Natalie Fenton
Biographic Data
| ID | 240740 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Natalie Fenton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Natalie |
| FAMILY NAME | Fenton |
| SIGNATURE | FENTON N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3754-8200 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 248 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
A statement on the ongoing genocide in Gaza
Communication, Culture and Critique has been the leading venue for critical approaches to communication and media studies. This issue marks the first guided by a newly formed Editorial Collective, which seeks to rekindle the politically engaged scholarship epitomized by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the 1970s, then under the leadership of Stuart Hall. As we assume our responsibility to guide this journal…
Critiquing the Vocabularies of the Marketized University
Critique is in crisis. Spaces in the university, where critique once flourished under the banner of academic freedom, have been appropriated and hollowed out of meaning. External pressures from the failed project of privatisation of higher education in the UK result in internal pressures from a marketized model of university management that sees critical thinking as branding content to influence market share, rather than relevance for (social) sc…
Critique is Dead – Long Live Critique: A response to Finlayson and Cusset
This piece offers some reflections and discussion points on the articles published by Alan Finlayson and François Cusset in this special edition of Media Theory. I argue the need to be cautious of tendencies towards techno-centrism even when so many of our lives are dominated by digital mediations; for the need to remember and take account of the longer history and prevailing influence of legacy media; to ensure that in our focus on front-stage p…
Comentário: Comunicação, democracia e mudança social em tempos de crise – desestabilizar os poderes, desmontar injustiças
Este comentário reflete sobre as condições reais para uma política democrática e o que isso significa para os estudos dos media e da comunicação quando tentamos dar sentido às estruturas e à natureza da comunicação, às condições das democracias em todo o mundo e às possibilidades de mudança social em tempos de crise. Para tal, será necessário que nos concentremos nas relações de poder – quer no exercício de poder como domínio, quer no potencial d…
Capitalism's Conscience: 200 Years of the Guardian
Indymedia and the long story of rebellion against neoliberal capitalism
Indymedia was born of the anti-globalisation movement of the late 1990s and quickly spread to become a social movement in its own right. This article reflects on how prescient the claims of the anti-globalisation movement have proven to be and how 20 years ago Indymedia and the anti-globalisation movement predicted there was trouble ahead and that neoliberalism was a central part of the problem. It notes how a history of struggle and protest eman…
Media Manifesto
Natalie Fenton. Digital, political, radical
(Dis)Trust
Democracia fake, más notícias
A mídia e a democracia, assim como Cagney e Lacey ou Starsky e Hutch, são inseparáveis. Não se pode ter um sem ter o outro. A livre troca de ideias, informações e símbolos que alimentam os cidadãos e reconstitui o sistema como um todo tem sido há muito vista como uma das bases de sociedades democráticas. De fato, uma parafernália normativa complexa emergiu para descrever as principais responsabilidades dadas à mídia no surgimento e manutenção da …
Left out? Digital media, radical politics and social change
This paper begins from the basic premise that in considering digital media and its multifarious relations with forms of protest and political mobilization, we are interested in social change. Yet, too often, the key ingredient of protest and political mobilization – the radical politics itself – is left out of our analyses. How can we begin to tackle the challenges posed to democratic politics if we do not talk about actual politics as part of ou…
Misunderstanding the Internet
Alternative media and the question of power
One of the main questions asked about alternative media is exactly what such media are alternative to
Mourning and longing: Media studies learning to let go of liberal democracy
In her essay ‘Neoliberalism and the end of liberal democracy’, Wendy Brown suggests that critical political theory needs to ‘mourn liberal democracy’ in order to develop a transformative vision of ‘the good’. The problem, as Brown outlines it, is not only that – to varying extents and in different scales across democratic states – market rationality has hollowed out representative structures and processes and organizes social life but also that ‘…
A symposium on media, communication and the limits of liberalism
The essays in this Special Issue explore the power and appeal of modern liberalism, even among the vast populations for whom its egalitarian promises go unfulfilled. For more than 30 years, we have seen dramatic growth in inequality worldwide, resulting from increasingly draconian economic policies – including severe austerity measures in the economic ‘periphery’ and sustained assaults on welfare and public service policies in affluent ‘core’ cou…
Social Media Is
A crap poem
Misunderstanding the Internet
Cosmopolitanism as Conformity and Contestation: The mainstream press and radical politics
In this paper I consider the concept of cosmopolitanism in relation to two types of communication systems: the mainstream press and alternative networked communications of new social movements. Through the example of the hacking scandal, the paper discusses how the cosmopolitan ethics of the “freedom of the press” have become distorted by a thoroughly commercialized tabloid media, to mean little more than freedom of the market to do as it pleases…
Telling Tales: Press, Politics, Power, and the Public Interest
This special edition was commissioned in response to one of the largest media scandals in recent history—the illegal practice of phone hacking. Although the events originated in the United Kingdom and relate particularly to the newspaper industry, the ramifications extend across the globe and across media, just as the tentacles of the Rupert Murdoch empire reach far and wide. As you read the articles that follow so the story unfolds: the lies and…
