Brian Mcnair
Biographic Data
| ID | 98606 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian Mcnair |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcnair |
| SIGNATURE | MCNAIR B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7918-6391 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 338 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Digitizing Democracy
Scandal and news values
This chapter considers the factors which shape the news value of scandal in both democratic and authoritarian societies. It explores how scandal emerges, and how its news value is determined in specific cases. News values remain more or less constant even as media technology advances and changes the communication environment. In many prominent cases of scandal, it is the perception of hypocrisy that generates news value and ultimately proves fata…
The truth is out there, somewhere
Pornography
Pornography is a term used to describe media content which is (1) sexually explicit and (2) produced with the intention of sexual arousal on the part of the consumer or user. This entry summarizes the history of pornography and the debate around its alleged social impacts.
Fake News: Falsehood, Fabrication and Fantasy in Journalism
Fake News: Falsehood, Fabrication and Fantasy in Journalism
Fake News: Falsehood, fabrication and fantasy in journalism examines the causes and consequences of the ‘fake news’ phenomenon now sweeping the world’s media and political debates. Drawing on three decades of research and writing on journalism and news media, the author engages with the fake news phenomenon in accessible, insightful language designed to bring clarity and context to a complex and fast-moving debate. The author presents fake news n…
From Control to Chaos, and Back Again: Journalism and the politics of populist authoritarianism
With the advent of the internet it had appeared to many that the traditional, normative, pro-democratic functions of journalism as critical scrutineer, Fourth Estate and source of common knowledge for the public sphere would be strengthened. Today, however, digital platforms are being utilized with great effect by the opponents of liberal democracy, whether extreme factions within Islam, reactionaries and populists within the democratic countries…
After Objectivity: Schudson’s sociology of journalism in the era of post-factuality
This essay takes Schudson’s pioneering work in the historical sociology of journalism as the starting point for an argument as to why the concept of objectivity can and must be re-evaluated in the digital era, if such a thing as a globalised public sphere, able to support further democratic progress in the decades ahead, is to be built from the “cultural chaos” of the internet. It explores the often ambivalent role a revised, more nuanced notion …
Understanding the civic impact of journalism: A realistic evaluation perspective
The importance of journalism to civil society is constantly proclaimed, but empirical evidence on journalism's impact, and how this operates, is surprisingly thin. Indeed, there is confusion even about what is meant by the term “impact”. Meanwhile, the issue of the role of journalism is becoming increasingly urgent as a consequence of the rapid changes engulfing the news media, brought about by technological change and the flow-on effect to the t…
The Interview: Schnarking, Knob Jokes and the Right to Cause Gross Offence
A few weeks before the murderous attack by Islamic extremists on the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, the Hollywood dream factory had its own encounter with would-be censors. The Interview (Evan Go
Rock Stars versus Reptiles: Lou Bloom, Photojournalism and Nightcrawler
Journalists have sometimes bemoaned what they perceive to be a bias in how they are represented in film and television. Aside from complaints about the alleged lack of realism in cinematic depictio
Rethinking the effects paradigm in porn studies
It has been an assumption of most anti-pornography discourse that porn damages women (and children) in a variety of ways. In Porno? Chic!, the author interrogated this assumption by examining the correlation between the incidence of sexual violence and other indicators of misogyny, and the availability and accessibility of pornography within a number of societies. This article develops that work with a specific focus on the regulatory environment…
From Cinema to TV: Still the same old stories about journalism
Television drama used to be the poor relation of the full length feature film made for cinema. No self-respecting movie star would be seen dead in the former, and successful TV actors rarely sustained careers of comparable brilliance in the film industry. Those days are gone, if a series such as House of Cards is any indicator of the trends
Gone Girl and the Mediatization of Crime
Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) will not be remembered for its representation of journalists, although both lead characters are, as the narrative opens in 2012, magazine writers made redundant in t
The Mighty Heart of James Foley: Journalism, risk and reporting from war zones
Trust, cynicism, and responsiveness: The uneasy situation of journalism in democracy
