Communication & Culture, Joint Program with Toronto Metropolitan University

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/27559

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Access status: Open Access ,
Trudeau Squared: An Analysis of the 1972 and 2021 Canadian Federal Elections
(2026-03-10) Vallesi, Davis Braden; MacLennan, Anne F.
The Canadian prime ministers Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Justin Trudeau, each serving as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, governed the country during periods that involved both crisis and social transformation. Related as father and son, the Trudeau prime ministers both experienced strong support upon their initial election to the prime minister’s office and developed a public image among citizens. Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Justin Trudeau were central individuals during the federal elections of 1972 and 2021, being regularly featured in newspaper coverage throughout these re-election campaigns. Comparatively analyzing newspaper coverage and Liberal Party campaign platforms corresponding to these two election periods supports arguments about the agenda of political topics, and details about the framing, tone, and structure within the coverage and platforms. Newspapers shape the process of voters becoming politically informed by reporting on activities of the campaign trail, circulating messages of political parties/candidates, and by shining a spotlight on political issues. Elections communication of political parties and candidates guides agenda setting during campaigns, conjointly influencing and being influenced by mass media outlets. Canadian election campaigns are useful events to employ agenda setting because they generate high levels of newspaper attention and strategic communication by political candidates and parties. Newspaper coverage of the 1972 and 2021 elections features similar political issues such as the economy, employment, and taxes; in particular, an economic slant is heavily present within the coverage. Newspaper coverage from 2021 features a rise in opinionated formats, alongside a subsequent decrease in journalistic objectivity when compared to 1972. While the 1972 Liberal Party platform does not mention Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 2021 Liberal Party platform is more leader-centric since many of the pledges are framed alongside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or the opposition party leaders. Newspaper coverage and the Liberal Party platform from 2021 displayed much more adversarial dialogue compared to the 1972 election; direct quotes of Justin Trudeau were also more frequently adversarial compared to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. As political information across the media landscape continues to evolve, newspaper coverage and campaign platforms remain worthwhile communication forms to track agenda setting during elections.
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Incredible voices: intimacy, embodiment, and belief in seances and smart tech
(2026-03-10) Borkowski, Alexandra McKee; Cecchetto, David
This dissertation examines how theories and practices associated with early 20th century séances resurface in contemporary voice user interfaces, particularly AI voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa. Addressing claims that “the future is voice,” a recurring tagline accompanying products and research that advance voicing as more natural or seamless mode of human-computer interaction, I turn to modern Spiritualism and psychical research as a historical counterpoint that unsettles these assumptions. Séances comprise complex and contradictory vocal performances—what psychical researchers describe as “wildly incredible” phenomena—that both fracture and reify voice’s presumed intimacy, naturalness, and human-ness. The practices associated with modern Spiritualism and psychical research also demonstrate a preoccupation with voice as means to verify, lend credibility, or cultivate faith in intangible systems, and indeed in technology as such—a strategy shared with proponents of contemporary AI exuberance. Voice—in both séances and contemporary tech—is characterized by ambivalences, contradictions, and co-presences; I interrogate the ways that voice, in these contexts, signals present non-presences (Chapter 2), conjures bodies while affirming a dream of disembodiment (Chapter 3), and troubles indexical ties to a singular speaking subject (Chapter 4). Drawing on perspectives from feminist STS, I further interrogate the ways that both séances and smart tech evoke gender and race as organizing principles, as tools for constructing connections and boundaries—whether confronting the unknown of the afterlife or the inscrutability of algorithmic systems and big data infrastructures. This dissertation comprises archival research into several Spiritualist circles operating in North America in the early 20th century, which share a notable emphasis on voice in their séance practices, as well as an analysis of contemporary discourse regarding voice user interfaces. I also interweave a discussion of media artworks throughout, as a means to amplify resonances between the past and the present, and to further unsettle dominant cultural imaginaries regarding what voices are understood to be and do.
Access status: Open Access ,
Nothing to See Here: Generative AI, Neoliberal Crisis, and Intensified Counterinsurgency
(2026-03-10) Richards, Grayson; Fisher, Caitlin
Examining generative artificial intelligence (genAI) as a discursive and technical agent deployed in response to the ongoing crisis of neoliberal legitimacy, this dissertation advances the claim that so-called “safe” models extend the counterinsurgent (COIN) mode of governance, both as an effect of the technology’s inherent mode of visualizing “meaning” from unstructured data, and through their operationalization as instruments of epistemic and political management. Anchored by Mirzoeff’s genealogy of Visuality—defined as the ‘visualization’ of the social in ways that separate subjects and authorize centralized control—the dissertation’s narrative is organized into three parts. The first develops a historico-genealogical account of media, visuality, and power, showing how media technologies reflect and intensify particular visualities, culminating in the emergence of algorithms as the media form native to a mode of visualization which ‘sees’ the social as a heterogeneous field to be stabilized through counterinsurgency. Part two narrates the current intensification as an establishment response to the deepening crisis of neoliberal governmentality and the runaway aggregation of insurgency enabled by platform algorithms, securitizing genAI through appeals to epistemic integrity, AI safety, and existential risk in authorization of extrapolitical information controls. Finally, part three traces this intensification of COIN through an analysis of the complementary regulations, technical countermeasures and epistemic interventions constructing the “safe” model as a palliative to the “existential threats” of AI-enhanced disinformation and its corollary: infocalypse. GenAI emerges at a conjuncture where digital networks have made it increasingly difficult to sustain stability via COIN alone. This dissertation contends that, absent meaningful political economic reformation, authority has instead resorted to progressively heavy-handed interventions in the digital public arena, birthing a complex of protocols which in effect produce “safe” generativity as a means of policing epistemic and political legitimacy through the tactical disaggregation of mounting insurgency. Recognizing that, while an extension of COIN visuality, genAI simultaneously reveals this intensification as the product of an ultimately mutable system, the dissertation concludes with a speculation on the possibility of appropriating generativity to visualize realities emancipated from the oppressive legacies of Visuality.
