Professor Chris Nash
Head of Journalism
View contact details in Monash Staff Directory
Latest Work
Chris and two colleagues, Phil Chubb and Bill Birnbauer, in 2009 completed a study of the reporting in the News Ltd broadsheet The Australian of climate change as a factor in the Black Saturday bushfires of February 2009 in Victoria. The research was presented at the Global Dialogue Conference in Aarhus, Denmark in October 2009, and is currently under review for publication. Chris also presented a plenary address at the Global Dialogue Conference on ‘What can we expect of Journalism in confronting climate change?’, which is also to be published.
Biography
Chris joined Monash University as Professor of Journalism in February 2008. For the previous ten years he had been Director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Chris is particularly interested in the interface between intellectual and creative media activity. He has worked professionally in radio and television at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and as an independent documentary film producer/director. He has won the Walkley Award for Journalism, and his best-known documentary film Philippines, my Philippines had international television and film festival release. An earlier film, Brigadistas, was shown at film festivals in Australia and Latin America. Both titles are available through the National Film and Sound Archive
Chris was the Director and Co-Producer with Shirley Alexander at the Institute for Interactive Media and Learning (IML) of the Australia Street Archive, which was a collaborative WWW social documentary between UTS and the Australian Museum. Chris was the Australian leader of the Tumblong project, a collaborative WWW venture between the IML at UTS and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, working with cultural institutions in both countries. Tumblong involved the collaborative production of art on the Web about the relationship between the two countries by artists working in the UK and Australia, and was financially supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Arts Council of England.
Research Interests
Keywords
environmental journalism, investigative journalism, journalist–source relations, comparative journalism; issues surrounding freedom of communication and information; urban and regional studies; political economy, communication and culture
Areas of Supervision
Journalism; journalism studies; media and social theory; media and urbanism, the environment and social justice; research methodologies in journalism and the social sciences
Current Research Projects and Grants
Chris has two current research projects:
- Communication Struggles in the Construction of Sydney as a Global City, 1983–2008
- Journalism as Research (engaging with the minimalist art of Hans Haacke)
Teaching
Chris teaches in the practice and theory of Journalism. In 2010, his teaching program includes:
- JCS3611 Journalism: Practice and Discourse
- JCS4001 Journalism Studies research Seminar
- JRM4904 Journalism Studies
- research supervision at the honours and postgraduate level.
Selected Publications
- ‘Addressing the gap in Indigenous health: government Intervention or community governance? A qualitative review’, Health Sociology Review, Vol. 19, No 1 2010 (with Ros Sorensen, Cathrine Fowler and Wendy Bacon)
- ‘Reporting controversy in health policy: a content and field analysis’, Pacific Journalism Review, Vol 15, No 2, 2009 (with John Roberts),
- ‘A political history of journalism’ (Review Article) Australian Journalism Review, Vol 31, No 1, 2009.
- ‘Playing Possum: Straws in the wind of the Blogosphere’, Pacific Journalism Review, Vol. 14, No 2, 2008
- 2007 ‘Journalism, human rights and moral rectitude: letters from a war zone’ (Review article), Australian Review of Public Affairs, July, 2007
- ‘Reporting the Environment in the English-language press of Southeast Asia, Pacific Journalism Review Vol 12, No 2, pp106-135, 2006 (with Wendy Bacon)
- ‘A journalist’s perspective on the Museum World’, Open Museum Journal, August 2006
- ‘Queensland is the Limitation’ (Review article), Australian Journalism Review, Vol. 28, No 1
- ‘Freedom of the Press in the New Australian Security State’ [PDF], University of New South Wales Law Journal, Vol. 28 (3), 2005, pp 900-908
- ‘Stories in distress: Three case studies in Australian media coverage of humanitarian crises, Australian Journalism Review, 26(1), 2004 (with Wendy Bacon)
- ‘Determinism’, Encyclopedia of Social Science Research, Sage, 2004
- ‘How the Australian Media Cover Humanitarian Issues’, Australian Journalism Review, 25/2, December 2003 (with Wendy Bacon)
- ‘Freedom of the Press in Australia [PDF]’, Democratic Audit of Australia, Australian National University, 2003
- News/worthy [PDF]: How the Australian Media cover humanitarian, aid and development issues, AusAID, 2002 (with Wendy Bacon)
- ‘Confidential Sources and the Right to Know’, Australian Journalism Review, 21/2, August 1999 (with Wendy Bacon)
- ‘Art and Audience in the Age of Electronic Exchange’, Joseph Beuys lectures, Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, 1997
