On The Couch with Kath Albury

[00:00:00] Jennifer Farinella: Hello and welcome to an episode of On The Couch, where we collaborate with experts, practitioners, authors, advocates, and influencers to explore current social themes, sex positive topics, and share stories and insights that matter.

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While listening, we encourage you to practice good self care. Check the show notes for content details and references. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, enjoy this episode of On The Couch.

[00:00:47] Maddy Stratten: So welcome I'm Maddy Stratten and I'm joined by Professor Kath Albury.

[00:00:51] Kath Albury: Hello, hello.

[00:00:52] Maddy Stratten: So it's my absolute pleasure to, welcome Kath On The Couch and I'm really looking forward to chatting with you about young people and sex in the digital space.

As always, I'm itching to dive straight in, but I don't want to rush. Um, I want to kind of get settled and start us off with a bit of your story, Kath. So, the previous couple of episodes, we've been using this concept of fields of existence or coordinates of belonging to help share and connect stories.

So these concepts were introduced to us by Leah from Co Culture Communications, and they demonstrate that our beings are a field of activity. Made up from the stories that we've been told, our ancestors that have existed, the land under our feet, and the places that we stand. And all of these forces form who we are in this moment as contextual beings.

So I'd love to get started with your story, Kath. How do you define yourself and locate yourself and what are your coordinates of belonging?

[00:01:51] Kath Albury: Yeah, thank you. Um, so I currently live and work on Wurundjeri Country, near beautiful Merry Creek, um, it's the nearest waterway to me and a beautiful, um, and very clear, connection with, Aboriginal people and, and their really powerful activism, um, particularly in Victoria right now, moving forward to a treaty, which is, yeah, really, long overdue.

Personally, I am from kind of mixed Scottish, Irish heritage, um, little bit of French and, and English thrown in, classic kind of white settler history. Um, don't know all of my family's history, but, but what I do know is, on my mother's side, the family were Protestants in Scotland, were moved by British colonial forces to Ireland as part of the occupation of Northern Ireland, and then left Ireland in the famine, as many people did, and went to the United States to the Appalachian area, which was of course, Native American land.

So then migrating here, um, histories of, being white settler, and kind of following, I guess, a bit of a colonial narrative that really we still, you know, like a lot of white settlers here, reckoning with in terms of what it means to be an uninvited settler on other people's land. 

In terms of my, um, more immediate, family history, my family migrated in the early seventies. Um, both my parents are academics, which is kind of unusual. Bit of a nepo baby situation. Uh, I have a, a history, outside of my academic life of doing kind of performance work and, and cabaret and, um, was in a youth health theater group in 1985.

Um, and lots of work, with the HIV positive community. So my, very dear friend, Tobin Saunders, has an alter ego as the drag queen, Vanessa Wagner, who, um, was very popular running HIV living workshops throughout the 90s and into the 2000s. Tobin is positive and was out about being positive, came out on Big Brother, in fact, on Celebrity Big Brother, um, in the 2000s and, I was his and her sidekick, Nurse Nancy, so I had a kind of femme drag persona. Then we did a show called Wheel of Misfortune, which was about HIV medication side effects. And then, um, that kind of morphed into a show called Chinwag, which was like an infotainment chat show about living well with HIV. And, and that that ran from like 1997 to 2014 was the last performance at the World AIDS Conference here in Melbourne.

Um, I also did some violence prevention work. So in the early 2000s, I worked with Catherine Lumby and a team through the University of Sydney, also with Rape Crisis New South Wales. I was on the research team and then designed and delivered, the initial ethical sexual relationships workshops with the NRL first grade players and then with the, um, under 20s Toyota Cup players over a series of years.

[00:05:21] Maddy Stratten: Yeah. Wow. I love this part of On The Couch conversations because it's so diverse those coordinates of belonging and, I like to spend a little bit of extra time here and hearing that backstory of how it leads into your work and where you are today.

Um, have a look on Kath's LinkedIn because your bio is so epic. So if they want to learn more about your career, they can jump in there and have a look at that. But I love hearing about the things that are a little bit more niche that you probably wouldn't hear about, so thanks so much for sharing that

I want to get into talking about what young people want health service providers to know about their digital sexual and reproductive health cultures. And some of those more theoretical conversations around, um, data or digital capabilities as well. So, if we could continue a little bit more first though, around your story and take a moment to go back to the start of your career in research and your PhD in the late 90s, I would say?

[00:06:24] Kath Albury: Yeah, started, started late 90s, didn't finish till mid 2000s, because I was doing all those other projects.

[00:06:31] Maddy Stratten: Yes.

[00:06:32] Kath Albury: Yeah.

[00:06:33] Maddy Stratten: I mean, that makes sense. Um, so your work was focused on ethical amateur pornography, heterosexual female sex and desire and consent. Um, can you take us back to those early days of your research and share what inspired you and I guess what motivated you to get into this space?

