Download PDF list of all Communication Projects (PDF 139KB)
Project Title: Digital Communication: Experiencing the Digital
- Supervisors: Tania Lewis, Ellie Rennie, Rowan Wilken, Shanti Sumartojo, Anne Harris, Haiqing Yu, Anna Hickey-Moody, Catherine Gomes, John Postill, Ramon Lobato, Julian Thomas, Jaz Hee-jeong Choi
Outline: How do people experience the digital today? What can ethnographic approaches contribute to our understandings of social, cultural and technological change? Where is digital communication headed? This project provides students and opportunity to explore these questions and their relationship with the contemporary world where digital and mobile technologies are increasingly pervasive. By using innovative, reflexive, and ethical ethnographic approaches to investigate wider processes of social and cultural change, this project offers new insights into digital communication theories and practices as well as their future.
Project Title: Adapting lifestyles for health: young people and their lived experiences
- Supervisors: Linda Brennan, Lukas Parker
Outline: Young people are subject to a wide range of pressures when it comes to developing and maintaining healthy lifestyles. This project aims to understand the behavioural infrastructures underpinning lifestyle choices when it comes to living and eating healthily. Specifically, how do young people engage with their physical, technological, social and personal environment to enact a healthy lifestyle? This project will work with a number of industry and academic partners as part of a team contributing to a broad understanding of young people and health.
Project Title: Blockchain and Social Good
- Supervisors: Ellie Rennie, Julian Thomas
Outline: The project will involve a case study investigation of blockchain development and/or use by civil society for social good outcomes or public infrastructures. It will consider the various emerging models of blockchain governance (consensus mechanisms and decision-making) and incentives for participation. Relevant areas of existing research include studies of altruism and cooperation (for instance, Bowles and Gintis 2013), and civil society theory (Keane 1998). The research approach may include ethnographic work into blockchain communities and their motivations. The project will be based in the School of Media Communication and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (Technology, Communication and Policy Lab), and affiliated with RMIT’s Blockchain Innovation Hub.
Project Title: Global and Cross Cultural Journalism
- Supervisors: Alexandra Wake, Antonio Castillo, Josie Vine, Philip Dearman, Marianne Sison.
Outline: The ability of journalists to work and create stories for a cross cultural environment has never been more important, with geopolitical forces and masses disruption to the news industry. However cross cultural environments bring with them issues around cultural competency. This project is specifically designed for those who want to explore in depth matters of culture within journalism workplaces.
Project Title: Communicating health: designing a toolkit for social change
- Supervisors: Linda Brennan, Lukas Parker
Outline: This project will work with a number of industry and academic partners as part of a team contributing to a broad understanding of young people and health. This project aims to use communication design principles and the body of work collected by the “Communicating Health” research team to create a toolkit that aims to provide guidance for social change projects in the future.
Project Title: Migration and Diverse Communities Project
- Supervisors: Catherine Gomes, Anna Hickey-Moody, Lutfiye Ali, Val Colic-Peisker (GUSS), Supriya Singh (Graduate School of Business), Glenda Mejia (GUSS), Anne Harris (Education), Chris Ziguras (GUSS)
Outline: This project is concerned with the globalised politics and experiences of (im)mobilities, and how these play out in our digitally saturated world. It aims to understand and demonstrate the diverse ways in which movement is experienced and impacts those who move, those who are left behind and receiver nation communities. It focuses the phenomenology of mobility in light of the sociopolitical and global context that is informed by current and historical relations of power. By engaging with and working alongside communities, the project aims to contribute to knowledge production, influence public discourses on diversity and the social policy landscape. This project is committed to social justice by surfacing patterns of power and privilege that maintain the status quo and to understanding the evolving and developing nature of diversity and social relations caused by the movements of people.
Project title: Creative and Cultural work in Australia
- Supervisors: Scott Brook, Ramon Lobato
Outline: While the prospect of creative and cultural work has provided a compelling narrative for Higher Education providers, evidence suggests graduates face unique career challenges in the sector. We invite PhD proposals to undertake empirical and theoretical research on Australian creative graduates, especially those addressed to questions of the significance of gender and/or social class, and the relationship of creative vocations to employment. The successful applicant will collaborate with an international ARC Discovery Project team and have access to comparative quantitative data on graduate outcomes in Australia and the UK.
