In this episode Nick Anstead is joined by Dr Ruth Garland of Goldsmiths, University of London and Spencer Livermore, Labour Party political strategist and member of the House of Lords.

They discuss how political communication has changed in the UK in the past twenty years, and think about the extent to which the New Labour model of message discipline remains an effective or desirable model of communication. They also discuss the recent rise of more populist communicators. Should we consider politicians like Boris Johnson to be effective political communicators?

In this episode Professor Bingchun Meng of the LSE is joined by Dr Ling Tang of the Open University, and Harriet Evans, Emeritus Professor at Westminster University and Visiting Professor at the LSE discuss the changing face of feminism in China.

In this episode, Nick Anstead is joined by Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE, one of the founders of Media and Communication at LSE. They discuss the history of the field at the LSE, going back to the early days of the subject in the School, when Masters degrees were taught across multiple departments.

The story of the founding of the department, and its evolution is linked back to the wider development of the field, going from the heady millennium-era optimism about the global village and cosmopolitanism, to more pessimistic contemporary takes which link the media to various ills of society.

In this second installment on humanitarian communications, Lee and Lilie are joined by Divya Pushkarna, the Disinformation Advisor to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Divya is a digital communications professional with more than 10 years of experience of managing digital operations in humanitarian and media sector, extensively working on assessment and management of harmful digital incidents with a focus on mis/disinformation and its impact on MSF’s humanitarian work in more than 80 countries. Prior to MSF, Divya worked as a digital business journalist with a leading media publication in India.

Lee Edwards researches strategic and humanitarian communication. Her recent article on visibility in promotional context is available open access.

Lillie Chouliaraki has researched humanitarian communication for two decades. Her publications include the books The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism (Polity, 2013), and the edited volume The Handbook of Humanitarian Communication (Routledge, 2021).