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Professor Angela Smith  has given a paper at the  26th Ross Priory International Seminar on Broadcast Talk 2018 . Entitled 'Slow tv: the mesmerising antidote to political maelstroms', her talk traced the emergence of 'slow TV' as the antithesis of the fast-edited, fast-paced television that has developed as the dominant concept of the medium in the twenty-first century.  More recently, it has been heralded as the antidote to the rise of right-wing populist noise.  Whilst the early cable channels showed ambient images of burning fires or tropic fish tanks, slow tv is slightly more dynamic and deliberately edited to be relaxing as well as informative.  Many of the visual tropes in slow tv come from arthouse cinema, particularly the lingering shots and sense of stillness. Unlike ambient tv, it has a narrative but not all of them have a narrator.  The narrative is sometimes left to the viewer to work out, such as the original slow tv show,  Train Ride: Ber...

Professor Angela Smith has recently given a paper at the 'Approaches to Discourse' conference at Georgetown University (Washington DC). She spoke on the concept of hypermasculinity, which was first theorised in the early 1980s. At that time masculinity was often perceived as being under threat from the great advances in gender equality made following the arrival of Second Wave Feminism.  Angela argued that in the last five years we have seen a rise in the performance of hypermasculinity on the national stage, often aligned with right wing politics and a heightened sense of national identity in face of a perceived over-reaching of liberalism.  Angela's paper explored how some politicians use social media to promote their messages, side-stepping the otherwise regulating voice of the mainstream media. She looked at tweets from the personal account of Donald Trump to offer an explanation for at least part of the appeal of the ‘Make America...

A new volume of essays entitled Crisis and the Media  features a chapter by Professor Angela Smith . In it, she explores how rejections of claims for equality are represented in the technology of the twenty-first century, but at the same time embody the language of a pre-feminist world and can thus be seen to at once empower and restrict feminist discourse. In this way, the crisis in gender relations is one that emerges in the 1990s in Westernised contexts and continues to develop into the twenty-first century, contributing to the emergence of a Fourth Wave of feminist action. As such, 'crisis' is employed to explore how various small events, seemingly insignificant in isolation, have been raised to public notice through social media to enhance the emergence of Fourth Wave Feminism in the last ten years. Smith, A. 2018. 'Gender in "crisis", everyday sexism and the Twittersphere.' In Patrona, M. (ed) Crisis and the Media . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.231-260...

Professor Angela Smith will be giving a talk in the School of Culture research seminar series. Her focus is Channel 4’s Naked Attraction . This is a show that opens with the assertion that ‘Online dat ing has been a complete nightmare […] with the status symbols we wear getting in the way of finding our perfect mate.’  With full nudity, lingering close-ups and graphic descriptions, many viewers took to Twitter to express dismay that the show had made it to mainstream television, and led to the Guardian referring to it as symptomatic of the dystopian media landscape of 2016. Angela's paper will explore how the shock of graphic nudity is ameliorated by the linguistic strategies of positive politeness that all participants seem to collude with. Such amelioration would appear to be a defence against accusations of voyeuristic and pornographic content on mainstream television. Wednesday 21 March 2018 Reg Vardy 104A, 4pm-5pm Light refreshments and Q&A after the talk

Professor Angela Smith recently attended the 4th FoodKom Seminar at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.   Her paper, 'Tiny Print and Traffic Light Chaos', looked at how European food labelling regulations are applied in the British context to front of packaging.   Angela showed how the non-mandatory nature of the system has led to potentially confusing food labelling, exploring the semiotic properties of the packaging.   She concluded that the lack of standardisation and the non-mandatory nature of the system is often unhelpful and even confusing (particularly to those of declining eye sight), but that it could nevertheless be of use to the knowing consumer and so is of limited help.

Professor Angela Smith has edited a collection of essays about Spare Rib , one of the most iconic symbols of Second Wave Feminism, whose influence has far out-lived the span of its publication (1972-1993).  Re-Reading Spare Rib (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) examines various aspects of the magazine - based on the digitised publication by the British Library in 2015 - in order to explore the ways in which it has influenced society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as the lives of individual readers. By analysing several articles from a modern, post-feminist perspective, and using cross-generational interviews of Spare Rib readers and reflective accounts of reading the publication, the significance and endurance of the publication is demonstrated. Written by academics, experienced researchers and independent scholars alike, the inter-disciplinary nature of the text results in a multi-dimensional reading of Spare Rib suitable for both an academic and gen...

