Canadian Journalists Research Articles

Social media attacks against female Canadian journalists

I investigate in this brief empirical study the social media attacks against female Canadian journalists who have frequently been targeted with online abuse. I used purposive sampling to focus on three journalists: Rachel Gilmore (formerly with Global News), Erica Iffil (freelance with The Hill Times), and Saba Eitizaz (Toronto Star). I employed a mixed method approach to conduct this study by collecting all the available Twitter replies to these three journalists (n = 402,821) posted by 84,962 unique users. The digital analysis results show that there are slight differences in the quantity of attacks on these journalists, but the qualitative assessment of images associated with tweets indicate the need to use manual approaches to better understand the nuances and quality of these disinformation and often racist attacks.

Is It Us or Them? The Challenge of Getting Journalists to Participate in Academic Research

ABSTRACT For journalism research rooted in a sociological framework, gaining access to journalists is crucial for data collection. However, journalists are documentably difficult to recruit as participants, frequently due to limited time and resources in shrinking newsrooms, sometimes because of roadblocks put up by leery newsroom management. As part of the data collection process for the Canadian branch of the international Journalistic Role Performance project, researchers tracked issues raised by journalists that may have impacted survey recruitment and completion. These issues were frequently grounded in the context of survey questions designed to be operationalizable in vastly different cultures, and were also documented by other researchers in both the Global North and South who were cooperating in this comparative study. Despite first refusing or completely refusing survey participation, though, some Canadian journalists were willing to be interviewed, giving researchers the opportunity to explore how to best engage journalists in the research process, and design research tools to be shared in different media systems. Using a lens of social exchange, this paper provides unique insight, from the perspective of researchers and participants, on the importance of relationship-building as a focal point in order to adequately contextualize findings within a sociology of news framework.

Journalists’ Views and Management of Dark Participation

ABSTRACT This study investigates how Canadian journalists view dark participation and respond to it. Based on interviews with 15 journalists, it explores their concern about dark participation practices especially in relation to the issues of hate speech, dis/misinformation, and trolling. Combined with the ripple effects of social media in delivering news content, the respondents indicated that there are multiple challenges and concerns when dealing with dark participation such as attacks on women and different minority groups which might threaten social cohesion. The majority of respondents highlighted the psychological toll of dark participation and ways of dealing with it.

Epic Snowmen, Expert Takes, and Audience Orientation: How Journalistic Roles are Performed in Canadian Media

Exploring the differences between normative visions and actual practices (Mellado, 2020), through a content analysis of more than 3,700 news stories contextualized with surveys, and further unpacked by interviews with journalists, this article provides a comprehensive overview of journalistic role performance in Canada. Findings show few, yet distinct, differences between French and English media, and that Canadian journalists are often present in their stories; use high levels of infotainment; and demonstrate strong performance of both the civic and service roles compared to other countries, but perform far less of the watchdog role than journalists surveyed perceived.

Media coverage of Canadian Veterans, with a focus on post traumatic stress disorder and suicide

BackgroundA large corpus of research indicates that the media plays a key role in shaping public beliefs, opinions and attitudes towards social groups. Some research from the United States indicates that military Veterans are sometimes framed in a stereotypical and stigmatizing manner, however there is a lack of research on Canadian media coverage of Veterans. As such, the overarching aim of this study is to assess the tone and content of Canadian media coverage of military Veterans, with a focus on PTSD and suicide. The first objective is to document and analyze common themes, content and temporal patterns in Canadian media coverage of Veterans per se. The second objective is to examine common themes and content in the sub-set of articles having PTSD as a theme. The third objective is to assess adherence to responsible reporting of suicide guidelines in the sub-set of articles having suicide as a theme.MethodsWe used validated and systematic methods including use of key words, retrieval software and inter-rater reliability tests to collect and code news articles (N = 915) about Veterans from over 50 media sources during a 12-month period, with specific coding of articles about PTSD (N = 93) and suicide (N = 61).ResultsAnalysis revealed that the most common theme is ‘honour or commemoration of Veterans’ which occurred in over half of the articles. In contrast 14% of articles focused on danger, violence or criminality. In the sub-set of articles with PTSD as a theme, over 60% focused on danger, violence or criminality, while only around 1 in 3 focused on recovery, rehabilitation, or health/social service intervention. In the sub-set of articles about suicide, there was generally strong adherence to responsible reporting guidelines, though less than 5% gave help-seeking information. Moreover, most reporting on PTSD and suicide focused on a single anomalous murder-suicide incident, with few articles about suicide prevention, helpful resources and modifiable risk factors.ConclusionsThe results reveal some encouraging findings as well as a need to diversify media coverage of Canadian Veterans. This could be achieved through targeted educational outreach to help Canadian journalists responsibly report on Veterans and their mental health issues.