[00:06:52] Kath Albury: Yeah. So, um, like I said, both my parents are academics.

 My father's specialization was history of medicine. My mother's specialization was, in fact, reproductive politics. There were always kind of, um, feminist books around my house and my mother for a time, I think in the 70s, was an educator for Family Planning, New South Wales. So there was all the gear, you know, and, and pretty, you know, 70s parents told us way more than we ever wanted to know about sex, and so I knew a fair bit about sexuality growing up in, you know, in a, in a reasonably age appropriate way, although it was the 70s. So if you think about popular culture, then it was a very different vibe.

But until I was an adult, I hadn't really seen much porn beyond the kind of Playboy thing, but I'd read Andrea Dworkin and kind of a lot of other, uh, critiques of porn that made it sound pretty brutal and pretty violent. Um, and as I was in relationships more and, you know, I had partners and friends of different genders, it's like, okay, porn is being made out to be this one particular thing with a kind of industrial complex behind it and, and very coercive, but I see more variation in what I observe in my, um, everyday life and my own relationships, and I wonder why that is.

So I started, you know, and this was the very early internet days too, you know, the, the era of people in a chat room, like working out what their cams could do, you know, for the first time. And so I could see around me in, in print and also online. Um, there was a very different culture of, you know, what you might term consensual exhibitionism and voyeurism going on.

That, yes, was like an image and therefore, I guess, was porn, but clearly something else was going on than, than the kind of, um, Catharine MacKinnon framing of you know, porn as a I guess, class violence where, you know, two gendered classes were in opposition to each other. Um, and so, yeah, so, so I did some work looking at, it was textual analysis, it wasn't interview based, but I did some work looking at the homegirls section in Picture Magazine, which was a kind of amateur, Sometimes complete amateur, just people sending pictures from home, sometimes sex workers sending like a publicity photo, you know, an amateur looking publicity photo to make some extra money or whatever.

Um, but it was a very popular part of the magazine. And so yeah, I did some work on that and, and looking at how do we conceptualize that within this current, um, framework or I guess toolkit of theorizing porn that doesn't really account for a kind of amateur or DIY culture in all of this.

[00:10:00] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, that's so interesting hearing about it back then and then reflecting on what we have now.

And I think, you know, those conversations around sex in the 70s versus now is very different. But then thinking about sexuality seems to be like in a really different place. As well, and, you know, thinking about that current digital landscape around these same topics. Is it where you thought we would be in 2025?

[00:10:28] Kath Albury: Um, I mean, nothing's where we, like, a lot's happened. . 2025's been a lot already. I mean, I think one of the interesting things, particularly when I started, um, looking at home technologies and that's what I was really interested in. Like the porn industry changed a lot. For example, when the VHS came out and people didn't have to go to the cinema, they could rent a video and watch it at home and online stuff really changed the way people could connect with people because you used to have to use like a drop box, like phone messages or a PO box to exchange pictures and videos. Um, whereas now, you know, you could do it directly again in domestic space. And there was a lot of initial concern in the 80s and 90s about like the domestic space being sullied by porn.

And if you look at, for example, the way sex shops are zoned, even on the street, in New South Wales, particularly, you can't still have a sex shop that you can directly walk into from street level, it has to be upstairs or downstairs. Physical barriers are placed around, this is the zone where sex happens and this is the zone where sex does not happen. And so...

[00:11:43] Maddy Stratten: How does that work for like, accessibility too? Like that's a whole

[00:11:46] Kath Albury: It does not. Yeah, it does not.

[00:11:48] Maddy Stratten: You've got a whole community of people who need to have access, like stairs are not an option.

Yeah.

[00:11:54] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, I mean, those potential areas of growth that we're talking about and maybe more so in terms of resources and knowledge for sexual and reproductive health professionals and health consumers.

Can you speak a bit to that as well?

[00:12:08] Kath Albury: Yeah, I mean, I think what we saw, and again, this was around in the 70s, if you look at old things like, you know, Our Bodies Ourselves and the kinds of feminist like conscious raising collectives and the origins of organizations like Family Planning again, they were like quite DIY and people weren't trained, you know, it was considered like, if you have a body, you have the expertise to be able to do this. Um, and there was a big pushback against kind of the medicalization of sexuality and of reproductive health and those kinds of things. So that then, I guess, evolved through the 90s through a kind of, yeah, punk DIY ethos.

But at the same time, particularly in Australia, there's a kind of NGO ization of health and it becomes a much more bureaucratic and regulated space, um, you know, in community health, definitely. And I think there was a shift in health organizations, probably, you know, for a range of very good reasons to making sure that we were on message and on brand and keeping the communication very tightly controlled and that it's very one way and very kind of broadcasty.

