BU Research Blog

Communicating Research
FMC Cross-Departmental Seminar Series 2015-16
The Faculty of Media and Communication at BU

Venue: CG17, Christchurch House, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB
Wednesday 17 February 3pm CG17

A Journalism Research Group Guest Lecture
Glenda Cooper, City University

Hurricanes and Hashtags: The Power Dynamics of Humanitarian Reporting in a Digital Age
Who tells the story of today’s humanitarian disasters? Twitter, Instagram, SMS messages have entered into the defining images and texts of humanitarian disasters, theoretically allowing survivors to play a role in the framing of such crises.

Yet research suggests both mainstream media and NGOs – whose symbiotic relationships traditionally framed such stories – have cloned and absorbed such content, potentially restricting the voices that are heard. Issues around privacy and copyright are yet to be resolved in the mainstream media, while NGOs have turned to Western bloggers rather than beneficiaries to mediate their message.

This seminar will draw on the recent collection Humanitarianism Communications and Change, co-edited by the author, and also 50 semi-¬‐structured interviews she has conducted with a) those whose content was used by UK mainstream media; b) journalists from the main broadcast and print outlets in the UK; and c) members of each of the 13 UK Disaster Emergency Committee aid agencies who responded to recent crises including the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake. It aims to look how voices of citizens in crises are being mediated and mediatized, as well as what issues the use of this content raises around the contextual integrity of privacy. It concludes by examining whether NGOs’ engagement online allows the voices of the marginalised to emerge?

Wednesday 17 February 4pm CG17

A CMC – Politics and Media Guest Lecture
Laura Sudulich, University of Kent

Not all that glitters is gold: Assessing the (absence of) impact of social media on preference voting in the 2014 Belgian elections
A growing number of studies address the relationship between candidate use of social media (particularly Twitter) and candidate voting, suggesting that those candidates who embedded social media in their campaign strategy attract more votes than those who have not. This holds across a variety of countries and political systems. We use data from the May 2014 Belgian to estimate the effects of social media campaign on preferential voting. This election is of particular interest because on the same day Belgian voters chose their representatives to the regional, federal and European parliaments (allowing us to examine ‘who’ would benefit most from Twitter). We captured candidates twitter feeds during the campaign and we merge this with information about the ballot position of the candidate, incumbency status and demographics. We control for traditional media coverage of each and every candidate to isolate social media effects. We find little evidence of social media directly leading to vote gains. Twitter adoption is correlated to better electoral performances but when taking a closer look at the dynamics of usage we find that usage is more symbolic than strategic.

Laura Sudulich is a Senior Lecturer in Politicas at the School of Politics and International Relations of the University of Kent. She is also affiliated to the Centre d’étude de la vie politique (Cevipol) Université Libre de Bruxelles. During the academic year 2012-2013 Laura was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. Laura holds a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin.

To date, her research activity has looked at the effects of new media use on electoral behavior and public opinion, electoral campaigns and their effects on vote gains, Voting Advice Applications, election forecasting and processes of politicization. Laura is also interested in survey design, quantitative methodologies and in making innovative use of existing data about elections and campaigns

About the series

This new seminar series showcases current research across different disciplines and approaches within the Faculty of Media and Communication at BU. The research seminars include invited speakers in the fields of journalism, politics, narrative studies, media, communication and marketing studies. The aim is to celebrate the diversity of research across departments in the faculty and also generate dialogue and discussion between those areas of research.

Contributions include speakers on behalf of

The Centre for Politics and Media Research
The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community
Promotional Cultures & Communication Centre
Public Relations Research Centre
Narrative Research Group
Journalism Research Group
Advances in Media Management Research Group

Kind Regards,
Brian

Brian McNulty
Research Development Co-ordinator
Faculty of Media & Communication
The Loft (P181), Poole House, Talbot Campus
Fernbarrow, Poole
BH12 5BB