Project Title: Cute! Kawaii! Awww!: Humanising Technologies in the City
- Supervisors: Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Larissa Hjorth
Outline: Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in everyday lives of people living in urban environments. Active discussions and design of robots and artificial intelligence question how they are perceived to care and be cared for those living in cities. As importantly, they raise questions around particular anthropocentric design choices, one of which is how “cuteness” is used to make them feel more approachable, acceptable, or even loveable. In this project, we study the current cute-scape of technologies designed for “caring” in different cultural setting and speculate its possible-tomorrows.
Project Title: Varieties of Populism
- Supervisors: Philip Dearman, Cathy Greenfield, Chris Hudson
Outline: In representative democracies and elsewhere, populism is something of an inevitable background against which politics is conducted. Populist rationalities are a resource for politicians across the political spectrum. Figures like Trump, Duterte and other leaders across Asia and Europe suggest populism is a newly global force. What new conditions and circumstances for populism, including media and market populisms, need investigation? How are populist literacies communicated and why do they matter?
Project Title: Diasporic digital/social media, cultural citizenship, and soft power
- Supervisors: Haiqing Yu, Catherine Gomes
Outline: The role of diasporic media in mediating migrants’ lives in host countries is well documented. There is also an increasing amount of scholarship on non-English digital/social media produced and used by migrant communities in Australia and other Western immigration countries. The transnational dimension of digital/social media, the penetration of powers from home countries in the migrant communities in host countries, and the subsequent impact on identity and citizenship—those and other related questions are relevant to the current debates on multiculturalism and transnationalism. We invite PhD proposals to undertake empirical and theoretical research on the use of digital/social media among diasporic communities in Australia, especially those to address the questions of citizenship, identity, and soft power. The successful applicant will collaborate with an Australia Research Council Discovery Grant Project team and have access to quantitative data.
Project title: Digital childhoods
- Supervisors: Anna Hickey-Moody, Jaz Hee-jeong Choi
Outline: This project investigates the digital, online and mediated worlds of children. Differences between online identity and offline identity, the politics of online identity construction and relationships between communities on and offline in children's everyday lives will form the focus of a digital ethnographic project that engages empirically and theoretically with children's lived experiences. Work on digital childhoods (Danby, Fleer, et al 2018) is gaining momentum, as are theories of youth citizenship as a creative or situated performance (Hickey-Moody 2013, 2014, 2016). This PhD will unite these bodies of scholarship through digital ethnographic methods, contributing to the fields of cultural studies of everyday life, youth studies and digital methods.
Project Title: Digital culture and economy of disability
- Supervisors: Haiqing Yu, Anna Hickey-Moody
Outline: We invite PhD proposals to undertake empirical and theoretical research on the relation of digital/social media, disability, and employment/entrepreneurship. Such research can be country specific or adopt an internationally comparative framework. We are interested in issues related to the culture and economy of digital disability from interdisciplinary perspectives such as critical media studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and social policy. Key issues related to digital media and disability can be intertwined with gender, sexuality, class, and race/ethnicity.
Project Title: Engaging China & Australia via a Sports Diplomacy Approach in the Contemporary Era
- Supervisors: Leah Li, David Fouvy, Haiqing Yu
Outline: The use of sports is becoming one of the popular tools to build a country’s soft power and to develop bilateral relations. Australia is acknowledged with its sports strength in the areas of AFL, and the current Chinese leadership strongly promotes the development of soccer as an industry and a nation-branding tool domestically and globally. This project investigates how to employ soccer as another diplomatic approach to facilitate the Sino-Australian relations in the contemporary era. It aims to explore the collaborative areas of hosting soccer events, establishing grass-root based soccer clubs, developing grass-root based soccer culture, and building an innovative tool to connect the cross-border football fans.
Project Title: Creating trust and credibility in a post-truth age of political communication
- Supervisors: Cathy Greenfield, Ella Chorazy
Outline: Public sentiment suggests high levels of dissatisfaction and cynicism with regards to the current state of political communication and the overt mediatisation of politics. This has been a long-standing point of critical and popular inquiry, with the current crisis of trust in a post-truth age at the forefront. This project investigates the symbiotic relationship between public relations, journalism, media, and politics, and explores ways to build trust and credibility between political actors and citizens. This knowledge is crucial to develop best practice models of political communication and encourage meaningful political discourse.
