Dr Kate Wright
Job Title
Senior Lecturer (Assoc. Prof) in Media and Communication
Research interests
Research interests
At a time when commercial funding for journalism is under threat, it is vital that we consider how to sustain international news financially, as well as re-assessing its contribution to the "public good" in our global society. My research examines the moral economies of international news: focusing on how journalists navigate tensions between normative values and the changing political, economic, and technological contexts of their work. My interest in these issues is informed by my background as an award-winning BBC journalist working on Scottish, UK, and international news flagships.
My interdisciplinary and comparative research has two main strands. The most recent of these focuses on public service media, including my current research project, which was codesigned with the global Public Media Alliance. This seeks to analyse the approaches to Responsible AI taken by public media organisations around the world. It is funded by the UK's AHRC, under the Bridging Responsible AI Divides scheme.
In addition, my latest book, Capturing News, Capturing Democracy is about the increased politicisation of a US-funded international news network, the Voice of America, during the Trump administration. It uses empirical data from this case, as well as previous cases of the government capture of public media, to build a new theoretical model about the relationship between media capture and democratic backsliding.
My more longstanding strand of research focuses on the reporting of humanitarian affairs. This includes two books, Who's Reporting Africa now?, and Humanitarian Journalists, as well as a substantial body of coauthored articles and industry reports.
I am the Academic Lead for the 80-strong interdisciplinary research cluster in Media and Communications at Edinburgh Futures Institute. I am a research associate of the Centre for Governance and Human Rights at the University of Cambridge and sit on an expert research assessment panel for the international Observatory on Information and Democracy, as well as serving on the editorial boards of two top-ranked communications journals, Digital Journalism and the International Journal of Press/Politics.
PhD students
Please note: I do not have capacity to take on any new PhD students for 2024/5
Current
Aybuke Atalay. 'The Digital Logic of Political Survival in Hybrid Regimes: Bots and Computational Propaganda in the Turkish Twittersphere.'
Ruolan Gan. 'China's Approach to the Responsibility to Protect.'
Nurul Iman Muhamad Dimyati. 'Developing Big Data Journalism in Malaysian Newsrooms'.
Former PhD student (passed viva)
Ricardo Ribeiro Ferreira. “Inside the ‘Meat Grinder’: The Roles of Journalists and News Organisations in the De-democratisation of Brazil
Background
Books
Wright, K, Scott, M and Bunce, M. (2024) Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reviewed in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism.
Scott, M, Wright, K and Bunce, M (2022) Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone. London: Routledge. Reviewed in African Journalism Studies and the European Journal of Communication.
Wright, K (2018) Who's Reporting Africa Now? Non-Governmental Organizations, Journalists and Multimedia. London, New York: Peter Lang. Reviewed by Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, the International Journal of Communication and LSE's Centre for Africa.
Peer-reviewed publications
Scott, M, Bunce, M, Wright, K (2021) The influence of news coverage on humanitarian aid: The bureaucrats’ perspective. Journalism Studies
Scott, M, Wright, K, Bunce, M (2021) The politics of humanitarian journalism. In L. Chouliaraki and A. Vestergaard (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication. London: Routledge.
Wright, K, Scott, M, and Bunce, M (2020) Soft power, hard news: How journalists at state-funded transnational media legitimize their work. International Journal of Press/Politics 25 (4): 607-631. OPEN ACCESS.
Wright, K, Zamith, R, and Bebawi, S (2019) Commentary on Special Issue. Data Journalism in Majority World Countries: Challenges and Opportunities. Digital Journalism 7(9): 1295-1302
Mutsvairo, B and Wright, K (2019) Research trajectories in African digital spheres. In M. Dwyer and T. Molony (Eds.) Social Media and Politics in Africa. London: Zed Books
Bunce, M, Scott, M, and Wright K (2019) Humanitarian journalism. In H. Ornebring and H. Wasserman (Eds.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wright, K (2019) NGOs as news organizations. In H. Ornebring and H. Wasserman (Eds.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scott, M, Bunce, M, and Wright, K (2019) Foundation funding and the boundaries of journalism. Journalism Studies 20(14): 2034-2052. OPEN ACCESS
Wright, K., Scott, M, and Bunce, M (2019) Foundation-funded journalism, philanthrocapitalism and tainted donors. Journalism Studies. 20(5): 675-695. OPEN ACCESS.