Veterans in the media: Assessing Canadian newspaper coverage of the Lionel Desmond murder-suicide

LAY SUMMARY The media can shape the opinions, beliefs, and attitudes of the public towards Veterans, Veterans’ issues, and Veteran suicide. Given the Lionel Desmond murder-suicide was covered extensively in Canadian media, the authors read and analyzed the tone and content of Canadian newspaper coverage of this incident, using social science methods. On the one hand, the authors found the media sometimes violated some of the best practice guidelines about how to responsibly report suicide and mental health when writing about the Lionel Desmond incident, for example, rarely including help-seeking information. On the other hand, journalists typically wrote about this incident in compassionate terms, calling for more action to help Veterans’ mental health, as well as more support for Veterans who are in transition to civilian life. In sum, the study reveals that much media coverage of the Lionel Desmond incident adhered to reporting guidelines, but there also remains room for improvement. The results indicate a need for more educational resources and better outreach to help Canadian journalists responsibly report issues around Veterans’ mental health and Veteran suicide.

Cloaked Meaning and Moral Craftwork: Progress and Perpetual Problems in the News Coverage of Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s Justice System

Background: This research offers a critical analysis of the “moral craftwork” of the news media’s coverage of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and the justice system.Analysis: This study’s thematic analysis of three case studies, spanning almost two decades, suggests a potential shift in how Canadian journalists report on racism and structural inequalities. Recent news coverage points toward a more transparent dialogue about racism.Conclusions and implications: This study finds problematic journalistic practices linger, occluding a broader understanding of racism and colonialism. This research aims to expand the reflexivity of journalists by spotlighting this type of storytelling.

“We Can’t Be Too Selective about This”: Immigration Advocacy in the Canadian English-Language Press, 1949–57

Immigration policy during the immediate years after the Second World War highly restricted the arrival of newcomers. Before 1947, Canada’s immigration system was a preferential one, with the highest priority given to British subjects coming to Canada from the United Kingdom, or from any of the British dominions, and the United States. Canada’s preferences then extended to Northern Europeans, then to Central and Southern Europeans. Chinese, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, and Spanish immigrants were excluded. During the years of Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent (1948–57), Canadians read about the economic benefits that a robust immigration policy promised in the English-language press. The St-Laurent government was under significant pressure to increase the flow of migrants into Canada. However, the Liberal government studiously monitored recent arrivals with a conservative approach to economic growth. The Canadian business community perceived this policy as too cautious, and their preference for a more robust policy frequently surfaced in the English-language press. This article shows that newspapers coverage across the country criticized the government’s immigration policy during the 1950s and advocated for an approach that accommodated more newcomers to spur population and economic growth. Through their coverage, the editors and journalists reasoned that boosting immigration accelerated the Canadian economy. English Canadian journalists and newspapers attempted to influence Canadians about the economic benefits of increasing migration to Canada.

