News and Events

Research to Reflect the Media’s View of Thatcher Years

19 June 2007

BU to explore media reflection of Margaret Thatcher’s view that “there’s no such thing as society” in £90,000 backed research.

BU researchers will use archive TV and radio footage to explore the media's reflection of Margaret Thatcher’s view that “there’s no such thing as society.”

Led by researcher Patricia Holland in our Centre for Broadcasting History, the study - called 'No Such Thing As Society?' - will focus on broadcasting as it represented the public services during the Iron Lady’s reign, between 1979 to1992.

The research is supported by a newly-awarded grant of nearly £92,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Soaps, sit-coms, satirical shows, dramas, docu-dramas, chat shows, lifestyle quiz and game shows will all be scrutinised, as will news and current affairs programmes aired during the period, with researchers focusing on how health and social policy were represented.

Patricia Holland recently wrote the book The Angry Buzz: This Week and Current Affairs, which argues for the importance of current affairs broadcasting in the UK.

She said: “many of the social changes during the period involved institutions - hospitals and schools - which made very attractive settings for dramas and observational documentaries,” said Holland.

“Our research will consider how the changes were reflected in, and mediated by, the broadcast output of the time.”

Our researchers will also review the progress of deregulation, privatisation, and the move towards free-market economics as it was explicitly presented on radio and television by Mrs Thatcher and her associates and as it was presented across the genres in both media.

“It is generally accepted that the Thatcher governments of the 1980s brought about a radical restructuring of the politics and economics of the UK, moving away from the post-war, social democratic settlement towards ‘rolling back the state’, de-nationalisation and giving greater power to the market,” Holland continued.

“This study will contribute to a historical understanding of the circulation of ideas and attitudes, as well as the mediation of factual information,” she concluded.

“It will throw light on the ways on which the public debate was conducted within the national broadcast media of the 1980s.”

The project will draw upon a number of in-house resources held by the BU Media School, where the Centre for Broadcasting History is based.

These resources include an archive collection of video and audio tapes, scripts, production documents, audience research data and a complete set of Radio Times.

Researchers at the Centre for Broadcasting History Research have also created a group of databases including:

Television Times (TVTip) up to 1985;
Radio 4’s Analysis current affairs series;
ITV’s This Week recently completed with an ARHC Resource Enhancement Grant (award no RE/AN11812/APN19470).
A newly created database of the long-running BBC flagship current affairs series, Panorama.

Our Centre for Broadcasting History recently won major funding worth over £750,000 from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

The funding will help us digitise and catalogue over 7,000 audio tapes covering the news output of LBC/ Independent Radio News from 1973 (when LBC/IRN began broadcasting) to 1995 (when digital storage at source was introduced).