Professor Aeron Davis

His research merges elements of political communications, economic sociology, cultural economy and financialization.

Staff details

Position

Emeritus Professor

Department

Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

Email

aeron.davis (@gold.ac.uk)

Professor Aeron Davis has studied and worked in departments of Media and Communication, Politics, History, and Sociology. His research and teaching merges elements of each of these disciplines, and includes: sociology of elites and power, political communication, media sociology and journalism, promotional culture and cultural intermediaries, economic sociology and financialization.

He has conducted research at Westminster, Whitehall, the London Stock Exchange, across business and financial networks, amongst the major political parties and the trade union movement. Along the way, he has interviewed over 350 high-profile individuals working in these sectors. He has published two edited collections, over 50 other journal articles, book chapters and reports, and six books: Public Relations Democracy (MUP, 2002), The Mediation of Power (Routledge, 2007), Political Communication and Social Theory (Routledge, 2010), Promotional Cultures (Polity, 2013), Reckless Opportunists (MUP, 2018) and Political Communication: A New Introduction for Crisis Times (Polity, 2019).

In addition, Professor Davis is Co-Director of Goldsmiths Political Economy Research Centre, as well as being a member of the Centre for the Study of Global Media & Democracy, the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre and the Media Reform Coalition. He also writes occasional pieces of journalism, think-tank and policy pieces.

Aeron Davis' Book Covers

Teaching

Professor Davis teaches the following modules: The Structure of Contemporary Political Communications, and Campaign Skills.

Areas of supervision

Professor Davis has supervised students in the areas previously listed. Recent and current supervisees include:

Mary Braid – Changing News and Political Discourses on Adoption
Rod Driver - Think Tanks and Banking Regulation
Bong-Hyun Lee - Globalisation, Economic Power and Media in Korea
Jack Mosse - Economic Imaginaries, Perfomativity and Material Culture
Jón Gunnar Ólafsson – Digital Mediatization and Media-Source Relations in Iceland
Catherine Walsh - Financialisation, the UK State and Budget Rhetoric

Publications and research outputs

Book

Media, Democracy and Social Change: Re-imagining Political Communications Davis, Aeron; Fenton, Natalie; Freedman, Des (D. J.) and Khiabany, Gholam. 2020. Media, Democracy and Social Change: Re-imagining Political Communications. London: SAGE Publications. ISBN 9781526456960
Political Communication: A New Introduction for Crisis Times Davis, Aeron. 2019. Political Communication: A New Introduction for Crisis Times. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 9781509529001
Reckless Opportunists: Elites at the End of the Establishment Davis, Aeron. 2018. Reckless Opportunists: Elites at the End of the Establishment. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526127280

Edited Book

The Death of Public Knowledge? How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect Davis, Aeron, ed. 2017. The Death of Public Knowledge? How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect. London: Goldsmiths Press. ISBN 978-1-906897-39-0

Edited Journal

Elites and Power After Financialization Davis, Aeron and Williams, Karel, eds. 2017. Elites and Power After Financialization, Theory, Culture & Society, 34(5-6). 0263-2764

Book Section

The Election Where Fourth Estate Journalism Moved Closer to Extinction Davis, Aeron. 2019. The Election Where Fourth Estate Journalism Moved Closer to Extinction. In: Daniel Jackson; Einar Thorsen; Darren Lilleker and Nathalie Weidhase, eds. UK Election Analysis 2019: Media, Voters and the Campaign. Poole: Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research, Bournemouth University, p. 22. ISBN 9781910042243
Forget Neoliberalism: Its Financialization, Stupid! Davis, Aeron and Cuonz, Daniel. 2018. Forget Neoliberalism: Its Financialization, Stupid! In: Daniel Cuonz; Scott Loren and Jörg Mettlemann, eds. Screening Economies: Money Matters and the Ethics of Representation. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, pp. 175-186. ISBN 9783837645279
Moving Beyond the Single Mediated Arena Model: Media Uses and Influences Across Three Arena’s Davis, Aeron. 2017. Moving Beyond the Single Mediated Arena Model: Media Uses and Influences Across Three Arena’s. In: Peter van Aelst and Stefaan Walgrave, eds. How Political Actors Use the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 167-186. ISBN 978-3-319-60248-6