This chapter explores what news organisations and those who work in them can do to secure their futures in a digitised media environment where their cultural authority and professional status are challenged as never before in the history of journalism. It argues for a response, from both institutions and individuals, on three levels. First, there needs to be an enhancement of the traditional sense-making, sorting-and-sifting, gatekeeping function…
The Rise of the Fifth Estate
In Journalists in Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), I highlighted Billy Ray's 2003 movie Shattered Glass as a significant work, not only for its qualities as cinematic art but because it dra
In Good Company
I like Robert Redford, as an actor and as a director. Millions of people do, not least because he was and remains a distinguished leading man of the old school—dignified, serious, polite, who think
Aha! The Return of Alan Partridge
Throughout a long and occasionally distinguished career first as a television sports correspondent, then chat show host (dramatically ended by the accidental homicide of a guest live on air), then rebirth as a radio presenter at North Norfolk Digital, Alan Partridge has navigated the stormy waters of the British media landscape, now achieving mainstream success on the big screen with a starring role in Steve Coogan’s Alpha Papa (Declan Lowney, 20…
Oh, Superman
Real Journalism and Not Just Bootlicking”: Journalistic practice in transitional societies
A small but important sub-genre of the journalism movie is the documentary of journalism practice: films about journalists at work, often in stressful or dangerous conditions; their daily routines
Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere
The public sphere is said to be in crisis. Dumbing down, tabloidisation, infotainment and spin are alleged to contaminate it, adversely affecting the quality of political journalism and of democracy itself. There is a pervasive pessimism about the relationship between the media and democracy, and widespread concern for the future of the political process.Journalism and Democracy challenges this orthodoxy, arguing instead for an alternative, more …
Et Tu, George? Campaign Journalism and the Politics of Compromise
There is a category of film about journalism in which journalism is not the star, but the supporting player, and journalists not the protagonists but the Greek chorus, commenting on and also changi
From True Story to Morning Glory: Fantasy and reality in journalism movies
Johnny Be Gonzo
The legend of Hunter S. Thompson—the great gonzo—has grown deeper and more layered since his death in February 2005 than it was even in his exotic and controversy-filled life. The most recent addit
The sociology of journalism
Introduction to the sociology of journalism defining terms journalism and society the critique of journalism how journalism is made organizational, professional and technological factors sources and source strategies manufacturing journalism - some cases
Cultural chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World
With examples drawn from media coverage of the War on Terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the London underground bombings, Cultural Chaos explores the changing relationship between journalism and power in an increasingly globalised news culture. In this new text, Brian McNair examines the processes of cultural, geographic and political dissolution in the post-Cold War era and the rapid evolution of information and communicati…
News and Journalism in the UK
News and Journalism in the UK is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the political, economic and regulatory environments of press and broadcast journalism in Britain and Northern Ireland.Surveying the industry in a period of radical economic and technological change, Brian McNair examines the main trends in journalistic media in the last two decades and assesses the challenges and future of the industry in the new millennium.Integrati…
After Objectivity: Schudson’s sociology of journalism in the era of post-factuality
This essay takes Schudson’s pioneering work in the historical sociology of journalism as the starting point for an argument as to why the concept of objectivity can and must be re-evaluated in the digital era, if such a thing as a globalised public sphere, able to support further democratic progress in the decades ahead, is to be built from the “cultural chaos” of the internet. It explores the often ambivalent role a revised, more nuanced notion …
PR must die: Spin, anti-spin and political public relations in the UK, 1997-2004
This essay critically assesses the "demonology of spin" which has dominated British political journalism, and academic writing on public relations since the rise of New Labour in the 1990s. It reviews the history of British political public relations (PR), and traces the emergence of journalistic hostility to the professional communication practices of New Labour in government. This "demonology" is viewed in the context of the professional rivalr…
Journalists in Film: Heroes and Villains
