Caroline FISHER — University of Canberra Research Portal

Personal profile

Biography

Dr Caroline Fisher is an Assistant Professor in journalism at the University of Canberra and course convenor for the journalism programme.

Caroline Fisher completed her PhD in 2014 which examined the career transition between journalism and parliamentary media advising. Prior to academia she was a reporter, presenter and producer for ABC News and Radio National; and, spent three years as a ministerial media adviser to Anna Bligh in the Queensland government.

Areas of Teaching

Dr Fisher teaches first year Introduction to Political Communication and Mobile Reporting. She also lectures in Audio and Video journalism in the second year of the journalism programme. Units taught by Dr Fisher are:

Mobile Reporting - 9923
Audio journalism – 9019
Video journalism - 9036
Introduction to Political Communication - 9024

Research Interests

Bypassing the news media

The rise of social media means politicians are no longer bound by their traditional reliance on the news media to reach the public. Via YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (amongst other platforms) politicians are now able to publish directly to their target audiences and avoid journalistic scrutiny. In a joint pilot project with FuJo: The Institute for Future Media and Journalism at Dublin City University, Dr Fisher is currently exploring the extent to which this phenomenon of ‘self-publishing’ and ‘disintermediation’ is occurring in Australia and Ireland.

Trust in news media

Public trust in the news media has been on a decline and is at record lows. Concerns about the veracity of news have been heightened with revelations of ‘fake news’ during the recent US presidential election. Dr Fisher is examining trends in public trust in news media as part of the Reuters Digital News Report annual survey produced in Australia by the News Media Research Centre at UC.

Disclosure and transparency in journalism

Transparency is the new buzzword in sections of the journalism community and has been hailed as one of the solutions to curbing falling levels of public trust in journalism. Dr Fisher is examining the attitudes of politicians, journalists and news editors about the disclosure of reporters’ personal interests, particularly in relation to whether they had previously worked for a politician. Her work reveals a disconnection between the ideal of disclosure and the reality of editorial decision making.