Bangor University's network for Media & Persuasive Communication (MPC) hosted the Political Studies Association Media and Politics GroupAnnual Conference themed on Media, Persuasion and Human Rights.

Our 2-day conference was attended by 44 delegates from across academia internationally (Australasia, Europe) and the UK, encompassing diverse disciplines (Media, Communications, Politics, Sociology, Law, Business, Linguistics), and from all career stages. As well as explorations of human rights from the perspectives of security, privacy, freedom of speech, gender, race, class, labour and religion, we saw papers on propaganda, persuasion and spin across all media forms – from music to new media, and across a range of institutional sites beyond media, such as governments, legislatures and the judiciary. We were sponsored by BBC Montoring and Peter Lang. The James Thomas Memorial prizes (£100 cheque) for the best postgraduate paper was awarded to Mr Khin-Wee Chen (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) for his paper on Malaysian Kangkung Politics: harvesting Internet visual memes for rhetorical acts. Two travel bursaries (£100 each) were awarded to delegates for the best abstract from a postgraduate student: Ruth Garland (LSE) for Beyond the Narrative of Political Spin: an empirical analysis of the workings and purposes of UK government media relations; and Mark Shaw (Durham University) for Discourses on European integration and Institutions in the UK press: political entrepreneurialism at work. The conference organising team were: Dr Vian Bakir (SCSM), Dr Martina Feilzer (Social Sciences), Dyfrig Jones (SCSM), Dr. Yvonne McDermott (Law), Dr. Andrew McStay (SCSM) and Dr Kate Taylor Jones (SCSM).