Prof Catherine Happer

I was discussing the future of the BBC in Scotland at Holyrood today. It was a really rich discussion - so much at stake in respect of protecting our democracy and what role public service media can play. Our GUMG submission (w/ @catrionaforrest.bsky.social) here: www.parliament.scot/~/media/comm...

On Thursday, Director of the GUMG @catherinehapper.bsky.social will give evidence to a Holyrood Committee Inquiry on Scottish broadcasting. The agenda and GUMG's written submission (with @catrionaforrester.bsky.social) can be accessed here: www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-...

Here's a new special issue of Journalism Studies, edited by @dr-hm-mabweazara.bsky.social and @catherinehapper.bsky.social and dedicated to our former colleague Greg Philo. It revisits the core concerns of media sociology - power, ideology, bias - but broadens the focus beyond Europe and America.

What a decade of research reveals about why people don’t trust media in the digital age How did we go from an era of high trust in 20th-century media to such low levels of trust today?

What do we know about why people do or don't trust media sources in the digital age? @catherinehapper.bsky.social explores what the research tells us in this new contribution to @uk.theconversation.com

Post from Breezy Politics - YouTube

youtube.com/post/UgkxaqG...

Britain’s food supply is precarious – and Trump’s chaos is spreading. I have a plan. Do you? | George Monbiot I’ve started a stockpile, but that isn’t the answer. If crisis strikes, the government needs a strategy to protect us all, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

15. I cannot tell you how frustrating it has been, banging my head against this brick wall for so long. Despairing of better policy, I've now started stockpiling food. Though small compensation, it's good to know that industry insiders share my frustrations. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Screenshot from Heller’s article in latest New Yorker quoting donors targeting faculty

Silicon Valley is coming for faculty governance. The vultures are circling the corpse of the neoliberal American university. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

On #WorldBookDay, and in the context of digital technologies slowly eroding our ability to source trusted information, here are two books I read recently which gave me a better insight into what is going on in the world right now than any media report.

📢 New report out today! 📢

➡️ Access the report here: repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeo...

📊 What did we find?

🔸 Most of the socio-economic background (SEB) and ethnic inequalities in entry to professional occupations are driven by employer-side decisions made during the recruitment process

Not sure if it's just me but when I hear government representatives repeatedly state that 'the NHS is not on the table', I immediately assume that the NHS is on the table. #trump-starmer #tradedeal

The World's Largest Search Doesn't Want You to Search Why is Google abandoning its core mission?

I've been thinking this for a while now. Google actually restricts your access to information, and asks that you do no thinking. It no longer has any use value.
The World's Largest Search Doesn't Want You to Search www.honest-broker.com/p/the-worlds...

wp.me/p3V8m9-ul

Fab interview with @cairsti.bsky.social on @freedomtorunfilm.bsky.social and her research on Israel-Palestine here cc @uofglasgow.bsky.social @uofgsocsci.bsky.social @docmediacentre.bsky.social

SHARDED MEDIA This book shows how the election of Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2024 is not a fluke but rather a symptom of a deep crisis within representative democracy

NEW BOOK OUT TODAY!!

SHARDED MEDIA
Trump’s Rage Against the Mainstream

@williammerrin.bsky.social

Tech bros, Trump and trolls, have not toxified the Mainstream Media...
they have replaced it.

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

I'm doing an online seminar discussing my book, The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age, next Wednesday (26th) at 2pm organised by the Centre for Science, Health & Data Comm Research @bournemouthuni.bsky.social All welcome: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-constr...

This sounds like a great idea....

So it needs a far-reaching multi-factor plan to re-build trust and win consent for a new political programme. It’s not enough to expose propaganda and lies – though it’s a big part of it – but offer actual change & show there is commitment to delivering it. #Starmer is doing the opposite right now.

Metapolitics and the Battle for Europe’s Future As the far right’s cultural influence grows, Sybren Kooistra dusts off Gramsci’s notes to shift the “climate of opinion”.

Makes a key point on combatting the far right – winning public consent has been a gradual process of shifting public thought and perception via mainstream & social media, cultural institutions & narratives capitalising on decades of political failure. 1/ www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/metapolitics...

So RFK Jr’s promise to ‘make diets healthy again', ask how this sits with a government which is anti-regulation, anti-science, and pro-business (and by extension Big Food). Take each idea on its own merits. Expose the interests. Say what should be done.

Great thread from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social on the ideological inconsistency & the false promises of the far right. As much as taking on the outright dangerous elements, journalists, politicians & leftists need to think carefully how to expose promises that sound right & speak to a wide public 1/

This event seems great www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-constr.... It revolves around this book manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180223/ by @catherinehapper.bsky.social.

I leave here the info in case someone might find it interesting.

thank you!

Media outlets all reporting 'welcome news' for the government as GDP grows - actually most people don't care about this, and this is not going to change the current position in respect of declining approval and the challenge from Reform at all.

Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared” Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use.

"Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use."

I’m a Labour MP – but the government’s ‘growth’ mission reeks of panic | Clive Lewis The decision to expand Heathrow is just the latest evidence that my party is chasing policies that serve profit, not people, says Labour MP Clive Lewis

@labourlewis.bsky.social is very right. This is a government stuck in the thinking of a decade ago when the public have moved on - totally disconnected from the broken promises of neoliberal 'growth'. My work shows empirically how this only benefits the right.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's disturbing how legacy media outlets somehow normalise and legitimise the plausibility of DEI being a factor in the DC crash. Trump's sinister rhetoric should be seen as just that, not as a mantle on which to construct an illusion of "legitimate debate". It's horseshit, & should be seen as such

Cuts at Cardiff University - up to 400 jobs - are absolutely horrifying. All sorts of potential impacts - reduction in trained nurses in Wales, in language scholarship, and the terrible human cost to individuals and communities. Where does Labour's obsession with growth fit with this? #cardiffUCU

Looking forward to speaking about my new book at the Centre for Climate & Data Science, Exeter tomorrow c3ds.ex.ac.uk. Climate and environment are very present in the book and the new six filter model of opinion formation I present within it is informed in part by my research on climate.

It was a comparative point, but let's see if that holds up.

I had been thinking that the unprecedented investment in AI had been a bit premature so not surprised to hear about #Deepseek. Good news for the planet, but my hope is it throws the whole agenda up in the air, or at least gives us pause to think - whose agenda? whose interests? - before we power on.

Here’s what Labour should learn from Donald Trump: think bigger, think faster | Polly Toynbee A hostile media will criticise it no matter what. So it should ignore the noise, harness its huge majority – and act decisively, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

The headline is right - COVID too showed governments can lockdown the whole of society overnight when they act decisively. But people are looking for radical changes to the system, not tweaks to how they get poorer and unhealthier (sadly they are getting Trump) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...