Project Overview

Algorithmic systems and generative artificial intelligence (‘Generative AI’_) tools are an inescapable part of contemporary life. Algorithmic decision-making and datafication – the capturing, storing, analysis and commercialisation of personal data – increasingly are part of early childhood and infancy from the first ultrasound photo onward (Leaver, 2015). Now Generative AI tools are equally shaping the way parents and societies experience, manage and imagine childhoods. Yet while these tools are widespread and ubiquitous, researchers have only really begun to analyse how childhoods – including new opportunities and well as new risks – look in the face to Generative AI and algorithms tools. Questions of opportunity, (in)equity, bias, creativity, and authenticity are all provoked as these technological systems reframe and alter childhoods, parenting and early educational experiences.

Aims

New technologies can offer new solutions in many realms of early childhood including health, education, welfare and communication often through the creation, tracking and analysis of increasingly largely datasets, but these opportunities must be balanced with a child’s right to privacy both today and into the future (Leaver, 2017). A point of tension in many households can come when the privacy and sharing practices and expectations of parents and children come into conflict, often around the sharing of children’s and family photo online, for example, in what has increasingly been dubbed ‘sharenting’ (Leaver, 2021). However, in the years before children have formed or can easily articulate their own preferences, parents have to make frequent decisions about which types of algorithms can influence children’s lives, including which systems can collect and store personal data about young people. These systems often measure young children against aggregated norms and ideals, without any transparency in how this sort of quantification or prediction can shape the experience and opportunities of a child’s life.  More than that, the Terms and Conditions which govern these apps and software systems are often written in such a way that carers rarely have the time or capacity to critically read or even open these Terms before agreeing to then with a single click.

Objectives

Generative AI tools supercharge this landscape, producing new opportunities, new challenges and new risks, but with vastly reduced transparency in how these tools operate, and how they are being integrated into the apps, platforms and educational tools that are shaping early parenting and childhood experiences.

Significance 

This project will seek to critically map and analyse the ways in which generative AI, algorithmic systems and datafication are influencing early childhood, with a particular focus on the early years from birth to eight years old. This map will including government systems such as centralised medical records, big platforms such as Facebook and OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT), and commercial start-ups which track and turn into data everything from infant heartbeats to first words and first steps. Once this mapping is completed, the project aims to find new ways to make the inner workings of these tools visible and understandable to those caring for young children in a manner that makes that information accessible and gives carers a stronger sense of agency in deciding how infants are (or are not) tracked, traced and recorded by digital devices, systems and apps.  

This project will be located within the Curtin node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, working with Professor Tama Leaver, who is a Chief Investigator in the Centre. 

References 
Leaver, T. (2015). Born Digital? Presence, Privacy, and Intimate Surveillance. In Hartley, John & W. Qu (Eds.), Re-Orientation: Translingual Transcultural Transmedia. Studies in narrative, language, identity, and knowledge (pp. 149–160). Fudan University Press. 
Leaver, T. (2017). Intimate Surveillance: Normalizing Parental Monitoring and Mediation of Infants Online. Social Media + Society, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117707192 
Leaver, T. (2021). Balancing Privacy: Sharenting, Intimate Surveillance and the Right to Be Forgotten. In L. Green, D. Holloway, K. Stevenson, T. Leaver, & L. Haddon (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Children and Digital Media (pp. 234–244). Routledge.

This project is grounded in existing research strengths within the Faculty of Humanities and Curtin University. The doctoral project will be housed within the Curtin node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child in which Tama Leaver is a Chief Investigator. The Curtin Node of the Centre holds a wealth of expertise in relation to digital childhood, and includes additional expertise, support and a physical space for Centre doctoral students and researchers to work collaboratively on Curtin’s Bentley campus. In critically analysing knowledge and data about, and produced by, children and parents, it sits firmly within the Faculty academic capability frameworks of both Global Futures and Learning Futures.

• Future Students

• Faculty of Humanities

• Higher Degree by Research

• Australian Citizen
• Australian Permanent Resident
• New Zealand Citizen
• Permanent Humanitarian Visa

• Merit Based

The annual scholarship package, covering both stipend and tuition fees, amounts to approximately $70,000 per year.

In 2024, the RTP stipend scholarship offers $35,000 per annum for a duration of up to three years. Exceptional progress and adherence to timelines may qualify students for a six-month completion scholarship.

Selection for these scholarships involves a competitive process, with shortlisted applicants notified of outcomes by November 2024.

1

All applicable HDR courses.

Essential: English language IELTS level of 6.5 and above  
Essential: Successful completion of an Honours or Masters programme with a research component (or equivalent)  
Preferable: Strong interest in children’s digital experiences and knowledge of social media platforms

 

Please send your CV, academic transcripts and brief rationale why you want to join this research project via the HDR Expression of Interest form to the project lead researcher, listed below. 

You must be enrolled in a Higher Degree by Research Course at Curtin University by March 2025.

Project Lead: Professor Tama Leaver