Welcome to Media Rhetoric–Where Human Persuasion and Technological Means Collide

ABSTRACT The social world is made of rhetorical practices that constitute our sense of self. We are always using some kind of rhetoric exhorting others to understand our thoughts and influencing them to adopt new forms of doing and thinking. Central to persuasive communication today are Media. They not only help shape rhetoric, they are also a key means of disseminating rhetorical discourses. Media Rhetoric expression marks a fundamental stage of human communication and the development of civilization where Media became key rhetorical actors and social players. In this essay the scope of Media Rhetoric is briefly presented along with a discussion of two central fields of Media Rhetoric today -advertising and digital rhetoric. By focusing on two case-studies – a print advertising campaign by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) and the QuitNow app – I demonstrate how persuasive strategies evolved in mediatized societies. Closing the article, some notes on Media Rhetoric from a Policymaking perspective are offered and reasons advanced to consider it, in the near future, as an important object of public attention.

Just Who Do Canadian Journalists Think They Are? Political Role Conceptions in Global and Historical Perspective

AbstractIn view of the robust link often inferred between autonomous journalism and the strength of a society's democratic institutions, and against the background of current challenges to journalists’ traditional roles as purveyors of timely and independent information, we interviewed 352 Canadian journalists about their social and political roles and the influences on their news choices. Comparison of their responses against an international data set (N= 27,567) suggests that Canadian journalists place greater value on detached monitorial roles and claim relatively greater autonomy from commercial and other influences on their work. Further, in comparing these findings to an influential panel study from 1996 to 2003, we conclude that the Canadian journalists’ “credo,” focused on neutral reporting and oriented more to perceived public interest than to business or audience interests, remains surprisingly intact despite contemporary pressures on news forms and business models. This professed neutrality is mitigated by a desire to promote diversity and tolerance.

Bearing the Burden of Corporate Restructuring: Job Loss and Precarious Employment in Canadian Journalism

ABSTRACTThis article reports on job loss among Canadian journalists between 2012 and 2016. Building on Australian research on the aftermath of job loss in journalism, this article examines the experiences of 197 journalists who were laid off or who took a buyout, voluntarily or not, due to corporate restructuring in Canadian media (both French and English). To date, no scholarly research in Canada has examined what happens to journalists after they are laid off, including the personal and professional experiences journalists undergo when they lose their job and seek a new one, or the implications of these experiences for Canadian journalism in general. Overall, in a result that mirrors laid-off Australian journalists’ experiences of re-employment, we find a dramatic shift among journalists’ employment status and a decline in incomes after job loss. The majority of our survey participants moved from full-time, secure, and well remunerated work to more precarious forms of employment in and out of journalism, including freelance, contract and part-time. This shift in employment status demonstrates underlying precariousness in Canadian journalism. We argue that job loss in journalism has implications for broader social life and for journalism as an institution vital for participation in democratic life.

The Ambiguous Definition of Open Government: Parliamentarians, Journalists and Bloggers Define Open Government In Accordance With Their Interests

AbstractWe present the results of a 2014 survey of Canadian parliamentarians, journalists and bloggers in which respondents were asked to rank competing definitions of open government. Overall, respondents preferred to define open government in terms of access to information and sources. However, controlling for age, ideology and language, we also found that respondents in the different positions ranked definitions of open government differently. Journalists are more likely than any other group to define open government in terms of access to information and sources. In contrast, parliamentarians who were members of a governing party were as likely to choose definitions of open government that emphasized public participation as they were to choose definitions that emphasized access to information. Opposition parliamentarians share more similarities with government parliamentarians than with journalists. These results suggest that key actors in the Canadian policy landscape define open government in ways that are consistent with their institutional interests. We suggest that these results reflect ways in which open government operates more like a buzzword, which helps explain the common pattern whereby opposition parties make promises to be more open and, after taking power, operate in less open ways. Moreover, these results raise questions about the extent to which open government can actually operate as an organizing principle.

