Research program: Digital Publics, ADM+S
Principal Supervisor
Associate Supervisor
Professor Scott Wright (Bournemouth University, UK)
Phoebe Matich is a PhD student at QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre who is participating in the Evaluating the Challenges of Fake News and Other Malinformation Discovery project. She is being supervised by Assoc. Prof. Stephen Harrington (QUT; Fake News project CI), with supporting supervision from Dr. Aljosha Schapals (QUT) and Dr Scott Wright (Monash University).
Phoebe’s research interests involve news media struggles for symbolic power in broader society, and how they relate to political fragmentation, including in- and out-groups and radicalisation. Her Honours studies focused on news media representation of terrorism and the ‘Muslim Other’ in relation to Muslim Australians’ lived experiences.
Her PhD work is concerned with researching how discourses of fake news are used in the Australian news media landscape. The thesis will evaluate the extent to which fake news discourses embody a contest for symbolic power over “truth” and “the real”, and how this contest may contribute to the ‘fake news’ problem and fringe politics in the Australian context.