Author: Auguste Janutaite

Natalie Fenton Goldsmiths, University of London It’s nearly Spring and the General Election is on the horizon. The next few weeks will be a field day for political communications – will there be a televised debate with all the political parties? Who will make the biggest publicity gaff and which party will work the Twitter-sphere …Continue Reading

Stephen Cushion Cardiff University Gordon Neil Ramsay Media Standards Trust & King’s College London Despite evidence that the TV debates in 2010 engaged and excited many people – in particular 18-24 year olds – according to the Conservative Party chairman, Grant Shapps, they “sucked the life out of the campaign”. Rather than focus on the …Continue Reading

Rosie White, Karen Ross and James Leggott Northumbria University This year’s MeCCSA Annual Conference was hosted by Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, 7th-9th January 2015. We started preparing for the event over a year in advance and one of our key concerns was that bad weather (snow, ice, hail, wind or other act of …Continue Reading

Stephen Coleman University of Leeds Forget the televised election debates. The debate about the debates is much more revealing. The pitiful ‘will they-won’t they’ saga that’s been played out in the past few months offers a telling insight into the assumptions of elite political communication and the grounds upon which so many people choose to …Continue Reading

Morgane Kimmich London South Bank University With Cameron refusing to participate without the Green party, Miliband and Clegg calling the Conservatives’ bluff, and minor parties now demanding to be invited, it is more than ever uncertain whether televised leader debates will be part of the 2015 election. So what exactly would we miss out on …Continue Reading

Ivor Gaber University of Sussex  A few weeks ago David Butler, the doyen of academic pollsters who has been following and writing about elections since 1945, said: “I have been watching elections for the past 70 years and this is, undoubtedly, the least predictable and most interesting one I have ever been involved with.” I …Continue Reading

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen City University, London  Election campaign coverage is an odd genre, made up of game show, satire and soap opera in equal measures. It tends to be about one of three topics: the election horse race; slinging mud and poking fun at the leaders, their gaffes and the weaknesses they imply; and the campaign …Continue Reading

Dominic Wring Loughborough University  A journalistic cliché we’re likely to hear a great deal more- and it has already been said- is that this General Election is the most important in a generation. But it is often difficult to gauge the significance of a particular election until sometime after the event. What is not in …Continue Reading

Steven Barnett University of Westminster While the outcome of May’s general election is likely to hinge on rather more pressing issues than the future of press regulation, there is no question that it will have significant implications for how the post-Leveson policy debate is finally resolved. Those who believe that the issue has been settled …Continue Reading

Jonathan Hardy Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom   Des Freedman Chair, Media Reform Coalition   The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, in association with the Media Reform Coalition, have published their Manifesto for Media Reform ahead of the election. It was drawn up following a public consultation in which a series of journalists, …Continue Reading