The digital domain is a very free for all space. And expertise is lateral, it's horizontal, it's diagonal, if you like, if you imagine like a tic tac toe, that's how communication works digitally and it's three dimensional and four dimensional as well. And I think, um, that's something that, that we could certainly see emerging like where spaces like Tumblr picked up and people were talking in very sophisticated ways about their experiences of their bodies and their sexualities and their gender.

And it was kind of picking up on those DIY zine culture, things, you know, people making collage artwork, writing pieces of very confessional writing, sharing lived experience, but then also, you know, sharing insider information, like where to find, you know, a doctor who would prescribe contraception without you having to show a Medicare card or where to get gender affirming care in a particular area.

So, this is something, I think we've really seen amplified with the growth of, you know, the social platform, like, like Instagram, like Facebook and whatever, but also very strong commercial forces in those spaces and, the conversation that we have had a lot, recently around the algorithmic, re curation of those spaces so that you don't just see the people you want to follow your kind of pushed particular kinds of content that may, um, be quite violent or, you know, is designed to provoke your emotion, basically, because that's what keeps you clicking and watching and keeps you engaged.

And I think, um, that's the space that has really, you know, people in internet research field have seen it happening for the past few years. And, I was at a conference last year where it said, like, you know, roundabout 2015, 2016 is the year we really fell out of love with the internet. And began to take a much more critical stance, you know, the internet researchers were all real cheer squads for, for the internet for a while. And then it was like, hang on a minute, stuff's happening here. And really seeing what happens when there's that concentration of wealth and power in very few hands and, their business model is based on maximizing connection and maximizing eyeballs on the page.

And there's not really a public interest ethos underpinning that and we really see what that leads to now.

[00:15:58] Maddy Stratten: Yeah. I love that concept of like , mid 2000s falling out of love with the internet. Gosh that is just so true because it was kind of this community and I guess it still can be this community where you're sharing ideas and you're supporting one another and you're connecting with services and resources and information and we'll get into some of that a little bit later as well. I really want to jump ahead, um, some of your recent work around digital media and sexuality. In particular, looking at how digital data capabilities have shaped health providers decision making. So, digital data capabilities is like the capacity to find and organize information and understand digital media as a tool and be able to share that information. I'm not sure if that's a great definition, but maybe you can speak to that a little bit more.

[00:16:48] Kath Albury: Yeah, yeah, sure. And we're specifically using the term capabilities, not literacy, not because we don't believe literacy is a good thing, but, one of the things that's become really evident to me working with health promotion people over time is how, um, what a massive role policy and infrastructure and training and resourcing plays in any individual health workers capacity to do their job well in relation to digital technology or in relation to engaging with data.

And I think if we use the term literacy, um, that really responsibilizes an individual. But like I could be the most literate health worker in the world, but if my organization won't let me use social platforms or has a firewall so I can't see what young people are doing online, or my manager is scared of the Internet and the only policy we have is about what I'm not allowed to say or do there and there's no kind of empowerment to experiment in that space, then I don't have capability, regardless of how literate I am. So that's my little soap box speech for the managers online right now.

[00:18:03] Maddy Stratten: I love that so much because, yeah, I think we hear digital literacy all the time, but I think digital capabilities is such a, a more, realistic, I guess, view of, of what a lot of people in the, um, in the workforce are living and dealing with at the moment. So, I know that you recently delivered a webinar on this and your fellowship research explores this impact of digital transformation ranging from, um, enterprise technologies to everyday digital practices in the sexual and reproductive health workforce.

 Can you share a couple of points and a couple of thoughts for our listeners?

[00:18:42] Kath Albury: Yeah, so we have developed, some models of what digital capability and data capability look like for the sexual and reproductive health workforce. And we also have a model of what we would consider, um, digital and data capability to look like for health consumers.

Because the actual empirical work we did for the project involved, a round of interviewing with kind of leaders and stakeholders in, in public health and sexual health and digital studies and data studies and youth studies, um, mostly in Australia, but also in, in Europe and Canada and, um, the U S, uh, and then we did some research with health consumers around how they use, digital platforms and technologies to support their sexual and reproductive health.

The final round then was some work with health promotion workers in the young adult age group, 18 to 29 year olds, because, you know, they are a target population, a priority population for health promotion service, but they also are often health professionals themselves. So we were asking people to kind of think about how they toggle, I guess, between those viewpoints.

Um, and what we found was. Yeah, people, you know, health consumers for want of a better term, not always service users. Some people prefer that term, but I don't think everyone's connected with a service. Uh, and use digital platforms in all kinds of ways. I mean, you know, they use platforms like Hot Docs to book in with their GP, but they're also reading the Google reviews to see what the GP is like.

They're scanning the bio on the practitioner's page to see what they say they're good at. Then they might be in a Discord chat or some other private chat going, has anyone been to so and so? What do you know? What do they know about them? How are they with, you know, do they understand non monogamy? You know, do they understand, um, that, a woman might want PrEP for a reason or, you know, these kinds of like, you know, specific health needs that are not necessarily generic. 

