“I am passionate about understanding the past, present and future of journalism and how we educate ethical and innovative practioners through research-informed teaching. In order to shape a better future for the culture industries, we need better critical understanding of how and why communications, politics and popular culture evolved.”
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Consultancy and Comment
- Expert in relationships between journalism and crime, celebrity and politics from earliest origins to current day.
- In-depth understanding of broader cultures of networked and constructed reality across digital, print and broadcast media.
- Argues the need for changes to codes-of-practice to overcome contemporary ethical challenges in digital spaces and in response to algorithms and AI.
- Provides workshops and consultancy to press agents, private companies and public figures on how to counter attack journalism and how to develop in house and externally facing training.
“Drawing upon her personal experience as a reporter in the UK as she engages in a thoroughly critical manner with the research literature and media commentary, Bethany Usher presents an account of the news industry that is nuanced, thoughtful and compelling.”
Professor Graeme Turner
Professor of Cultural Studies and Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland Former President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Author: Understanding Celebrity
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“Bethany Usher has produced a remarkable rewriting of how we understand the relationship between celebrity and journalism. With clarity of images, brilliant charts and deep research, she makes sense of the close relationship that the emergence of celebrity has had to both journalism and politics.“
Professor P. David Marshall
Professor of Communication School of Information and Communication Studies Faculty of Arts and Education, Charles Sturt University
Author: Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture
Author / Journalist / Academic / Educator 