Author: Tama Leaver

Tama Leaver is a Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia and expert media commentator. He is the Vice-President of the (international) Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. His research interests include digital childhood and infancy online, visual social media , social media, digital death, mobile gaming and the changing landscape of media distribution. He is the author of Artificial Culture: Identity, Technology and Bodies (Routledge, 2012); co-editor of An Education in Facebook? Higher Education and the World’s Largest Social Network (Routledge, 2014) with Mike Kent; and Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The Changing Gaming Landscape (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) with Michele Willson; co-author of Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (Polity, 2020) with Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin; and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children (Routledge, 2021) with Lelia Green, Donell Holloway, Kylie Stevenson and Leslie Haddon. He has been awarded teaching awards from the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, and in 2012 received a national Australian Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities and the Arts.

August 3, 2021 by Tama Leaver

Instagram’s privacy updates for kids are positive. But plans for an under-13s app means profits still take precedence

Facebook recently announced significant changes to Instagram for users aged under 16. New accounts will be private by default, and advertisers will be limited in how they can reach young people.
The new changes are long overdue and welcome. But Facebook’s commitment to childrens’ safety is still in question as it continues to develop a separate version of Instagram for kids aged under 13. Read More

June 16, 2021August 3, 2021 by Tama Leaver

Police debacle leaves the McGowan government battling to rebuild public trust in the SafeWA app

QR code contact-tracing apps are a crucial part of our defence against COVID-19. But their value depends on being widely used, which in turn means people using these apps need to be confident their data won’t be misused.
That’s why this week’s revelation that Western Australian police accessed data gathered using the SafeWA app are a serious concern. Read More