 Or, you know, people like my, my PhD student is, specifically doing work with people who practice ethical non monogamy and want higher rates of testing than a standard, you know, population wide recommendation might dictate. And so how do they navigate, you know, getting the tests they want while not falling foul of the Medicare guidelines, which restrict testing. Um, and, and how do people negotiate like data collection and data sharing in organizations? So all that demographic information is data and it's managed in particular ways. It connects with health records. It connects with, you know, guidelines and recommendations.

Um, There are a lot of restrictions. Digital systems are particularly restrictive because, you know, when people had like a paper intake form, they could cross something out and write something next to it. If all you have is a drop down menu, you've got to tick a box. Otherwise you break the system. You can't go to the next page.

We know people, segment their health care in different ways. They might go to, you know, I go to one GP for the health test I have because I'm a swinger and I go to another GP when I'm taking my kid because they have tonsillitis, you know, um, So this is kind of what we're talking about in relation to the use of digital platforms and technologies for health culture, like, you know, it ranges from me on a dating app, you know, using the menu to connect with the person I want to connect with, like to build my profile, to me seeking health information or healthcare or just connecting with someone else with the same condition, like, you know, living with herpes support group type thing online group chat to dealing with the enterprise technologies in a health organization where there's a particular form we use for intake,

where there's a particular form where we seek testing or we, we get surveillance data particular way, or we understand our particular services ,you know, epidemiological profile, if you like, in a particular way, based on our negotiation of data and all of this. These days comes through a digital technology, you know, and at the same time, your organization has a website and, um, you have a web developer, you know, who can see on Google Analytics, who stays longer in which area and what they click on and possibly what their IP address is and those kinds of things.

So as a health organization or a person managing their health, you're navigating a lot of data now, and some of it's very obvious and some of it's not so obvious. So yeah, we're just kind of building frameworks for organizations to have strategic conversations around this and then to think about, okay, for want of like a better metaphor, like what are the known knowns and what are the known unknowns?

And what are the absolute unknown unknowns here? And where do we need more training, more support, more um, resourcing, more whatever. There's a lot of Australian policy coming in now, leading digital transformation and. wanting, you know, digital capability in the health workforce, but that's very kind of generic and top down.

And so our project has tried to get a bit more in the weeds of what do people see their immediate issues are and where might that be stickier for a service that's, you know, offering termination of pregnancy, for example, or, um, many of the clients are living with HIV or there's people, you know, who are sex workers, um, and, or, or dealing with other kind of issues that might lead them to be exposed to stigma in health settings and, you know, how do they navigate that in a kind of very digitized and data driven environment?

[00:24:49] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, and I think, you know, it'll all lead together as this conversation, um, continues, but the, um, web developers, the young person in the team who looks after the web development of the team.

Um, that is a very familiar thing for a lot of our audience, I'm sure. And I think, you know, like lets in perfectly to, I guess more of a discussion around young people's digital self representation and using, uh, user generated, social media for sexual learning, safety, well being, uh, both formally and informally in this digital culture, and you've spoken to that already.

 Just for our listeners, when we talk about digital culture, we mean the values, beliefs, behaviors, and technology that shape the way that we work and interact in a digital first environment. So when we think about digital cultures, we include elements like mindset, collaboration, innovation, and technology adoption.

And we know that a lot of young people are getting their online sexual health communication through social media, as you mentioned earlier., although I'm interested to see, how this will change with the introduction of those age restrictions. So you might like to share some thoughts on that as well. Kath, how would you like to introduce these concepts a little bit more, around the conversations around digital cultures and young people a bit more specifically?

[00:26:15] Kath Albury: Yeah, I, I think for a long time and, you know, I think you, you heard by my history, I've been around these spaces since the late 90s.

So for a long time, when people were talking about media, particularly in the sexual health area, it was a lot about understanding images and decoding images and it was all about like understanding that advertising is not real and, um, romance novels are fiction and, you know, it was a kind of grappling with representation and assumed that media was made somewhere else, by professionals, and I think it took a while in the space of health education, and health promotion for there to be a bit of a reframe into, oh, okay, we all do media now, like, we all make media, like, you know, that was the, that was the smartphone moment meant we all had the camera and the whatever in our pocket, we can all edit an image, we can all filter an image, and a lot of the response to that then kind of reflected the old, oh, but filters are bad and they are fake.

And, I think it then took a while to, think about the ways that creativity works in digital culture and that actually, all the old things that people used to quite happily accept about, early adulthood and adolescence being a time of experimentation and playing with identity and, you know, playing with the idea of self and, and that evolving that, yeah, that also works through visual digital culture.

And so people make and create images, um, and share images that are about exploring different elements of sexuality and gender. And some of it is, um, Uh, what your, health or P. E. teacher. at high school would have thought was a really good way of doing it. And some of it is not what they would have thought was a really good way of doing it.

