David Taras

Beverly Jean Rasporich

Passion for Identity provides an excellent collection of readings which are ideally suited for an introductory course in Canadian studies. The pieces are engaging, readable and highly relevant to the complexities of culture, society, and power.

Canadian Studies for the 21st Century

A Passion for Identity

Richard Davis

Today, political leaders and candidates for office must campaign in a multimedia world through traditional forums—newspapers, radio, and television—as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics chronicles how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used successfully and unsuccessfully to influence elections. Each of these platforms have different affordances and reach various audiences in different ways. Campaigns often have to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. In some instances, they are crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media. In others, digital media remains underutilized and undeveloped. As has always been the case in politics, outcomes that depend on economic and social conditions often dictate people’s readiness for certain messages. However, the method and content of those messages has changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. This book answers several questions: How do candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages? How do they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses? How has media fragmentation altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse? Finally and most critically, what does this mean for how democracies function?

Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics

Christopher Waddell

After almost 90 years, the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, has reached a crossroads. This book examines the political, economic, social, media, and cultural forces that have pushed the CBC to the point where it must be reimagined and re-invented.

End of the CBC

David Schneiderman

Florian Sauvageau

Media coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada has emerged as a crucial factor not only for judges and journalists but also for the public. It's the media, after all, that decide which court rulings to cover and how. They translate highly complex judgments into concise and meaningful news stories that will appeal to, and be understood by, the general public. Thus, judges lose control of the message once they hand down decisions, and journalists have the last word. To show how the Supreme Court has fared under the media spotlight, Sauvageau, Schneiderman, and Taras examine a year in the life of the court and then focus on the media coverage of four high-profile decisions: the Marshall case, about Aboriginal rights; the Vriend case, about gay rights; the Quebec Secession Reference; and the Sharpe child pornography case. They explore the differences between television and newspaper coverage, national and regional reporting, and the French- and English-language media. They also describe how judges and journalists understand and interact with one another amid often-clashing legal and journalistic cultures, offering a rich and detailed account of the relationship between two of the most important institutions in Canadian life.

Media Coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada

Last Word

Richard Sutherland

Duane Bratt

Keith Brownsey

In 2015, the New Democratic Party won an unprecedented victory in Alberta. Unseating the Progressive Conservatives -- who had won every provincial election since 1971 -- they formed an NDP government for the first time in the history of the province. Orange Chinook is the first scholarly analysis of this election. It examines the legacy of the Progressive Conservative dynasty, the PC and NDP campaigns, polling, and online politics, providing context and setting the stage. It highlights the importance of Alberta's energy sector and how it relates to provincial politics with focus on the oil sands, the carbon tax, and pipelines. Examining the NDP in power, Orange Chinook draws on Indigenous, urban, and rural perspectives to explore the transition process and government finances and politics. It explores the governing style of premier Rachel Notley, paying special attention to her response to the 2016 For McMurray wildfire and to the role of women in politics. Orange Chinook brings together Alberta's top political watchers in this fascinating, multi-faceted analysis.

Politics in the New Alberta

Orange Chinook

A comparative approach to judicial communication offering perspectives on the relationship between national supreme courts and the media covering them.

Justices and Journalists

Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media examines how political leaders have adapted to the challenges of social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and memes, among other means of persuasion. Established political leaders now use social media to grab headlines, respond to opponents, fundraise, contact voters directly, and organize their election campaigns. Leaders of protest movements have used social media to organize and galvanize grassroots support and to popularize new narratives: narratives that challenge and sometimes overturn conventional thinking. Yet each social media platform provides different affordances and different attributes, and each is used differently by political leaders. In this book, leading international experts provide an unprecedented look at the role of social media in leadership today. Through a series of case studies dealing with topics ranging from Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump's use of Twitter, to Justin Trudeau's use of selfies and Instagram, to how feminist leaders mobilize against stereotypes and injustices, the authors argue that many leaders have found additional avenues to communicate with the public and use power. This raises the question of whether this is causing a power shift in the relationship between leaders and followers. Together the chapters in this book suggest new rules of engagement that leaders ignore at their peril. The lack of systematic theoretically informed and empirically supported analyses makes Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media an indispensable read for students and scholars wishing to gain new understanding on what social media means for leadership.

Case Studies in Political Communication

Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media

Pierre Trudel

à qui le dernier mot?

La Cour suprême du Canada et les médias

Maria Bakardjieva

Frits Pannekoek

In the first volume of "How Canadians Communicate" the editors examined and assessed the health of Canada's cultural industries circa 2003. In this second volume, they not only undertake a new examination of Canada's current media health, but also turn their attention to analysing the impact of the startling pace of global media proliferation on our country's media institutions. The revolutionary changes underway in mass media technology, from blogs to peer-to-peer networks and the ubiquitous cell-phone, have all imposed structural modifications to global communication systems, inexorably altering the fundamental ways in which Canadians communicate. The editors have carefully chosen essays that address the central issues of today's global media environment from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Grouped under the headings 'The Debate over Policy', 'The Quest for Identity', and 'The Struggle for Control', the topics ranging from media concentration to foreign ownership and the challenge of mass communication in an increasingly multicultural community, underscoring the way in which our media has operated in the past and how it must now adapt to a new media landscape. There is little doubt that Canadian media and cultural institutions have been buffeted by the sheer magnitude of new communication technologies. But with change comes opportunity, and the ability to re-evaluate current paradigms and look for better and more effective ways of adapting to new circumstances. "How Canadians Communicate II" will illuminate the present media climate, and in doing so, suggest new and challenging paths forward that will utilise the vast array of media technology to strengthen a uniquely Canadian cultural identity.

Media, Globalization, and Identity

How Canadians Communicate II

Christopher Robb Waddell

Substantial changes have occurred in the nature of political discourse over the past thirty years. Once, traditional media dominated the political landscape, but in recent years Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Blackberrys have emerged as important tools and platforms for political campaigns. While the Canadian party system has proved surprisingly resilient, the rhythms of political life are now very different. A never-ending 24-hour news cycle has resulted in a never-ending political campaign. The implications of this new political style and its impact on political discourse are issues vigorously debated in this new volume of How Canadians Communicate, as is the question on every politician's mind: How can we draw a generation of digital natives into the current political dialogue? With contributions from such diverse figures as Elly Alboim, Richard Davis, Tom Flanagan, David Marshall, and Roger Epp, How Canadians Communicate IV is the most comprehensive review of political communication in Canada in over three decades - one that poses questions fundamental to the quality of public life. David Taras holds the Ralph Klein Chair in media studies at Mount Royal University. He served as an expert advisor to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and co-edited the first two volumes in the How Canadians Communicate series. He is the co-author of The Last Word: Media Coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada. Christopher Waddell is director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and holds the Carty Chair in business and financial journalism. He was formerly national editor for The Globe and Mail and Parliamentary bureau chief for CBC television news.

David Taras

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