Dr Alana Mann

Phone: +61 2 9351 2249
Address: Room 211, Reception, Level 2, Footbridge Theatre Terrace
Access adjacent to Footbridge Theatre and Footbridge over Parramatta Road
A09a - Footbridge Theatre
Undergraduate Coordinator Semester 1/2012
Email: .
Consultation Times
Wednesday 2pm to 4pm
For Undergraduate Degree consultation please email for an appointment.
Dr Alana Mann joined the Department of Media and Communications as a full-time lecturer in July 2007. From 1999 – 2006 she managed youth and education marketing campaigns for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald at Fairfax Media before joining social enterprise The Smith Family as Marketing Communications Manager. Alana teaches and co-ordinates MECO3605 Media Globalisation (UG), MECO3609 Critical Practice (UG) and MECO6913 Public Opinion, Policy and the Public Sphere (PG). She also teaches into the Bachelor of International and Global Studies in Semester 1.
Alana’s research interests include the strategic communication between peoples’ movements, non-government organisations (NGOs) and other actors within transnational advocacy networks concerned with agrarian reform and food politics. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Framing Food Sovereignty: A Study of Social Movement Communication, analyses the campaigning activities of rural social movement organisations (SMOs) in Chile, Mexico and Spain that are members of glocal SMO La Via Campesina (‘the peasant way’). In 2011 she spent four months working in the Communications Unit at the headquarters of the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) in Heidelberg, Germany, where she edited the Right to Food Quarterly and contributed to the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2011, an international publication monitoring the accountability of state and non-state actors in fulfilling the right to adequate food.
Associations
- International Political Science Association (IPSA)
- International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)
- International Federation of University Women (IFUW)
Research Interests
- The communication strategies of grassroots organisations, social movements and international humanitarian NGOs
- Transnational civil society and advocacy in human rights and food politics
- Framing processes, issue emergence, discourse analysis and mechanisms of representation
- Communication structures and processes in globalisation, particularly in relation to concepts of political community and network theory
Publications
- [PhD Thesis] Framing Food Sovereignty: A Study of Social Movement Communication. University of Sydney, 2012.
- [Article] “No Corn, No Country: Mexican Farmers Opposition to NAFTA”. Journal of Latin American and Iberian Studies (JILAR), December, 2011.
- [Article] “Lobbying for Peasant Rights at the UN”. Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World), FIAN International and the Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO), August 2011.
- [Article] “Communicating the Right to Food Sovereignty: The Voice of the Campesino in the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform”. PRism 6(2), 2009. http://praxis.massey.ac.nz/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/MANN.pdf.
- [Article] “Spaces for Talk: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Genuine Dialogue in an International Advocacy Movement”. Asian Social Sciences Journal, October, 2008.
- [Article] “Churnalism”, in The State of the News Print Media 2008 Report, Australian Press Council, Sydney.
- [Review] “Moving Targets”. Media International Australia Journal, No. 132. August, 2009.
- [Review] “Methodological Pitfalls of Social Network Analysis”. Media International Australia Journal, No. 132, 2009.
- [Conference paper]”Spaces for Talk: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Genuine Dialogue in an International Advocacy Movement”. Association of Pacific Rim Universities Doctoral Student Conference, Vladivostok, Russia, July 2008.
- [Conference Paper] “Framing the Global Food Crisis: La Via Campesina and the Politics of Resistance”. International Political Science Association Conference, Santiago, Chile, July 2009.
- [Conference Paper] “Communicating the Right to Food Sovereignty: The Voice of the Campesino in International Media Coverage of the Global Food Crisis”. International Association of Media and Communication Research Conference, Mexico City, July 2009.
- [Conference Paper] “The Politics of Resistance: Strategic Communication within a Global Advocacy Network”. Australian Political Science Association Conference, Macquarie University, Sydney, October 2009.
- [Conference Paper] “Framing food politics: National and International Media Discourses on Agricultural Sustainability”. Australian Media Traditions Conference, University of Sydney, November 2009.
- [Conference Paper] “Becoming Public: La Via Campesina and the Transformative Politics of Framing”. Transcultural Mapping Conference, University of Sydney, April 2010
- [Conference Paper] “No Corn, No Country: Mexican Farmers Opposing NAFTA”. Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies, ANU, July, 2010.
- [Conference Paper] “Becoming Public: La Via Campesina and the Transformative Politics of Framing”. IAMCR Conference, Braga, Portugal, July 2010.