Wright, K (2018). "Helping our beneficiaries tell their own stories?" International aid agencies and the politics of voice in news production. Global Media and Communication 14(1): 85-102
Scott, M, Bunce, M, and Wright, K (2018) Doing good and looking good in global humanitarian reporting: Is philanthrojournalism good news? In F. Enghel and J. Noske-Turner (Eds.) Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good? London: Routledge.
Bunce, M, Wright, K, and Scott, M (2018) "Our newsroom in the cloud": Slack, virtual newsrooms and journalistic practice. New Media and Society 20(9): 3381-3399. OPEN ACCESS.
Scott, M, Bunce, M, and Wright, K (2017) Donor power and the news: The influence of foundation funding on international public service journalism. International Journal of Press/ Politics 22 (2): 163-184. OPEN ACCESS.
Wright, K (2017). Public-commercial hybridity at BBC News Online: Covering non-governmental organisations in Africa. In A. Davis (Ed.) The Death of Public Knowledge? How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect. London: Goldsmiths/MIT Press
Wright, K (2016). Moral economies: Interrogating the interactions of NGOs, journalists and freelancers. International Journal of Communication 10:1510-1529. OPEN ACCESS
Wright, K (2016) "It was a simple, positive story of African self-help" (manufactured for a Kenyan NGO by advertising multinationals). In M. Bunce, S. Franks, and C. Paterson (Eds.) Africa's Media Image in the Twenty-First Century: from the 'Heart of Darkness' to 'Africa Rising'. London: Routledge.
Wright, K (2015). "These grey areas": Freelancers and the blurring of INGOs and news organisations. Journalism Studies 17(8):989-1009
Wright, K (2014) Should journalists be 'virtuous'? Mainstream news production, complex media organisations, and the work of Nick Couldry. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 15(3):364-381
Wright, K (2012) Educating rookies: Might guided problem-based learning help first year journalism students learn to inter-relate theory and practice? Journalism Education 1(2):8-25. OPEN ACCESS
Wright, K (2011) Listening to suffering: What does 'proper distance' have to do with radio news? Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 13(3): 284-302
Wright, K (2011) Reality without scare quotes: Developing the case for Critical Realism in journalism research. Journalism Studies, 12(2):156-171
Reviews
Wright, K (2019) Review of The Fixers: Local News Workers' Perspectives on International Reporting by Lindsay Palmer. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 20(10) ONLINE FIRST
Wright, K (2018) Review of Television production in the UK: From cottage industry to big business, by David Lee. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 19(8) ONLINE FIRST.
Public scholarship
Wright, K and Scott, M (2023) Podcast with Dave O'Brien on Humanitarian Journalists for the New Books Network, Feb 8.
Scott, M, Wright, K, and Bunce, M (2023) Why so many humanitarian crises are 'forgotten' and 5 ideas to change that. Op Ed. The New Humanitarian. Jan 16.
Scott, M, Wright, K, and Bunce, M (2022) New research shows how news coverage influences countries' emergency aid budgets. Nieman Lab, Harvard University, Jan 10.
Scott, M, Wright, K, and Bunce, M (2021) How news coverage influences countries' emergency aid budgets- new research'. The Conversation. 14 Dec.
Wright, K (2020) 'How Journalists at State-Funded Transnational Media Legitimize Their Work'. An interview with Carolina Are. The Humanitarian News Research Network, 29 June.
Wright, K, Scott, M and Bunce, M (2020) Voice of America: struggle for independence highlights issue of state role in government-backed media. Op. Ed. The Conversation, 25 June
Wright, K (2019) Why did Epstein fund non-profit media? Blog, 23 August.
Wright, K (2019) Podcast on NGO journalism about Africa with Dickens Olewe, 26 February.
Wright, K 2019) Who's reporting Africa now? Invited blog for Africa is a Country, 18 February.
Wright, K (2018) How ready are journalists to cover the big humanitarian stories? Invited Op. Ed. for the International Broadcasting Trust, 25 October.
Scott, M, Wright, K, and Bunce, M (2018) The State of Humanitarian Journalism (2018). Industry report. Norwich: University of East Anglia
Scott, M, Wright, K, and Bunce, M (2018) Foundation Support for International Non-Profit News: Mapping the Funding Landscape. Industry Report. Norwich: University of East Anglia
Wright, K (2018) NGOs and Journalism. A Q and A with Carolina Are. The Humanitarian News Research Network, 27 June.
Works within
Staff Hours and Guidance
PhD candidates and dissertation supervisees should make appointments by email. Please note that I will be on research sabbatical for the academic year 2023/4, and will only be supervising my PhD students at that time.