But, um, we're immersed in digital culture now and many young people actually have excellent digital literacy and are really good at making and doing things in digital spaces. But that doesn't necessarily mean they have, um, a really good and critical understanding of sexuality or sexual health.

Um, but that can emerge through that space. This is a kind of complicated domain and that, that often young people are doing very sophisticated things in these spaces, but, but maybe doing it,, In a very creative way, or a very playful way, or a humorous way, or a way that seems really dark and scary, like mental health memes freak a lot of people out, you know, because they can be really dark, but they can be a great space of connection.

You know, for the people who make them and share them. So, yeah, it's a really, um, complex space and a space. I think it's only recently, being grasped in its full complexity by, a professional space that was really working to, to get its head around, the explosion of creativity.

[00:29:25] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, it's quite innovative really, isn't it? And all it is, is opening up a door for the opportunity of people to be able to to walk through and get what they're looking for in that digital space as well. And I know that there's all these growing challenges of producing and promoting digital content.

Especially with the recent announcement from Meta, on its new content moderation process and bringing an end to fact checking, which, to be honest, is a little bit terrifying, uh, to know how much, misinformation will be spread in these social media platforms.

This could be really damaging for young people's sexual and reproductive health and relationships. So how do we as organizations and individuals working with young people, enhance and better understand and practice our digital and data capabilities and literacy?

[00:30:23] Kath Albury: Yeah, I think, it's a horrible kind of techie word, but I think being agile is really important.

And this is where I say, like, in capability wise, this is where organizations, I think, need to have some strategic conversations about, this domain being a site where we have to experiment, we can't wait for a randomized controlled trial or whatever, you know, because it will be 12 months too late by the time you implement the change.

So it's about, um, exploring different platforms, early. Some of them may not be picked up by the people that you want to connect with, but some of them may be very important to the people that you want to connect with. Doing a bit more, um, what's often termed social listening in digital space and actually paying people to do that work.

[00:31:15] Kath Albury: And that's the most important thing, not just adding that as another thing that someone who has a very full workload. Um, you know, has to do, but understanding that, same as you don't just walk into someone's house and start giving them a whole heap of health information that you're not sure whether they want or need or whatever, like, sorry stop your conversation and listen to me, like, you don't barge into someone's social media space and say, please respond to this, you know, targeted effective messaging, like you actually listen and understand what the conversation is about first. And I think, um, it's really important as people are trying out new platforms like Bluesky, for example, which is where a lot of people have moved to after Twitter that we don't assume that we could just blast a whole lot of content into the space, but we actually look at, okay, their particular hashtags we should be following at their particular conversations and for the people who are doing health promotion and already have a good sense of engaging with young people across different platforms, to be empowered by their organization to be able to respond in a conversation at the right time in a timely way, and and to be supported by the organization if what happens as a result of that is a, for example, a transphobic pile on or whatever.

But, um, I think this requires a different approach to the old school, you know, we focus test a message and we then take it to a creative agency. And then the creative agency makes the campaign. And then we pilot the campaign. It's not going to work. It's not going to work.

[00:32:58] Maddy Stratten: And I just think of our team leader, Jen Farinella because her voice is in my mind being like we're organized but flexible and when we're when we're developing content particularly like um sexual health education content I guess or sex positive content where we're going a little bit advanced so that we're not you know under the pump all the time trying to produce content but then things change you know different conversations come up online something's happened in the media and I'm like whoop we need to listen to that.

We need to shift our focus a little bit. We were going to post today about this topic, but It feels misplaced now. We're going to listen and we're going to pivot and we're going to be organized, but we're going to be really flexible with that. And that takes time. And I think that's the thing when it comes to, doing this work is allowing time and patience for all of that and be like, it's not, this, this big doom and gloom. We need to have, hundreds of likes and thousands of engagement because I think you kind of narrow yourself down like.

[00:33:58] Kath Albury: Yeah, and analytics are proxies for engagement. Analytics aren't attention, really. And someone could screenshot your message and send it to someone in a group chat who really needs that, at that time, and that would be a terrific outcome, but you'll never get it by counting clicks and likes, you know. And so I think you have to think of digital content often as having again, like buzzwordy, but like a long tail, like it doesn't just matter in that moment. It often circulates or re emerges at a different time, because this is one thing that's, you know, distinct digital content is archived, you know, in a way that the poster on the back of the toilet door is not when the poster goes from the back of the toilet door, it's gone.

But the digital content remains and people stress about that of like, Oh, my God, the digital footprint or like, Oh, if we say something wrong in a chat room, it's there forever. And I know that's a lot of pressure, but it also has benefits. And if you think of Tumblr and how successful Tumblr was as a platform for sharing, sexual and reproductive health information and, you know, support around, um, gender diversity, um, reblogging and archiving like was the absolute essence of Tumblr.