Professor Angela Smith has recently given a paper at the 3rd FoodKom International Conference , held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Angela considered the recent shift in food communication which has seen a rapid rise of the concept of 'clean eating' as an all-embracing notion of wellness. In the UK, the pioneers of clean eating have recently sought to distance themselves from this controversial area of cooking and lifestyle by rebranding themselves as purveyors of a more generic wellness agenda. Angela showed how the self-appointed clean-eating gurus who write the blogs and cookery books associated with the concept nevertheless seek to persuade us to exclude huge groups of food types and to 'get the glow'.

Professor Angela Smith has given a paper at the Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Seminar. The topic of her paper was nakedness in dating shows; in particular Channel 4’s Naked Attraction . This is a show that opens with the assertion that ‘Online dat ing has been a complete nightmare […] with the status symbols we wear getting in the way of finding our perfect mate.’  With full nudity, lingering close-ups and graphic descriptions, many viewers took to Twitter to express dismay that the show had made it to mainstream television, and led to the Guardian referring to it as symptomatic of the dystopian media landscape of 2016. Angela's paper will explore how the shock of graphic nudity is ameliorated by the linguistic strategies of positive politeness that all participants seem to collude with. Such amelioration would appear to be a defence against accusations of voyeuristic and pornographic content on mainstream television.

In an article published in Social Semiotics , Professor Angela Smith explores recent developments in masculinity, focusing on the sexualisation of fatherhood in Anglophone media. As it becomes socially acceptable for men to engage with “hands-on” fatherhood roles that had previously been primarily associated with motherhood, the appeal lies not just in this shift in gendered performance, but the representation of this as an opportunity for men to reveal a desirable body image. Where previously the hands-on fatherhood role had been glossed as “nappy changing duties,” this more recent development focuses on men’s bodies and in particular the act of carrying a young child which affords the chance for biceps to be flexed in juxtaposition with the gentle act of holding a child. Colloquially, this has led to the emergence of the “DILF,” particularly on social media where sites are devoted to photos of such men. Smith, A. 2017. Bulging biceps and tender kisses: the sexualisation of fatherho...

Angela Smith has recently been promoted to Professor of Language and Culture within the Faculty of Education and Society. Her research interests are in gender, discriminatory practices, media discourses and language in popular culture.  The various contexts of her research range from the home front in the First World War to the pioneering broadcast career of Kate Adie. Angela is interested in the various forms of confrontational language that is found in broadcast media, from Radio 4's Today programme to Top Gear . In her professorial lecture, entitled 'War, Conflict and Sid the Seagull', Professor Smith will also mention Paddington Bear and how he actually links these seemingly distinct themes.  Recently, her research has expanded into a project with other members of the English team at Sunderland to explore the city's literary and cultural history, and this feeds into the City of Culture 2021 bid.  This talk will explore these issues in more detail and will identify ...

In the first Humanities Research Seminar of 2016 Professor Angela Smith's topic is banter. It has long been recognized that jocular argument and teasing are central to social bonding.  In Western society, this is most often seen as being a feature of masculine behaviour.  Various studies (eg Gough 2001, Benwell 2006, Smith 2016); have shown that this is a central concern of male bonding, with Mike Souter (the first editor of FHM magazine) commenting that in a social group, the wittiest guy is the most popular.  However, when this is transferred to the domain of broadcast media, it has the capacity to be misinterpreted and have the opposite effect of binding social groups.  The majority of complaints sent to the BBC relate to the ‘offensive’ remarks on programmes such as Top Gear , whilst on Channel 4 the same is the case on programmes in the ‘comedy quiz panel show’ genre.  Most often this is defended as being a ‘misunderstanding’ of an in-show j...

Professor Angela Smith and Dr Michael Higgins (Strathclyde University) have published a book entitled Belligerent Broadcasting: Synthetic Argument in Broadcast Talk (Routledge 2017).  The volume reflects upon and analyses the development of 'belligerent broadcasting', beginning with an exploration of belligerence in its historical context and as an aspect of wider cultural concerns surrounding the retreat of civility.  With attention to the different relations of power expressed in the various forms of belligerent conduct across a range of media genres, Angela and Michael explore its manifestation in political interviews, in 'confrontation' in talk shows, in makeover television, as an 'authentic' means of proffering opinion, and as a form of sociability in banter. The book uses examples from a range of well-known shows such as The Apprentice , Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares , The Jeremy Kyle Show , and Top Gear to reflect on the consequences and p...

