Professor of Digital Communication, RMIT University (Melbourne); Co-director, RMIT Digital Ethnography Research Centre.
Rob is a media and cultural studies scholar who researches digital and screen 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) online adversity, hostility and abuse. He is Chief Investigator on a number of major funded research projects, including an Australian Research Council Discovery Project "Representation of Gender and Sexual Diversity in Australian Film and Television, 1990-2010" " (2018-2023) an ARC Linkage Project "LGBTQ Migration" (2020-2024) investigating the relationship between gender/sexual diversity and internal migration in Australia, and an ARC Discovery Project "“Addressing Online Hostility in Australian Digital Cultures” (2023-2026). He has worked with Australian and international governments on a range of research projects, including in relation to COVID-19 health communication campaigns, and on the online abuse of public figures.
This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and tele... more This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and television LGBTQ+ themes, characters and narratives they viewed while they were growing up. Aspects of place and space were centred in these accounts, from memories of watching a shared television in the domestic family setting to the physical artefact of the video tape. Participants emphasised the theme of mobility toward the city and a rural/urban distinction in the film and television they discussed, and the role of city contexts in providing better access to screen media that represented LGBTQ+ lives – for example, through access to independent cinemas. These memorial accounts were considered formative and often provided the framework by which participants perceive and navigate everyday life as members of minority communities. At the same time, these place-bound accounts of encounters with LGBTQ+ screen texts expressed a complex attachment to domestic spaces, tangible objects and narratives of mobility.
For the past half-decade, disinformation and misinformation have been discussed in the public sph... more For the past half-decade, disinformation and misinformation have been discussed in the public sphere as the construct ‘fake news’, through a discourse of crisis and, increasingly, in terms of responses, remedies, solutions, interventions and preventative affordances. This article explores the emergence of the crisis–remedy discourse of disinformation, arguing that responsiveness is grounded in a solutionism that positions ‘fake news’ as crisis. Drawing on select examples, we use a cultural approach to analyse a range of remedies put forward in public sphere, policy and scholarly discourse. We identify three frameworks of the crisis–remedy discourse: alarmism, regulation/eradication, and adaptation. The article presents examples of five remedial approaches and theorises their alignment with different crisis frameworks. By thinking through the cultural formation of different remedies, we aim to draw out cultural studies’ utility in future efforts to determine the efficacy and ethics o...
The #MeToo debates have provided extensive new knowledge of the social, cultural, political and e... more The #MeToo debates have provided extensive new knowledge of the social, cultural, political and experiential conditions in which women, from Hollywood celebrities to women in more everyday settings, experience vulnerability of sexual assault, rape, harassment and sexually conditional employment. This chapter interrogates the ways in which #MeToo can be understood as a reaction of anger about the failure of ‘new masculinities’ to be more ethical in gender relationality. Using Judith Butler’s ethics of non-violence based on the recognition of vulnerability as a mutual condition of all subjects, this chapter argues that the retaliatory approach of #MeToo is unhelpful, but that its recognition of the shortcoming of non-hyper masculine masculinities helps open a way to rethink ethical relationality in celebrity workplaces.
Teen film presents a variety of intimacies between characters, sometimes in constructive ways, ot... more Teen film presents a variety of intimacies between characters, sometimes in constructive ways, other times in ways that demonstrate a lack of care for the self or others. As a popular, accessible textual form, teen film can provide a space to explore ethical practices of relating through flirting. In order to appeal to the largest possible audience, flirting, innuendo, touching, glancing, and talking often replace the representation of sex in teen film, playing a part in testing the waters and learning how to relate to other people. In this way, film has the potential to provide an environment to discuss aspects of relationships and relating that sometimes fall to the wayside. This chapter considers how teen films present pedagogical moments which might be valuable for starting conversations or discussions regarding the negotiation of intimacy, rather than resorting to scandal.
Following the development of online sites dedicated to the preservation of individuals’ photograp... more Following the development of online sites dedicated to the preservation of individuals’ photographic and textual memorialisation of cities, a number of archiving sites using Facebook have been developed that cater to the interactive and co-creative practice of memorialising LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) city-based communities, events and public spaces (e.g. Lost Gay Perth and Lost Gay Melbourne). Such minority community practices of memorialisation invoke deeply felt and affective attachments to ‘past’ in ways which have implications for identity, belonging, ageing and agency. This article utilises a critical approach to archiving, temporality, identity and attachment to interrogate some of the ways in which digital cultural practices related to archiving social networking sites are implicated in the memorialisation of community belonging through notions of past, networks of knowing, and the temporal and historical production of ways of thinking about and kno...
