Dr Bernadine Jones

I am a visual analyst, specialising in social semiotics, multimodal discourse methodology, and television news. I am Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Stirling, and my scholarship spans four degrees on two continents, intersecting media, politics, and representation. I co-founded the Visual Rhetoric / Media Semiotics research group that spans across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

My Masters thesis (2010-2012, UCT) annotated the (local and global) television news coverage of the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa, focusing on visual and social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, and post-colonial theory. Continuing with the research of television news, my PhD (2018, UCT) investigated the broadcast coverage of the first five South African democratic elections (1994 - 2014). African narratives, political communication, post-colonial theory, the role of media in political discourse, and journalism ethics amongst others form the theoretical basis.

My first monograph transformed my PhD thesis into a chronology of six South African elections on television news, providing a deep analysis of media and democracy in the country.

I am currently involved in two pieces of research: analysing the UK and Scottish Government Covid-19 responses through visual social media posts, and assisting the SABC TV News archives in developing an enhanced transcription and organisation system.

My research areas cover the intersection between media and politics, particularly South African and non-Western news. I am a news social semiotician, and analyse visual rhetoric through multimodal discourse analyses. My specific research interest is television, or convergence, news.

I currently teach on the following undergraduate modules: Introduction to Journalism, Magazine Journalism, Journalism and Society, Analysing the Language of News, Ethical Issues in Journalism, Researching the Media and Culture.

I teach on the postgraduate modules: Advanced Topics in Communication, Public Relations and Public Communication Theories.

I am also undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD supervisor on topics throughout media, journalism, and culture. I currently supervise one PhD student on African social / digital media.