Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez

Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the School of Communication, QUT. She is a Chief Investigator at the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. With a PhD in Digital Media from QUT (2018), MA from the Digital Methods Initiative (UvA), and BA in Journalism (Barcelona), her work focuses on digital platforms' role in systemic inequality, particularly around racism, memes, and content moderation. She leads projects on platform governance, collaborating across law and data science. Her research has been published in journals like Information, Communication & Society and First Monday.

Her teaching includes units on social media, digital media projects, and platform power at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She is actively involved in scholarship on content moderation challenges, humor as harm, and the evolving dynamics of global messaging apps like WhatsApp.

Key research themes include platform regulation, digital methods for studying social media, and the interplay between technology and social justice. Her work frequently addresses how digital platforms mediate contentious content and shapes public discourse. She has advised on policy submissions for Australian parliamentary committees on AI and social media governance.

Notable contributions include analyzing the 'El Negro de WhatsApp' meme, humor's role in online harm, and the global shift of WhatsApp from personal messaging to a public communication tool. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges media studies, sociology, and computational methods to tackle complex digital issues.