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Dr Hugh Ortega Breton

Lecturer

Qualifications: MAHons (Glasgow), MSc (Bristol), PhD (Roehampton)

Email:
Phone: Work: 01483 68 2829
Room no: 18 AD 03

Further information

Biography

Hugh read Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Glasgow before briefly working on the popular daytime chat shows Jerry Springer UK and Trisha. After completing an MSc in Sociology at the University of Bristol, he undertook his PhD research in Media and Cultural Studies at Roehampton University, some of which has already been published. Hugh specializes in the deconstruction of mainstream representations of risk, emotions and British political culture using a psycho-cultural studies approach. His work is interdisciplinary, crossing the disciplines of Sociology, Political Communication, Media Studies and Psychoanalysis. He is an advisory group member of the AHRC-funded Media & the Inner World research network (www.miwnet.org), which investigates the relationship between meaning and emotions in popular culture, and is also the Assistant Reviews Editor for Free Associations: Psychoanalysis and Culture, Media, Groups, Politics. He is currently running a series of seminars on emotions and radio. Outside work he plays football and angles for coarse fish.

Research Interests

Hugh’s research focuses on the affective dynamics of political communication and mainstream media representations, in particular television, film and the national press. He is currently a Research Assistant for the Media and the Inner World research network. In this capacity he is currently running a series of seminars on radio with Peter M. Lewis (London Metropolitan University). This will result in a special edition of The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media, which he will co-edit.

Hugh recently completed research (2010) for his PhD on ‘The Paranoid Style on British Television 1998-2007’ which applied object relations psychoanalysis to the textual analysis of representations of terrorism and counter-terrorism.

Much of Hugh’s research is concerned with how public issues and social problems are discursively constructed as risks and the consequences this has for political subjectivity and how these ‘problems’ are dealt with. This involves primary analysis of the communication and representation of ‘risks’ in political and news discourse, cinema and television entertainment.

Publications

Journal articles

  • Ortega Breton H. (2011) 'Coping with a Crisis of Meaning: Televised Paranoia'. psychoanalysis-and-therapy.com Free Associations, u.k.: (62), pp. 85-110.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/7304/

Book chapters

  • Ortega Breton H. (2011) 'Screening for Meaning: Terrorism as the product of a Paranoid Style in Politics and Popular Culture'. in Hammond, Philip (eds.) Screens of Terror: representations of war and terrorism in film and television since 9/11 U.K. : arima Article number 12 , pp. 223-242.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/7305/
  • Ortega Breton H. (2010) 'Feeling persecuted? The definitive role of paranoid anxiety in the constitution of “War on Terror” television'. in Brecher B, Devenney M, Winter A (eds.) Discourses and practices of terrorism: interrogating terror London : Routledge
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/7047/

Teaching

Hugh runs compulsory and optional modules available on the Sociology and Media Studies degree programmes on terrorism, counter-terrorism, western humanitarian intervention, emotions in popular media culture and Cultural Studies.

Affiliations

Member, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA)

Advisory Group Member, Media & the Inner World Research Network (AHRC funded)

Assistant Reviews Editor for Free Associations: Psychoanalysis and Culture, Media, Groups, Politics