Welcome to the Inaugural Issue

Associate Professor Wayne Hope's specific areas of research include New Zealand economic, political and media history, public sphere analysis, the political economy of communication, sports–media relationships, globalization, and time. His research has been published across a range of academic journals including Media, Culture and Society, International Journal of Communication, Time and Society. Wayne is a long standing member of the International Association of Media Communication Research (IAMCR) and a regular contributor to the Political Economy section. At the Auckland University of Technology, he is curriculum leader for undergraduate media communication courses and teaches a postgraduate course entitled Time, Temporality, and Globalization. Wayne is also a regular media commentator and blogger who critiques local manifestations of neo-liberal capitalism.

Peter Thompson is a senior lecturer in the media studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington. He has published extensively on the evolution of media policy in New Zealand, especially in respect to the public service broadcasting reforms between 1999–2008. He has conducted research on behalf of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the NZ Broadcasting Commission. He was appointed chair of the working party which reviewed public submissions of the (now repealed) TVNZ Charter. His other major research interest, stemming from his doctoral work, concerns the role of communication systems in financial markets and the significance of reflexive feedback loops for financial reporting and the generation of bubbles and crashes.

Martin Hirst is associate professor in journalism and multimedia at Deakin University in Melbourne. He has a 40+ year engagement with practical and academic radical political economy and has been a scholar in journalism studies for 20 years. He is author and co-author of several books on journalism ethics and new media that engage with the traditions of the political economy of communication. He is widely published in collections on journalism theory and practice. He is a regular contributor to academic journals and media commentary. Dr Hirst's PhD, Grey Collar Journalism: The social relations of news production was completed in 2003.