Algorithms are a part of our daily lives.
Every time you engage with a platform, like Facebook, Google, or even this website, various systems are gathering information about who you are, and what you might buy.
Whether that’s a new jumper, a ticket to see a movie, or a political party’s message.
“These platforms use this behavioural data to algorithmically target you with content, but these new tools have also resulted in new ways to classify and discriminate,” says Dr Thao Phan, a feminist science and technology studies (STS) scholar and Lecturer in Sociology at the Australian National University.
Dr Phan’s work researching algorithmic culture and its impacts on how we understand contemporary racial formations has won the 2025 Max Crawford Medal, Australia’s most prestigious award for early career scholars in the humanities.
“Platforms employ machine learning models to sort users into social groups. These sorting tools make us legible not only to platforms but to other actors who want to use these grouping to target, identify and classify individuals, communities, and populations,” she says.
“These new tools for seeing and acting on people have profound implications for how we live in the world, significantly shaping our life-chances, and how we relate to ourselves and others.”
Dr Phan’s research has significantly advanced debates on race, gender, and algorithmic culture, uncovering the often-opaque ways platforms like Meta and Google use our data to influence us.
Early memories
Dr Thao Phan was born in Melbourne and grew up in Canberra.
In 1980, her father fled Vietnam and arrived in Australia by boat. Four years later, Thao’s mother and sister were sponsored to join him, and the family settled in Footscray.
“My mother was a civil engineer in Vietnam, but when she moved here, her training wasn’t recognised, so like many migrant women she became a factory outworker, sewing shirts for fifty cents each. Some of my earliest memories were spent in the factory cutting fabric.”
When her father got a job in the public service, the family moved to Canberra. Her mother opened a private dressmaking business, and Dr Phan spent summers cutting patterns, hand-sewing buttons and hand-hemming pants.
“It’s a very typical migrant story. Almost every Vietnamese person of my generation has a similar story to share.”
It wasn’t until Dr Phan began her Bachelor of Arts in media and communication as an undergraduate that she felt she ‘discovered the critical part of my brain’.
“I never thought of myself as very literary so didn’t think arts and humanities was for me. It wasn’t really until I got to university and learnt that you could read advertising as a text, popular culture as a text, and other parts of everyday life as a text. That revelation became the critical foundation in forming my approach as a feminist science technology studies scholar, who examines the social and cultural impacts of new technologies.”
Me, you & everyone we know
Dr Phan is currently a Chief Investigator on the 2025-27 Australian Research Council Discovery project, The Australian experience of automated advertising on digital platforms, led by researchers at the University of Queensland, alongside AAH Fellow Professor Mark Andrejevic FAHA.
“Even before you’ve set up a profile, a social media platform already knows what browser you’re using, what brand device you’re on, your IP address, and more,” she says.
“But it’s not just about you, it’s about people in your network, creating clusters and groupings from the user population. What I’m interested in is understanding the racialised nature of those groups.”
“A great example is Facebook,” says Dr Phan. “They don’t ask you to identify yourself according to race, but they do infer your race based on your behavioural data and deliver you ads based on those characterisations. Most people don’t know that they’re being delivered ads in that way and I don’t think people understand the extent to which we are being socially sorted by platforms.”
“The idea you can do anything online as an anonymous subject is completely out the window now.”
Australia as a test bed
Dr Phan also works closely with the Australian Internet Observatory, an initiative of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), to allow Australians to submit their social media data for research. In return, donors get a better understanding of what the platforms know about them.
She also recently concluded a study on the impacts of commercial drone delivery trials in Logan, Queensland, as a Research Fellow for the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S).
“This work has been instrumental in understanding AI innovation and the politics of race in Australia.”
Many Big Tech companies use Australia as a test bed for trialling new products and services. Platforms like Facebook, Spotify, and Tinder have all tested features first in the Australian market before releasing them globally.
“Australia has a long history as a testing ground for colonial science and technologies. Think of the use of Indigenous land for things like British testing of nuclear weapons. But it also has a lot to do with the racial diversity of the population.”
Platforms & the politics of power
In 2023, the Australian government passed a bill to introduce a social media age ban to limit children under 16 years of age from accessing social media.
Opponents of the bill say it encourages tech companies to use age-check software that collects IDs and stores sensitive personal information in off-shore systems.
“You don’t have to look far to see that platforms are wielding an unprecedented amount of power,” Dr Phan says. “And how that power has been wielded by platforms in places like the United States.”
Both Meta and Amazon made political donations during the last US Election. Research, led by Mark Andrejevic FAHA, suggests X made changes to its algorithm to support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in 2024.
“It’s up to humanities researchers, as independent researchers to hold them to account because they do not operate in the public interest.”
On receiving the Max Crawford Medal
“As a feminist STS researcher concerned with race and racialisation, my work is deeply linked to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives,” says Dr Phan. “You look at open attacks on research in that area in places like the United States, and it’s incredibly scary.
“I’m very grateful to be able to do this work in Australia, but we are still nevertheless seeing humanities disciplines taking the brunt of hits when it comes to budget cuts.”
“To receive the Max Crawford Medal at this particular moment when the humanities and social sciences are being systematically devalued is extremely validating. I’m proud that the Academy recognises feminist STS scholarship as work that is of national importance.”
“We’re in the midst of some of the most socially complex, politically divisive moments, and we need humanities researchers on the ground to help us make sense of what is happening right now.”
President of the Academy, Professor Stephen Garton AM FAHA FASSA FRSN FRAHS FRHistS, congratulated Dr Phan on the honour.
“Dr Thao Phan is an exemplary scholar whose work offers powerful insights into how algorithmic systems shape our identities, our communities, and our society in opaque and complicated ways. Her work shows the critical importance of humanities scholarship in understanding our increasingly complex world and the Academy is proud to honour her scholarship at a time when this work is more important than ever.”
Get to know Dr Phan’s work
>> Stream the 2023 Hancock Lecture: Artificial figures: gender-in-the-making in algorithmic culture.
>> Black Nazis, Asian Vikings & the white paranoia that haunts generative AI.
>> Dr Phan’s documentary, made in partnership with documentary filmmaker Jeni Lee, AI- in- the- street: drone observatory, considers the convenience, unease, and ethical questions that come with being at the frontline of big tech experimentation.
