Associate ProfessorBenedetta Brevini

Project Opportunities

Title: Media and Communications

Summary of opportunity:

The Department of Media and Communications is a fast growing department in the Faculty of Arts. With highly qualified staff drawing on extensive professional experience it actively contributes to thinking about media and communications practice in new ways, drawing strongly on scholarly and critical practice. Its research interests are interdisciplinary, international, and broad in scope. Our academics collaborate with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation looking into cross-media training of journalism cadets; work in partnership with the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People looking at mobile phone use by school age users; research the state of newspapers and quality journalism in the Internet age with the Walkley Foundation; participate in an interdisciplinary Public Health and Media Network, and are actively part of The Listening Project, an inter-university project which explores the politics, technologies and practices of listening. From the changing cultural politics and aesthetics of China, to the state of newspapers and quality journalism in the Internet age, we are interested in the way media and communications help us to make sense of who we are, where we are, and our connection with others. For detailed information on what submitting a proposal to the department involves click here.

* If you are interested in this research opportunity, please see the profiles of the Department of Media and Communications staff and contact your preferred supervisor directly to discuss your proposed project.

Opportunity synopsis:

Recent and forthcoming book projects tackle subjects as diverse as narrative and media; media relations; global news; city branding; youth mobile media; cosmopolitanism; class in the media and film in China; children's media; the Internet; media convergence, media and ethics; genres of journalism; screenwriting; the cultural politics around breastfeeding; and the commodification and management of images of death across the world. Recently completed or current doctoral research by staff includes a cultural history of the popular magazine Cleo; analysis of campaign strategies by trans-national NGO networks; music journalism; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's development of interactive multimedia publishing 1992-2002; and journalism education (see individual staff pages for details). Departmental staff are active in a variety of strands of media and communications, including media relations, journalism studies, media policy, media history, media studies and education, health communication, screen studies, and cultural studies and politics. In broad terms, common themes include changes and transformations in the mediasphere; media culture and public discourse; journalism, public relations and professional ethics, practice and literacy.

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Project Opportunities

Title: Political economy of new media

Summary of opportunity:

Dr Benedetta Brevini is Associate Professor of political economy of communication at the University of Sydney. She holds Visiting Fellowships at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City University, London, at WZB in Berlin and at the Centre for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University, Budapest. Before joining academia she worked as journalist in Milan, New York and London for CNBC, RAI and the Guardian and held tenured positions at City University London and Brunel University London. She writes on The Guardian’s Comment is Free and contributes to a number of print and web publications including Index of Censorship, OpenDemocracy and the Conversation. She is the author of several books including Is AI good for the Planet ? (2021), Amazon, Understanding a Global Communication Giant (2020), Public Service Broadcasting online (2013) and editor of the volumes Beyond Wikileaks (2013), Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Crisis (2017), Climate Change and the Media (2018). She is currently working on a new book project on Communication and the Climate Emergency.

Benedetta’s research is grounded in a critical political economy that investigates the relations between communications, politics, power and inequality. It has three main strands. The first explores media policies and media reforms in comparative settings and the roles of political, economic and corporate power in sustaining or thwarting the development of media systems which are functioning in the public interest. The second approaches the contradictory structure of the internet and social media as the sites of a continuous, and intensifying power struggle between openness and closure, surveillance and freedom, censorship and free speech, exclusion and access. The third examines the connections between communication, politics, economics and science in order to enhance our understanding of the relationship between communication systems and climate change.

Opportunity synopsis:

Research interests

• Political economy of new media
• The politics of media and power
• Media reforms in comparative settings
• Digital surveillance and internet freedoms
• Media, journalism and democracy
• Communication systems and climate change

----------Current Research Projects----------

Dr Brevini is currently working on a book project for Polity, Cambridge on Communication , Data Capitalism and the Climate Emergency.