We both love and hate our journalists. They are perceived as sexy and glamorous on the one hand, despicable and sleazy on the other. Opinion polls regularly indicate that we experience a kind of cultural schizophrenia in our relationship to journalists and the news media: sometimes they are viewed as heroes, at other times villains. From Watergate to the fabrication scandals of the 2000s, journalists have risen and fallen in public esteem. In thi…
Journalism and Democracy: A Millennial Audit
This article challenges what it characterizes as the pervasive pessimism, and narratives of decline, which dominate current scholarly debates on the relationship between journalism and democracy. Drawing on original ESRC-funded research, and examples drawn from recent political news stories such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the article presents a more positive evaluation of contemporary political journalism and its contribution to the democrat…
Journalism in the 21st century — evolution, not extinction
Public Access Broadcasting and Democratic Participation in the Age of Mediated Politics
This article presents the results of research carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's Democracy and Participation programme. Drawing on new empirical data assembled by the authors from interviews with programme makers, public participants and members of the listening and viewing audience, it seeks to evaluate the role of political access broadcasting in the British democratic process, against the background of a perceive…
Rethinking the effects paradigm in porn studies
It has been an assumption of most anti-pornography discourse that porn damages women (and children) in a variety of ways. In Porno? Chic!, the author interrogated this assumption by examining the correlation between the incidence of sexual violence and other indicators of misogyny, and the availability and accessibility of pornography within a number of societies. This article develops that work with a specific focus on the regulatory environment…
Teaching Porn
This article gives an account of my experiences as a student and teacher of pornography in the UK university context. From my time as a student at Glasgow University in the late 1970s, to my classes on sexual transgression at Strathclyde in the 2000s, I trace changing attitudes to the pornographic, against the background of changing political and technological environments. The article considers the pedagogy of porn against the backdrop of pro- a…
Media in Post-Soviet Russia: An Overview
Since the failed coup of August 1991, the media of the former Soviet Union have been attempting to adapt to the conditions of the market economy and emerging democracy, amid continuing political and social turmoil. This article examines the media's role in the final years of the Soviet state, and identifies the main challenges of the transition. These are discussed in terms of economic, political and cultural problems, and set against the backgro…
The truth is out there, somewhere
Understanding the civic impact of journalism: A realistic evaluation perspective
The importance of journalism to civil society is constantly proclaimed, but empirical evidence on journalism's impact, and how this operates, is surprisingly thin. Indeed, there is confusion even about what is meant by the term “impact”. Meanwhile, the issue of the role of journalism is becoming increasingly urgent as a consequence of the rapid changes engulfing the news media, brought about by technological change and the flow-on effect to the t…
Journalism at the Movies
Welcome to the first of what will be a regular review essay on films about journalism, covering recent releases as well as looking back at established classics and under-rated obscurities.And there is
From Cinema to TV: Still the same old stories about journalism
Television drama used to be the poor relation of the full length feature film made for cinema. No self-respecting movie star would be seen dead in the former, and successful TV actors rarely sustained careers of comparable brilliance in the film industry. Those days are gone, if a series such as House of Cards is any indicator of the trends
Journalists in Film: Heroes and Villains
News 2.0: Can journalism survive the Internet
Martin Hirst's study of “News 2.0” begins with the qualification that “it is impossible for a text like this to be completely up-to-date”. And indeed, the volume misses out on the explosion of the
From Control to Chaos: Towards a New Sociology of Journalism
Glasnost and restructuring in the Soviet media
From Control to Chaos, and Back Again: Journalism and the politics of populist authoritarianism
With the advent of the internet it had appeared to many that the traditional, normative, pro-democratic functions of journalism as critical scrutineer, Fourth Estate and source of common knowledge for the public sphere would be strengthened. Today, however, digital platforms are being utilized with great effect by the opponents of liberal democracy, whether extreme factions within Islam, reactionaries and populists within the democratic countries…
Gone Girl and the Mediatization of Crime
Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) will not be remembered for its representation of journalists, although both lead characters are, as the narrative opens in 2012, magazine writers made redundant in t
