Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman joined Glasgow’s School of Social and Political Sciences as a University Teacher in Politics, June 2015. As both a practitioner and scholar, Anthony has a diverse background in communications and politics, which has fuelled his interdisciplinary research interests in media and democracy. He will be teaching the Politics, Communication and Democracy module in the autumn term.

In 2013, he was awarded a University of London PhD for the thesis ‘The Conservative Party and New Media: A Comparative History, 1951-1964 and 2005-2012’. This ESRC funded research is influenced by cultural history and ethnographic methods; and examines the role of new media (television and internet) in party organisation in two distinct periods of technocultural change. Anthony spent a year in the Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and was granted MCR membership to Hertford College, Oxford. 2009-2010, he served as a councillor and parliamentary candidate, which afforded him significant access to political participants and their engagement in the run-up to the 2010 General Election.

Anthony holds an MSc in Social Research Methods from the University of Surrey; and a BSc (Hons) in Science and the Media, which was read at the universities of Plymouth, UK, and North Carolina, US. Anthony’s other research includes a quantitative content analysis that examines news representations, in the UK quality press, of Britain’s decision to go to war with Iraq.

Anthony’s doctoral research led to two book projects with Palgrave Macmillan, firstly, ‘Cameron’s Conservatives and the Internet: Change, Culture and Cyber Toryism’; and, secondly, ‘Broadcasting an Elite: Tories and Television, 1951-1964’. The first project received mentions in Newsweek and the New Scientist magazines. Recently, Anthony contributed to the ‘UK Election Analysis 2015: Media, Voters and the Campaign’ in collaboration with Bournemouth University and the Political Studies Association. Currently, he is collaborating on a book chapter that analyses cross-party uses of social media in the 2015 General Election. Anthony’s future research plans include comparing different media in terms of their impact on human rights agendas and debates.

Anthony has taught classes and workshops at the universities of London and Oxford. In 2009, he created and led the innovative educational project ‘Young People, Democracy and the Internet’. In addition to academia, he has worked in Sky’s Environment, Politics and Online news bureaus and as a news editor for a weekly local newspaper in North Carolina. He has also worked and conducted research in science communications at the US Geological Survey, Florida. More recently, as a communications consultant, Anthony has worked for clients in a range of commercial and non-commercial sectors.

First published: 30 June 2015

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