Centre for Media Futures
Research
Research themes
Our research agenda spans five interrelated and mutually reinforcing themes that reflect the entangled nature of contemporary media questions. Each theme connects to the School of Arts, Media, and Communication's three established media research clusters - Media Practice, HESTIA, and Public Communication - and, where relevant, to the University's Institute for Digital Culture and Institute for Environmental Futures.
Media history
Media history and audience legacies
Building on Leicester's extensive archives, this theme reassesses foundational media theories and methodologies through targeted archival research, oral histories with pioneering scholars, and comparative studies of media effects across eras.
It connects historical insights to contemporary media uses by documenting recent technological developments shaping today's media landscape.
Critical theory
Critical theory, digital culture and technologies
Scholars in this area interrogate digital culture's impact on democratic societies, focusing on platform politics, algorithmic control (including AI-driven and bot-mediated systems), surveillance practices, and misinformation dynamics. Key projects include the ethics of AI-driven media, online radicalisation, digital inequalities, and emerging forms of platform governance.
Representation
EDI, representation, and social justice
Recognising media's power to both perpetuate and challenge inequalities, this theme investigates representational practices across digital and traditional platforms. Projects examine intersectional dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class within media production and representation, and how actors construct agency in relation to structures of power.
Future
Future of journalism and communication
Addressing transformations in journalism and the creative industries, this theme researches the impacts of automation and AI on media work, explores innovative media literacy initiatives, and develops strategies for rebuilding trust and credibility in media institutions.
Public communication
Public communication and civil society
This theme investigates how media serve the public interest and civil society, examining when communication empowers communities and democratic participation.
It encompasses the representation of diverse publics, dialogue and debate, power dynamics between producers and audiences, and policies shaping inclusive public discourse, including media portrayals of environmental crises, race, ethnicity and migration, and the impacts of media regulation on civic engagement.
Connections to clusters and Institutes
The Centre's themes braid together the School’s three media research clusters and connect outward to the University's Institutes. This is the Centre's distinctive contribution: a single platform that surfaces the breadth of media research at Leicester.
- Media Practice cluster: media producers, production processes, creative and cultural industries, mediating role of communication technologies.
- HESTIA (Health, Environment, Science and Technology): media in health crises, misinformation, public engagement with health and environmental information.
- Public Communication cluster: how platforms and practices empower communities, foster inclusive public discourse, and strengthen civic engagement.
- Institute for Digital Culture (IDC): digital culture, creative industries, AI and platforms.
- Institute for Environmental Futures (IEF): environmental and planetary dimensions of media; climate communication.
Centre events
Our Research doesn't stop here. Find out more about the impact we're making by meeting us in person at our events.