The 'New' News
This themed issue of Media International Australia brings together a collection of work that critically examines some of the rapid changes to the news media system in recent years, including an explosion of news sources, formats and increasingly popular hybrid styles and, the collapse in the authority of the trusted news sources of the past. Much news is now broken by social media, and journalists compete in a cycle of news and politics that has …
Wikileaks, Journalism and the Consequences of Chaos
This article considers the impact of the WikiLeaks organisation in relation to debates around the defence of national security and free speech, global media citizenship and the emerging dynamics of the global public sphere. Building on the author's previous work on political communication, journalism and 'cultural chaos', it explores the implications of WikiLeaks for emerging conceptions and definitions of journalism, and for the changing structu…
Television in a post-Soviet union
Journal Article Television in a post-Soviet union Get access Brain McNair Brain McNair Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 33, Issue 3, Autumn 1992, Pages 300–320, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/33.3.300 Published: 01 October 1992
Glasnost and restructuring in the Soviet media
Television in a post-Soviet union
Journal Article Television in a post-Soviet union Get access Brain McNair Brain McNair Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 33, Issue 3, Autumn 1992, Pages 300–320, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/33.3.300 Published: 01 October 1992
Media in Post-Soviet Russia: An Overview
Since the failed coup of August 1991, the media of the former Soviet Union have been attempting to adapt to the conditions of the market economy and emerging democracy, amid continuing political and social turmoil. This article examines the media's role in the final years of the Soviet state, and identifies the main challenges of the transition. These are discussed in terms of economic, political and cultural problems, and set against the backgro…
Television in post-Soviet Russia: From monolith to mafia
The sociology of journalism
Introduction to the sociology of journalism defining terms journalism and society the critique of journalism how journalism is made organizational, professional and technological factors sources and source strategies manufacturing journalism - some cases
Journalism and Democracy: A Millennial Audit
This article challenges what it characterizes as the pervasive pessimism, and narratives of decline, which dominate current scholarly debates on the relationship between journalism and democracy. Drawing on original ESRC-funded research, and examples drawn from recent political news stories such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the article presents a more positive evaluation of contemporary political journalism and its contribution to the democrat…
Striptease Culture
From advertising to health education campaigns, sex and sexual imagery now permeate every aspect of culture. Striptease Culture explores the 'sexualization' of contemporary life, relating it to wider changes in post-war society. Striptease Culture is divided in to three sections: * Part one – traces the development of pornography, following its movement from elite to mass culture and the contemporary fascination with ‘porno-chic’* Part two – cons…
An Introduction to Political Communication
In this highly accessible textbook Brian McNair critically explores the relationship between politics, the media and democracy in the United Kingdom, America and other contemporary societies. He examines how different organisations make use of advertising, marketing and public relations. This revised and updated edition draws on a range of contemporary examples to show how politicians and political groups communicate, including: * new Labour unde…
Notes de lecture
partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manire que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord pralable et crit de l'diteur, en dehors des cas prvus par la lgislation en vigueur en France. Il est prcis que son stockage dans une base de donnes est galement interdit
Public Access Broadcasting and Democratic Participation in the Age of Mediated Politics
This article presents the results of research carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's Democracy and Participation programme. Drawing on new empirical data assembled by the authors from interviews with programme makers, public participants and members of the listening and viewing audience, it seeks to evaluate the role of political access broadcasting in the British democratic process, against the background of a perceive…
An Introduction to Political Communication
An Introduction to Political Communication explores the relationship between politics, the media and democracy in the UK, the USA and other contemporary societies. Brian McNair examines how politicians, trade unions, pressure groups, non-governmental organizations and terrorist organizations make use of the media. Separate chapters look at political media and their effects, the work of political advertising, marketing and public relations and the…