It was an anonymous site. It wasn't about your brand. Like it was about the kind of cycles of sharing and reblogging things that were meaningful, so that other people could find them and leaving like a trail of breadcrumbs almost. But it , it does take a bit of immersion in digital vernaculars and digital culture, like to, to begin to see how this operates.

And that's why, you know, that's why I think it's so important that staff are funded and resourced for it. Like the digital native is a myth. It was made up by a marketing company. It's like the 10, 000 steps thing. Like there's no, it doesn't, it's not a thing. Um, just because someone enjoys using TikTok like as a, as a person commuting on the train to work, doesn't mean they understand how to make great TikTok content. They have to be looking at TikTok analytically and that that is a job and that takes time. You know, we run a media and communications degree with a social media major, it actually it's real work. It's it's not just vibes, you know, so.

So, yeah, I have great empathy with younger staff who, who get assumed to know all things youth because of course they don't, like then that's what people said in our research project. I am a health promotion professional, I'm not a typical young person, like, because they are not health promotion professionals.

So we need to actually still do research and resource people and do proper analysis of media content.

[00:36:54] Maddy Stratten: Yeah. And I think, you know, the landscape is changing so quickly, I just think Winnie and I were talking about just the other day when Instagram changed the formatting to make it a square and all of our content, we have to change everything.

You can plan, you can redesign, but then we're like, okay, but what if they change it back because they can just do that if they feel like it and we're just, you know, things are changing, algorithms are changing all the time and it's like, yep, you can send us off to do a social media training, capacity building, professional development thing.

Great. But it has to be like an ongoing learning, doesn't it?

[00:37:32] Kath Albury: Yeah, it really does. And I think, um, there needs to be time and resourcing, you know, in the way that so for years, I was on a health promotion subcommittee for New South Wales Health, where there were like these quarterly day long, you know, really long meetings where we went through the epidemiology and looked at this and talked about it critically.

It was a very multidisciplinary team, but you all kind of had a shared agenda in a way. It was a lot of people who were in working groups coming together and unpacking what different constituencies needed. I think they're really, it would be a great thing to have like a social media community of practice for health workers where, yes, people could have their small working groups or clusters, but be funded to do that.

Yes, get ongoing training and then be able to come together for a solid, working day once a quarter or whatever and actually go, okay, what are you seeing? What are we seeing? What have you, you know, what have you found useful? How do we learn this tool? How do we move here? What's going on? You know, uh, you know, what have the broligarchs broken now?

Like, you know, those kinds of things. And it's very messy and it's going to get worse before it gets better, I would say.

[00:38:51] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, and it's that shared learning, isn't it? You know, we're not gatekeeping anything here. Anything that I learn, I will share and pay it forward and, and other people in the sector do the same.

And it's that community and we're all here trying to achieve the same thing. We're all working towards the same goal here. So, I think that community of practice model is really interesting. Did you want to share more about what that means?

[00:39:17] Kath Albury: Yeah, so historically, um, it comes from the work of Lave and Wenger, who were a couple of anthropologists of work, in fact.

That's why I particularly like that model because it was, they were asking the question, like, how do people learn how to do their job outside of the formal training.? And of course, what you do is you learn from your peers and you learn from observation and it doesn't just happen at work. Like, you know, how do you learn salsa dancing?

Well, you don't just take the lessons, like you're part of a community that dances. And I think it's one of the underexplored elements of sexuality, like, how do we learn sexuality? We don't learn just from sex ed or from content we read online, sorry to the people who produce the content we read online, like we learn by doing and, and observing our peers and listening and whatever.

And I think It's a very important part of learning and it can be formal or it can be informal. There are a lot of communities of practice online that are quite informal, but it can be resourced by organizations in a really, strategic way to allow for this kind of dynamic learning and very responsive learning.

Um, and yeah, you might, you might find like the community of practice does a lot of peer stuff, but then says, okay, we need formal resourcing on this particular thing, or we, you know, we need a subscription to a particular tool and you need to pay money for that. And the fact that there's like a a group that is, is cross disciplinary, perhaps is, is cross organizations, you know, that you are then able to advocate for that, gives it both helps you grow your skills, but it also helps you, make a case for actually there's a demonstrated need for this.

I think they're, they're really helpful. Yeah.

[00:41:06] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, um, so I want to move on now to talking more about our work across online channels. There are all these, uh, I guess, messy online sexual choreographies and this underlying role of shame in sexual learning, in particular media content relating to sexuality.

 Can you talk us through some, uh, strategies for engagement with sexual health communication platforms, where we've already spoken about algorithms that don't favor sex positive content. We're up against, you know, censorship and, allowing this misinformation hate speech around the work that we do.

So can you talk us through, some strategies, just knowing who our audience is today? Yeah, yeah,

[00:41:50] Kath Albury: yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, the first thing is. You know, the, the kind of broad demographic category of young people, which used to be like 12 to 29 or something bizarre in the, in the sexual health strategy, I think it's smaller now.

