Findings

Articles published in the most recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Media Studies that may be of interest to the journalism community:

"Informed Mutual Support: Options on Violence and Trauma from the Perspective of the Journalist", by Robert M. Frank and Ross Perigoe

"Covering Democracy: The coverage of FPTP vs. MMP in the Ontario Referendum on Electoral Reform", by George Hoff

"Thwarting Foreign Ownership Limits: Policy Activism by CanWest Global Communications in Canada and Australia", by Marc Edge

"Media, Politics and the Emergence of Democracy in Bangladesh", by Abul Mansur Ahmed

"News of War in a Distant Land: The News Media and the Korean War", by Andrew Fraser

Click on "More" to read article abstracts

For many in the traditional media business, attracting young readers and viewers is like searching for the Holy Grail, a quest that never quite succeeds as hoped. However, according to How Teens Use Media, a new "myth-debunking" study by the Nielsen company, teens really aren't that different from other people in how they interact with mass media. 

"The fact is, teens are unique, but they are not as bizarre and outlying as some might presume. Sure, they are the digital natives, super-communicators and multi-taskers we hear so much about, but they are also the TV viewers, newspaper readers and radio listeners that some assume they are not. What we have found, across a variety of studies, is that teens embrace new media not at the cost of traditional media, but in supplement to it. Taken on whole, teens exhibit media habits that are more similar to the total population than not."

Twitter may be a hot subject in many newsrooms, but in the real world ... not so much. A recent survey of Canadians by Ipsos-Reid found just 26 per cent of respondents had ever heard of Twitter and only a teeny-tweety-tiny 1.45 per cent actually use it. Said a polling company spokesman: "The buzz (to) usage ratio is sort of out of whack right now."