DOMINIQUE CARLON
With over a decade of experience in both the public and private sectors, I am passionate about grounding academic research in real-world concerns and communicating findings in accessible, actionable formats that drive impact.
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I am an interdisciplinary scholar who enjoys working in collaborative, cross-sector teams. My work bridges traditional disciplinary divides across communications, criminology, law, and history, and I am always looking for ways to connect theory and practice across these fields.
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Academic background:
2021-2025
Doctor of Philosophy
Queensland University of Technology
2018-2019
Master of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Griffith University
2010-2012
Master of Laws in Transnational Organised Crime Prevention
University of Wollongong
2005-2009
Bachelor of Laws/ Bachelor of Arts
University of Wollongong
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Funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society
Dissertation title: The life stories of bots in Reddit’s platform culture: Inter-bot governance, play, and protest
Supervisors: Distinguished Professor Jean Burgess, Dr Ariadna Matamoros Fernandez
Recipient of two examiner nominations for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award (ODTA)
Dissertation title: Investigating the Reddit Bureau of Investigation: A case study on community led digital vigilantism
Supervisors: Professor Melissa Bull, Dr Kieran Hardy
Awarded with Distinction, Recipient of Griffith Award for Academic Excellence in 2018 and 2019
Based at the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention with a focus on cybercrime, counter-terrorism, intelligence-led policing and situational crime prevention strategies and interventions.
Awarded with Distinction.
Major in History, Minor in International Studies (conducted via exchange at the University of Sheffield)
BA awarded with Distinction, and recipience of residential scholarship in 2005 for all round achievement.
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Doctoral thesis:
'The life stories of bots in Reddit’s platform culture:
Inter-bot governance, play, and protest'
Recipient of two nominations for Outstanding Thesis Award​
If you are interested in collaborating on bots and/or Reddit research please get in touch:
Written against the backdrop of the generative AI boom and Reddit’s transition to a public listed company, my doctoral thesis traces the rise and fall of community-led moderator bots, the 2023 Platform Blackout protest against API enclosure, and Reddit’s role in the AI attention economy as a repository of human knowledge.
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In this thesis I redefine bots as cohabitants of platform environments: entities that both shape and are shaped by the social, cultural, and political dynamics of the spaces they inhabit. Drawing on three years of digital ethnographic research on Reddit, the thesis examines how bots negotiate norms, enforce governance, and shape platform cultures alongside human users. Through three thematic studies on inter-bot governance, automated play, and platform politics it shows how bots act as gatekeepers, performers, and coordinators of collective action.​ By identifying emerging practices of inter-bot communication and norms around AI generated content, the thesis demonstrates how bots reshape digital governance, strengthen community resilience, and reconfigure cultures of human–AI collaboration.
