James Morrison

James Morrison is an Associate Professor in Journalism Studies at the University of Stirling, where he is affiliated with the Communications, Media and Culture department. With over a decade of professional experience as a staff reporter for major news organizations including the Press Association and the Independent on Sunday, followed by extensive freelance work for publications ranging from the Guardian and Telegraph Magazine to History Today and Museums Journal, Morrison brings substantial practical journalism experience to his academic role.

Morrison's research focuses on the complex interplay between media, political and pop cultural representations of marginalized groups, their lived experiences, and public attitudes toward them. He examines how disadvantaged minorities—from working-aged benefit recipients to economic migrants and refugees—are problematized through narratives of othering, stigmatization, and moral panic. His work also investigates how real-time data-driven market intelligence and evolving dynamics between news audiences, produsers, journalists, and sources are transforming newsgathering practices, cultures, ideologies, and identities of news professionals. Much of his empirical work adopts an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approach combining analysis of media, political, and social media discourse with individual interviews, focus groups, authored testimonies, journals, and other forms of participatory research.

His recent publications reveal a consistent thematic focus on media representation of marginalized groups, welfare stigma, moral panics, and the transformation of journalism practices in the digital age. Morrison's work spans both theoretical explorations of media effects and practical examinations of contemporary journalism challenges, with particular attention to how poverty, social exclusion, and economic disadvantage are framed in public discourse. His research connects media studies with sociology, political science, and communication theory to provide nuanced analyses of how media narratives shape public understanding of complex social issues.

• Familiar Strangers, Juvenile Panic and the British Press (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
• Scroungers: Moral Panics and Media Myths (Zed Books, 2019)
• The Left Behind: Reimagining Britain's Socially Excluded (Pluto Press, 2022)

Morrison serves as UK Co-investigator on the joint AHRC/German Research Foundation (DFG) project 'Voices from the Periphery: (De-)Constructing and Contesting Public Narratives about Post-Industrial Marginalization (VOICES)' and is working on a new monograph for Intellect Books titled Inactive: Stigma, Unpaid Labour and the Myth of Worklessness. He is also an active member of the Public Affairs Board of the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) and author of the widely-used textbook Essential Public Affairs for Journalists (Oxford University Press), now in its eighth edition.