Critical Suicide Studies Network (www.criticalsuicidology.net).

 Recent books include: Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity: Unliveable Lives? (Routledge 2012), Vulnerability and Exposure: Footballer Scandals, Masculine Identity and Ethics (UWAP 2015), Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self (Elsevier, 2016), Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Gender and Relationships in a Digital Era (Routledge 2019), Flirting in the Era of #MeToo: Negotiating Intimacies (with Alison Bartlett and Kyra Clarke; Palgrave 2019), and Population, Mobility and Belonging: Understanding Population Concepts in Media, Culture and Society (Routledge 2020). Rob is co-editor of the anthology Youth, Sexuality and Sexual Citizenship (Routledge 2019).

Themes

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.

Publications

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...