Media Discourse group
Media Discourse at De Montfort University has been recognised as ‘world-leading’ (Research Assessment Exercise, 2008).
Research produced by our Department was placed above 32 other institutions, including Oxford, Leicester, Leeds, UWE, Brunel, Sheffield Hallam, Nottingham, Sheffield, and Swansea.
The Media Discourse group, chaired by Stuart Price, has established a thriving research and post-graduate culture, and would welcome applications from Research students (see below for fields of expertise).
The Group has also hosted a number of conferences and events, and is currently engaged in a number of research projects and other initiiatives.
Research Initiatives:
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‘Media, Communication and Security’, 2012
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‘Memory, Narrative and War’: research project, 2012
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Global Uncertainties: Grand Challenges
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Health and Ageing: Grand Challenges
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Global Sports Rights
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‘The Ordinary Audience’: psycho-social approaches to media and consumption
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The Mediation of Disability
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Transcription Project: ‘Branding the Agency’
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‘Networked’ communication and power
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‘Democracy in Deficit’: Media Talk and Elections in America, Europe and the UK
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Pension policy in its historical context
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Reality Television and Class
Conferences and Research Events:
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Media and Disability, Meccsa network, 2010
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‘Election 2010’ - symposium, May 2010
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RCUK Research event, April 2011: ‘Global Uncertainties’ presentation
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‘The Mediation of Security’ - International conference, May 2011
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‘Women, War and Terror’ - tenth anniversary of the Meccsa Women’s Network, September 2011
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‘Creative Practices’ - public lecture with documentary film-maker Amanda Blue, November 2011
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‘The Assault on the Universities’ - event with Dr Des Freedman, Goldsmith’s College, December 2011
MA/MPhil/PhD study
The Group would welcome applications from Research students. We offer expertise in the following areas:
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Media Discourse and Security
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Media Discourse and Gender
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Media Discourse: Television and Broadcast Talk
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Media Discourse and Disability
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Media Discourse and Representations of Ageing
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Media Discourse and Advertising
Current Research Students are working on a variety of projects, including Terror and the Postcolonial, the Discourses of Cinema, Institutional Discourse (TV), and Election 2010 Online.
Specialist studies undertaken by MA students include work on Representations of Women in Web-based advertising, Postmodern Television, the Press and Terrorism, and Feminism and the Web.
Although Media Discourse is chiefly concerned with studying the ‘textual’ evidence of interaction and address, we include the research interests of those individuals active in the analysis of Mediated communication in general.
The development of New Media, in particular, constitutes a challenge to the ways in which communication forms are both circulated and understood. As Wood has observed, ‘the logic of information ‘flow’ produces instability in any structure of meaning’ (2009, 201). This challenge to established practices seems to demand a more nuanced understanding of the contemporary character of those exchanges that constitute the textual ‘event’. The task as we conceive it is to analyse the production, consumption and interpretation of textual traffic in the contemporary media environment, without abandoning our critical approach to public communication.