Dr Stephen Harrington is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Media and Communication.

His research focuses mainly on the changing relationships between television, journalism, politics and popular culture, and, in particular, understanding the qualitative impact of these changes in terms of public knowledge.

He is the author of Australian TV News: New Forms, Functions, and Futures (Intellect, 2013), and has published work on some of his favourite TV shows – including The Office, The Panel, Sunrise, Top Gear and The Chaser’s War On Everything – in a number of high-profile international journals (including Journalism, Journalism Studies and Popular Communication).

His PhD thesis, Public Knowledge Beyond Journalism, funded by both a Creative Industries Faculty Postgraduate Scholarship and the Tom Dixon Scholarship, won a 2009 QUT Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award.

Stephen is a Chief Investigator (with Professors Brian McNair and Terry Flew) on the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project ‘Politics, media and democracy in Australia: public and producer perceptions of the political public sphere’ (DP130100705) from 2013 to 2015.