Justin R Schlosberg
Media activist, lecturer and researcher and current Chair of the Media Reform Coalition
Biography
I began my career as a singer in a very unfamous rock band called Hell is for Heroes. After touring intensely for the best part of 7 years, enjoying modest chart success, seeing the ins and outs of both major and independent label life, and experiencing life threatening stage injury, I went back to school in 2008 and got my masters and PhD at LSE and Goldsmiths respectively. I brought with me a deep concern for issues to do with media power as both an activist and creative worker which has shaped and fed my research career.My PhD, supervised by Professor James Curran, examined the coverage of systemic corruption scandals in public service news, in case studies including the Al Yamamah controversy embroiling BAe Systems and the British government over a quarter century, as well as the untimely death of defense intelligent expert David Kelly, at the height of the fallout from the 2003 Iraq War. This formed the basis of my first book in 2013 on Power Beyond Scrutiny: Media, justice and accountability.
Since then, my work has focused on questions of media ownership and plurality in the digital age. It has been driven by an effort to understand the complexities of gatekeeping phenomena when it comes to the flow of news and information across networks, and an attempt to reconcile some of the contradictory patterns and narratives that frame questions of media power today. This is the basis of my current book, Media Ownership and Agenda Control: The hidden limits of the information age.
As current Chair of the Media Reform Coalition, my activism and advocacy work both draws on and feeds my research and teaching. In 2016 I lead a research team that examined coverage of the leadership crisis in the British Labour Party that followed the EU referendum. The study found systematic imbalances in the coverage, including the BBC, and was covered as a lead story on both Huffington Post and the BBC's Newsnight.
Websites
Books
Articles
Should he stay or should he go?
Published: Aug 01, 2016 by Mediareform.org.uk
Authors: Justin Schlosberg
IIn a period of intense conflict and instability within Britain’s largest political party, mainstream news gave disproportionate prominence to voices critical of the Labour leadership, and systematically marginalised or maligned opposing views. The BBC is especially important here, given its comparative reach and public service obligations. Amidst the social fracturing and polarisation of democratic life post-Brexit, the need for a more plural and inclusive news media is all the more apparent.
End of Story: Accountability spectacle as "closure" in national security news
Published: Apr 01, 2015 by International Journal of Press/Politics
Authors: Justin Schlosberg
Since the alleged conspiracy by the U.S. and U.K. governments to invade Iraq in 2003, the national security state in both countries has been subjected to intense scrutiny by news organizations around the world. This scrutiny has been fueled in part by what some describe as the development of a “networked fourth estate” (Benkler 2011). But this article reflects on one controversy that was resolved through an apparent spectacle of accountability.
Videos
Published: Dec 05, 2016
Published: Dec 05, 2016