School of Communication Studies - Te Kura Whakapāho

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10292/1316

The School of Communication Studies is committed to innovative, critical and creative research that advances knowledge, serves the community, and develops future communication experts and skilled media practitioners. There is a dynamic interaction between communication theory and media practice across digital media, creative industries, film and television production advertising, radio, public relations, and journalism. The School is involved in research and development in areas of:

Journalism

Media and Communication

Media Performance

Multimodal Analysis

Online, Social and Digital Media

Asia-Pacific Media

Political Economy of Communication

Popular Culture

Public Relations

Radio

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 246

Media & Communication Studies Through a Multimodal Lens (A Global Report)
(IAMCR - International Association for Media and Communication Research, 16/07/2025) Ristovska, Sandra; Zalipour, Arezou; Arsoy, Aysu; Shtern, Jeremy; Jackson, John L; Sumiala, Johanna; Carpentier, Nico; Pinto de Oliveira, Pedro
"My Body, My Choice": Discursive Brandjacking and the Strategic Reframing of Protest Language
(Elsevier, 22/11/2025) Wolf, Katharina; Theunissen, Petra
This paper critically examines the strategic appropriation—or brandjacking—of feminist rhetoric by the COVID-19 antivax movement in Australia and New Zealand. Specifically, it explores how the slogan “My body, my choice,” historically rooted in reproductive rights activism, was co-opted to oppose vaccination mandates during the pandemic. Based on a social-constructivist approach and framing theory, the study employs ethnographic observation combined with an analysis of media discourse to investigate how language functions as a vehicle for ideological contestation. Findings suggest that the antivax movement’s use of the slogan was not incidental but a calculated form of discursive brandjacking that leveraged the feminist movement’s social capital to construct legitimacy, foster group identity, and broaden its mainstream appeal. It is argued that the adoption of familiar feminist rhetoric provided rhetorical coherence and moral cover for the antivax movement. Such appropriation undermines long-standing social justice struggles by reframing collective advocacy as individual resistance. It is proposed that brandjacking should be re-conceptualized beyond commercial and advertising contexts to highlight the vulnerability of progressive messaging to ideological subversion. To counter such destabilization, communicators and activists must develop a greater awareness of the strategic repurposing of emotionally resonant language by non-progressive movements.
Reflecting on Student Radio Work: Stories from the Studios
(Informa UK Limited, 18/11/2025) Mollgaard, Matt; Neill, Karen
This article sets out to illuminate an often-overlooked aspect of radio broadcasting, the experiences of its workers. It uses the reflections of workers from student radio in New Zealand to discuss the profound impact working in this sector has had on the lives of these people. We do this by conducting a thematic analysis of online survey feedback in order to understand how student radio work shaped the lives of the respondents. This article is designed to center the place of workers and their experiences in media organizations and of media work. The article interrogates the life-long impacts of working in student radio in terms of workers’ careers, wellbeing and sense of belonging to a unique community. It does this by drawing thematic conclusions about student radio as a space for developing purpose, identity and belonging, a catalyst for the independent music scene and a breeding ground for creativity and media careers. This led to a lifelong passion for student radio and a lasting legacy for student radio workers.
Delicate Interactions: Relational Skills in Public Relations
(Elsevier, 10/10/2025) Bhargava, Deepti; Theunissen, Petra
Public relations consultants rely primarily on relationships to sustain their work. However, existing scholarship has largely overlooked the use of interpersonal strategies for public relations, and even more significantly, there has been insufficient exploration of public relations consultants’ professional practices. This study, which is part of wider research exploring consultancies in New Zealand, aims to fill this gap. Utilizing video ethnography, ethnographic communication analysis (ECA) and participant observation, this paper presents findings from a routine interaction between a consultant and her client. The analysis shows that consultants strategically use empathy, politeness, humor, and purposeful linguistic choices to manage relational harmony while asserting their professional expertise. The study highlights the importance of sophisticated interpersonal skills for public relations consultants. It also highlights the need for further research into public relations practices using a wider range of methodological approaches to better understand relational labor and power dynamics within consulting work.
Will New Zealand’s School Phone Ban Work? Let’s See What It Does for Students’ Curiosity
(The Conversation, 1/05/2024) Usmar, Patrick Richard
A Hawaiian Epic Made in NZ: Why Jason Momoa’s Chief of War Wasn’t Filmed in Its Star’s Homeland
(The Conversation, 1/08/2025) Caillard, Duncan
Transforming Pedagogical Practices and Teacher Identity Through Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis: A Case Study of Novice EFL Teachers in China
(MDPI AG, 3/08/2025) Zhou, Jing; Li, C; Cheng, Y