The Death of Public Knowledge Introduction Davis, Aeron. 2017. The Death of Public Knowledge Introduction. In: , ed. The Death of Public Knowledge? How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect. London: Goldsmiths Press, pp. 1-14. ISBN 978-906897-39-0
Financial Insider Talk in the City of London Davis, Aeron. 2015. Financial Insider Talk in the City of London. In: Graham Murdock and Jostein Gripsrud, eds. Money Talks: Media, Markets, Crisis. Intellect, pp. 29-44. ISBN 978-1783204052
The Impact of Market Forces, New Technologies and Political PR on UK Journalism Davis, Aeron. 2013. The Impact of Market Forces, New Technologies and Political PR on UK Journalism. In: Raymond Kuhn and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, eds. Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective. London: I.B.Tauris, pp. 111-130. ISBN 978-1780766782
Mediation, Financialization and the Global Financial Crisis: An Inverted Political Economy Perspective Davis, Aeron. 2012. Mediation, Financialization and the Global Financial Crisis: An Inverted Political Economy Perspective. In: John Banks; Dal Yong Jin and Dwayne Winseck, eds. The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1849668934
Promotion, Propaganda and High Finance Davis, Aeron. 2011. Promotion, Propaganda and High Finance. In: Gerald Sussman, ed. The Propaganda Society: Promotional Culture and Politics in Global Context. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 251-266. ISBN 978-1433109966
Media and Politics: An Overview Davis, Aeron. 2010. Media and Politics: An Overview. In: James P. Curran, ed. Mass Media and Society, Fifth Edition. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 83-102. ISBN 978-0340984451
Politics, Journalism and New Media: Virtual Iron Cages and the New Culture of Capitalism Davis, Aeron. 2009. Politics, Journalism and New Media: Virtual Iron Cages and the New Culture of Capitalism. In: Natalie Fenton, ed. New Media, Old News: Journalism And Democracy In The Digital Age. SAGE, pp. 121-137. ISBN 978-1847875747
Investigating Cultural Producers Davis, Aeron. 2008. Investigating Cultural Producers. In: Michael Pickering, ed. Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 53-67. ISBN 978-0748625789
Public Relations in the news Davis, Aeron. 2008. Public Relations in the news. In: Bob Franklin, ed. Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism. Routledge, pp. 254-264. ISBN 978-0415425568
Spinning Money Davis, Aeron. 2007. Spinning Money. In: David Miller and William Dinan, eds. Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy. Pluto Press, pp. 212-225. ISBN 978-0745324449
Placing Promotional Culture Davis, Aeron. 2005. Placing Promotional Culture. In: James P. Curran and David G. Morley, eds. Media and Cultural Theory. Routledge, pp. 149-163. ISBN 978-0415317054
Public Relations and News Sources Davis, Aeron. 2003. Public Relations and News Sources. In: Simon Cottle, ed. News, Public Relations and Power. SAGE, pp. 27-42. ISBN 978-0761974963
Public Relations Campaigning and News Production: The Case of New Unionism in Britain Davis, Aeron. 1999. Public Relations Campaigning and News Production: The Case of New Unionism in Britain. In: James P. Curran, ed. Media Organisations in Society. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 173-192. ISBN 978-0340720158
Media Organisations in Society: Central Issues Davis, Aeron. 1999. Media Organisations in Society: Central Issues. In: James P. Curran, ed. Media Organisations in Society. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 19-65. ISBN 978-0340720158

