Identifying as a committed socialist and anti-racist, during the 1970s, Barker focused his research on racism, in particular its place in British children's comics.
This culminated in a major audience research project for the British national film and video game censorship body the BBFC in the early 2000s.
Committed to anti-racism, he came to believe that the IS's focus on combating the growth of the fascist National Front "didn't seem to me to be the heart of the matter" and that there was a larger issue at play in British society.
[4] Early in his academic career, Barker researched and published work on racism in the UK and children's comics, including Action and 2000 AD.
He coined the term "new racism" in 1981 in the context of racist public discourse about immigration to the UK during the reign of Margaret Thatcher.
[5] In the 1980s, Barker became an outspoken critic of the video nasties censorship campaign in the UK, which was led by the Daily Mail and public pressure group the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, spearheaded by Mary Whitehouse.
At Aberystwyth University, Barker was commissioned by British film censors, the BBFC, to produce research on audiences and issues around watching sexual violence on screen.