Mark Wheeler is a Professor of Political Communication and Research Lead.
Mark Wheeler
Dr Mark Wheeler is a professor of political communications at London Metropolitan University and a member of the University Research Ethics Committee and Chair of the School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Review Panel. He is also a member of the Research Higher Degrees Committee and the Chair of the Research Students Progress Group.
He is the author of six books, including Politics and the Mass Media (Blackwell, 1997), European Television Industries (British Film Institute, 2005) (with Petros Iosifidis and Jeanette Steemers), Hollywood: Politics and Society (British Film Institute, 2006), Celebrity Politics (Polity, 2013) and (with Petros Iosifidis) Public Spheres and Mediated Social Networks in the Western Context and Beyond (Palgrave, 2016) and Sorcerer: William Friedkin and the New Hollywood (Lexington, 2022).
He has contributed numerous peer-reviewed articles to academic journals and has written many chapters in collected editions concerning celebrity politics.
- Media and Policy
- Political Communication
- Social media and democracy
- The Politics of Hollywood
- Celebrity Politics
Module leader and lecturer on Media and Culture, Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and Contemporary American Politics.
Books
- Politics and the Mass Media, (Oxford: Blackwells, 1997).
- Co-author with Jeanette Steemers and Petros Iosifidis, European Television Industries, (London: British Film Institute, 2005).
- Hollywood: Politics and Society, (London: British Film Institute, 2006).
- Celebrity Politics: Image and Identity in Contemporary Political Communications, (Cambridge: Polity 2013).
- Co-author with Petros Iosifidis, Public Spheres and Mediated Social Networks: The Western Context and Beyond, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016).
- Sorcerer: William Friedkin and the New Hollywood (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2022)
Journal Articles since 2012
- ‘European Union State Aid, public subsidies and analogue switch-off/digital switchover’, International Journal of Digital Television, (Bristol: Intellect, 2012).
- ‘A City Upon a Hill’: The Wire and its distillation of the United States polity’, Politics (Political Studies Association, 2014).
- ‘The Mediatization of Celebrity Politics through the Social Media’, International Journal of Digital Television, (Bristol: Intellect, 2014).
- (with Petros Iosifidis), ‘The Public Sphere and Network Democracy: Social movements and Political Change?’, Global Media Journal (Open Access, 2015).
- (with Hugo Dobson, Andrew Cooper), ‘Introduction to non-western Celebrity Politicians’, Celebrity Studies, (London, Routledge 2017).
- (with Duygu Karatus) ‘Introduction’. Editor of Special Edition ‘The Public Sphere and the Social Media.’, International Journal of Digital Television, (Bristol: Intellect, 2017).
- (with Petros Iosifidis), ‘Modern PoliticalCommunication and Web 2.0 in Representative Democracies’, Javnost: The Public – 25th anniversary issue, Vol. 25 no. 1-2. (London, Taylor & Francis, 2018).
- “Celebrity Politics and Cultural Studies within the United States and United Kingdom.” In Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Studies (Oxford University Press, 2018).
- (with Andrea MacDonnell), ‘@realDonaldTrump: Political celebrity, authenticity, and para-social engagement on Twitter’, Celebrity Studies,b(London, Routledge 2019).
Chapters in Books since 2011
- ‘Darryl F. Zanuck’s Wilson’ in Iwan Morgan (ed), US Presidencies at the Movies (Palgrave, 2011).
- ‘Bill Clinton: courting the Hollywood film industry’ in Mark White (ed.) The Presidency of Bill Clinton: The Legacy of a New Domestic and Foreign Policy (I.B. Taurus, 2012).
- ‘Digital Switchover: European Union State Aid, public subsidies and enlargement’ in Hilde van den Bulck Manuel Puppis, Seamus Simpson (ed.s), European Media Policy for the Twenty-First Century: Assessing the Past, Setting Agendas for the Future (Routledge, 2016).
- ‘Celebrity Diplomacy: Theories and Practices’ in The Sage Handbook of Diplomacy (ed.s Costas M. Constantinou, Paul Sharp, Pauline Kerr) (Sage Publications, 2016).
- ‘The political history of Classical Hollywood: moguls, liberals and radicals’ in US Movies and the Great Depression (ed.s Professor Iwan Morgan and Professor Philip Davies) (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).
- ‘Human Rights, Celebrity and Democracy’ in Anthony Elliot (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies (Routledge, 2018).
- ‘Politics, Leadership and Power’ in Katja Lee (ed.) A Cultural history of Fame (London: Bloomsbury 2023). This is a chapter in the six-volume series, A Cultural History of Fame.
- ‘The working class in Schrader’s ‘Blue Collar’’ (1978) in Steven J. Michels (ed.) This Hard Land: Scenes from the American Working Class. (Lexington Books 2023)
PSA small conference grant
University of East Anglia external reviewer, November 2014 and external examiner 2016-20.
External Doctoral Examiner PhD Thesis for Chang Yong, City Universiy, 16 July 2012; for Imir Rashid, University of Westminster, 4 December 2015 and for Lawrencia Agyepong, University of Leicester, 9 December 2016.
Research Officer for the British Screen Advisory Council (BSAC) from 1998-2004.
Co-convenor of the British Political Studies Association (PSA) Media and Politics Specialist Group (MPG) from 1998-2005.
PSA Grant for Specialist Group Conference on Media and Politics 2018
Editorial Board member for the International Journal of Digital Television, (Bristol: Intellect)
Expert commentary on celebrity and Hollywood politics. Including Celebrity politics in the Fake News age and Hollywood in the 1930s.
Professor Dr Mark Wheeler
Professor of Political Communications
E: m.wheeler@londonmet.ac.uk