Project Title: Ethics and data-driven communication
- Supervisors: Phil Pond, Ellie Rennie, Jenny Robinson, Lukas Parker
Outline: As communication platforms are increasingly being driven by AI, proprietary algorithms and data capitalism, ethical dilemmas continue to arise that impact on governance structures and industry implementation of the technologies. In this project we aim to explore data ethics on communication platforms specifically. There are many social and industry disruptions in which data ethics can be explored. What are the key ethical dilemmas in the areas of citizenship and sovereignty of data, alternative economies and platform governance and regulation? Can distributed ownership offer a solution or does it raise different ethical concerns? And then what is the impact on communication professionals and their role; e.g. is there a role for communication professionals in data-driven communication or has this now gone beyond what professionals can really control and is more about the governance of platforms?
Project Title: Forensic interviewing skills for journalists
- Supervisors: Alex Wake, Georgina Heydon (GUSS)
Outline: This project looks at ways of developing trust in journalistic interviewing through police-inspired interviewing techniques. Police in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand have been trained to enhance recall by a subject, and optimize that subject’s capacity to express themselves, in the often stressful setting of an institutional interview. This project seeks to determine if a similar matrix can be used by journalists to optimize an interview subject’s recall and thereby improve methods of getting accurate, truthful and well-rounded representations of events. This is particularly significant since the surge in concern about “fake news” in the Trump campaign, the UK’s Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press and the Finkelstein Inquiry into the Australian media. Our overall project intends to investigate the extent to which new scientific principles underlying investigative interviewing by police can be used as a foundation to construct an empirically sound method of interviewing for journalists (particularly of people who have been involved in traumatic events or in vulnerable positions).
Project title: Helping Older Men Save Themselves: A Social Marketing Paradox
- Supervisors: Lukas Parker, Glen Donnar, Linda Brennan
Outline: Global business There is a gender paradox in mortality, with men dying earlier than women despite possessing greater socioeconomic resources. Research has shown that holding stereotypical notions of masculinity reduce preventative health care and lower perception of risks, particularly for middle aged or older men. Health and safety interventions do not necessarily address the gendered background of lifestyle behaviours, and so social marketing campaigns targeting middle-aged or older men commonly fail to change behaviours or attitudes. Further investigation into social marketing strategies and masculine dynamics is needed for more effective communication of health and safety related messages to this challenging target group.
Project Title: Social, cultural, and critical perspectives on public relations
- Supervisors: Ella Chorazy, Robert Crawford, Marianne Sison
Outline: PR is positioned as a powerful actor in contemporary societies, where it operates as an important intermediary between organisations, media, and publics. However, much of the professionalization of PR, and its development as a scholarly discipline, has focussed on its organisational positioning and role as a business function, while research about PR as a social phenomenon and site for critical inquiry has been limited. This project explores public relations from alternative and interdisciplinary perspectives that are essential to understanding the social and cultural influence and phenomenological impact of PR, as well as strengthen its efficacy and legitimacy as a profession and practice.
Project Title: I was a different man then': Global masculinities in popular genre film and television
- Supervisors: Glen Donnar, Daniel Binns, Stayci Taylor
Outline: This project redresses numerous critical gaps on intersections of masculinity, society and popular culture, importantly extending screen scholarship beyond textual analysis and Anglo-American contexts. In its first phase, the project is interested in global representations of masculinities in genre film and television, especially in ‘male action’ genres. This could include: ageing on screen; screen masculinities in Asian action cinemas; approaches to screenwriting and creative practice; and transnational reception studies of action films, focusing on evolving understandings of masculinity and mediated nostalgia. What might contemporary representations indicate about attitudes to broader social transformations, such as male anxieties about continued cultural, economic and political precedence?
Project Title: Imagining digital creative futures in advertising
- Supervisors: Michelle Aung Thin, Julie Bilby
Outline: This project investigates how creative practices in advertising and associated industries might respond to the possibilities presented by digital media. What is creativity in this space? Are traditional roles of Art Director and Copywriter still relevant? What will Advertising creativity look like in Australia and the Asian region? The thesis will be presented as two components: a body of creative work and a dissertation. The creative work will be a substantial and significant work that embodies a sustained answer to the research question. The dissertation will define the purpose and theoretical basis for the creative practice, drawing on examples from the relevant literature.
Project title: Mediations of feminism
- Supervisors: Rebecca Hill, Chris Hudson
Outline: This project articulates feminism as a constructive practice that enables social change for women and others oppressed by sexism and heteronormativity. The PhD can be either a project or a thesis. The candidate will produce a feminist work; for instance, through the medium of film or animation, poetry or a novel or as a thesis that articulates feminist ideas. The project/thesis will be a significant work that embodies feminist mediation as a constructive practice. If the student creates a project, the exegesis will define the theoretical basis for the creative practice, drawing on examples from relevant literature.
