- Has government been mediatized? A UK perspective Garland, Ruth; Tambini, Damian and Couldry, Nick. 2018. Has government been mediatized? A UK perspective. Media, Culture & Society, 40(4), pp. 496-513. ISSN 0163-4437
- Between mediatisation and politicisation: The changing role and position of Whitehall press officers in the age of political spin Garland, Ruth. 2017. Between mediatisation and politicisation: The changing role and position of Whitehall press officers in the age of political spin. Public Relations Inquiry, 6(2), pp. 171-189. ISSN 2046-147X
Dr Ruth Garland
Staff details
Position
Lecturer and Convenor, BA Promotional Media
Department
Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
r.garland (@gold.ac.uk)
Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups
Ruth Garland's main research project is a longitudinal study of UK government communications from 1979 to date.
Ruth spent more than 25 years in public sector PR, taking her PhD at the LSE in 2016. Her research focuses on governments' relations with media taking the UK since 1979 as a case study. She offers a critique of the narrative of political spin, preferring to examine the broader relations between politics and media as an interaction between and within elites that excludes the public. She identifies the role of impartiality as a factor in trustworthy and credible public communication and is turning her attention to political branding as a form of disinformation.
Since the publication of her book Government Communications and the Crisis of Trust (2021) she was invited to take part in the OECD’s current inquiry into Transparency, Communication and Trust in public communication, and contributed to the OECD’s UK Public Communication Scan in 2024.
Academic qualifications
- PhD Media and Communications - London School of Economics and Political Science 2016
Teaching and supervision
Ruth supervises BA and MA dissertation students.
Research interests
A former BBC publicist from 1987-2006 for television documentaries and consumer publishing. Ruth took the opportunity to observe television production from behind the scenes and remains fascinated by the making of television programmes and the construction and practice of 'celebrity'. As a sideline to her main research she has conducted a longitudinal thematic analysis of the ITV daytime show 'Loose Women', focusing on the contradiction between its pursuit of commercial and showbiz values while claiming to challenge stereotypes of female ageing. She has contributed a chapter to the Rowan and Littlefield book 'Gender: Representation, Engagement and Expression in the Digital Sphere' (2024), edited by Barbara Mitra, entitled 'The social media feeds of Loose Women: taking the temperature of popular feminism'.
Featured publications
2025:
Politics, government and the media: a site of struggle between opposing conceptions of public communication
Chapter in Book 'Histories of Political Public Relations', edited by Anastasios Theophilou & Martina Topic
2021:
Government Communications and the Crisis of Trust: from Political Spin to Post-Truth
Book by Ruth Garland, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
2017:
Has Government Been Mediatized: a UK Perspective
R.Garland, D.Tambini & N.Couldry (authors). Published in Media, Culture and Society
2018:
Is post-truth another word for political spin or a radical departure from it? Evidence from behind the scenes in UK government communications: 1997–20
Journal article by Ruth Garland in International Journal of Media and Politics
2017:
Between mediatisation and politicisation: The changing role and position of Whitehall press officers in the age of political spin
Journal article by Ruth Garland in Public Relations Inquiry
Publications and research outputs
Article
- No escape from the No.10. bunker? UK government news management under siege: John Major (1990-97) and Boris Johnson (2019-2022) Garland, Ruth. 2024. No escape from the No.10. bunker? UK government news management under siege: John Major (1990-97) and Boris Johnson (2019-2022). Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 29(1), pp. 24-37. ISSN 1356-3289
- The unseen power of creative news management in government: The marginalisation of UK Government press officers between 1997 and 2015 Garland, Ruth. 2018. The unseen power of creative news management in government: The marginalisation of UK Government press officers between 1997 and 2015. Journal of Communication Management, 22(4), pp. 416-431. ISSN 1363-254X
- Is post-truth another word for political spin or a radical departure from it? Evidence from behind the scenes in UK government communications: 1997–2015 Garland, Ruth. 2018. Is post-truth another word for political spin or a radical departure from it? Evidence from behind the scenes in UK government communications: 1997–2015. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 14(3), pp. 333-350. ISSN 1740-8296
Book
- Government Communications and the Crisis of Trust: From Political Spin to Post-truth Garland, Ruth. 2021. Government Communications and the Crisis of Trust: From Political Spin to Post-truth. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030775759
Book Section
- Politics, government and the media: A site of struggle between opposing conceptions of public communication Garland, Ruth. 2025. Politics, government and the media: A site of struggle between opposing conceptions of public communication. In: Anastasios Theofilou and Martina Topic, eds. Histories of Political Public Relations: From Propaganda to Public Health. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 95-106. ISBN 9781032500911
- Spin Garland, Ruth. 2025. Spin. In: A Nai; M Gromping and D Wirz, eds. Encyclopedia of Political Communication. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
- The Social Media Feeds of Loose Women: Taking the Temperature of Popular Feminism Garland, Ruth. 2024. The Social Media Feeds of Loose Women: Taking the Temperature of Popular Feminism. In: Barbara Mitra; Sharon Young and Mehreen Mirza, eds. Gender in the Digital Sphere: Representation, Engagement and Expression. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538155684
Professional Activity
- Written evidence submitted by the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London Written evidence submitted to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs in response to call for evidence for the Inquiry into Civil Service Leadership and Reform Garland, Ruth. 2023. Written evidence submitted by the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London Written evidence submitted to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs in response to call for evidence for the Inquiry into Civil Service Leadership and Reform.