Shannon is a Higher Degree by Research Candidate in the School of Communication, Media and Journalism. Her research examines how power is produced, maintained and contested through news media discourse, and how these processes shape social and political life. Her doctoral thesis analyses media coverage of the Robodebt scheme to consider how news discourse shapes understandings of welfare receipt, state authority, administrative legitimacy and institutional harm over time. More broadly, her work explores depoliticisation, particularly how poverty and welfare are translated into moral, technical, legal and administrative vocabularies that often limit political critique. Shannon’s research interests include media discourse, journalism, poverty and welfare, social policy, neoliberalism and post-structuralism.