This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contemporary #MeToo movement and related ... more This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contemporary #MeToo movement and related debates have an impact on concepts related to flirting. We discuss flirting in relation to #MeToo as an interpersonal communication form occurring in workplaces such as film studios and business, as well as in the context of flirting as a cultural object itself. Analysing some examples of writing that worries about the possibility of #MeToo preventing workplace and public flirting, we look at how affective engagement with discomfort and vulnerability is implicated in flirting, and how it operates as a liminal activity built on unknowability of its communicative outcomes. Exploring some of the causes and origins of #MeToo in anger about the failure of ‘new masculinity’ and its claims to gender equity and corporate social responsibility, we show how flirting has been used sometimes either to initiate sexual harassment or to excuse it after the fact. Looking at #MeToo as a form of populism ...
This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and tele... more This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and television LGBTQ+ themes, characters and narratives they viewed while they were growing up. Aspects of place and space were centred in these accounts, from memories of watching a shared television in the domestic family setting to the physical artefact of the video tape. Participants emphasised the theme of mobility toward the city and a rural/urban distinction in the film and television they discussed, and the role of city contexts in providing better access to screen media that represented LGBTQ+ lives – for example, through access to independent cinemas. These memorial accounts were considered formative and often provided the framework by which participants perceive and navigate everyday life as members of minority communities. At the same time, these place-bound accounts of encounters with LGBTQ+ screen texts expressed a complex attachment to domestic spaces, tangible objects and narratives of mobility.
For the past half-decade, disinformation and misinformation have been discussed in the public sph... more For the past half-decade, disinformation and misinformation have been discussed in the public sphere as the construct ‘fake news’, through a discourse of crisis and, increasingly, in terms of responses, remedies, solutions, interventions and preventative affordances. This article explores the emergence of the crisis–remedy discourse of disinformation, arguing that responsiveness is grounded in a solutionism that positions ‘fake news’ as crisis. Drawing on select examples, we use a cultural approach to analyse a range of remedies put forward in public sphere, policy and scholarly discourse. We identify three frameworks of the crisis–remedy discourse: alarmism, regulation/eradication, and adaptation. The article presents examples of five remedial approaches and theorises their alignment with different crisis frameworks. By thinking through the cultural formation of different remedies, we aim to draw out cultural studies’ utility in future efforts to determine the efficacy and ethics o...
The #MeToo debates have provided extensive new knowledge of the social, cultural, political and e... more The #MeToo debates have provided extensive new knowledge of the social, cultural, political and experiential conditions in which women, from Hollywood celebrities to women in more everyday settings, experience vulnerability of sexual assault, rape, harassment and sexually conditional employment. This chapter interrogates the ways in which #MeToo can be understood as a reaction of anger about the failure of ‘new masculinities’ to be more ethical in gender relationality. Using Judith Butler’s ethics of non-violence based on the recognition of vulnerability as a mutual condition of all subjects, this chapter argues that the retaliatory approach of #MeToo is unhelpful, but that its recognition of the shortcoming of non-hyper masculine masculinities helps open a way to rethink ethical relationality in celebrity workplaces.
Teen film presents a variety of intimacies between characters, sometimes in constructive ways, ot... more Teen film presents a variety of intimacies between characters, sometimes in constructive ways, other times in ways that demonstrate a lack of care for the self or others. As a popular, accessible textual form, teen film can provide a space to explore ethical practices of relating through flirting. In order to appeal to the largest possible audience, flirting, innuendo, touching, glancing, and talking often replace the representation of sex in teen film, playing a part in testing the waters and learning how to relate to other people. In this way, film has the potential to provide an environment to discuss aspects of relationships and relating that sometimes fall to the wayside. This chapter considers how teen films present pedagogical moments which might be valuable for starting conversations or discussions regarding the negotiation of intimacy, rather than resorting to scandal.
