Date: |
6 October 2017 |
|---|---|
| Speaker: | Prof. James Curran |
Newspapers are in decline; bookshops are closing; and computer games now generate more revenue than cinema sales. The rise of Netflix presages the globalisation of television; the internet is reconfiguring journalism; and social media and blogging, we are told, are transforming politics. All this seemingly confirms that we are living through a media revolution that is changing the world.
This lecture will question this received wisdom. It will explore whether media conglomerates have been dethroned; whether the logic of power and profit has been subverted; and whether the changes attributed to a media revolution — from popular empowerment to the spread of global understanding—have been realised.
This lecture will attempt to distinguish between the important changes that are occurring as a result of new communications technology and fantasy fuelled by wish fulfilment.
Professor James Curran is Professor of Communications, University of London. He is the author or editor of 21 books about the media. Four of these have been translated into Chinese: Power Without Responsibility (with a new title in Chinese, British Journalism History), Media and Power, Mass Media and Society and De-Westernising Media Studies. His latest book is Misunderstanding the Internet (with N. Fenton and D. Freedman), 2nd edition, Routledge, 2016. His publications have been translated into 14 languages. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of California, Oslo, Stockholm, Stanford and Pennsylvania.
presented by
Office of the Vice-President (Research)