The Process is the Punishment: Criminal Libel and Political Speech in Canada

The number of U.S. states with criminal libel laws has been steadily declining since the 1960s, and the offense has been struck down in the United Kingdom and several former British colonies. In Canada, however, criminal libel not only continues to exist, but appears to be enjoying a resurgence, albeit one that has flown beneath the radar of Canadian lawyers, judges, and journalists, who frequently assert that criminal libel prosecutions are rare. The research reported in this article found more than 400 prosecutions since the beginning of the twenty-first century. While many of these cases were brought against people who disseminated sexual slurs against former romantic partners, in a substantial number of cases criminal libel law was used to punish citizens’ political speech, particularly speech critical of police or other justice system officials, a use wholly inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“But it is not getting any safer!”: The Contested Dynamic of Framing Canada's Military Mission in Afghanistan

AbstractThe Canadian government and military struggled to control its media framing of the war in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2009. This content analysis (n= 900) critically investigates the mediated dynamic of framing Canada's military mission in Afghanistan. This study found that while journalists overwhelmingly indexed their stories to elite sources, they frequently impeached the frames sponsored by government and military leaders. Journalists used elite criteria to fact check the frames of military and government leaders. Most of the coverage was episodic and event-oriented rather than thematic and contextual. While Canadian journalists challenged official claims of improving security, for instance, their coverage lacked context and critical appraisal of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan, raising questions about journalism's normative role in Canadian democracy.

Political journalists’ corporate and personal identities on Twitter profile pages: A comparative analysis in four Westminster democracies

The practice for journalists to present an identity and brand the self on social media has become common across many newsrooms, yet its practice is still poorly understood. Focusing on journalists’ self-representations on the social network site Twitter, this study aims to address the lack of empirical understanding through an analysis of the identities which political journalists present on their Twitter profile pages. A total of 679 accounts of parliamentary press gallery journalists in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom were analyzed, with a focus on various textual and visual pieces of professional and personal information. The article develops scales of corporate and personal identity, finding that UK and Canadian journalists most strongly differentiate between personal and corporate identities. Differences across countries are linked to political and economic aspects of the respective media systems.

The Snowden Archive-in-a-Box: A year of travelling experiments in outreach and education

The Snowden Archive-in-a-Box is an offline wireless network and web server providing private access to a replica of the Snowden Digital Surveillance Archive. The online version is hosted by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. A work-in-development since April 2015, the Archive-in-a-Box is both a research tool and a tool for public education on data surveillance. The original version is powered with battery packs and housed in a 1960s spy style briefcase. When it is turned on, anybody in the vicinity can access the archive by connecting their wireless device to the Snowden Archive WiFi network and browsing to a website. Open the briefcase up and one finds a wood panel with a flatscreen inset, playing back the IP traffic of the archive's current users. Thus, while an audience such as a class of students or workshop group can access the Snowden documents and learn about mass surveillance from primary materials, they are also shown what data surveillance ‘looks like’. This Commentary explores my experiences during the first year of the Snowden Archive-in-a-Box. I examine my experiences as an international traveller carrying a suspicious briefcase of Top Secret materials and this project's reception by certain audiences. The project is still a prototype, yet it is quickly gathering a following and a number of permanent installations around the world. What could this mean for the future of surveillance education and leaks-enabled research?

The professional ‘Creed’ of francophone journalists in linguistic majorities and minorities in Canada

Abstract Scientific research concentrating on Quebec journalism and media has been conducted for nearly 40 years. It may be said that in 2014, the domain is richer and more fertile than ever. Such an emphasis on Quebec, however, gives the impression that there is no francophone journalism worthy of research outside of that province. To compensate somewhat for this shortcoming, I propose two proceedings. First, I will sketch a sociological portrait of journalists in Canadian francophone minorities in order to present a more general overview of this population. Second, I will compare their professional priorities with those of two homologous groups: Quebec journalists, and francophone and anglophone Canadian journalists. This comparison will allow us to observe that journalists in francophone minorities (JFMs) are not so different after all from their counterparts, though they have certain distinguishing traits that I will attempt to explain.