Article

Top CEOs, Financialization and the Creation of the Super-Rich Economy’ Davis, Aeron. 2019. Top CEOs, Financialization and the Creation of the Super-Rich Economy’. Cultural Politics, 15(1), pp. 88-104. ISSN 1743-2197
Defining Speculative Value in the Age of Financialized Capitalism Davis, Aeron. 2018. Defining Speculative Value in the Age of Financialized Capitalism. The Sociological Review, 66(1), pp. 3-19. ISSN 0038-0261
The New Professional Econocracy and the Maintenance of Elite Power Davis, Aeron. 2017. The New Professional Econocracy and the Maintenance of Elite Power. Political Studies, 65(3), pp. 594-610. ISSN 0032-3217

Conference or Workshop Item

When Online Political Networks meet Off-Line Actually Existing Democracies Davis, Aeron. 2014. 'When Online Political Networks meet Off-Line Actually Existing Democracies'. In: Auckland University of Technology. Auckland, New Zealand.
Elite Economics: Imaginaries, Discursive Practices and Mundane Technicalities Davis, Aeron. 2014. 'Elite Economics: Imaginaries, Discursive Practices and Mundane Technicalities'. In: CRESC Annual Conference. Manchester University, United Kingdom.
Intra-State New Institutionalism and the Financialization of the UK Economy Davis, Aeron and Walsh, Catherine. 2014. 'Intra-State New Institutionalism and the Financialization of the UK Economy'. In: Elites in Our Time Conference. Goldsmiths/CRESC at Goldsmiths, United Kingdom.

Thesis

Public relations, political communications and national news production in Britain 1979-1999 Davis, Aeron. 2000. Public relations, political communications and national news production in Britain 1979-1999. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London

Research Interests

Professor Davis’ research has covered several areas. One of these is public relations and the interaction of PR with news journalism. His earliest studies were of corporate and trade union public relations. He was interested in questions of how PR affected news outputs and also in comparing how different organisational sectors in society interacted with news media. This resulted in his first book, Public Relations Democracy (2002, MUP), and several articles in media and journalism journals. He has returned periodically to the topic, extended this work to look at the promotional professions more generally, including PR, advertising, marketing and branding. As well as teaching in these areas, he has also published a wide-ranging study, Promotional Cultures (2013, Polity).

A second ongoing area of research for Professor Davis is political communication, broadly defined. His earlier work looked at trade union and interest group campaigning. But, he has also regularly looked at politicians, political parties, civil servants and political journalists. Much of this research was published in two books, The Mediation of Power (2007, Routledge) and Political Communication and Social Theory (2010, Routledge). The second of these was based on 100 interviews with politicians, officials and journalists. Findings were also published in journals of media, journalism, and politics. His most recent book, Political Communication: A New Introduction for Crisis Times (Polity, 2019), engages with the dramatic shifts in democratic political and media systems since 2016.

A third continuing area of interest cuts across economic sociology, cultural economy and financialization. His first research on public relations looked at financial public relations and media, as well as communications more generally in the City. Later, he returned to interview fund managers and analysts operating around the London Stock Exchange. He was particularly interested in the dot.com boom and bust of 2000, with obvious implications for what happened in the 2007-08 financial crash. Since then, he has interviewed former civil servants and ministers in the Treasury and former DTI about economic policy and the financial sector, as well as large company CEOs about their communication, social relations and decision-making. Findings have been published in each of the above books as well as in journals of media, politics and sociology. Since 2014, Professor Davis has been Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) with Will Davies, which seeks to explore alternative approaches to mainstream neoclassical economics. He is currently writing a book for MUP focusing on the UK Treasury and the evolution of economic policymaking since 1976.

In most of this research, there have been several linking strands. Most obvious is a continuing focus on elites, their social worlds and networks. In various ways, he wishes to explore the communications, behaviours, cognitions, cultures, discourses and organisational elements of elites and centres of power, and the implications for wider society. His interview findings are combined with larger political and economic data. This has all been put together in the book Reckless Opportunists: Elites at the End of the Establishment (MUP, 2018). He also published a co-edited (with Karel Williams of CRESC) special journal edition for Theory, Culture and Society, on Elites and Power After Financialization.