Project title: Digital Politics
- Supervisors: John Postill, Cathy Greenfield, Jenny Robinson, Antonio Castillo, Julian Thomas, Ramon Lobato, Ella Chorazy
Outline: We are interested in the role of communication (technologies, practices, actors, frameworks) in the art of politics, ordinarily conceived as electoral politics but also more broadly how digitally networked populations are governed. One area of interest is how digital platforms impact on the political communication process and what opportunities there are for a real contribution to policy formation and public debate within and via digital networks.
Project title: Native advertising and global cultures
- Supervisors: Robert Crawford, Linda Brennan, Lukas Parker, Julie Bilby
Outline: As digital platforms attract larger audiences traditional media outlets, advertisers have progressively sought to tailor and adapt their strategies to meet this shift. Building on the product placement approach, native advertising positions advertising as content and provides a means by which advertisers can integrate themselves and their messages into new platforms in a seamless way. But how do strategies and execution vary between advertisers in different countries? To what degree are their approaches consistent across the globe? To what degree are they informed by national cultures? This project aims to answer these questions by unpacking and critically examining native advertising approaches across different platforms and countries.
Project Title: Queer histories and creative practices
- Supervisors: Patrick Kelly, Ronnie Scott
Outline: How can creative practice be used to explore how public spaces are used by queer people? What role do queer people play in maintaining lively cities, creative communities, and healthy societies? Working with industry partners including arts organisations and archives, this project seeks to enrich understandings of queer pasts and presents, looking at creative uses of public space for socialisation, transgression, incitement, creativity, daily life, and community organisation. This project will use existing archives, document new oral histories, and create playful, innovative solutions to digital and material encounters, using creative practice approaches from nonfiction creative writing and screen production research.
Project Title: Reexplore Cross-border Smart Education with the Innovation of Digital Platforms
- Supervisors: Leah Li, Marianne Sison
Outline: Different sectors including government, commercial, and academic concentrate on building the following dimensions of smart cities, including smart transport and smart environment, but pay limited attention on the dimension of smart education. This project explores what smart education should be in Australian higher education in order to achieve a sustainable growth of the smart city/nation/global society. It aims to establish the theoretical framework of smart education, to develop smart education strategies in Australian high education, and to develop an innovative tool to enhance knowledge transfer, global connectivity, and cross-border talent flows in the context of globalisation.
Project Title: Communicating One Belt & One Road via Network Diplomacy: Comparison of Digital Narrative in Russia and Australia and its Global Meaning
- Supervisors: Leah Li, Marianne Sison
Outline: Russia as China’s competent and reliable partner and a member of OBOR raises suspicion of OBOR and Australia chose not to participate in OBOR due to its mistrust in the initiative and close ties to the US. This project examines how China communicates OBOR digitally in Russia and Australia; compare the digital narrative in both countries; and investigates the impact of China’s network diplomacy on digital economy and bilateral relations.
Project Title: Rethinking the professional communication industry: entrepreneurs as disruptors
- Supervisors: Emsie Arnoldi, Julie Bilby
Outline: There is nothing new about the claim that advertising and the communication industry is not what is used to be (West 2017; Summers 2017). Many advertising agencies and the brands they represent have been caught on the back foot over recent years. Fifteen, even 10 years ago no-one could have predicted the effects the digital and social revolution might have on the communication industry. The stalwart of the communication agency, the 30-second commercial has lost it former glory, public relations’ press release made in a room of curious journalists have matured into strategic ideas and events. However, many ‘traditional’ agencies have had to embrace the notion of ‘evolve or die’. One school of thought, as postulated by Deighton (2017), argues that some advertisers are integrators, who are able to integrate data from source to data applications. These integrators, he argues, are titans in a battle to create the dominant design for a platform on which all marketing will be practiced in future. But, who will do the work of marketing? Will it be done by an evolved version of the advertising agency, will it by institutionalised into a culture of data science; or will it not be professionalised at all but rather defer to alone or more standard setting practice? To gain a broader understanding of the phenomenon, the role of the professional communication entrepreneur and its potential to disrupt the industry to affect change needs to be explored.
Project Title: The rise and rise of public relations
- Supervisors: Robert Crawford, Alexis Bergantz, Ella Chorazy
Outline: Although public relations has emerged as a key communication industry, it is an irony that the growth and development of this industry has largely gone unnoted. Past practices and campaigns in the public relations field offer important insights into contemporary PR industry. This project seeks to address this shortcoming by undertaking a critical study of public relations and its history. By examining key public relations campaigns, practices, and professionals across various countries, this project asks how public relations has evolved in relation to broader social, cultural, technological, and economic changes with a view to demonstrating the impact of the past on the present.