Alternative Media and Social Networking Sites: The Politics of Individuation and Political Participation
The rapid growth in usage of social networking sites begs a reconsideration of the meaning of mediated political participation in society. Castells (2009 Castells, M. 2009. Communication power, Oxford, , England: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) contended that social networking sites offer a form of mass communication of the self wherein individuals can acquire a new creative autonomy. Stiegler (2009 Stiegler, B. 2009. Teleologics of th…
‘Comment is free, facts are sacred’: Journalistic ethics in a changing mediascape
Deregulation or democracy? New media, news, neoliberalism and the public interest
This article began from the premise that news media are in crisis. The crisis is being managed by closing papers or shedding staff. Drawing on extensive empirical research the paper argues that these cuts are having a devastating effect on the quality of the news. The cuts are being delivered to news so that shareholder profits remain in an increasingly deregulated news environment. This is having a particularly negative impact on local news. Whi…
New Media, Old News: Journalism & Democracy in the Digital Age
Drowning or Waving? New Media, Journalism and Democracy
With massive changes in the media environment and its technologies, interrogating the nature of news journalism is one of the most urgent tasks we face in defining the public interest today. The implications are serious, not just for the future of the news, but also for the practice of democracy. In a thorough empirical investigation of journalistic practices in different news contexts, this book explores how technological, economic, and social c…
My Media Studies: Getting Political in a Global, Digital Age
New Media, Counter Publicity and the Public Sphere
New media have been widely used by radical groups of both Left and Right to advance their political projects. The aim of this article to provide a theoretical framework, through developing the concepts of public sphere and counter-public sphere, which allows us to understand the growing importance of alternative media in society and to indicate how this framework might generate questions for empirical research
From inception to reception: The Natural History of a News Item
This article compares the complex dynamics involved in the production and reception of a newspaper article. This case study is used as the basis for a broader discussion of the encoding and decoding of meaning via the news media. The article recommends that closer attention needs to be given to the linkages between these moments in the mass communication process, and the temporal contexts within which they occur
Deregulation or democracy? New media, news, neoliberalism and the public interest
This article began from the premise that news media are in crisis. The crisis is being managed by closing papers or shedding staff. Drawing on extensive empirical research the paper argues that these cuts are having a devastating effect on the quality of the news. The cuts are being delivered to news so that shareholder profits remain in an increasingly deregulated news environment. This is having a particularly negative impact on local news. Whi…
Mediating hope: New media, politics and resistance
In an attempt to reimagine the concept of resistance in media studies this article argues for a reconsideration of the concept of political hope in non-mainstream mediated political mobilization that will take us beyond a focus on resistance to one of political project(s). The critical first step in such an endeavour is to reach beyond the confines of media and communication studies. This article draws on political science, sociology, social move…
Mediating Social Science
Collision or collusion? A discussion and case study of the unplanned triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods
In recent years there has been a growth of interest in breaking down the divisions between qualitative and quantitative research. However, although examples of multi-method studies now abound, there has been little discussion within the literature about the empirical and theoretical challenges that such eclecticism can pose. This article provides an example of a multi-method investigation into social scientists and their media relations wherein q…
Textualizing risk: TV discourse and the issue of nuclear energy
(Dis)Trust
Alternative media and the question of power
One of the main questions asked about alternative media is exactly what such media are alternative to
Sod off and Find Us a Boffin: Journalists and the Social Science Conference
Social scientists perform a multi-functional role as researcher, teacher and expert. The academic conference provides an opportunity for all these roles to be engaged and as such is a political and social site where meaning is debated and new research born. The conference is also attractive to journalists as news fodder. This article considers the relationship between journalists and social scientific organizations in the context of a professiona…
Mediating solidarity
With the apparent increase in the number of alternative political media, political pluralists are again faced with the question: does the proliferation of subaltern counter-publics lead to a multiplication of forces? Fragmentation in political culture is fuelled by the rise of identity politics that focuses on consumption not production. Party allegiances and class alliances give way to more fluid and informal networks of action. Postmodern theor…
The problematics of postmodernism for feminist media studies
This article explores the implications of postmodernism for feminist media studies. It takes two key tenets of postmodernism which overlap with much work in feminist media studies - the notion of representation as reality and audience resistance. In the context of the metathemes of identity and difference, it argues for a mode of analysis which is integrative and tracks social and ideological relations at every level between cultural production a…
Trust, the voluntary sector and civil society
Looks at the development of the voluntary sector into a semi‐professional area undertaking more work which was previously seen as the State’s responsibility. Considers the amount of trust invested in these charities and the damage that new fundraising techniques may inflict. Outlines the recent political influences on society and the individual together with the resulting attitudes to charity. Briefly outlines the local and global perspectives in…
