Emeritus ProfessorDavid Marshall

My research interests have focused on two areas: the public personality (which
includes studies of celebrities, stars, public leaders and moments of fame and
infamy); and the study of new media and the various forms of communication
that have become elemental to contemporary life through new media. My recent
work is connecting these two areas and developing "persona studies", where
the presentation of public versions of the self has become generalized through
online culture. This research studies reputation and the predominant
recognition culture that pervades our uses of social media. Connected to this
work is the development of new concepts to describe this changed contemporary
world. These include concepts such as Intercommunication, representational
media, presentational media, and micro-publics. Persona studies is an
exploration across professions, activities and practices of how individuals
now present themselves publicly and build reputations and value in the newly
unstable world of work and leisure.

Knowledge Areas
Media and Communication

New Media

Cultural Studies

Online Culture

Persona Studies

Celebrity Culture

Leadership Studies

Projects
The focus of my current research is on Persona Studies, where the public
presentation of the self in both professional and leisure activities has
become normalised in contemporary culture via social media in particular.
This work has led to research related to the academic persona and reputation,
the artistic persona, the sports persona, the gamer persona, the political
persona, and the institutional persona and is designed to explore these and
other areas over the next five years. It is closely related to my past and
current work on celebrity and contemporary culture and how celebrity culture
structures power and influence, reputation and prestige.

The development of the public self and my research on persona emerges from
what I call "presentational media" and the related shift in cultural value
from representational media forms such as film and television. Presentational
media identifies how the individual is now further engaged in the production,
exhibition and communication of media and the decline in the power of
representational media to embody the culture and the polity. The focus of my
research into the expansion of presentational media is related to
"intercommunication" that is, the regular transposition of mediated forms
into patterns of interpersonal communication. Intercommunication is a term
that best describes the new blending of media and interpersonal forms of
communication.