MeCCSA colleagues will have been saddened by the death of Jay G. Blumler, a pioneering scholar in our field and a friend and well-wisher to many of us. At the MeCCSA conference held at the University of Leeds Jay was not only in attendance at every session, at which he would typically raise the most …Continue Reading

Deborah GraysonGoldsmiths, University of London Public media are under attack. Boris Johnson has made it clear that the funding and remit of the BBC is up for grabs and that the privatisation of Channel 4 may soon be under consideration. Meanwhile, the launch of GB News and Murdoch’s News UK TV channel will move Britain’s …Continue Reading

Declan McDowell-NaylorCardiff University What do you do about a problem like Facebook? This question is set to define a decade of legislative and judicial agendas. And from Australia, we have now seen one approach in action. Back in 2018, I questioned the intent behind Facebook’s hiring of Nick Clegg and the notion of “building bridges” between governments and …Continue Reading

Steven BarnettUniversity of WestminsterJulian PetleyBrunel University The last days of Donald Trump did a great deal, albeit belatedly, to spotlight the corrosive effects on the democratic process of partisan media, and particularly Fox News. As an interviewee put it in an article in the Financial Times, 15 January 2021, following the Capitol invasion: “Those outlets that …Continue Reading

Tom ChiversGoldsmiths, University of London So farewell to Sir David Clementi, the outgoing Chairman of the BBC. Most previous Chairs are remembered only by an anorak’s shorthand of reforms, scandals and political conflicts: Real Lives, ‘internal markets’, the Hutton Inquiry, Savile, DMI, and so on. By modern standards Clementi’s four years in office have been uneventful, …Continue Reading

Kulraj PhullarIndependent Scholar “Decolonisation” is a term that has become familiar to many of us in recent years. Last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests across the UK contributed to the global wave of solidarity with African Americans following the killing of George Floyd, and raised the political stakes of decolonising our disciplines, histories and institutions. …Continue Reading