Project Title: Communicating Publics
- Supervisors: Linda Daley, Cathy Greenfield, Philip Dearman
Outline: This project investigates publics, and the public literacies entailed in acting on the urgency of now. How are the challenges around matters as pressing and diverse as climate change, 21st century news environments, the adequacy of city infrastructures, and relations between diverse groups in differently placed populations articulated and opened up for decision-making? Our research agenda is problem-oriented and focused on the intersection of communication, social relations, and democratic decision-making.
Project Title: Screening radicalisation - youth perceptions of images of radicalisation and extremist violence in global film & tv
- Supervisors: Glen Donnar, Jeff Lewis
Outline: The role of the Internet and social media in processes of radicalisation is well documented and dominates government-led Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiatives. This project addresses a crucial knowledge gap pertaining to how traditional media shape youth attitudes to radicalisation and extremist violence. The project seeks analyses of portrayals in global film and television and/or reception studies of youth perceptions and attitudes, focusing especially on gendered depictions of heroism, salvation and sacrifice-martyrdom. This project will make an important contribution to still incomplete understandings of cultural influences on radicalisation processes and potentially inform the design of future CVE counter-narratives.
Project Title: Spanning boundaries: exploring cross cultural communication praxis
- Supervisors: Marianne Sison, Emsie Arnoldi, Jenny Robinson
Outline: As technologies advance and cross border engagement increases, questions emerge on the dominance of western-oriented, and specialised, perspectives of global communication practice and education. Colonial histories, cultural values and political economies often shape perceptions and practices of organisational communication, social responsibility and sustainability. It has been argued that crossing disciplinary boundaries is critical to advancing the field. In this research, we explore how we navigate geographical and disciplinary boundaries to advance communication education and professional practice in the Global North and Global South. This research will be valuable for communication academics and practitioners interested in advancing praxis.
Project Title: Searching for a brand's voice in conversation marketing communication
- Supervisors: Emsie Arnoldi, Jenny Robinson
Outline: Advances in our ability to convert human conversations into data that a machine understands and artificial intelligence over the last few years, we are starting to see more accurate voice and chat interactions through virtual private assistants, smart speakers and chatbots. This is opening up a variety of uses in the mainstream. The increasing proficiency of choice, microcontent (Chung 2018) and chat interfaces, the increasing accuracy of digital virtual private assistants, the uniqueness of face and voice prints and the scaling of augmented and mixed realities if used well, can make for deeper customer relationships (Galetto 2018) because the machine knows when we are happy, sad or angry. (Future Trends Institute 2018; Nicol 2018). However, conversation marketing communication requires brands to rethink their structures and processes since it requires marketers to combine utility and added value with customer service and brand experience. How will brands embrace these challenges to communicate with their customers? What will these new formats and opportunities look like?
Project Title: The superficial evolution of equality in advertising: the next great wave of change
- Supervisors: Emsie Arnoldi, Julie Bilby, Jenny Robinson
Outline: The advertising industry's barriers to entry, efforts to overcome problems of inclusivity, and the future of multicultural perspectives in a digital age are well documented. The #TimesUp and #MeToo movements underscore the need for women, but in particular, women in advertising’s
stories to be uncovered and told. Social media is giving everyday people an amplified public voice; women have never been so educated and present in the workforce; marriage equality made society stop and think about fairness and the invisible prejudices they had blindly accepted. But will the advertising industry step up when it comes to the next wave of change that is equality? Moreover, will more academic-industry bridges that are necessary to build authentic programs that increase inclusivity and address covert sexism, racism and structural oppression, support the change?
Project Title: Sustainable consumption and mindfulness
- Supervisors: Linda Brennan, Lukas Parker, Tania Lewis, Yolande Strengers, Simon Lockrey, Karli Verghese
Outline: This project aims to understand the impact of mindful consumption on sustainable consumption. The barriers and facilitators to sustainable consumption are myriad and as yet under explored. There are at least four schools of thought in sustainable consumption that have acknowledged potential to moderate consumption. This project will examine these perspectives and identify the role of mindfulness in developing sustainable consumption behaviours.
