Dr Rob Cover

Biography/ Background

Rob joined the Media Discipline at The University of Adelaide in 2008. Originally from Western Australia, Rob completed his PhD in media theory and queer theory at Monash University (Melbourne), and subsequently taught media studies and cultural studies at Monash and the University of Melbourne.

In 2003, Rob took a position as lecturer (and later senior lecturer) in media studies at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) where he taught on popular media culture, media theory, digital media, communication and identity/subjectivity and media/gender/sexuality, There he served as the programme's inaugural honours co-ordinator.

During 2006 and 2007 Rob provided strategic communication advice, training and consultation to a number of Queensland State Government departments, particularly in the areas of transitioning internal and inter-agency communication to digital environments, utilising networks to build staff 'communities, and handling media risk in a digital media environment.

He has written for a range of news publications, magazines and online sites, in addition to publishing creative fiction; in 1998 he was a Writer-in-Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre (Western Australia).

Qualifications

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History and English, University of Western Australia. Awarded 1996.

Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies, Media Studies and Critical Theory, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Awarded 2002.

Teaching Interests

Rob's teaching experience and interests include: participatory/interactive digital media environments, network cultures, media theory, communication and identity, media/gender/sexuality and popular media culture.

He currently convenes the first-year course MDIA 1002 Introduction to Media: Digital Revolutions and the Honours Core Component Seminar in the first semester of 2009.  In the second semester, Rob teaches the MDIA 3310 Professional Practice course (B.Media degree exit course), among other teaching.

Research Interests

Rob researches and publishes in a range of media fields of study, although these can be understood under the following three headings: Digital, participatory/interactive media and communication theory, particularly:

•     The theory and practice of interactivity, audience participation and co-creation in the text, author-audience relationships in a digital media environment
•     Social networking media (MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal)
•     Wireless communication channels and the impact on news and information flows
•     Television narrative, intermedia, fan cultures (particularly Buffy, Six Feet Under, 24, West Wing and political/satirical comedy such as Chaser's War on Everything
•     Electronic Games, gaming/interactive narratives and representation 
•     Digital skills and tertiary education.

Minority identities, community and media cultures, particularly:

•     Transition from 'community' print newspapers to online, networked information flows, and the impact on minority communities (immigrant, ethnic, sexual minorities and homeless youth)
•     The impact of online access to globalising discourses on small-press print feasibility
•     Reworking theories of identity (subjectivity, selfhood) to account for interactive, participatory digital media forms
•     Identity, representation and the persistence of cultural stereotypes within changing journalism ethnics and strategic communication processes

Youth, digital media strategies and new media risk reduction, including:

•     Representation of youth suicide and self-harm in contemporary news and entertainment media
•     Digital/online media, youth forums and the reduction of self-harm and suicide risk
•     Youth health, bodies and use of digital media and electronic games
•     Computer games and 'addiction' discourses
•     Gaming and bodies, health and youth.  
•     People with disabilities and digital audio-video technologies (iPod, X-Box and Mobiles)
•     Communication strategies for government and non-government human services agencies in a digital era
•     Media risk reduction for government and non-government agencies in an era of participatory, networked digital media

Rob's research is self-consciously broad, informed by theory while targeting specific social and cultural needs and contemporary problems. The research is drawn together by a core interest in contemporary digital/interactive and participatory media forms and questions of identity, self-hood and social/economic equality.

In 2006 he was awarded the Victoria University Early-Career Research Award; he sits on and/or has refereed for a number of academic publications, including New Media & Society, Media International Australia and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Publications

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Cover, Rob (forthcoming 2008). 'Sad, Sick & Alien Identities: Representing Queer Suicide in Popular Culture' Sexualities.

Cover, Rob (forthcoming 2008) 'Digital Refuges: At Risk' Sexual Minority Youth, New Media Technologies and Self Determination.' Youth Studies Australia.

Cover, Rob (2007) Review Essay: Donald E. Hall, Subjectivity. Subject Matters: A Journal of Communications and the Self 2(2).

Cover, Rob (2007). 'Gaming Addiction: The role of narrative and play in the production of the addiction myth' Game Studies: International Journal of Computer Game Research 6(1). Avail. at: www.gamestudies.org

Cover, Rob (2006). 'Audience Inter/Active: Interactive Media, Narrative Control & Reconceiving Audience History.' New Media & Society 8(1): 213-232.