Following the development of online sites dedicated to the preservation of individuals’ photograp... more Following the development of online sites dedicated to the preservation of individuals’ photographic and textual memorialisation of cities, a number of archiving sites using Facebook have been developed that cater to the interactive and co-creative practice of memorialising LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) city-based communities, events and public spaces (e.g. Lost Gay Perth and Lost Gay Melbourne). Such minority community practices of memorialisation invoke deeply felt and affective attachments to ‘past’ in ways which have implications for identity, belonging, ageing and agency. This article utilises a critical approach to archiving, temporality, identity and attachment to interrogate some of the ways in which digital cultural practices related to archiving social networking sites are implicated in the memorialisation of community belonging through notions of past, networks of knowing, and the temporal and historical production of ways of thinking about and kno...
This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contemporary #MeToo movement and related ... more This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contemporary #MeToo movement and related debates have an impact on concepts related to flirting. We discuss flirting in relation to #MeToo as an interpersonal communication form occurring in workplaces such as film studios and business, as well as in the context of flirting as a cultural object itself. Analysing some examples of writing that worries about the possibility of #MeToo preventing workplace and public flirting, we look at how affective engagement with discomfort and vulnerability is implicated in flirting, and how it operates as a liminal activity built on unknowability of its communicative outcomes. Exploring some of the causes and origins of #MeToo in anger about the failure of ‘new masculinity’ and its claims to gender equity and corporate social responsibility, we show how flirting has been used sometimes either to initiate sexual harassment or to excuse it after the fact. Looking at #MeToo as a form of populism ...
Population, Mobility and Belonging: Understanding Population Concepts in Media, Culture and Society, 2020
In a world of increasing mobility and migration, the concepts of population and belonging have co... more In a world of increasing mobility and migration, the concepts of population and belonging have come under significant recent scrutiny and criticism across social policy, opinion, public debate, entertainment, film and television. These fields help shape how national and global publics make sense of population as a cultural concept in ways which differ from the more formal administrative understandings of demography and statistics. Broadly, cultural perspectives tend to divide population into questions of either ‘size’ or ‘composition’. How these are determined helps constitute our understandings of people and identity, and policy debates on migration, climate change, urban infrastructure, ecology and ecological tourism, and population health. As importantly, how we come to an understanding of population in relation to mobility, social participation and identity informs the development of a public ethics about who can belong, the conditions that make belonging possible for marginal or mobile groups, and how we produce new convivialities in order to live together ethically on a crowded planet. They simultaneously inform how we can think about our ethical obligation as people to the world, the role of bodies in climate change, and the sustainability of vital, life-giving resources in the context of the population as ‘countable’ bodies.
Drawing on social, cultural and media approaches, this book takes a fresh look at the meaning of the concept of population. It focuses on how the concept of population governs ways of thinking about our own identities and forms of belonging at local, national and international levels, how film and television genres fixate on depictions of overpopulation and underpopulation, on how questions of ethics of belonging and migration emerge in relation to cities, attitudes towards otherness, and the use of population in ‘forgotten people’ concepts by an emergent alt-right politics.
Vulnerability and Exposure: footballer scandals, masculine identity and ethics presents a critica... more Vulnerability and Exposure: footballer scandals, masculine identity and ethics presents a critical investigation of contemporary masculine team sports and football scandals and their relationship with gendered cultures, institutions and identity norms. Drawing on reports of Australian Rules football off-field scandals over the past decade, the book critically examines cases of sexual assault, illicit drug use and binge drinking, homophobia, violence and other controversial behaviours that have become norms in the reporting of sportsplayers’ off-field lives.
Using a range of approaches to unpack some of the ways in which these scandals are produced and understood, and how they impact on reputations (of players, clubs and the game itself), Cover identifies the cultural factors significant in the production of the contemporary footballer identity, and the ways in which these identities are constructed, performed and reported on.
In utilising scandal to develop ways in which off-field behaviour in sport can be re-made as a relatively harmless event for women, bystanders and players, this work develops an approach to ethics by showing that footballers are well-placed to see the vulnerability of others through their own vulnerability to injury, career breaks and loss of reputation.
Chapter Two - #MeToo Scandals
This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contempora... more Chapter Two - #MeToo Scandals
This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contemporary #MeToo movement and related debates have an impact on concepts related to flirting. We discuss flirting in relation to #MeToo as an interpersonal communication form occurring in workplaces such as film studios and business, as well as in the context of flirting as a cultural object itself. Analysing some examples of writing that worries about the possibility of #MeToo preventing workplace and public flirting, we look at how affective engagement with discomfort and vulnerability is implicated in flirting, and how it operates as a liminal activity built on unknowability of its communicative outcomes. Exploring some of the causes and origins of #MeToo in anger about the failure of ‘new masculinity’ and its claims to gender equity and corporate social responsibility, we show how flirting has been used sometimes either to initiate sexual harassment or to excuse it after the fact. Looking at #MeToo as a form of populism that, on the one hand, critiques gender relationality but, on the other, does not offer solutions, we end the chapter by considering how ethics grounded in vulnerability might simultaneously maintain flirting’s uncertainties while seeking non-violent forms of negotiated intimacy.