Women, Communication and Theory: A Glimpse of Feminist Approaches to Media and Communication Studies
Communicating philanthropy: The media and the voluntary sector in Britain
Whether in looking for resources or doing their work, voluntary and charitable organisations have always needed to publicise their existence. However, major changes in the role and funding of the sector in Britain have meant that the issue of publicity has gained particular salience. This article discusses these changes and provides preliminary findings from a large-scale investigation into media and public attitudes towards voluntary and charita…
Cosmopolitanism as Conformity and Contestation: The mainstream press and radical politics
In this paper I consider the concept of cosmopolitanism in relation to two types of communication systems: the mainstream press and alternative networked communications of new social movements. Through the example of the hacking scandal, the paper discusses how the cosmopolitan ethics of the “freedom of the press” have become distorted by a thoroughly commercialized tabloid media, to mean little more than freedom of the market to do as it pleases…
Global Capital, Local Resistance: Trade Unions, National Newspapers and the Symbolic Contestation of `Offshoring' in the UK
The purpose of this article is to analyse the symbolic response of some trade unions in the UK to the 'offshoring' of call centre work. The article shows how these responses have drawn extensively upon nationalist rhetoric and that this places unions in a contradictory position with respect to their internationalist objectives. It also shows that the unions' campaigns have been well received by elements of the UK national press, not usually known…
A statement on the ongoing genocide in Gaza
Communication, Culture and Critique has been the leading venue for critical approaches to communication and media studies. This issue marks the first guided by a newly formed Editorial Collective, which seeks to rekindle the politically engaged scholarship epitomized by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the 1970s, then under the leadership of Stuart Hall. As we assume our responsibility to guide this journal…
Indymedia and the long story of rebellion against neoliberal capitalism
Indymedia was born of the anti-globalisation movement of the late 1990s and quickly spread to become a social movement in its own right. This article reflects on how prescient the claims of the anti-globalisation movement have proven to be and how 20 years ago Indymedia and the anti-globalisation movement predicted there was trouble ahead and that neoliberalism was a central part of the problem. It notes how a history of struggle and protest eman…
Mourning and longing: Media studies learning to let go of liberal democracy
In her essay ‘Neoliberalism and the end of liberal democracy’, Wendy Brown suggests that critical political theory needs to ‘mourn liberal democracy’ in order to develop a transformative vision of ‘the good’. The problem, as Brown outlines it, is not only that – to varying extents and in different scales across democratic states – market rationality has hollowed out representative structures and processes and organizes social life but also that ‘…
Telling Tales: Press, Politics, Power, and the Public Interest
This special edition was commissioned in response to one of the largest media scandals in recent history—the illegal practice of phone hacking. Although the events originated in the United Kingdom and relate particularly to the newspaper industry, the ramifications extend across the globe and across media, just as the tentacles of the Rupert Murdoch empire reach far and wide. As you read the articles that follow so the story unfolds: the lies and…
Textualizing risk: TV discourse and the issue of nuclear energy
Women, Communication and Theory: A Glimpse of Feminist Approaches to Media and Communication Studies
Communicating philanthropy: The media and the voluntary sector in Britain
Whether in looking for resources or doing their work, voluntary and charitable organisations have always needed to publicise their existence. However, major changes in the role and funding of the sector in Britain have meant that the issue of publicity has gained particular salience. This article discusses these changes and provides preliminary findings from a large-scale investigation into media and public attitudes towards voluntary and charita…
Sod off and Find Us a Boffin: Journalists and the Social Science Conference
Social scientists perform a multi-functional role as researcher, teacher and expert. The academic conference provides an opportunity for all these roles to be engaged and as such is a political and social site where meaning is debated and new research born. The conference is also attractive to journalists as news fodder. This article considers the relationship between journalists and social scientific organizations in the context of a professiona…
Collision or collusion? A discussion and case study of the unplanned triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods
In recent years there has been a growth of interest in breaking down the divisions between qualitative and quantitative research. However, although examples of multi-method studies now abound, there has been little discussion within the literature about the empirical and theoretical challenges that such eclecticism can pose. This article provides an example of a multi-method investigation into social scientists and their media relations wherein q…
Trust, the voluntary sector and civil society
Looks at the development of the voluntary sector into a semi‐professional area undertaking more work which was previously seen as the State’s responsibility. Considers the amount of trust invested in these charities and the damage that new fundraising techniques may inflict. Outlines the recent political influences on society and the individual together with the resulting attitudes to charity. Briefly outlines the local and global perspectives in…
From inception to reception: The Natural History of a News Item
This article compares the complex dynamics involved in the production and reception of a newspaper article. This case study is used as the basis for a broader discussion of the encoding and decoding of meaning via the news media. The article recommends that closer attention needs to be given to the linkages between these moments in the mass communication process, and the temporal contexts within which they occur
