Rebecca Saunders, Still

Programme notes created for BBC Radio 3's UK premiere of 'Still' which was broadcast live from the Barbican, London on 10 February 2012

No flowers: performative interventions 'at the moment of' Margaret Thatcher's passing

Why is “respect” the order of the day for the dead, such as Margaret Thatcher, upon their dying? Was Walter Benjamin right when he pointed to death and its trimmings as that which lends authority to the storyteller? And how might performance short circuit narratives so motored

Greetings from Bangor Wales to Bangor Maine

A program produced in cooperation with WLBZ to share greetings and information about daily live from Bangor, North Wales to the people of Bangor, Maine. Not dated. Circa 1955.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/wlbz_station_records/1170/thumbnail.jp

How social media and technology are challenging journalists’ perceptions of their role

Professional ideology and newsroom culture have become deeply embedded and codified in Anglo-American journalism since the late 19th Century. Despite constant questioning by professionals and scholars alike, they have remained remarkably stable, resisting the repeated challenge of technological, societal and cultural change ranging from the groundbreaking introduction of radio and television to the ‘New Journalism’ of the 1960s & 70s and the birth of the Internet. The antagonism between professional journalists and the boundaries they are erecting to distinguish themselves from ‘citizen journalists’, or those they regard as ‘amateurs,’ is arguably reinforcing existing ideology. There are also clear signs that media outlets are unwilling to give up their traditional ‘gate keeping’ role. But are there other disruptive factors ushered in by the social media revolution that may finally lead to a breakdown of these norms? Using a qualitative research methodology involving in-depth interviews with journalists from leading established news outlets, this paper examines two changes to practice now becoming commonplace in the newsroom. Firstly, it explores the growing requirement for journalists to use Twitter and other social media tools to promote their own news output or their news organisation; and secondly it examines the introduction of social media ‘hubs’ in which journalists trawl the Internet for user-generated content to complement their own. To what extent are these two developments changing journalists’ perception of their role and the culture of the newsroom? And is the broadly consensual view of their professional ideology becoming more diffuse

Why do children love George Ezra's Shotgun?

They're the hit of children's parties and end of term discos, but the plague of parents. Why do some songs prove so popular with children they are played seemingly perpetually

Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media

Some Internet genres, in particular Weblogs and discussion fora, have a dubious reputation for giving voice to strongly polemical discourses or hate-speech. This paper investigates the use of dehumanizing metaphors, specifically parasite metaphors, in British debates about immigration. It compares the range of metaphors used in Blogs with that used in online fora and in mainstream newspaper coverage and concludes that despite substantial variation, they can be categorised into four main scenarios, of which one includes dehumanizing metaphors such as depictions of immigrants as parasites, leeches, or bloodsuckers. Whilst this kind of stigmatizing imagery occurs across the three different media genres, the samples also show significant quantitative and qualitative differences: dehumanizing metaphors occur most often and their potential for aggressive argumentation and polemics is exploited in more detail in Blogs than in the fora, and least in the mainstream press. It is then asked what cognitive import this differential usage has in view of a) the discourse histories of such metaphors and b) their most likely present-day semantic motivation. The paper concludes that while it is unlikely that present-day users have detailed knowledge of the etymological and conceptual histories of such metaphors, it is also improbable to assume a wholly “unconscious” or “automatic” use or reception in the respective community of practice, and that instead it is more likely that they are used with a high degree of “deliberateness” and a modicum of discourse-historical awarenes