Please find below, the videos of the communication lecture series of the last months.
The Tar Sands and the Rise of the Synthetic
Dr. Patrick McCurdy, Associate professor
Department of communication
Quand les journalistes parlent d'eux-mêmes: études de cas sur le discours métajournalistique dans les médias écrits québécois et leur réception par divers publics
Philippe Rodrigues-Rouleau, Doctoral student
Department of communication
Co-designing a meaningful, humane and personalized eHealth technology: The eCARE-PD project / Co-concevoir une technologie de e-santé signifiante, humaine et personnalisée : le projet eCARE-PD (Bilingual lecture)
Sylvie Grosjean, Full Professor
Department of communication
The long and winding road to open government in Canada
Daniel Paré, Associate Professor
Department of communication
Perspectives on communication and data literacy: a research program (lecture in English)
Meredith Rocchi, Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
Modern technology has provided unprecedented access to data, and opportunities for communicating that data with others. This data promotes evidence-based decision-making but also serves as means to spread misinformation. It is becoming increasingly important for individuals to have basic data literacy skills in order to identify good and bad representations of data in their everyday lives. Despite the importance of data literacy, however, currently, in Canada, these outcomes are not included in the vast majority of humanities and social sciences undergraduate program curricula. This program of research aims to identify best practices for data literacy education with the goal of promoting student motivation and reduced anxiety for students.
Kitsch in public communication: biology, aesthetic and strategy (Conference offered in French)
Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, Associate Professor
Department of Communication
Kitsch is simultaneously the opposite and complementary category of the visually grotesque in the present landscape of public communication. The dialectic relation between Kitsch and the grotesque is a manifestation of “deformative transparency”. (Nahon-Serfaty, 2019). A) Biology: Our subject of study is nature and the “natural” understood as non-human. B) The aesthetic : we seek to study the economy of emotions in the present communication ecosystem. C) The strategy: situate the visually Kitsch in the battlefield of public communication in order to highlight the role of the sensible and the sensations in the formation of ideas, perceptions, opinions, attitudes and even behaviors of people.
What does it mean to read?
Kyle Conway Associate Professor,
Department of Communication
A paradox haunts communication, both as an act and as a field of study. On the first day of class each semester, for instance, I begin by reading my syllabus. My goal is to transmit information to my students: when we meet, what we're reading, what's on the exams. How much do students remember? Very little. This rote exercise, despite its apparent purpose, is quickly forgotten. My efforts at communication have resulted in non-communication. But what if I read a poem, say, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "I Am Waiting"? Students would be confused, and although they might not know when we meet or what we're reading, they would remember the event. My non-communication has resulted in a successful transfer (they will not forget my performance!), but of what? This presentation takes that paradox as its starting point to ask about how humanistic methods, especially those that explore the metaphorical structure of language, help us navigate through this paradox. What does it mean to read when communication so easily becomes non-communication, and vice versa?
Who is the "public"?
Bertrand Labasse, Associate Professor
Department of French and Department of Communication
Since the 19th century (at least), the development of mass communication methods has been accompanied with concerns regarding the new publics deemed futile, impulsive and easily manipulable. The collapse of the public sphere associated with social media revives this fright. However, are the masses as frivolous as elites worry and are they any different themselves? To answer with certainty, we must first revisit an old mystery of the social sciences, notably, one of their most principal shortcomings: understanding the multiple factors that contribute to us attributing value and meaning to one piece of content as opposed to another.
Vulnerability during a pandemic: an analysis of the media discourse on the elderly
Martine Lagacé, Full professor
Department of Communication
The pandemic has had a severe impact on the elderly community, simultaneously in terms of sanitary effects, to the prevalence of stereotypes and ageist discriminatory behaviors. Intentionally or not, canadian media has perpetuated ageist language. The conference will allow to share the results of a content analysis carried out in francophone media outlets such as, “La Presse” and “Le Devoir” during the first wave of the pandemic. The results suggest a polarisation of the elderly regarding the representation of ageing essentially framed in terms of decline and vulnerability.
Research assisted by: Pascale Dagnoisse and Amélie Doucet
How political information flows: the roles of personal algorithmic influence
Elizabeth Dubois, Full professor
Department of Communication
Before political information reaches us, it flows through a complex media system. News media, social media platforms, and our social relationships each impact that flow of information. In this talk, Dubois reviews key concepts such as personal influence and the two-step flow hypothesis, echo chambers, and filter bubbles in order to map out the ways in which political information flows through the media system. She draws on multiple studies she has conducted in collaboration with students in her Pol Comm Tech Lab: https://www.polcommtech.com/
During the talk, Dubois will also introduce the lab and her podcast Wonks and War Rooms. You can find her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizdubois
