Judith Townend

PhD Title: Self-censorship Within Media Systems: Examining How UK Libel and Privacy Law Affect the Publication Process
E-Mail: judith.townend.1@city.ac.uk
Twitter: @jtownend

Judith's PhD focuses on legal restraints on the media, in particular, the pre-publication process, the interaction between media organisations and privacy/defamation law, and notions of self-censorship and the 'chilling effect'. Her research supervisors are Nicholas Hatzis (The City Law School) and Professor Howard Tumber (School of Arts).

Judith completed a degree in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2006 and trained in journalism at City University London in 2006/7. She has worked and freelanced for a number of media organisations, before specialising in media reporting for the industry site Journalism.co.uk. She currently contributes to several online publications and helped develop a series of 'Hacks and Hackers' events for the online data scraping start-up, Scraperwiki.

Her research interests include: injunctions, defamation/privacy law, legal data, open justice, online publishing and blogging, media ethics and accountability.

Publications

• Judith Townend, 'Court short of basic information: If we can tweet from court, why can't we find out which cases are being heard?', Guardian.co.uk, 5th March 2012
• Bennett, Daniel and Townend, Judith, "Press 'Omerta': How Newspapers' Failure to Report the Phone Hacking Scandal Exposed the Limitations of Media Accountability" (2012) published in The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism on Trial, edited by Keeble and Mair (Abramis 2012)
• Townend, J. (2011) 'Navigating digital publishing law without a 'night lawyer': an exploration of informal legal support networks', Cultural Policy, Criticism and Management Research 5: 27-46.
• Townend, J. (2011) 'Battle of (t)wits? Using Twitter as a journalistic tool' in Face the Future: Tools for the Modern Media Age, Arima, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble 
• Townend, J. (2010) 'The ethics of the 'blind story' and 'fair game' gossip', Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, Vol 7, No 1 2010

Conference presentations

• Panellist, Rebellious Media Conference, London, October 2011
• Participant, Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute, July 2011
• Speaker, Face the Future journalism conference, Coventry University, November 2010
• Speaker, Is World Journalism in Crisis? Coventry University, October 2009
• Speaker, Institute of Communication Ethics annual conference, Coventry University, October 2009

Teaching

Guest talks at Kingston University London; University of Lincoln; City University London; Southwestern Law School (UCL) Weekly social media and community journalism seminars, MA Interactive Journalism, City University London

Online

Her online work can be found at http://meejalaw.com and http://jtownend.com and she is @jtownend on Twitter. She can be contacted via judith.townend.1@city.ac.uk.She has recently written articles for Guardian.co.uk, Index on Censorship and the INFORRM media law blog.