Behavioural Sociologist and Mass Communication Scholar. ILM-certified coach. Environmentalist. Ecofeminist. Vegetarian. Animal Lover. Former Journalist. PR Academic and Convert. Young scholar mentor. Championing research-led teaching. Empowering disempowered and always advocating.
Author: Andrew Hastie The Infinity Engines – Tesseract is the fifth part in a book series by Andrew Hastie. It is a time travel series featuring an ancient Order whose members follow a non-linear life path and thus live longer and can travel in time. They fight attempts to change history and only do as…
Author: Hiro Arikawa The Goodby Cat received mixed reviews (negative; positive) and I was aware of it when I proposed it to my British book club which we now run online, since my relocation to the US. Now that I read it, I am none the wiser and don’t know what to say. On one…
Author: Ann Patchett Tom Lake was recommended by a colleague from the College of Communication and Information Sciences, at the University of Alabama. Together, the three of us (for now) have formed a book club and previously, we read The Library by Bella Osborne. I did not know what to think of the book as…
Author: Stephanie Butland The Lost for Words Bookshop is another beautiful story of community, support, friendship, and love. However, this story is more than that because it is also a story of domestic abuse. What is more, it is also a story of early socialization and how it impacts adult life. It is well known…
Author: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi I read this book as part of a book club we formed as part of the #WECAN project in our school. It was a recommendation of Dr Karen Vollum-Dix who is turning into one of the greatest benefits of ever dealing with that project, along with Dr Joy Ogbemudia because the…
CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS Women and Leadership in the Public Relations Industry: An International Perspective. London: Rutledge Editor: Dr Martina Topić, Leeds Beckett University, UK (M.Topic@leedsbeckett.ac.uk) As part of the EUPRERA project on Women in Public Relations, which I lead, I have so far edited and released four reports and one journal article based on…
Director: Chiwetel Ejiofor Mark: 5/5 This is an inspiring true story of William Kamkwambawho (Maxwell Simba) who was eager to learn in Malawi and who ultimately helped his village by building a wind turbine after reading about it in a library book. He read that this is how electricity comes to the USA and insisted…
New series on Netflix is a really refreshing story, and suitable for all audiences despite teenager theme. Therefore, we meet Otis (Asa Butterfield) and his mother Jean (Gillian Anderson). Jean is a sex therapist who has no boundaries and cannot accept her boy is growing up and needs independence. On the other hand, she has…
CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS Editors: Martina Topic, Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom Sydney Heifler, The University of Oxford, United Kingdom Women in the Media: Who Creates the News? So far, the research has shown that women have less voice in the media than men do, both as the creators of news, the…
Director: McG Rating: 3/5 The Babysitter is a new film on Netflix. I watched it on Saturday and I am still not sure how I feel about this film and what to say. Basically, Cole (Judah Lewis) is bullied and he gets super cool babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving) he really loves. She teaches him how to defend…
Director: Adam Wingard Rating: 4/5 If I knew I would end up writing film and series reviews on my blog when I first started it, perhaps I would have considered naming it “blog of a sci-fi nerd” or something like that. I surely like sci-fi, and I clearly liked this film. In this film, we…
I read last week that Netflix has an information on when viewers get hooked up with a series. According to the information, viewers get hooked up to a series when watching episodes between two and eight (Kastrenakes, 2015). At first I raised my eyebrows, but then I thought about it again. Indeed, when I recently…
I finally managed to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 movie, the last part in a series of four movies made based on books by Suzanne Collins. I missed it when it was available in the cinema due to obligations with research, and then it took a while until I managed to see it…
The majority in the UK has voted to leave the EU. It is not a massive majority of the country, but it is the majority of those who voted in the referendum. This referendum result presents a victory of the Leave camp and UKIP that has been campaigning to leave the EU for a long…
Until the last year, those of us who are still attached to more traditional media while embracing new technologies, had a hope that the traditional media are not losing battle with the new media. For example, since 2005 Ofcom reports were systematically showing that the TV would be most missed media if it was not…
I run into a few forum discussions of prospective students wondering if they can get rich if they study marketing. At first I thought it was a very weird question because when I was deciding what to study long time ago in 1998, I did not even think of the financial aspect of my choice. I…
According to Crawford (1994), humour is one of the most persuasive and successful communication strategies. Nevertheless, humour is a part of the communication process and it has a psychological motivation dependent on interpretation of the message receiver and the social context (Lynch 2002; Meyer 2000). Majority of the research and available knowledge focuses on the…
A few months ago, Volkswagen faced now well-known environmental scandal that stirred international controversy and attracted extensive media coverage. The company installed, as it was discovered, false devices to hide the actual amount of emissions and cheat on controls. Nevertheless, the company marketed their cars in the US as environmentally friendly while cars actually produced…
We have been hearing for a while that British M&S is doing fine with M&S Food but not so well with fashion. This is despite the fact M&S offers traditionally good quality clothes. The situation in the fashion department looked improved with rise in sales, however, in 2015 a new decline has been reported (Butler,…
The largest British supermarket chain Tesco recently published a series of advertisements promoting their policies, such as opening additional tills if there is more than one person in the queue and the price promise. Tesco can hardly be called a champion in emotional advertising, which does make sense since it is difficult to imagine that…
On Saturday, 18th July 2015, I accidentally ended up at Heckyfest festival in Kirklees. It was a nice festival and I really enjoyed it. During the festival, I had to go to the toilet so I went to Lidl, which was across the road from the park where the festival was organised. As I don’t…