Mediating Social Science
Trust and Civil Society
Trust and Civil Society offers an original and accessible analysis of the meaning of 'trust' in a range of critical contexts: voluntary organizations, faith associations, the economy, the state and welfare, environmental issues and charity. Balancing theory with grounded analysis, and drawing on interdisciplinary and international perspectives, the book makes an important contribution to contemporary debates. It will be of interest to academics, …
The problematics of postmodernism for feminist media studies
This article explores the implications of postmodernism for feminist media studies. It takes two key tenets of postmodernism which overlap with much work in feminist media studies - the notion of representation as reality and audience resistance. In the context of the metathemes of identity and difference, it argues for a mode of analysis which is integrative and tracks social and ideological relations at every level between cultural production a…
Trust and Civil Society
New Media, Counter Publicity and the Public Sphere
New media have been widely used by radical groups of both Left and Right to advance their political projects. The aim of this article to provide a theoretical framework, through developing the concepts of public sphere and counter-public sphere, which allows us to understand the growing importance of alternative media in society and to indicate how this framework might generate questions for empirical research
‘If You’ve Got a Vagina and an Attitude, that’s a Deadly Combination’: Sex and Heterosexuality in Basic Instinct, Body of Evidence and Disclosure
A large body of work exists on women’s sexuality and its construction and misrepresentation in media texts, yet little research analyses explicit sex scenes in mainstream film. Drawing on textual analyses of the sex scenes in Basic Instinct (P. Verhoeven, 1992), Body of Evidence (U. Edel, 1993) and Disclosure (B. Levinson, 1994), the article addresses these issues more specifically. We argue that a consideration of the heterosexual identities and…
Another world is possible
Global Capital, Local Resistance: Trade Unions, National Newspapers and the Symbolic Contestation of `Offshoring' in the UK
The purpose of this article is to analyse the symbolic response of some trade unions in the UK to the 'offshoring' of call centre work. The article shows how these responses have drawn extensively upon nationalist rhetoric and that this places unions in a contradictory position with respect to their internationalist objectives. It also shows that the unions' campaigns have been well received by elements of the UK national press, not usually known…
Mediating solidarity
With the apparent increase in the number of alternative political media, political pluralists are again faced with the question: does the proliferation of subaltern counter-publics lead to a multiplication of forces? Fragmentation in political culture is fuelled by the rise of identity politics that focuses on consumption not production. Party allegiances and class alliances give way to more fluid and informal networks of action. Postmodern theor…
Mediating hope: New media, politics and resistance
In an attempt to reimagine the concept of resistance in media studies this article argues for a reconsideration of the concept of political hope in non-mainstream mediated political mobilization that will take us beyond a focus on resistance to one of political project(s). The critical first step in such an endeavour is to reach beyond the confines of media and communication studies. This article draws on political science, sociology, social move…
My Media Studies: Getting Political in a Global, Digital Age
New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age
With massive changes in the media environment and its technologies, interrogating the nature of news journalism is one of the most urgent tasks we face in defining the public interest today. The implications are serious, not just for the future of the news, but also for the practice of democracy. In a thorough empirical investigation of journalistic practices in different news contexts, this book explores how technological, economic, and social c…
New Media, Old News: Journalism & Democracy in the Digital Age
Drowning or Waving? New Media, Journalism and Democracy
With massive changes in the media environment and its technologies, interrogating the nature of news journalism is one of the most urgent tasks we face in defining the public interest today. The implications are serious, not just for the future of the news, but also for the practice of democracy. In a thorough empirical investigation of journalistic practices in different news contexts, this book explores how technological, economic, and social c…
Alternative Media and Social Networking Sites: The Politics of Individuation and Political Participation
The rapid growth in usage of social networking sites begs a reconsideration of the meaning of mediated political participation in society. Castells (2009 Castells, M. 2009. Communication power, Oxford, , England: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) contended that social networking sites offer a form of mass communication of the self wherein individuals can acquire a new creative autonomy. Stiegler (2009 Stiegler, B. 2009. Teleologics of th…
‘Comment is free, facts are sacred’: Journalistic ethics in a changing mediascape
Deregulation or democracy? New media, news, neoliberalism and the public interest
This article began from the premise that news media are in crisis. The crisis is being managed by closing papers or shedding staff. Drawing on extensive empirical research the paper argues that these cuts are having a devastating effect on the quality of the news. The cuts are being delivered to news so that shareholder profits remain in an increasingly deregulated news environment. This is having a particularly negative impact on local news. Whi…
Misunderstanding the Internet
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (28 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Social Media and Politics (13 works) · Media studies (12 works) · Media Studies and Communication (12 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works)