From Control to Chaos: Towards a New Sociology of Journalism
News and Journalism in the UK
News and Journalism in the UK is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the political, economic and regulatory environments of press and broadcast journalism in Britain and Northern Ireland.Surveying the industry in a period of radical economic and technological change, Brian McNair examines the main trends in journalistic media in the last two decades and assesses the challenges and future of the industry in the new millennium.Integrati…
PR must die: Spin, anti-spin and political public relations in the UK, 1997-2004
This essay critically assesses the "demonology of spin" which has dominated British political journalism, and academic writing on public relations since the rise of New Labour in the 1990s. It reviews the history of British political public relations (PR), and traces the emergence of journalistic hostility to the professional communication practices of New Labour in government. This "demonology" is viewed in the context of the professional rivalr…
What Is Journalism
To answer the second question first: a reasonable claim can be made for journalism as the pre-eminent cultural form of our era, occupying more resources in its production and distribution, and routinely consumed by more people in most countries than any of the many other ways in which we experience the world through mass media. We love our movies and our music, of course; are addicted to our TV soaps and our game shows, perhaps; have reverence an…
Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media
The reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev have brought tumultuous change to political, social and economic life in the Soviet Union. But how have these changes affected Soviet press and television reporting? Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media examines the changing role of Soviet journalism from its theoretical origins in the writings of Marx and Lenin to the new freedoms of the Gorbachev era. The book includes detailed analysis of contemporary Sov…
Cultural chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World
With examples drawn from media coverage of the War on Terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the London underground bombings, Cultural Chaos explores the changing relationship between journalism and power in an increasingly globalised news culture. In this new text, Brian McNair examines the processes of cultural, geographic and political dissolution in the post-Cold War era and the rapid evolution of information and communicati…
Politics and Media
In 1922 the American journalist and social commentator Walter Lippmann wrote that “the significant revolution of modern times is the revolution taking place in the art of creating consent among the governed” (Lippmann 1954). From his vantage point in the early twentieth century, just four years after the end of World War I, Lippmann was drawing attention to the fact that politicians were entering a new era in which the role of the media was going…
Journalists in Film: Heroes and Villains
Journalism in the 21st century — evolution, not extinction
Teaching Porn
This article gives an account of my experiences as a student and teacher of pornography in the UK university context. From my time as a student at Glasgow University in the late 1970s, to my classes on sexual transgression at Strathclyde in the 2000s, I trace changing attitudes to the pornographic, against the background of changing political and technological environments. The article considers the pedagogy of porn against the backdrop of pro- a…
Book Notes
Journalists in Film: Heroes and Villains
We both love and hate our journalists. They are perceived as sexy and glamorous on the one hand, despicable and sleazy on the other. Opinion polls regularly indicate that we experience a kind of cultural schizophrenia in our relationship to journalists and the news media: sometimes they are viewed as heroes, at other times villains. From Watergate to the fabrication scandals of the 2000s, journalists have risen and fallen in public esteem. In thi…
An Introduction to Political Communication
An Introduction to Political Communication introduces students to the complex relationship between politics, the media and democracy in the United Kingdom, United States and other contemporary societies. Brian McNair examines how politicians, trade unions, pressure groups, NGOs and terrorist organisations make use of the media. Individual chapters look at political media and their effects, the work of political advertising, marketing and public r…
Managing the online news revolution: The UK experience
Newspapers and, if to a lesser extent as yet, linear broadcast news providers on TV and radio are in the process of being replaced as the dominant carrier media of journalism by an emerging network of online outlets
Sociology (44 works) · Political science (42 works) · Media studies (39 works) · Media Studies and Communication (24 works) · Journalism (23 works) · Law (23 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Art (20 works) · Democracy (13 works)