Researching Journalism

Marc Raboy and Jeremy Shtern’s collection Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada is a series of essays by Canadian media and communications scholars on the past, present and future of Canadian communication rights. Expanding the notion of ‘the right to communicate’ beyond a conversation about freedom of expression, the authors in this book tackle topics as various as copyright, privacy, Internet infrastructure and access, and the political economy of media.  The book’s overarching goal is both to assess and propose remediation for some of the serious problems plaguing the Canadian communications landscape.  Because good journalism is fundamental to Canadian communication rights, Researching Journalism editor Lisa Lynch interviewed Jeremy Shtern about the process of editing Media Divides and what the book suggests about the role of journalists in ensuring communication rights for Canadians.

In Second Wounds, media scholar Carrie Rentschler traces the emergence of victim advocacy in the U.S. from the sixties until the present.  Rentschler also explores the relationship the victim’s rights movement and the media, describing how U.S. reporting on crime has been influenced by the movement’s idea of the “secondary victim” as well as theories of post-traumatic stress.  In the first of a series of interviews with scholars about journalism research, Researching Journalism page editor Lisa Lynch spoke to Rentschler about her research process and her findings.

Academics, practitioners, and others with a demonstrated interest in these issues are invited to submit papers for presentation at Journalism Strategies, a McGill Conference whose purpose is to to re-imagine the role of journalism in Canada and ways to use media policies to support it.

The organizers invite you paper proposals on one of the four conference themes. The questions included below are suggestions, meant to aid  reflection. Please do not feel constrained by them. 

1. Working definitions of journalism that place at the fore public deliberation and participation:

a. What kinds of journalism practices can facilitate citizen participation and public deliberation?

b.  How are they distinct from other journalism practices?

c. How can these practices enable citizens to engage at different levels of governance (local, regional, national, global) in their preferred ways (as contributors, journalists, etc.)?

2.  Organizational models:

a. What types of organizational structures are conducive to emerging journalistic practices at different levels?

b.  How can existing journalism organizations adapt their structures to better facilitate those practices?

c.  How can individual actors within organizations participate in the reform process?

d. How can journalism organizations cooperate with other interested organizations and individuals (e.g., labour unions, media reform organizations, academics, activists, emerging journalism organizations, and bloggers) to address the democratic deficit in the Canadian media landscape?

3. Regulatory policies:

a. How have historical developments of Canadian media policy (e.g., government subsidies, foreign ownership restrictions, telecommunications regulations, etc.) laid the groundwork for current Canadian journalism practices?

b. How do media policies offer actors (e.g., governments, news organizations, media workers, not-for-profit organizations, activists, and citizens) opportunities to intervene in policy discussions?

c. What policies are necessary to ensure that emerging journalism practices are sustainable?

4. Financial policies:

a. How can fiscal and financial policies at various levels of government encourage approaches that address emerging journalistic practices?

b.  What types of organizations and actors should receive public funding?

c.  How can other financial models foster a more open and diverse media landscape?

d. What are the impacts of different funding mechanisms on journalism organizations?

Please submit your proposal in either English or French. On the first page, provide the paper’s working title, your name, organizational affiliation (if any), and contact information. On the second page, include the working title of the paper and an abstract (two pages or approximately 500 words) that addresses the criteria listed below.

The deadline to submit two-page paper proposals is 27 June 2011. Relevant sub-committees of established academics, graduate students, practitioners, and individuals with a demonstrated interest in journalism policy will peer review these submissions. Reviewers will use the following three criteria to assess the proposals:

1. Relevance to one of the four conference themes;

2. Originality of contribution to ongoing scholarly and professional debates about journalism; and

3. Strength and value of two workable and actionable policy strategies.

Sub-committees will select four proposals per theme. Thus, they will accept sixteen papers for presentation at the conference. We will notify authors of the decisions by 30 September 2011. The deadline to submit full papers is 15 February 2012. We will invite a selected number of presenters to submit expanded and revised versions of their papers for inclusion in a possible post-conference publication.