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Research Funding Awarded
CPCR awarded £75, 000

The Centre for Public Communication Research has been awarded £75,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a study of emotional literacy in journalism trainings.

The emotional demands of journalism, especially those involved in reporting on violent conflicts, are now increasingly recognised.

How journalists deal with the emotions evoked in them by what they witness or investigate will affect not only their own well-being but also how they do their job, i.e. how they present the world to readers and audiences. As yet, however, this area of professional competence is not systematically dealt with in most training settings.

This project will establish the extent to which the capacity for ‘emotional literacy’, i.e. reflecting on and managing emotional responses, is currently developed in journalism trainings. It will collate views from across the industry on how this could be done, study the effects of emotional literacy training, and outline a strategy for developing emotional literacy amongst journalists.

The project will be undertaken in close collaboration with the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma. A researcher will be appointed to undertake the fieldwork across a fifteen-month period, and to work with the project team of Professor Barry Richards (Project Director), Stephen Jukes (Head of The Media Shool) and David Bradshaw (Head of the Journalism and Communication Academic Group) in publishing the findings, including through a dissemination conference to be organised for September 2007.

The AHRC funds postgraduate training and research in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. The quality and range of research supported not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.

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