Scottish media, communications and cultures

Drawing on the geographical advantage of Stirling’s central location in Scotland our researchers have been ideally placed to investigate media and cultural industries both across the industrial central belt of the country and in the rural Highlands and Islands.

Given profile through the Scottish Studies at Stirling and our involvement in various AHRC-funded projects based in Scotland, our research in this area covers cultural policy issues related to the film, television and media sectors more broadly, as well as a specific focus on Scottish media practices, content and cultural identities. Since 2014 active recruitment of a number of early-career researchers, all coming from major Scottish-based research projects, has enhanced the reach and scope of research on Scottish cultural themes. Most of this work has been published in edited collections related to AHRC-funded projects.

More broadly, our strategy in this area aims to illustrate international themes in media and communications research linking the Scottish context with global challenges in media production cultures and practices, media and communications regulation, diversity and inclusion in the media industries, political communications and democracy and transformations in aspects of popular culture and identities, especially focused on film cultures and media sport. Collectively researchers in this area maintain constant dialogue and our research has the capacity to develop multidisciplinary case studies on Scottish creative industries, while communications contributes to advances in knowledge and comparative analysis of the global media environment. We believe discussions with practitioners in these areas informs research ideas and, in turn, media and communications research helps shape practitioner conception of the challenges they face.