This study investigates the evolving pedagogical strategies and professional identity development of two novice college English teachers in China through a semester-long classroom-based inquiry. Drawing on Norris’s Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis (MIA), it analyzes 270 min of video-recorded lessons across three instructional stages, supported by visual transcripts and pitch-intensity spectrograms. The analysis reveals each teacher’s transformation from textbook-reliant instruction to student-centered pedagogy, facilitated by multimodal strategies such as gaze, vocal pitch, gesture, and head movement. These shifts unfold across the following three evolving identity configurations: compliance, experimentation, and dialogic enactment. Rather than following a linear path, identity development is shown as a negotiated process shaped by institutional demands and classroom interactional realities. By foregrounding the multimodal enactment of self in a non-Western educational context, this study offers insights into how novice EFL teachers navigate tensions between traditional discourse norms and reform-driven pedagogical expectations, contributing to broader understandings of identity formation in global higher education.
Rural Hauntings and Black Sheep: Comic Turns, Violence and Supernatural Echoes in New Zealand’s Gothic Comedy Films
(Edinburgh University Press, 30/06/2024) Piatti-Farnell, Lorna; Nairn, Angelique
Untethered: Resisting Unhelpful Assumptions About News Trust and Trust in Other Social Institutions
(SAGE Publications, 20/06/2025) Myllylahti, Merja; Treadwell, Greg
In both the academic and grey literature, trust in news is often connected with trust in other societal institutions, including governments, politics, businesses and non-governmental organisations. This study investigates, through a lens of social-contract theory, the extent to which we can be confident that trust in news is directly connected to trust in government and politics, and to trust in other social institutions. Using a general-elimination method, we compare trends in trust-based social relationships to see which connections between trust in the news and public institutions should be retained in future studies. To help identify these (dis)connections, we explore mixed-methods data from a longitudinal study in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our findings suggest trust in news is connected to changes in trust in other social institutions but is not tethered to them, encouraging exploration of bespoke solutions for trust issues facing public-interest journalism.
Film Practitioners’ Perspectives on Australasia-China Co-production
(Te Mātāpuna | AUT Library, 17/11/2022) Wang, Xinmu
Film as a medium has become a tool to carry out the mission to serve the purposes of both economic gain and cultural communication in China (China Film Association, 2020). In addition, the “14th Five Year Plan” on China’s film development report highlighted that Chinese films will serve diplomatic outreach, promote co-productions and strengthen the international influence of Chinese cinema while demonstrating Chinese values (China Film Administration, 2021). The academic scholarship on Sino-foreign co-production has focused primarily on the textual analysis of co-produced films and China’s soft power (for example, Peng, 2015). In the existing scholarship, what has not been significantly researched and rarely addressed are the practitioners’ insights and practical experiences in Sino-foreign film co-production. Filling the gaps in this area, this PhD research project examines Sino-foreign co-production in the Australasian region to provide a comprehensive understanding of the practitioners’ perspectives, ideas, experiences, and strategies. Looking briefly at the critical review of related studies, in this presentation, I focus on an in-depth qualitative analysis of interview data with film practitioners and industry personnel who have worked in co-production film projects with China in the Australasian region. I explore and analyse the practitioners’ strategies and negotiations that have taken place in a few examples.
Crafting the Grotesque: Mutation and Imagination in Face Off
(Queensland University of Technology, 18/06/2025) Nairn, Angelique
Māhū screen aesthetics: Queer ecopoetics and aloha ‘āina in New Hawaiian Cinema
(Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, 6/12/2024) Caillard, Duncan
In November 2021, Red Hill – a decaying military depot near Pearl Harbour – started leaking jet fuel into the freshwater aquifer beneath O’ahu, progressively destroying the surrounding ecosystem and forming yet another front in the US military’s violent exploitation of Hawaiian ‘āina (land) and wai (water). Coming to light during the COVID-19 pandemic and alongside Indigenous-led resistance to the Thirty Meter Telescope at Mauna Kea, Red Hill serves as a flashpoint in ongoing Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) struggles for land under military occupation. Through analysis of Tiare Ribeaux’s ongoing short film project Pō’ele Wai (2022-2023), this paper explores how contemporary Kānaka Maoli filmmakers challenge American colonisation through a queer lens. Contrary to its mistranslation as ‘homosexual,’ the Hawaiian term ‘Māhū’ refers to “a third or intermediate gender category referring to individuals with a mixture of male and female attributes” (Hamer and Wong-Kalu 2022, 263) often connected to healing or spiritual roles in Hawaiian society, whereas ‘aloha ‘āina’ encompasses both patriotism and an intimate, reciprocal relationship of care between Kānaka and ‘āina (Osorio 2021, 11). Produced through collaboration with a team of Māhū/non-binary multidisciplinary artists, Pō’ele Wai resists the ecological violence of colonisation by centralising queer bodies in states of transition to form intimate bonds between Hawaiian bodies and the land. Drawing upon interviews with the filmmakers, this paper explores how queer bodies and aesthetics meld to enact resistance and reform intimacies with place.