Project Title: What does it mean? Making sense of risk and disaster narratives
- Supervisors: Marianne Sison, Jenny Robinson, Emsie Arnoldi
Outline: As geographical boundaries blur and complexities increase in the digital environment, questions emerge on how we manage our identities and those of others. This research explores discourses of identity, diversity, inclusion, gender, religion and culture within organisational and societal contexts. In particular, we are interested in how multiple cultural perspectives might inform these discourses. Generating knowledge in this area will help transform how we create and co-create discourses enables inclusion in our urban and rural communities, as well as developing media literacy for various stakeholders.
Project Title: THINKING DIFFERENCE
- Supervisors: Rebecca Hill, Linda Daley
Outline: This project – thesis or project -- focuses on the concept of difference. Rather than construing difference negatively, the candidate will think difference as the generative basis for place, an open thinking of time and non-hierarchical relationships between human beings. We welcome projects that deploy difference in the effort to reconceive nature as non-totalisable. The candidate’s thesis or project will make a significant contribution to feminist, queer, anti-racist and/or ecological thinking.
Project Title: Why We Live Alone: And Eat, Play, Work, and Sleep Alone
- Supervisors: Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Tania Lewis
Outline: People living alone are on the rise in cities around the world; they are expected to make up 30-40% of all households in many countries by 2030. The ageing population is one factor. The rise of people choosing to live alone is another. At the same time, more people are dying alone. How might we better understand and care for them? What are the associated social, health, economic, and environmental impact? And how might we co-create liveable urban futures? These are some of the key questions driving this project
Project Title: You, me, we: examining inclusive communication in the digital age
- Supervisors: Marianne Sison, Jenny Robinson, Emsie Arnoldi
Outline: As geographical boundaries blur and complexities increase in the digital environment, questions emerge on how we manage our identities and those of others. This research explores discourses of identity, diversity, inclusion, gender, religion and culture within organisational and societal contexts. In particular, we are interested in how multiple cultural perspectives might inform these discourses. Generating knowledge in this area will help transform how we create and co-create discourses enables inclusion in our urban and rural communities, as well as developing media literacy for various stakeholders.
Project Title: Indigenous Cartographies: Place-based Storytelling and the Culture of Games
- Supervisors: Olivia Guntarik, Hugh Davies, and Larissa Hjorth
Outline: Pokémon Go has brought augmented reality and pervasive games to centre stage, prompting new questions around how we use public space and city streets. Notions of space and place are invariably entangled with questions of belonging and exclusion, as well as how everyday mobile technologies are used to create interactive experiences. Possible research questions include (but are not limited to): How can pervasive games be designed with a situated awareness that responds to local, urban, and historic notions of place and place-relations? In what ways can locative practices engage with and reveal Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations to place? How can situated storytelling techniques promote Indigenous capacity and wider community engagement?
Creative practice projects are invited in any artistic medium, particularly those that engage with augmented reality via our storytelling platform. Interested PhD applicants will have opportunities to work directly with Traditional Owner communities, government and industry. Students will gain insight into game development, content curation and digital storytelling techniques. Research training will be provided in screen, sound, audio-visual technologies, locative media, and online and on-site situated storytelling methods.
Project Title: Journalism Technologies
- Supervisors: Alex Wake, Leah Li, Marianne Sison, Cathy Greenfield, Philip Dearman, Maria Stratford
Outline: Digital technologies and the wider circumstances in which they are being taken up are forcing major changes to journalism practise which have transnational ramifications. Some of the changes to practice include the introduction of, or the emergence of, artificial intelligence, mobile journalism, drone journalism, fake news, clickbait, native advertising, news bots, non-profit journalism, viral news, data journalism, information management, basic code, deep search and search engine optimisation techniques. Journalists are increasingly needing to use these tools - as well as sound, vision, and reportage, to produce outstanding journalism. What calculated and other outcomes for journalism's public role do these tools and associated knowledges [or logics or rationalities] have? Projects in this area consider the historic, current and emerging working practices of journalists as well as the structures, funding and products of the journalism industries.
Project Title: Long-form journalism
- Supervisors: Alex Wake, Brigid Magner, Antonio Castillo, Josie Vine, Philip Dearman
Outline: Long-form journalism, although a historic form of journalism, has become increasingly popular among working journalists with news organisations increasingly working with the form in a bid to engage new audiences. Long-form journalism is often called creative non-fiction or narrative journalism but also magazine journalism. Although long-form journalism can be works presented in traditional book form, it can also use other mediums such as radio, vision and multimedia. The serious longer-form journalism produced in this style is often considered the highest form of journalism, and works in this project should be considered for high-quality journalistic work, such as longer investigative pieces. This project allows candidates to explore long-form journalism alongside an exegesis.