(Mis)Representing the 2008 Prorogation: Agendas, Frames, and Debates in Canada’s Mediacracy

In this article, we explore the role of the Canadian media during the 2008 parliamentary crisis. While the crisis was resolved when the Governor General granted a request for prorogation that allowed the Prime Minister to avoid a vote of no-confidence, debate persists about the wisdom of such action. We argue this event represents an important case study in understanding how the Canadian media communicates essential principles of parliamentary democracy. Five years later, and based on recent research, we compare survey results on the 2008 prorogation between 10 leading Canadian journalists and commentators, and 30 constitutional scholars and former advisers to the Crown.

Verification as a Strategic Ritual

While a concerted quest for accuracy is seen by many journalists as central to their professional identity, informal rules of practice for achieving news accuracy are elusive and highly nuanced. We conducted post hoc qualitative interviews with 28 semi-randomly selected Canadian journalists working for French- and English-language newspapers; each journalist reconstructed in detail the process of verification used in reporting a single newspaper story. Findings suggest considerable diversity in verification strategies, at times mirroring social scientific methods (source triangulation, analysis of primary data sources or official documents, semi-participant observation), and different degrees of reflexivity or critical awareness of journalists' own blind spots and limitations. Most interviewees expressed passionate support for the norm of verification, but described a range of pragmatic compromises when selecting various types of facts for, and when conducting, verification. Proper names, numbers and some other concrete details were verified with greater care than some other types of factual statement. On the other hand, statements were frequently relayed, with or without attribution, based on a single subject's word. We also observed that verification cannot easily or consistently be identified as a distinct process within the normal course of reporting: rather, the relationship between the reporting and verification processes may often be circular, and some verification rests in knowledge derived from a reporter's earlier work.

Book Review: The Sweet Sixteen: The Journey that Inspired the Canadian Women’s Press Club, by Linda Kay

The Sweet Sixteen: The Journey that Inspired the Canadian Women's Press Club. Linda Kay. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012. 228 pp. $34.95 hbk.In June 1904, sixteen Canadian journalists boarded a luxurious train car bound for the St. Louis World's Fair. It was a newsworthy trip for more than one reason: they were female and about to report on a global exposition, undoubtedly the biggest story of the year. At the turn of the century, the few dozen women who worked as journalists in Canada typically penned articles on etiquette and social events for women's pages, and they rarely traveled for assignments. That was about to change.In this enjoyable road-trip narrative, Linda Kay, associate professor and chair of Concordia University's Department of Journalism, describes a journey that helped Canada's female journalists achieve professional legitimacy and led to the formation of the Canadian Women's Press Club (CWPC). As the first women's press club in the world to claim a national membership, the CWPC would endure 100 years.But the sixteen women traveling in the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) car could not know any of this. Dressed in the day's fashion of floor-length tweed skirts, shirt- waists, and large-brimmed hats, the women were excited and a little nervous. For some, the assignment marked their first reporting venture. The novices also were awe- struck by the few stars among them, such as Kathleen Blake Coleman of the Mail and Empire, one of Canada's largest newspapers. Known by her readers as Kit Coleman, she had become famous for covering the 1898 Spanish American War from Cuba.CPR sponsored the journalists' ten-day trip. The railway wanted to entice immi- grants to western Canada and thus ensure the transcontinental line it had completed in 1885 would enjoy brisk traffic. Its publicity-savvy officials knew a group of women traveling alone to the World's Fair would garner a great deal of press coverage about Canada and their company, and they were right. The railway's public relations appara- tus, although not a focus of this book, is an interesting side note.The author deftly places the women's stories within the political and social context of Canada at the start of the twentieth century. In 1904, women in Canada did not have the right to vote or hold public office. Married women found it difficult to continue professional careers. Kay shows that the cultural differences of the country's dual language citizenry are reflected in this group of journalists, which was evenly split between English- and French-speakers. …