
Workshop to investigate public interest litigation in harmful digital marketing awarded Academy of Social Sciences funding
Authors Kathy Nickels
Date 19 December 2022
ADM+S researchers Prof Christine Parker, Prof Jeannie Paterson, Prof Kimberlee Weatherall and colleague Assoc. Prof Paula O’Brien have been awarded funding from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Workshops Program to convene leading stakeholders to investigate issues of harmful online advertising and the potential for public interest litigation.
The ASSA Workshops Program for 2023, awarded over $70,000 to convenors from ten different universities to advance research and policy agendas on nationally important issues.
The ADM+S co-hosted workshop Strategic Public Interest Litigation for Transparency and Accountability of Harmful Digital Marketing: A Researcher-Regulator-Community Dialogue seeks to address challenges of harmful digital advertising. It will bring together key social science and socio legal researchers to investigate predatory and manipulative advertising practices across a range of harmful industries such as alcohol, unhealthy food, and gambling.
Professor Christine Parker, Chief Investigator at ADM+S, University of Melbourne says that these practices are challenging to investigate.
“Bringing together scholars, activists and regulators working on these issues in different industries will provide the opportunity to discuss our common challenges.
“We plan to also look at the potential benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of strategic public interest litigation to address these harms.” says Professor Parker.
The ASSA Workshops Program has been operating for over 30 years. Each year the program supports 8-10 workshops with funding up to $9,000.
The program supports multidisciplinary workshops with the purpose of being a catalyst for innovative ideas in social science research and social policy, to build capability amongst young researchers, and to foster networks across social science disciplines and with practitioners from government, the private sector, and the community sector on issues of common concern.
The workshop Strategic Public Interest Litigation for Transparency and Accountability of Harmful Digital Marketing: A Researcher-Regulator-Community Dialogue will be co-hosted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, the Centre for AI and Digital Ethics at University of Melbourne and the Health Law and Ethics Network at Melbourne Law School, at the University of Melbourne on 25-26 September 2023.