This ethnographic research design was driven by consultation with members of the ACMI team. Through audience conversations, we developed a series of broad themes that guided our work. The ethnographic research revealed complex relationalities between the places, wayfaring, co-presence (physical and/ or digital proximity), and digital sociality that ACMI itself enacted, and that in turn was enacted by ACMI’s audiences. Through combining close analysis of the enacted digital participation by both parties with rich ethnographic data, we demonstrate an opportunity for alignment between institutional and audience-led digital practices. Based on this insight, we provide recommendations to calibrate differences between perceived and lived participation, through integrating institutional and informal digital practices.

Over two weekends in September 2019, the RMIT ACMI Tea project invited matinee cinema audiences to share a cup of tea and a biscuit, and discuss their associations, connections and sense of belonging with ACMI. Across a variety of cultures, tea is understood as core to conversation and connection. Through this project, and building on Phase 1, we specifically sought to identify and develop socially- thick understandings of the (digital and non-digital) experiences and potential opportunities for older adults to engage with ACMI on its reopening.

For older adults ageing in place (i.e. at home) challenges have emerged around ageing well during the pandemic — especially around lack of access to networks, increased isolation, depression, and anxiety. This Policy Brief outlines the critical issues in this area, creative approaches to research in ageing and aged care and maps RMIT’s capabilities and expertise to provide unique approaches to understanding the challenges faced by ageing populations. The future of ageing gets recalibrated as celebration and resilience.

The cohealth@365: past, present & co-futures report details how we cocreated and co-designed with the cohealth community to capture their stories and hear their voices as core to cohealth’s past, present and future. These stories help to locate the community as central to cohealth’s transition to cohealth@365.

This research project investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living in Australia, with a particular focus on their experiences, perceptions and practices—especially in terms of tracking technologies (the COVIDSafe app, the use of QR codes), masks and other prosocial techniques. The project also explored changing public perceptions in relation to media, government response, lockdowns, vaccinations and public space during this time.

Recognising the social, civil and governance impact of the COVID-19 crisis, COVIDSafe: Perceptions and Practices has sought to discover how Australians are understanding and responding to these changes at a community and personal level. Beginning in June 2020, the project initially aimed to understand people’s experiences and practices of the COVIDSafe App in Australia, both in terms of use and non-use. We distributed a 25 question Qualtrics survey via social media to explore what people thought about the app, relating to privacy concerns, efficacy, clarity of government information and processes. In addition, we asked them if they had downloaded the app (or not) and the range of reasons for doing so or not (e.g. concerns about the health of oneself and others, concerns about privacy of information and tracking apps, etc.)

This collaboration built on the Victorian Trades Hall Council’s (VTHC) gender-based violence in the workplace training package, designed to advance the rights of people working across Victoria through cultural change towards inclusion, equality, and diversity. The project aim was to have the package evaluated, enhanced and for measurements to be embedded to ensure the aim of the package to change workplace cultures is able to be rolled-out.

The Games of Being Mobile project followed nearly sixty households over three years (2013–2016) in five of Australia’s capital cities: Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane. It is the first national survey of mobile games. Our ethnographic project sought to put mobile games in context: socially, intergenerationally and culturally. Our study aimed to contextualise mobile games as part of broader practices of play, both in the home and extending out into neighbourhoods, urban public spaces and online networks.

COVID-19 has recalibrated everything — work, life and study — as many of these activities become compressed in the home. Digital amplification can be felt palpably on all areas — in good and less positive ways. For HDR students, this recalibration has added another layer of complexity and instability in an already undulating journey that is both intellectual and psychological. Work futures have rapidly come under revision — compounding the feelings of uncertainty, loss and change. This report has sought to give a voice to the diverse and divergent lived experiences of current HDRs, across different fields of research and stages of the research.

HDR students constitute society’s future knowledge workers (Mackie & Bates, 2019) and the repercussions of COVID-19 represent a significant loss of potential for students, with implications for their research aspirations and current and future employment. As Universities grapple with how to best support HDR students through this crisis, we offer a contribution to the understanding that acknowledges the complexity of journey as an intellectual development that has emotional and affective components (Owens et al., 2020).

This Australian Research Council Linkage with Intel, Locating the Mobile, followed ethnographically 12 households over three years (2014 – 17) within the three purposefully very distinct locations (Melbourne, Tokyo and Shanghai) to gain a sense of cultural differences and similarities with respect to intergenerational use of locative media. To understand how locative media fit into the rhythms of everyday life—with its mundane routines and intimacies—the researchers went beyond standard interviewing methods. Instead, they developed ethnographic techniques that enabled them to engage empathetically with people’s intimate experiences in mundane life.

Cherished Pets (CPF) is a charity committed to supporting the lives of older adults through animal-human centred approaches to care and independent living. From July to October 2020, RMIT University connected with CPF beneficiaries and volunteers to explore their experiences, perceptions and practices. The aim of the exploratory study was to reflect on the significant value of animals in the lives of older adults, and the important role of CPF in facilitating these experiences. This report captures the experience of some of the key members of the community and how they value CP. Learnings from this fieldwork will be taken into the place-making game, Pet Playing for Placemaking (PP4P).

With many pet owners experiencing social isolation during the pandemic, RMIT researchers are collaborating with Cherished Pets Foundation and its affiliated veterinary social enterprise towards improving social inclusion in the local community. The initiative has received community funding to bring an interactive, playful, and creative spin through a game designed to promote social engagement and healthy ageing.

This report examined risk perceptions—that is, beliefs about potential harm or the possibility of a loss. It is a subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. The report describes the outcomes of stage one of the project, Explore and Quantify. This includes an analysis of 22 exploratory interviews resulting in 22 video vignettes of older adults’ information and communication technology (ICT) risk perceptions (March 2021), and findings from a survey of approximately 400 members from the University of the Third Age (U3A) (June 2021).