If the British economic crises of 2022 feel like the product of a unique set of challenging circumstances – the aftermath of a global pandemic, war in Europe triggering a major energy crisis and the constitutional disruption of Brexit – to which a drastic response is required, reading the mainstream media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that nothing has changed. In what looks like a photocopy from the 1970s, the Sun are reporting a series of industrial strikes across the country as organised by ‘Marxist union mobs’ and ‘militants’ ‘causing chaos’ and ‘declaring war on Britain’. RMT leader – or ‘union baron’ – Mick Lynch, has been the focus of particularly hostile coverage across a range of outlets including Sky, the BBC and ITV (where Lynch in a now infamous exchange was asked directly if he was a Marxist).

Rupert Murdoch may still be the owner of the Sun (he bought it over in the late 60s) – but in spite of what might look depressingly familiar, our media landscape has gone through a radical transformation in that time. The digital revolution has democratised the production and consumption of news and information disrupting the hegemony of the gatekeepers of mass media. While new global powers have emerged – Facebook, Twitter, Google – attempts to contain public opinion require an increasingly coordinated and fast-moving set of mechanisms to enforce. Deletion, moderation and blocking move only so fast.

But it’s not just the structure of media that has changed – the last few decades have seen a transformation in public knowledge and understanding of how the media work.

‘Academic hitmen’

Once described by The Observer as ‘academic hitmen stalking television’s newscasters’, the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) really made their name exposing the patterns in language and ideology implicit in the media coverage of the miners’ strike of 84-85. This signalled the start of successive governments’ progressive dismantling of the power of trade unions in Britain as union voices were demonised and side-lined by their media cheerleaders. Through a series of seminal studies of British ‘Bad News’, the GUMG charted the pivotal role of the media in the advent of neoliberal politics.

The impact of their work on the British public, and the industry itself is now difficult to imagine. Quite a few decades on and the idea that news is a construction, rather than a simple reflection of reality, has been absorbed into popular understanding.

What is interesting with Lynch is that in spite of the mainstream media’s hyperbolic and increasingly personalised attacks, public support for strikes has increased as his voice is amplified. One factor is his brand of authentic expertise – briskly explaining the causes of inflation, role of taxation, and the nature of employment law to ill-informed journalists.

But equally crucial is his exposure of media bias and the power relations underpinning media reporting – calling out the ‘pro-boss line’, the tired old tropes about trade unions and the interests betrayed by the line of questioning.

Through Lynch’s exasperation with the ‘state of journalism’, the media construction of strikers in conflict with working people – as opposed to strikers being working people – has never been more exposed. In this he owes much to the tradition of the Group and the many other media and political scholars who followed their lead.

Launching our blog

It is in that tradition – of a genuinely public social science – that we launch this blog. It represents the work of the current group of media sociologists at the University of Glasgow, the Glasgow University Media Group or GUMG, who come together over their interest in media and structural power, and the question of how social change actually happens.

It comes at a time in which the story of neoliberalism is being challenged around the world due to a series of economic shocks and there is a crisis in legitimacy and truth which has led people to populist narratives – and when the circuit of communications moves way beyond conventional journalists and their suppliers of information to include tech companies, AI and platform ownership, and content moderators.

These transformations require new methods of analysis, and in this our researchers build on and adapt the pioneering methods of the Group; for example, in analyses of content and public reception work, both of which look quite different in a platformised culture. We apply them to global issues and moments of social change as they arise – with interests in the Group as varied as African news rooms, Chinese social media, Scandinavian politics and journalism. And with a new focus on Scotland’s dual public sphere as the constitutional question begins to bubble up again.

We extend these questions of media, power and justice to our interest in teaching – what are the best ways to produce reflective and ethical journalists who can manage the logistics and rationale of a media environment that often demands they undermine their own principles?

We’re are going to use this space as a platform for updates about Glasgow University Media Group research, public engagement and reflections on teaching – as well as a much broader lens on news, politics and social change, and the sociology of media, related books, articles and resources, innovations in research methods, and conferences and events.

The Group has a lot of interesting things coming up, including the launch of a report on Scotland’s Sustainable Media Future, so please subscribe to this blog and follow us on social media.

First published: 20 September 2022

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Dr Catherine Happer