MECCSA-PGN Executive Committee Members
Cathy Baldwin
St Antony's College, University of Oxford
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
I am doing a D.Phil (PhD) in Social and Cultural Anthropology on the
impact of the British national media on notions of national identity
amongst ordinary people of English, Polish, Irish and Sikh (Indian and
East African Asian) origin - in Swindon. I have an M.Sc Visual
Anthropology from the University of Oxford, an MA Anthropology of
Europe and BA Music and Media Studies from the University of Sussex.
Before coming to Oxford, I worked as a reporter and researcher for BBC
Radio 3, 4 and World Service radio [English service]. I specialised in
factual programmes and documentaries covering arts, social affairs and
science across Europe.
Thesis title: Broadcasting Britishness? Multi-Ethnic Media Audiences and
Identity in Swindon.
My project offers an alternative angle on the recent political and public obsession with 'Britishness'. It examines what impact (if any) national media - television and radio programmes and newspapers articles, both those with explicit references to the nation and those which make no reference at all - has on ideas about 'identity' among the English majority and three minority ethnic groups in Swindon, an ordinary English town. Through a 12-month ethnographic study of media consumption, it will gauge the role of media sources – the major supplier of public information on, and link to political rhetoric on
'Britishness' - on ideas amongst the public audience about 'community', 'town', ‘nation’, ‘identity’ and ‘belonging’. It will look at which media sources are influential, and how media audiences envisage individual and collective notions of identity. In particular, the study will focus on the dynamic between audiences’ feelings about ‘nation’ and their attachments to other strands of 'identity' such as religion, region, ethnicity, diaspora and the local town.
Qualitative and quantitative data will be gathered through a field study using participant observation and a questionnaire survey (200 participants) to be distributed whilst participating in voluntary, civic and social activities in the town. These methods will help to form a detailed picture of the social, cultural, religious, political and economic factors in local peoples' lives. After a few months, research will focus on the media consumption habits and responses to broadcast/press content by audience members in up to 25 households, using 'media talk' - both in casual conversation and semi-structured interviews – as a primary source of information. Links can then be made between local demographic and social factors, and ordinary people's ideas.
The final thesis will explore connections between the ethnographic data and a macro theoretical framework seeking to understand the relationship between political discourses articulated by politicians, policy authors and commentators, media discourses and ordinary people’s ideas. My data will be considered in the light of historical and current political debates about British citizenship and British and English national identity, in relation to the country's position as a multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic state.
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