Digital media has in recent years enabled people, including particularly younger people, to engag... more Digital media has in recent years enabled people, including particularly younger people, to engage creatively and interactively in defi ning their own sense of identity. This has included the production of new, diverse 'labels' or 'categories' of sexu-ality and gender identity and defi nitions of relationships. Challenging the older languages of LGBT identity in many ways, the new labels include over a hundred new terms to describe sexuality and gender, including terms such as heterofl exible, non-binary, asexual, greysexual, sapiosexual, demisexual, ciswoman, transcurious, maverique and many more. Social networking sites have responded by opening up or expanding the selection of gender and sexual categories used in drop-down menus and lists for self-identifi cation. Some have done away with lists for gender and sexual orientation altogether in favour of 'write in your own' text boxes-a sensible move given the speed at which new terms, categories and labels are developed and, relatedly, the way in which new exclusions and injustices are produced by the failure to include and represent a suffi cient range of gender/sexual terms. New youth digital cultural practices of announcing, rating and ranking this diverse range of gender and sexuality labels have become unexpectedly popular in very recent years in both online and offl ine settings. This has occurred alongside a new younger-generational custom of announcing preferred pronouns (she, he, ze, they or others a long list of new terms), together with the preferred use of new terms such as cismale, cisfemale and cisgender to describe, in contrast to transgender, those who have remained in the same gender roles as assigned at birth. What we are seeing emerge is what I refer to as a new 'taxonomy' of gender and sexuality, one that actively challenges authorised and institutional knowledge on identity and social practices, and that simultaneously contests both older...............
Digital Identities explores the ways technology and online media have infiltrated our daily lives... more Digital Identities explores the ways technology and online media have infiltrated our daily lives, and how they shape and affect who we are, both online and off. Critical studies over the past century have pointed to the multifaceted nature of identity, with a number of theories and approaches examining how everyday people have a sense of themselves, their behaviors, desires, and representations. This book investigates how these cultivated forms of identity have grown more complex with the increasing ubiquity of interactive, digital and networked media and communication, and how our perception of the self and cultural markers have changed. It details how digital users fashion not just a single online self-representation, but how they create different personas depending upon the digital platform, with whom they are communicating, and how they wish to perceive themselves, as well as how they have the capacity to co-create common and group narratives of identity through interactivity and the proliferation of audio-visual user-generated online content.
We have moved from making use of online communication as separate from other aspects of life to one in which digital media infiltrates and networks with almost all aspects of our everyday lives. Traces of our online identity are everywhere—social networking pages, blogs, Twitter, and more, all of which actively contribute to elements of our identity. our identities are always ‘on’ Digital Identities helps make sense of the implications for subjectivity and selfhood in an era of constant connectivity.
