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Media and communication research

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Research projects

A Moral Truth

New Zealand has a long and rich tradition of journalism that holds power to account. This book by Dr James Hollings pulls together stories, dating from 1863 to reveal hidden truths. Some will be well known. Many will not. Some still shock and disturb. All show the craft, compassion, toil and persistence of the journalists and editors who unveiled them.

A Moral Truth

Affective Sexual Pedagogies in Film and Television

Kyra Clarke’s book offers a provocation to think differently about sex education and textual analysis. It argues that the feelings produced by film and television hold significant potential for developing affective sexual pedagogies, that is, ways of discussing feelings and experiences that we do not necessarily have the words for.

Contact Kyra Clarke

Biopolitical Media: Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare Life

Alan Meek’s book presents an historical account of media and catastrophe that engages with theories of biopolitics in the work of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and others.

Contact Alan Meek

Carving Out an Australian Sensory Cinema

Claire Henry’s chapter in Australian Screen in the 2000s applies an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the emergence and aesthetics of new Australian cinema, combining the import of new extremism and cinema of sensation from European film theory and an analogy with the revival of direct carving in modernist sculpture.

Contact Claire Henry

Culturally-centred health communication in African American communities

Professor Mohan Dutta worked on a culturally-centered health communication project on heart disease among African American communities in the Lake and Marion counties of Indiana. This community-grounded project interrogated the unhealthy structures that constrain the health and wellbeing of African American neighbourhoods in the US. It became the basis for multiple organic projects rooted in the aspirations in the community for health and wellbeing.

Contact Mohan Dutta

Humour as Politics: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary Comedy

Nick Holm’s book was published as part of the Palgrave Studies in Comedy Series. It argues that humour has become a central site of cultural politics in the 21st century. The book challenges older models of laughter as a form of dissent and instead argues for a new theory of humour as the cultural expression of our (neo)liberal moment.

Contact Nick Holm

In My Father’s Den

Brian McDonnell’s book explores both the 1972 novel and the process by which scriptwriter/director the late Brad McGann took the book’s core and made it his own. The book launches the New Zealand Film Classics series of short texts published by boutique UK publisher Kakapo Books.

Contact Brian McDonnell

Neoliberalism, Media and the Political

Neoliberalism, Media and the Political examines the condition of media and journalism in neoliberal cultures. Authored by Sean Phelan, the book emphasises neoliberalism's status as a political ideology that is simultaneously hostile to politics. It presents a critical theoretical argument supported by empirical illustrations from New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and the US.

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New Zealand's first musical film 'Daffodils'

Daffodils is a bittersweet musical love story told with beautiful re-imaginings of the most iconic New Zealand songs ever written. Touted as New Zealand’s first musical film, creative media lecturer Mathew Knight is Director of Photography.

Contact Mathew Knight

Protest and action in a digital age

This research, led by Professor Shiv Ganesh, looks at how technology has impacted on collective action. By examining data from a decision-making app used by activist groups, the research is working to uncover any differences in group footprints. Some of the initial results indicate that technology is creating hybridised forms of collective action and supporting existing forms rather than new ones.

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Public Relations and Lobbying: Influencing Politics and Policy

What is the relationship between public relations and lobbying? When do PR lobbying efforts succeed, and when do they fail? This project helps us understand the role of lobbying as a controversial feature of corporate and political advocacy in the marketplace of ideas. A joint project between Massey University's Dr Luk Swiatek and Dr Mitchell Hobbs from the University of Sydney, it examines the campaign by big tobacco to defeat plain-packaging legislation, and the Australian mining lobby’s victories over taxation reform and climate change policies. The research appears as a chapter in the second edition of the book 'Influence Seekers'.

Contact Luk Swiatek

Revisionist Rape-Revenge: Redefining a Film Genre

Claire Henry’s 2014 book uncovers the potential and limitations of the under-theorized genre of rape-revenge for cultural analysis of political and ethical issues surrounding gender, power, spectatorship, rape and revenge. Each chapter examines a significant trend or aspect of the genre's revisionist phase through in-depth film case studies, placing them within broader cultural myths and media narratives about rape.

Contact Claire Henry

Social inclusivity, cultural diversity and online film consumption

Ian Huffer’s study is the first to interrogate untested rhetoric suggesting online film distribution connects audiences to a greater diversity of film. He found that audiences’ breadth of engagement with international film increased more in the offline spaces of cinemas and film societies.

Contact Ian Huffer

Talking to young people: A video series

Claire Henry has created this video series in collaboration with the Office of Film and Literature Classification as part of a Parents' Guide to talking to children about the media. It covers how to start a conversation and how to teach them how to engage critically with the media they are consuming.

Talking to young people: A video series

The emotional life of postmodern film: Affect theory's other

Pansy Duncan’s monograph argues that, while reviled in contemporary media aesthetics for failing to accommodate emotion, postmodern theory sustains a number of idiosyncratic emotional formations, from bewilderment to knowingness.

Contact Pansy Duncan

Transnational Film Culture in New Zealand

Simon Sigley’s book approaches transnational film culture as a form of social practice and examine the domestic reception of international film theories and discourses. It shows how these ideas shaped distinct cultural practices from the 1920s to the present.

Contact Simon Sigley

“friendship isn’t an emotion f..knuts” – Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story

"Homestuck" is an online serial story constructed so that different pages of the story might be primarily a comic, videogame, text, music and video, or combination of different media. Kevin Veale’s article explores how "Homestuck" manipulates the reader's experience of the story by using their familiarity with the wider media landscape as a storytelling tool in itself.

Contact Kevin Veale

    Departments and staff

    Find out more about the departments and staff involved in media and communication research at Massey.

    School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing

    School of English and Media Studies

    School of Music and Creative Media Production

    College of Humanities and Social Sciences

    Massey Business School

    College of Creative Arts

    Research centres

    Centre for Culture-Centred Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE)

    CARE collaborates with communities at the margins (indigenous collectives, migrant and refugee workers, communities living in poverty, sex workers) in the Asia-Pacific to develop communication for social justice that builds infrastructures for community health and wellbeing based on local cultural understandings. In projects that bring together communities, activists, and academics, we use participatory and culture-centered methodologies to create communication infrastructures that enable the development of community-driven solutions to health.

    Find out more

    New Zealand Centre for Investigative Journalism

    The New Zealand Centre for Investigative Journalism brings together journalists, documentary makers, authors, students and others who are doing or would like to do investigative journalism. It runs an annual conference focusing on investigative journalism.

    Find out more

    Political Ecology Research Centre

    The Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC) is dedicated to connecting groups and individuals whose work emphasises and critiques the relationships between society, environment and politics. PERC members study, teach, research, and/or practise political ecology.

    Contact PERC

    You may also be interested in research in

    Communication and public relations

    English, writing and theatre

    Film, animation and VFX

    Languages and linguistics

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