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Join us on Tuesday night as we look at how we look at each other. When the media focuses on more what Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon were wearing than the policy they had met to discuss, are we really served well by our mainstream news media? Volunteering in developing countries is often stereotyped as gap-year teenagers ‘finding themselves’ but is that doing international volunteering a disservice? Taking place in the basement Cinema room at the The Town Wall. Please note this venue has a strict no under 18s policy.
Sex, Politics, News: A Game of Three Sides
Karen Ross
( Professor of Gender and Media, Newcastle University)
When Theresa May entered no.10 as Britain’s second-ever woman Prime Minister, the media focus was on what she was wearing, not what she was saying. The relationship between politicians and journalists has always been a tricky one but when you throw sex into the mix, we see an altogether more complicated picture. This talk looks at the ways in which news media frame women politicians and suggests that whatever we think about their political position, we are poorly served by a mainstream news media which tells us all about their style and almost nothing about their substance.
Never mind the gap year: local volunteers, poverty and development
Matt Baillie Smith
(Professor of International Development, Northumbria University)
While researchers and the media criticise or celebrate international volunteers and gap year participants, local volunteers working to address poverty and development get sidelined. This talk will explore why some volunteers get all the attention. Findings from research on the activities of local volunteers in the global South, particularly those in conflict settings, will be used to question popular and academic understandings of what volunteering is, why people do it, and whether ‘paying’ a volunteer stops them being a volunteer.
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