Rate My Professor Sam Hinton

Sam Hinton is an Associate Professor in Digital Media & Design within the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. Possessing more than two decades of experience in digital and internet-related media, Hinton commenced web development in 1993 by downloading NCSA Mosaic via telnet FTP. Between 1995 and 1998, he worked at the Australian National University’s Centre for Networked Information and Publishing as the institution's "web master." In 1998, he began his PhD research titled "Towards a Critical Theory of the Internet" at La Trobe University, which he completed in 2006. During this period, he also engaged in game development, contributing to the popular Quake III mod Urban Terror. In 2003, Hinton joined the University of Canberra as a lecturer, advancing through the ranks to his current position as Associate Professor. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing, awarded in 1992, and a Doctor of Philosophy from La Trobe University in 2006.

Hinton's research specializations include virtual, mixed, and augmented reality; real-time graphics; location-based gaming; web design; creative data visualisation; and computational design. His scholarly contributions notably include co-authoring "Understanding Social Media" with Larissa Hjorth, published by SAGE in 2013 and updated in a second edition in 2019. This work provides a critical conceptual framework for social media evolution and practices. Additional key publications encompass the chapter "Playful Resistance of Data Futures" in The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art (2020), editorship of Electronic Visualisation and The Arts Australasia 2016: Conference Papers (2017), and co-authorship of the Canberra Urban Activation Study: Play, Creativity and Culture (2017) for the ACT Government. Hinton has led or collaborated on several funded projects, such as the Sam Hinton ECR application (2007), Wakul and remote Indigenous media (2022), and the University of Canberra/Peet Research Hub for the Built Environment (2023-2031). He actively supervises PhD and Masters by research students in digital media-related topics and maintains an interest in the technical and social dimensions of computational technologies.