"In Queer youth suicide, culture and identity Rob Cover presents a unique approach to conceptuali... more "In Queer youth suicide, culture and identity Rob Cover presents a unique approach to conceptualising the issue of queer youth suicide by examining both the representation of the issue in popular media and the discursive frameworks through which suicidal queer young people are typically understood. By questioning the representation of queer youth as inherently vulnerable on the basis of their sexuality alone as well as the discourse of risk on which current knowledge of suicide is based, he provides a novel interpretation of the available research and widely publicised instances of queer young people who have taken their own lives and makes a persuasive argument for a change in how we as a society deal with this phenomenon… a balanced analysis of media representations of queer young people and suicide, pointing out the gaps and shortcomings as well as the strengths in current understanding of the issue. In particular, Cover’s examination of the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign does an excellent job of illuminating the potential positives as well as the negatives of a public discourse that presumes all queer young people to be vulnerable and at risk… On the whole, Cover has written a book that elegantly weaves together a poststructuralist critique of the academic literature, representations of queer youth from popular culture and real-world examples in order to make a case for looking at queer youth suicide not through frameworks of bullying or depression, but through an understanding of the pressure that queer young people may feel to make their sexual identities whole and recognisable to others… this book is a worthwhile read and a valuable tool for anyone who engages with queer young people in any way." -- Culture, Health & Sexuality
'Steeped in Butler- and Foucault-inspired sensibilities, Cover’s examination of popular media, academic, and Internet texts challenges existing narratives that assume that homophobia is the root cause of queer youth vulnerability and that all queer youth are equally at risk of suicide. … Cover highlights the shortcomings of current approaches to queer youth suicide, he also offers alternatives; the book is as pragmatic as it is theoretical. … This text is highly accessible and interdisciplinary, with relevance for readers interested in policy making, advocacy, media studies, rhetoric, sociology, and queer theory. … Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity effectively brings queer theory into a conversation that has been long dominated by more traditional gay and lesbian studies, and makes a compelling case for expanding how we interpret representations of queer suicide and sexuality and how we can work to reduce it. In the end, the book is an excellent effort to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice, a fitting (albeit incomplete) response to a social problem to which we still seem to be struggling for lasting solutions." -- QED-A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking
Uploads
Papers by Rob Cover
Drawing on social, cultural and media approaches, this book takes a fresh look at the meaning of the concept of population. It focuses on how the concept of population governs ways of thinking about our own identities and forms of belonging at local, national and international levels, how film and television genres fixate on depictions of overpopulation and underpopulation, on how questions of ethics of belonging and migration emerge in relation to cities, attitudes towards otherness, and the use of population in ‘forgotten people’ concepts by an emergent alt-right politics.
Using a range of approaches to unpack some of the ways in which these scandals are produced and understood, and how they impact on reputations (of players, clubs and the game itself), Cover identifies the cultural factors significant in the production of the contemporary footballer identity, and the ways in which these identities are constructed, performed and reported on.
In utilising scandal to develop ways in which off-field behaviour in sport can be re-made as a relatively harmless event for women, bystanders and players, this work develops an approach to ethics by showing that footballers are well-placed to see the vulnerability of others through their own vulnerability to injury, career breaks and loss of reputation.
This chapter investigates some of the ways in which the contemporary #MeToo movement and related debates have an impact on concepts related to flirting. We discuss flirting in relation to #MeToo as an interpersonal communication form occurring in workplaces such as film studios and business, as well as in the context of flirting as a cultural object itself. Analysing some examples of writing that worries about the possibility of #MeToo preventing workplace and public flirting, we look at how affective engagement with discomfort and vulnerability is implicated in flirting, and how it operates as a liminal activity built on unknowability of its communicative outcomes. Exploring some of the causes and origins of #MeToo in anger about the failure of ‘new masculinity’ and its claims to gender equity and corporate social responsibility, we show how flirting has been used sometimes either to initiate sexual harassment or to excuse it after the fact. Looking at #MeToo as a form of populism that, on the one hand, critiques gender relationality but, on the other, does not offer solutions, we end the chapter by considering how ethics grounded in vulnerability might simultaneously maintain flirting’s uncertainties while seeking non-violent forms of negotiated intimacy.
We have moved from making use of online communication as separate from other aspects of life to one in which digital media infiltrates and networks with almost all aspects of our everyday lives. Traces of our online identity are everywhere—social networking pages, blogs, Twitter, and more, all of which actively contribute to elements of our identity. our identities are always ‘on’ Digital Identities helps make sense of the implications for subjectivity and selfhood in an era of constant connectivity.
-- Culture, Health & Sexuality
'Steeped in Butler- and Foucault-inspired sensibilities, Cover’s examination of popular media, academic, and Internet texts challenges existing narratives that assume that homophobia is the root cause of queer youth vulnerability and that all queer youth are equally at risk of suicide. … Cover highlights the shortcomings of current approaches to queer youth suicide, he also offers alternatives; the book is as pragmatic as it is theoretical. … This text is highly accessible and interdisciplinary, with relevance for readers interested in policy making, advocacy, media studies, rhetoric, sociology, and queer theory. … Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity effectively brings queer theory into a conversation that has been long dominated by more traditional gay and lesbian studies, and makes a compelling case for expanding how we interpret representations of queer suicide and sexuality and how we can work to reduce it. In the end, the book is an excellent effort to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice, a fitting (albeit incomplete) response to a social problem to which we still seem to be struggling for lasting solutions."
-- QED-A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking