The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age

Dr Catherine Happer presents a new model for understanding how media and communications interact with politics, culture, and everyday experience to construct people’s ideas, opinion and thought. She locates these processes in a time of constant political crises, when new technologies are changing how we access information and questions of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ are being radically reworked. Rooted in the findings of empirical studies conducted over a decade, she identifies a growing ‘disconnect’ between a neoliberal media and political class and the public they serve – ripe for exploitation by rightwing political actors but ultimately under the management of Big Tech who control the digital space. Finally, she will explore the way in which spaces for alternative perspectives may also emerge and play a role in driving social change. Catherine Happer is Director of the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) and Subject Head of Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences, UofG. She is author of three books: The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age (2024, Manchester University Press), Trump’s Media War (2018, Palgrave Macmillan, with Hoskins and Merrin), and) Communicating Climate Change and Energy Security: New Methods in Understanding Audiences (2013, Routledge, with Greg Philo). She set up the MCS in Media, Communications and International Journalism at UofG, and previously was a producer at the BBC.