At the annual Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Seminar Group (held this year at the Hellenic Army Academy, Athens, Greece) Dr Angela Smith gave a paper on the rise of 'dating shows' on television.  She explored the ways in the conventions of observational documentary have been adapted to engage audiences in a more sympathetic reviewing of participants through her discussion of Channel 4's First Dates .  This show employs a 'diary room' convention from reality TV formats, whilst also engaging in a minimal use of voice-over and absence of the conventional host of such shows.  In this way, Angela argues, we are encouraged to think of the participants as being more authentic and sincere, whilst the hidden formal production markers ensure that there is a perception of a partly mediated, independent reality.  In this way, the audience are not invited to laugh at people in the way the game show format of dating shows encourage, but instead we empathise with them....

Dr Angela Smith has co-written an article with Michael Higgins which looks at the development of broadcast talk in those reality TV genres associated with shopping and negotiation, focusing on Antiques Road Trip . In a context in which reality TV has become associated with judgement and rancour, Angela is concerned with the balance between expertise and ordinariness, and exploring the place of conversational and interactional styles we have come to associate with “sociability” and the maintenance of “face”, both in terms of pleasure and spectacle and providing a tactical basis for on-screen negotiation. Angela argues that these performances differ from conventional discourses of expertise as arbiters of specialist insight and market value, and offer new performances of expertise, based on a tactical mix of professional capital and sociability. Smith, A. and Higgins, M. (2016) Flirtation, desire and cut-glass biscuit barrels: Forms of expertise in Antiques Road Trip . Discours...

Dr Angela Smith has co-written an article with Professor Philip Drake (Edge Hill University) which considers the format and cultural politics of the hugely successful UK television program Top Gear (BBC 2002–2015). 'Belligerent broadcasting, male anti-authoritarianism and anti-environmentalism: the case of Top Gear ' analyzes how—through its presenting team—it constructed an informal address predicated around anti-authoritarian or contrarian banter and protest masculinity. Regular targets for Top Gear presenter’s protest—curtailed by broadcast guidelines in terms of gender and ethnicity—are deflected onto the “soft” targets of government legislation on environmental issues or various forms of regulation “red tape. Repeated references to speed cameras, central London congestion charges and “excessive” signage are all anti-authoritarian, libertarian discourses delivered through a comedic form of performance address. Thus, the BBC’s primary response to complaints made about t...

Dr Angela Smith was invited to give a paper at the second FoodKom seminar, held at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 16-18 June.  Her paper, 'Cooking to be Happy: Simply Nigella and the rise of mindful cooking', explored how the current trend in self-help therapy glossed as 'mindfulness' has recently extended to cookery programmes.  Through an exploration of Nigella Lawson's cookery series in the UK (BBC November/December 2015) and its associated cookery book, Angela suggests that mindfulness is actually central to this show rather than its more peripheral place in others, and that this is part of a growing trend for such self-help psychology.  

British War Widows of World War 1 is the subject of a talk to be given by Dr Angela Smith at the Bowes Museum on 12th January 2016 at 2.30 pm. Booking information can be found here .

Dr Angela Smith has recently returned from a trip to Sweden where she was invited to give a paper at Örebro University's Media and Communication research symposium.  The paper, based on a chapter in her forthcoming book, Belligerent Broadcasting ( co-authored with Michael Higgins), dealt with the phenomenon of argument as entertainment in the form of banter as found on shows such as Top Gear , Never Mind the Buzzcocks , and many other comedy-quiz formats.  Angela suggested that the particular form of banter found in such shows is primarily masculine in character.

Dr Angela Smith has published an article which explores the influential role played by the media in perceptions of political leaders. Since the latter part of the twentieth century, leaders’ personalities have come to play an increasing role in their appeal, in particular their gendered performances. In her article, Angela explores Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign through a gendered lens, contrasting it with the construction of male political leaders in other parts of the world, particularly that of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Building on work carried out in relation to the mediatisation and personalisation of politics in the last 50 years, Angela shows how gendered performances can be seen to mirror changes in society. Smith, Angela (2015) 'Mediated political masculinities: the commander-in-chief vs. the new man.' Social Semiotics . 

Dr Angela Smith will be presenting a paper at the 2015 Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Group's annual seminar to be held on the banks of Loch Lomond, 6-9th July. Her subject is how social media is used to create a sense of co-presence and community amongst viewers of the BBC1 show, Strictly Come Dancing , in both the BBC's official social media feeds and in the Guardian ’s dedicated blog. In so doing, she will revisit Livingstone and Lunt’s (1994) assessment of the privileging of ‘lay’ over ‘expert’ in public participation shows, as well as the creation online of a sense of co-present liveness that underpins more conventional aspects of broadcast sociability (Scannell, 1991).