Dr Brett Hutchins

Background

Brett Hutchins graduated from the sociology program at the University of Queensland in 2001, receiving the Dean’s Commendation for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Thesis (Ph.D.). His thesis was published as Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth by Cambridge University Press in 2002, receiving significant media and critical attention and appearing in paperback in 2005. He joined the Communications and Media Studies program in 2005 after lecturing at the University of Tasmania. He has published widely over the past decade on sports media, sport in Australian culture and history, and news media in national and international journals and edited collections. In addition to writing features for newspapers, he is a regular commentator on media culture and sport in print, electronic and digital news media.

Research Interests

Brett Hutchins’ research interests are sport and media, news media, computer and video games, and social theory. His publications address a wide variety of topics in relation to these areas, including the international growth of e-sport (competitive computer gaming), the political economy of sports media, independent online news, environmental protest, regional news media, and Australian national mythologies. These studies have appeared in international journals such as Media, Culture & Society, New Media & Society, Television & New Media _and _Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism.

His major research focus from 2008-2010 is a project titled, ‘Struggling for Possession: The Control and Use of Online Mediasport’. Funded by the Australian Research Council and working with Professor David Rowe from the University of Western Sydney, this research is investigating the consequences of popular sport media consumption moving from the historically dominant platform of broadcast television to the online environment of the Internet and World Wide Web.

Selected Publications

Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth (2002 Hardback, 2005 paperback) is “a valuable book, a genuinely different addition to a mountain of writing on Bradman” (Times Higher Education Supplement) and is “authored and expertly crafted by the talented Australian sociologist, Brett Hutchins” (Professor John Bale in International Review for the Sociology of Sport).

 

Sociology: Themes and Perspectives 3e (2006) is the market-leading introductory sociology textbook in Australia, selling over 40,000 copies since the release of the first edition in 1996. Brett Hutchins is the author of the materials presented on media and communications in the latest edition. A fourth edition is presently being planned.