Files and links (1)
CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Mr Bates vs the Post Office : mediating emotion in the Post Office scandal and subpostmasters’ campaign for justice
Communication research and practice
2025
Abstract
Considered part of the ‘media journey’ of the UK Post Office scandal, this article focuses on ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office (Mr Bates), which dramatised the story of subpostmasters/mistresses (SPMs) wrongly convicted for theft or false accounting over a 20-year period based on flawed data derived from Fujitsu’s Horizon computer system installed by Post Office to automate accounting processes at its branches. A week after Mr Bates aired, more than a million people had signed a petition calling for justice. This article explores how and why, despite prior media attention, Mr Bates galvanised such a strong public response. It argues the composition of the television series, its structure and scheduling, its paratextual qualities and relationship to other texts, and its depiction of psychological violence, such as gaslighting, wreaked upon individual SPMs by the Post Office behemoth engaged viewers leading to significant legal change.
Details
- Title
- Mr Bates vs the Post Office : mediating emotion in the Post Office scandal and subpostmasters’ campaign for justice
- Authors/Creators
- Greg Martin - The University of SydneyLauren O’Mahony - Murdoch UniversityRebecca Scott Bray
- Publication Details
- Communication research and practice
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
- Number of pages
- 16
- Identifiers
- 991005794521007891
- Copyright
- © 2025 The Author(s).
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Media and Communication
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
Metrics
1 File views/ downloads
30 Record Views