I am currently a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics, department of Media and Communications, supervised by Dr Dylan Mulvin and Professor Lilie Chouliaraki and funded by a studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council.

My research began as an inquiry into the implication of automation and ‘artificially intelligent’ software systems for photojournalism. Informed by science and technology studies I was interested in examining the degree of mutual social shaping that was taking place between these technologies and newsroom practices. However as the work has developed the focus has also shifted, and the project now looks more at the way photojournalism professionals and organisations navigate an increasingly precarious landscape in which audience trust which was once taken as a given is now increasingly in doubt, in no small part because of these same artificially intelligence technologies.

My research examines how audience trust and the threats to it are understood by photojournalism professionals across three industry sites, and what measures these organisations do, or do not implement in order to restore, protect or increase that trust. I attempts to trace a complex interplay of factors, from technological initiatives and institutional dynamics, to the place of industry standards and individual critique in explaining this. But fundamentally at the root of this work is a concern with the ‘world making’ power of photography, and the role that images of news play not solely as illustrations, but as things which fundamentally shape our understanding of those events and the world we collectively occupy.