It's more like 18 to 24 or something.

[00:42:07] Maddy Stratten: Yeah.

[00:42:08] Kath Albury: Yeah. They've separated out the high school kids. But, um, you know, even within that group, you might have, um, people who are backpacking and going to festivals and, uh, you know, uh, uh, out to party and people who are , very quiet and stay at home, or not very sexually experienced. and so thinking about how you talk to who is really important. I know in the past, and I was involved in a big campaign in 2009, that was meant to be all people, 12 to 29, and this, and then we'll tell them they have to use condoms, and they have to test, and they have to this, and it's like, mmm, you know, that's one size fits all.

I think digital spaces give you access to niche populations in the way that cinema advertising or, or back of the toilet door didn't. And so now's the time to think about who specifically do we want to engage with? And you have data that might help you make that decision. And then, okay, so where are they?

And like, okay, the gamers are maybe on Twitch, but you know, the people going to this festival are all on this other, you know, on this music fan site talking about it. And that's, if that's where they are, that's where you go. Um, and, and thinking about what they care about, which might not be what you think they should care about, but starting the conversation where they are, not where you are, but, you know, I mean, I think people know how to do this and these are kind of fundamentals really in health promotion, but, also owning, bad feelings.

I think one of the reasons that the manosphere has been allowed to have so much traction is sometimes there was a little bit of, happy washing, you know, in, in consent education or sex positivity, um, and there was less acknowledgement of how you feel when you're rejected and how you respond to that, how that might push back on your idea of what it means to, be successful or be mature or be a man in a particular context, although, of course, we know it's not just men who are aggressive when they're rejected always. Um, and, and yeah, dealing with difference or dealing with aspects of your sexuality that you do feel a bit ashamed about. And this is where, like, spaces like Tumblr did this really well, but the growth of, the manosphere has really, I think, sadly found and hooked into a gap in outreach to, to men around sexuality and relationships. And, and it's now guaranteeing good feeling if you follow these rules,, which are punching down rules, mostly. Um, And we can't, you know, we can't guarantee you'll never be rejected.

We can't guarantee sex will always be good. And I think we need to start engaging a bit with the bad feelings associated to sex. Not in a scary, don't have sex, you'll get pregnant and die way, but engaging with why people feel like they can't say things. in sexual relationships and why consent is a really hard conversation and why it's hard to say you've changed your mind and why it's hard to not be desiring when you feel like you should be or why being in love doesn't instantly make sex good or like all those things are messy.

[00:45:38] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, and I think back to the episode that we did with Dr Joy. Townsend, who I know that you're very familiar with her work on consent. She's CEO of Learning Consent for our listeners. I'd encourage our listeners again to go back to that conversation around consent because it's really an interesting one and so nuanced and all of these, all of these conversations kind of linking together in that way.

 I really want to link in that concept of rejection and think a bit more around your work in co design projects, like Crushed But Okay, uh, especially when we're talking about young people managing rejection and how their activities and actions have real impacts.

 Part of this this discussion is around co developing literacy, uh, resources, skills, and knowledge needed to navigate digital tools. Crushed But Okay is an evidence based and socio culturally relevant digital intervention based on the theory of behavior change. So it's a website, with online videos talking about real life, rejection scenarios with practical tips on how to manage this very normal experience. And it's aim is to reduce, online harms of a sexualized nature. The project has a really interesting story around co design, Kath, so can you share a little bit about this?.

[00:46:58] Kath Albury: Yeah, yeah, sure. So, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation partnered with, a team that I worked with at Swinburne Uni on this project. The aim was to produce these online resources that, that specifically targeted young heterosexual men, and, helping them navigate rejection because there's literally no content, targeting them and we did a lot of research with experts in the field that kind of confirmed that, uh, The co design team was mixed gender, it included, young men and, and some young women aged from about 16, 17 up to 21.

So, you know, just around that late high school, early uni period, um, and there was a lot of iterative work with this group and it was really hard because it was during the Melbourne lockdowns when we were all learning what we could do with platforms like Zoom. It's old hat now, but I like it stressful as hell in March 2020. , as you may vaguely recall, if you haven't blacked it out. Um, uh, so it was working with this group and then and then some testing with some larger groups of young people. But what was great about the project was when the design team. put the first prototype to the young people, they said, this is not what we wanted.

And this isn't what we talked about in groups. And it was, it was almost like the designers like took all the feedback and then went, here's the, here's the checklist. Here's the top tips, because like adults can't help themselves. We have to make it prescriptive and clean. Right. And the young people went.

