Tag: Canadian politics

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Summer updates

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“Tout Cela Est…”

poster

In 2014, in the midst of Quebec’s provincial election, Mariam Esseghaier, Marie Eve Lefebvre and I finished and released our online documentary, “Tout Cela Est…: Communicating the Charter of Quebec Values/Communiquer la charte des valeurs québécoises.”

Since, we’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on the video project, how it was meant to intervene in the Charter debate in 2013-14, and how we might recommend others approach similar mixed academic-journalistic-activist interventions given limited time and resources. With thanks to the Canadian Journal of Communication‘s special issue editors, Sandra Smeltzer and Leslie Regan Shade, as well as to everyone who ever took time to be interviewed, to translate parts of the video, to help us with our website, to ask questions during conference presentations, and finally to edit or recommend changes to our Research in Brief, here is our final written piece, “‘It won’t go viral’: Documenting the Charter of Quebec Values and Talking Theory on YouTube.”

 

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“Freedom Train: Mobilizing alternative media”

An article I have been working on for some time was published in the International Journal of Communication in August. Here is the abstract:

“In 2012, as efforts grew to move more Canadian oil into international markets, members of a group of First Nations communities undertook a cross-country protest to protect their lands from pipeline encroachment. This analysis of documents produced and shared by organizers of Freedom Train 2012 maps modes of mobilizing participation across media spaces. Drawing upon alternative media literature, this article proposes a turn from analyzing how protest movements use media tools to how protest movements can be understood as forms of alternative media. The article concludes by advocating further study of alternative media practices to attend to how traditionally marginalized voices and cross-community communication networks contest industrial, governmental, and mainstream media power.”

Here is a direct link to the article: http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4907/1773

And, you might also be interested in this short documentary about Freedom Train 2012: http://www.yinkadene.ca/freedomtrain/

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“Towards a blueprint for a new free press”

For those who missed Journalist Interrupted at MacEwan University in May, you can find streamed video from the event here or read J-Source‘s live coverage here. Co-organizer Brian Gorman and I also wrote an op-ed for The Edmonton Journal, which you can read online here.

I would love to hear from anyone who has had time to further reflect on the event. For me, it was a markedly hopeful and inspiring evening.