Cover, Rob (2006) 'Producing Norms: Same-Sex Marriage, Refiguring Kinship and the Cultural Groundswell of Queer Coupledom' Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 6(2), Spring http:// http://reconstruction.eserver.org/062/contents.shtml

Cover, Rob (2005). 'Not To Be Toyed With: Drugs Addiction, Bullying and Self Empowerment in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.' Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19(1): 85-101.

Cover, Rob (2005). 'Political Suicide: GLBT Politics, Human Rights (to Life), and the Politicization of Queer Youth Suicide' Journal of Intergroup Relations 31(4): 25-44.

Cover, Rob (2005). 'Engaging Sexualities: Lesbian/Gay Print Journalism, Community Belonging, Social Space and Physical Place.' Pacific Journalism Review 11(1): 113-132.

Cover, Rob (2005). "Queer Subjects of Suicide: Cultural Studies, Sexuality and Youth Suicide Research/Policy in New Zealand" New Zealand Sociology 20(1): 76-98.

Cover, Rob (2005). 'Changing Channels: Scheduling, Temporality, New Technologies (And The Future Of 'Television' In Media Studies).' Australian Journal of Communication Studies, 32(2): 9-24.

Cover, Rob (2005) "DVD Time: Temporality, Interactivity and the New TV Culture of Digital Video" Media International Australia, No. 117 (November): 137-148.

Cover, Rob (2005). "(Re)Cognising the Body: Performativity, Embodiment and Abject Selves in Buffy The Vampire Slayer." : AesthethikaC Journal (Special Issue on 'Spaces of the Body'), 2(1): 68-83.

Cover, Rob (2004). 'Bodies, Movements and Desires: Lesbian/Gay Subjectivity and the Stereotype.' Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 18(1): 81-98.

Cover, Rob (2004). 'From Butler To Buffy: Notes Towards a Strategy for Identity Analysis in Contemporary Television Narrative.' Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 4(2), Spring.

Cover, Rob (2004). 'Interactivity: Reconceiving the Audience in the Struggle for Textual 'Control'.' Australian Journal of Communication, 31(1): 107-120

Cover, Rob (2004). 'My Own Private Parliament: Media Ethics, Gender, Popular Culture and the Kernot/Evans Affair.' Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 5(1), May 2004.

Cover, Rob (2004). 'Material/Queer Theory: Performativity, Subjectivity and Affinity-Based Struggles in the Culture of Late Capitalism.' Rethinking Marxism 16(3): 295-312.

Cover, Rob (2004). 'New media Theory: Electronic Games, Democracy and Reconfiguring the Author-Audience Relationship.' Social Semiotics 14(2): 173-191.

Cover, Rob (2004). 'Digital Addiction: The Cultural Production of Online and Video Game Junkies.' Media International Australia, No. 113, pp. 110-123.

Cover, Rob (2003). 'Some Cunts: Media, Graffiti, Globalisation and the 'Ownership' of Signification.' Social Semiotics 12(3): 269-290.

Cover, Rob (2003). 'The Naked Subject: Nudity, Context and Sexualisation in Contemporary Culture.' Body & Society 9(3): 53-72.

Cover, Rob (2002). 'Strategic Subjects: The Binary, Transgression and the Ethics of Strategic Essentialism.' Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique, 6(April).

Cover, Rob (2002). 'Re-Sourcing Queer Subjectivities: Sexual Identity and Lesbian/Gay Community Media.' Media International Australia (incorporating Culture & Policy), No. 103, 2002. pp. 109-123.

Cover, Rob (2000). 'First Contact: Queer Theory, Sexual Identity, and 'Mainstream' Film.' International Journal of Gender and Sexuality, 5(1): 71-89.

Cover, Rob (2000). 'Free(ing) Speech: Internet, Censorship, Pornography and the Child of the Millennium.' Antithesis, 11: 89-116.

Cover, Rob (1999). 'Queer with Class: Absence of the Third World Sweatshop in Lesbian/Gay Discourse and a Rearticulation of Materialist Queer Theory.' Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 30(2): 29-48.

Cover, Rob (1999). 'Perverting the Course: The Dynamics of Academic Queer Theory and Lesbian/Gay/(Queer) Politics.' theory@buffalo: Journal of Postgraduate Writing, 5: 58-87.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Cover, Rob (forthcoming) 'More Than a Watcher: Buffy Fans, Amateur Music Videos, Romantic Slash and Intermedia.' Sounds of the Slayer, ed. Vanessa Knights & Paul Antinello.

Cover, Rob (2006). 'Queer with Class: Absence of the Third World Sweatshop in Lesbian/Gay Discourse and a Rearticulation of Materialist Queer Theory.' Linked Histories: Postcolonial Studies in a Globalized World, ed. Pamela McCallum & Wendy Faith. Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary Press.

Cover, Rob (2005). 'Sexuality and Advertising.' Sexualities in Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Allison Kirkman & Pat Maloney. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

NON-REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

Cover, Rob (2002). 'Speaking (of) the Queer: Teaching/Communicating/Resourcing 'homosexuality' and its inherent dangers.' New Work: Teacher and Youth Worker Policy, ed. Michael Crowhurst & Mic Emslie.

Cover, Rob (2002). 'Cultured Borders, Bordering Cultures: Lesbian/gay Culture, the Australian Multiculturalism Paradigm and 'the Nations'.' Word is Out: Online Journal for Gay, Lesbian and Queer Liberation," www.wordisout.info 4(September).

Cover, Rob (2000). 'Student Organisations.' (entry in) Encyclopedia of Homosexuality Vol II: Gay Cultures and Identities. Los Angeles: Garland Press.

Cover, Rob (2000). 'Promiscuity.' (entry in) Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, ed. Timothy F. Murphy, Chicago & London: Fitzroy Dearborn.

Cover, Rob (2000). 'Equality' (entry in) Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, ed. Timothy Murphy, University of Illinois. ed. Timothy F. Murphy, Chicago & London: Fitzroy Dearborn.

SHORT FICTION

"Emergence" in JAAM (Wellington, NZ), #20, October, 2003.

"Blade" in Takahe (Christchurch, NZ) #50, Summer, 2003.

"Stereo" in Going Down Swinging, September 2000.

"Binary" in Amorphik, Simon Sellars (ed.), Melbourne: Sub Dee Industries,1999.

"Limit" in Australian Multicultural Book Review. Vol 6, No 3, 1999.

"Third Blow" in Querelle 1999 (Queer Collaborations Journal), 1999.

"A Girl's Opera" in Wild Fictions: Stories of LoveSexDeath, Cliff Street Publishing, Fremantle, 1997.

"Tower" in Wild Fictions: Stories of LoveSexDeath, Cliff Street Publishing, Fremantle, 1997.

"Onion" in Wild Fictions: Stories of LoveSexDeath, Cliff Street Publishing, Fremantle, 1997.

"Terminus" in Lovers & Others, Kerry Bashford (ed.), Darlinghurst: AFAO, 1997.

"Nil by Mouth" in Campaign Australia, No. 238, January, 1996.

"Watch" in Ready or Not, ed. Mark Macleod, Random House Australia, 1996.

"Dana" in Westerly Magazine, Spring, 1996

"Twin Tub" in Tamba Literary Magazine, 13, May, 1996.

"Tower" Karrinyup Writing Collection, Karrinyup Writers' Club, Perth, 1996.

"Loincloth" in Divertika, (anthology) eds. Steve McLeod & Gerry North, Night of Your Life/City Media Services, Sydney, 1995.

"Morning" in OutRage 1995 Short Story Anthology, ed. Adam Carr, OutRage, Melbourne, 1994.

"Little Journey" in Fruit, (anthology) ed. Gary Dunne, BlackWattle Press, Sydney, 1994.

Community Engagement

With research interests that focus on people's needs, sense of self and capacity for participation within contemporary media environments, Rob's academic work extends into community engagement in the form of government and industry consultancy.

He has recently consulted and provided training and strategic communication management for the Queensland Government, particularly with the departments of Disability Services and Communities, in the following areas:

•     Strategic planning, performance measurement and media/communication management
•     Strategic communication project planning, intranet and internet networked environments
•     Digital media risk management
•     Inter-agency communication and the use of communication tools to increase participation, understanding and mutual co-operation among and between government departments and with non-government human service providers.   

Expertise for Media Contact

Categories	Information technology, Media & journalism
Expertise	Interactivity;interactive;media;social networking;games;youth;culture;suicide;digital ;skills;identity;television;strategic;communication;computer;suicide;self-harm;sexuality;queer;theory
Mobile	0437 902 967

Entry last updated: Sunday, 22 Nov 2009