No, that's not what we talked about. And Alannah and Madeline Foundation, bless them, went, okay, we're going to hire a central crew of young people to be part of the co design team. So they hired them, they paid them properly. They didn't just give them, you know, some McDonald's vouchers or whatever. They had a really hard time like onboarding them because the 17 year old, they had to get him into the payroll system without passing a Working With Children Check because he was also under 18 and like he broke their onboarding system, never had done that before but yeah, it was a wonderful project for that reason, because it was genuinely produced with the, the constant insight and input from that team. And so the, the end result was produced by a professional company, but was continuously like every stage of the development was encouraged by the young people.

It wasn't just a little ideation meeting and some post its at the beginning. So it was really genuine engagement and you can really see the vitality, I think, in the final product because of it.

[00:49:42] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, and I think it's a great example of co design done properly and really valued and taken seriously and not not a tick box tokenistic thing, yeah, we've co designed, but actually have you like, that's actually a whole other conversation co design, but you know, I think again, referencing the episode that we had with, Laura Crozier and her work in the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria and the Yeah Nah project. She spoke a little bit about co design there, in particular around the affirming consent education.

 Um I do want to kind of finish talking about your current work in critical capabilities for inclusive AI and, how that explores that accessibility of AI tools and how they can benefit across society.

It's a really big question, but I think it links all of the conversations that we've had together today. How can we or how might we better achieve inclusive AI and how can our workforce shift our focus to take full advantage of the benefits of digital technologies in the work that we do?

[00:50:46] Kath Albury: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a really, again, a really messy and fast moving space.

So kind of DeepSeek's come in, in the past few weeks and just again, been a total game changer in terms of what we know about AI and generative AI particularly. Um, but the project, really is aiming to look at how can we have inclusive AI, not just in the idea of, oh, the team might be diverse, that makes the AI or the images in the AI reflect the diversity of culture, but how do we have inclusivity in terms of access to the tools and resources and understanding of the tools and resources?

And it's 100 percent fine to choose not to ever use AI and to have all kinds of ethical reasons for choosing that. Um, But if we get a two speed economy or two speed culture, where there are people who get access to certain tools and people who don't, that's a real problem. And so the idea is to work with partners, partnering with organizations like the Red Cross and the ABC.

We're doing some work with NAPWA coming up, the National Association of People with HIV, to think about like health work and AI and how that works. And, and to, um, allow people to have access to AI in a way that their data is secure because we're using university technologies, not proprietary technologies.

And you don't have to buy into a great big enterprise package to be able to use it. But you can begin to see what's possible and what's not possible. And what's actually, you know, working in AI in terms of cultural appropriateness or, or translation of health information, not just translation from one language to another language, but say translation from a medical paper into a plain English version of that content, um, and, and how we can make sense of that. So, yeah, that project, that's a 3 year project. It's only just kicking off now. We've only just hired the full team, but that's through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.

And, you know, we're really interested to see where that goes.

[00:52:58] Maddy Stratten: Yeah, and I'm interested to see and to follow that journey along too, and so maybe we'll, we'll check back in later and we can do like a where are they now with Kath Albury and we can hear more about how that project went. But it'd be great to, spend some time now, leaving our listeners with some key messages.

Anything that you're thinking in your mind that you really wanted to just speak on or any final takeaway thoughts that our sector can be doing better or how we can be engaging with young people in this digital space, um, and how we can get there. So, yeah

[00:53:30] Kath Albury: yeah, I think, I think I've covered, a lot of my headline thoughts, which are really about, the need for, the higher levels of the health sector, the managerial and policy direction levels to really take on board how much work is involved in, in dealing with digital platforms and technologies and, and think about how, strategy and policy can resource the people who are doing this work. Um, again, you know, it was pretty sobering for us to hear from a cross section of the Australian health promotion work workforce in the 18 to 29 area and how kind of overstretched they are in relation to trying to do digital work on top of the work they were actually trained to and you know what their PD says they're supposed to do.

And I think now, as we see the volatility in the political space, it's really important to have a lot of channels open for communication and a lot of ways for people to be able to access health information and services because, as I said, it's going to get more restricted before it gets better.

Globally, we're in a really volatile place. And I think, we need to have a lot of courage locally and really work together and build those communities and communities of practice, in order to, to get through it and, and to really connect people with the healthcare they need. So, um, Yeah, I, you know, we're really happy to share our research and, you know, we're doing workshops with people and we'll be building a website that's open access and our publications are open access and those kinds of things.

So we would love to hear from people about this project, but I particularly want to hear from managers um, you know, I think there needs to be really strong leadership and courage in leadership around this work.

[00:55:25] Jennifer Farinella: Thanks for listening to On The Couch. We create this podcast because we are allies in actively challenging discrimination, microaggressions, and exclusionary behaviors. We want to create spaces where people feel safe to share their thoughts, knowing they will be heard and respected. Such an environment fosters collaboration, innovation, and contributes to a more inclusive society.

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On The Couch is made by Jennifer Farinella, Naomi Viret, Maddy Stratten, and Winnie Adamson.

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