Cultural Transposition: Adapting an Appreciative Inquiry to Support Organisational Change in a Non-Western Context
(Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Library, 28/01/2025) Sabra, Nabil
This doctoral research study employed an Appreciative Inquiry as a culturally adjusted method for enabling six university educators to develop critical thinking (ijtihad) in Yemeni graphic design education.[1] Emanating from a constructivist paradigm, the study recognised the role of sociocultural contexts in knowledge formation. The Appreciative Inquiry was divided into four stages (Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny) based on Cooperrider and Whitney’s (2005) model. The study utilised Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP)[2] based on a traditional cultural construct known as Halakat Elm (حلقات علم, knowledge circles). These circles were shaped by three cultural principles: wa’adeuk fa’ajbuh (واذا دعاك فأجبه); Husn al-Dhann (حسن الظن); and sadakat al elm (صدقة العلم). Key themes were identified through a Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). The outcomes demonstrated that an Appreciative Inquiry developed inside the culturally specific construct of the Halakat Elm can serve as an effective, culturally responsive approach for developing co-creative approaches to organisational and pedagogical reform. [1] The project was granted ethics approval (21/129) on July 8, 2021. [2] A Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) operates online. Here, individuals engage in instruction-based learning or group discussions within a specific domain, forming social structures to facilitate knowledge sharing and creation (Wenger-Trayner, 2015).
Employee Perceptions of Crisis Spillover Risk: The Role of Perceived Crisis Severity and Corporate Response Strategies
(Wiley, 4/05/2025) Wang, Yijing; Einwiller, Sabine; Laufer, Daniel
While the spillover effect of crises is an emerging research topic in the field of crisis communication, little attention has been given to how employees perceive the risk of crisis spillover due to a corporate misconduct of another company. Employees are important stakeholders in an organization and closer to it than any other stakeholder group. Understanding employees' judgments of crisis spillover risk and response strategies helps to assess their advocacy behavior, which can protect the organization's reputation. This research addresses how perceived crisis severity and corporate response strategies affect employee perceptions of crisis spillover risk and their subsequent advocacy behavior. A pre‐test (N = 181) identified three types of corporate misconduct (overcharging customers vs. data leak vs. selling rotten meat) that are characteristic for the supermarket industry. These scenarios were used in an online experiment with retail employees (N = 300) to examine the effects of two crisis response strategies (issuing a denial vs. no response) by a competitor supermarket for which they were asked to imagine working. The findings indicate that higher perceived severity of corporate misconduct correlates with an increased perceived crisis spillover risk to the industry. This perceived risk mediates the relationship between perceived crisis severity and the perceived spillover risk to an individual's own company. Furthermore, issuing a denial is perceived as more appropriate than offering no response, and it fosters greater employee advocacy behavior.
Moving Beyond The COVID Classroom: A Study of How Mobile Technology is Used for Field Data Gathering and a Changing Pedagogical Framework
(AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society), 24/07/2024) Sinfield, David
The COVID lockdown period is fast becoming a distant memory, but while we were experiencing how to cope with teaching outside the physical classroom and indeed furthering our own research did present a way of adapting and discovering new processes. These new processes led to working remotely within our own individual bubbles and discovering how to cope with this new world. Using a research project of documenting the phenomenon of beach cusps this paper will consider how mobile technology is used in the field for gathering data and how the findings can be incorporated into the teaching curriculum which can lead to new artistic artworks created from these findings. The artistic pieces created from the field data using mobile technology can be expressed within the artistic community by giving credibility to the technology and can give further dialogue to the connection of place and the changing methods within the tertiary education sector.
Decolonising Screen Production: The Practice of the Māori Film Producer
(Sage, 1/01/2025) Milligan, Christina
