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As part of the JOMEC Research Seminar Series, Dr Michael Higgins, visiting from the University of Strathclyde, will be giving a talk this Wednesday (9th April). The lecture will take place at 4pm in Rm 0.05 (please note change of venue), Bute Building, the title is: ‘' Indignation unto nation: belligerence in broadcasting".

Abstract: This paper draws upon a larger study on the development and significance of developments in television and radio that we have described as “belligerent broadcasting”. This refers to a broadcast style, often associated with reality television, “that offers as spectacle expressions of anger or impatience, or the exercise of intimidation” (Higgins, Montgomery, Smith, Tolson, 2012). The intention of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the paper proposes to assess belligerent broadcasting’s usefulness to current debates on emotionality in media and in journalism. In this regard, the paper intends to suggest that media performances of anger and impatience might be seen as potentially productive expressions of journalistic and public sentiment, and so offer an important extension to journalism’s emotional range. Second, and looking at the example of BBC World’s Hard Talk, the paper intends to highlight and discuss a number of ways in which an international context may constrain and challenge belligerent performance in journalism.

Bio: Dr Michael Higgins is Senior Lecturer in Journalism and English in the School of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde. Michael’s books include Media and Their Publics (Open University Press, 2008), The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Culture (with Clarissa Smith and John Storey, Cambridge University Press, 2010) and La Leadership Politica (with Emiliana Di Blasio et al, Carocci, 2012), as well as a recent textbook The Language of Journalism (with Angela Smith, Bloomsbury, 2013). He is currently interested in debates around the popular and populism in political communications, and has published a number of recent chapters on populism in political rhetoric.

The seminar series web page is available at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/newsandevents/13research_seminar_series.html