The film production ecology of Aotearoa New Zealand is an industrial and creative space controlled almost solely by Pākehā (European New Zealanders). However, since the turn of the century, Māori (Indigenous) filmmakers have risen to increasing prominence. They are becoming owners of the means of production and of the intellectual property generated when a film is made. Story sovereignty, or Māori control over Māori stories, is the heart of the enterprise for Māori filmmakers and implicit in this is how the story is made, that is, the process of filmmaking. This article examines the practice of Māori film producers and discusses how they bring te ao Māori (the Māori way of being or world view) into the day-to-day management of a film production. With non-Indigenous financiers and audiences to please, these producers walk simultaneously in two worlds, bringing their understanding of mainstream expectations together with their Indigenous world view, to realise film stories told from the Indigenous heart. Concepts such as tikanga (protocol), manaakitanga (respect for others), whanaungatanga (kinship) and mana (spiritual power) are elements of the daily practice of these producers, as they adapt the Western-originated filmmaking process to their own ends. Analysing such complexities requires a theoretical framework which accommodates not just the work of the individual, but also the relevant social and cultural context within which they operate. In recent years, a variety of researchers in the fields of cultural and media production have found common ground in applying systems thinking to analysing various forms of creative production. In particular, the exploration of the phenomenon of creativity within the production of culture has shifted since the late twentieth century towards an approach which recognises that the value of creative acts depends not just on what the individual brings to the act, nor just on the artefact created, but also on social and historical perspectives and positions. Prominent among the models being applied is the systems approach initially developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi maintains that creativity arises when three essential features interact: the domain, or existing body of knowledge; the individual who produces variation within that body (that is, creates something new); and the field, or network of experts who recognize value in the new and facilitate its absorption into the domain. Through critical exploration of the practice of the Māori film producer, this researcher has developed a revised version of Csikszentmihalyi’s model and presents it from an Indigenous perspective: the revision incorporates and extends the original by connecting the elements of the model through the holistic framework of te ao Māori or the Māori world view, to enable analysis of the practice of the screen producer within its specific Indigenous context.
Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2025
(AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD), 13/04/2025) Myllylahti, Merja; Treadwell, Greg
Methodological Challenges in Studying a Dynamic Screen Ecology
(AUT Graduate Research School and Te Mātāpuna: AUT Library, 2/04/2025) Daniels, Rachel
The primary purpose of the research has been to look at the significant challenges that have impacted the New Zealand screen industry since streaming of global Subscription-Video-On-demand (SVOD) services entered the sector nearly a decade ago. Turner (2018) describes the shift as the ‘The Netflix effect’; linear television has seen declining viewership numbers with audiences shifting to a wide range of platforms and services. This change has placed a strain on the sustainability of traditional funding of legacy television through advertising. Across the globe, nations have had similar impacts on local screen industries (Lotz et al., 2022). Thematic analysis of the research data, gathered from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 key industry experts, showed that New Zealand economy faces multiple challenges across various areas within the screen sector. The presentation will report on key findings: the decentralised way audiences consume content and the uncertainty in shifts in audience viewing behaviours, the importance of industry transformation, and what the industry considers a measure of success. The presentation will also recognise and discuss how the themes intersect at several critical points, where economic and cultural forces are at play, and the challenge of navigating a selected theoretical framework when researching a dynamic industry.
Mobile Innovation and Mobile Creativity
(Informa UK Limited, 13/03/2025) Schleser, M; Sills-Jones, D
Mobile media, mobility, mobile creative arts and mobile communication have significantly shaped the way we live, work, tell stories and how we are creative and stay innovative. Inspired by the trans-disciplinary impact of mobile media, this special issue reflects on developments in creative mobile media practice, including mobile studies, mobile communication, and mobile experience. Based on the discussions and presentations at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China during the Mobile Studies Congress 2022 with the theme Go Mobile Stay Innovative and the Mobile Studies Congress 2023 at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China with the theme Go Mobile Stay Creative, the articles will explore and examine innovation and creativity in screen storytelling, community engagement and novel production formats such as mobile music, drone cinematography, mobile and smartphone filmmaking. As much of our world has gone mobile, it is vital to examine the present changes, challenges, and chances that define mobile media, mobility, mobile creativity and mobile communication now and in the near future. Developments towards Industry 4.0 and ongoing digital transformations continue to disrupt the screen industries. Innovative technologies and mobile creativity allow various communities to create artistic and cultural productions globally and forge new synergies among academic disciplines.
Arts, Culture and Recreation Participation and Wellbeing Amongst 12-year-olds in the Growing Up in New Zealand Cohort [Manatū Taonga Bespoke Report]
(Manatū Taonga | Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2/03/2025) Tait, Josie; Redman, K; Patrakova, N; Wang, Y; Meissel, K; Fenaughty, J; Evans, R

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