Access status: Open Access ,
"What is a Newsfluencer?": Conversations About Identity, Social Media Platforms, and Journalism Boundaries
(2025-11-11) Hopkins, Destiny Anne; Bergstrom, Kelly
This thesis examines the journalistic field position and perspectives of U.S. and Canadian “newsfluencers”: a portmanteau coined by Edward Hurcombe (2024) of “news” and “influencer.” Newsfluencers are content creators who regularly post about news across social media platforms and employ social media influencer (SMI) marketing practices, like self-branding, to cultivate engaged and participatory audiences. SMIs are internet personalities with substantial followings that ‘influence’ their audiences’ lifestyle and purchasing decisions. Focusing specifically on non-affiliated newsfluencers—or creators with no formal journalistic training or media background—through semi-structured interviews, this research explores how they: 1) navigate platforms and SMI strategies to gain followers, 2) establish relationships of trust and credibility, and 3) identify as ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of journalism. Using field theory and boundary work to guide analysis, the findings add to existing literature surrounding newsfluencers and illuminate the role of non-affiliated newsfluencers in connecting with contemporary news audiences.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Effects of Culture and Cultural Media on COVID-19 Community Response
(2025-11-11) Chu, Terri Oi-Li; MacLennan, Anne F.
The side-by-side communities of Markham and Vaughan Ontario, situated directly north of Toronto have similar income profiles, housing types, education, and age demographics. Both cities share consistent policies as members of the Regional Municipality of York. Yet despite similarities, a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, Vaughan saw 96% higher infection rates than Markham. One key difference in the demographics between Markham and Vaughan is the population of ethnically Chinese people. Markham has 77% visible minority and 45% ethnically Chinese population. Vaughan has an 8% ethnically Chinese population. The stark contrast in infection rates, despite similar socio-economic indicators, was the driving force behind this research. Key questions were whether culture or cultural influences played a role in pandemic behaviour. What role media consumed by diasporic communities had on decisions to wear a mask or practice social distancing, and how digital communication technologies can be used to influence pandemic behaviour. The experiences of Vaughan and Markham demonstrate a clear emphasis on economic issues in English-language Toronto-based media, which creates a bias of economic importance compared to Chinese language media, which focused on the health impacts of COVID-19. The coverage did not merely report on the pandemic; it mediated the response by its framing and messaging. Information flowed quickly from Chinese language sources to both individuals and family and friend group chats. The impact of this information flow was apparent as many Chinese Canadians adopted masking before mandates came into effect, in fact, many were masking while Canadian officials were asking people not to mask. Applied Science Communication, the science communication that attempts to influence either policy or public behaviour, should be treated differently from traditional forms of science communication. The political implications of behaviour compliance points to treating it more like political communication. The economic coverage of COVID-19 overshadowing the public health issues demonstrated how politically charged the issue became. As science and technology become more entwined in everyday life, scientists need to recognize the political implications of their work and research and communications should be done with this in mind.
Access status: Open Access ,
Requiem for a Century? Canadian Broadcasting Policy, Online Streaming Service Regulation, and Cultural Sovereignty in the Digital Age
(2025-11-11) Cooling, Christine Rose; MacLennan, Anne F.
Canada’s broadcasting policy debate reignited with the 2023 Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11), which brought streaming platforms under the nation’s cultural policy apparatus. Historically, Canadian broadcasting policy has sought to support both the economy and culture of the nation-state through regulating radio and television; however, the transnational media landscape of the twenty-first century, marked by the rise of American-based streaming services, has disrupted this regime. This research historicizes Canadian broadcasting policy debates while examining reactions to the Online Streaming Act: framed as necessary government intervention, an invocation of twentieth-century cultural nationalism, or somewhere in between. Analyzing media discourses alongside political texts, this thesis argues that while the Online Streaming Act is often articulated to the preservation of cultural sovereignty in the digital age, efforts to future-proof broadcasting policy remain tethered to enduring tensions over nation-building, cultural expression, and normative regulatory philosophy in Canada.
Access status: Open Access ,
An Overheated Dollar: How the Framing of the 1970s Inflation Led to the Swapping of Social Spending with Finance, and the Consequences for Our Wellbeing
(2025-07-23) Hansen, Keah; Hayward, Mark P.
This dissertation performs longitudinal textual analysis of twelve Economic Reports of the President- the premier American federal economic policy planning document published annually by the President and the Council of Economic Advisors- from the 1960s to the 1990s to propose that starting in the late 1970s, both Democratic and Republican US administrations deliberately and dramatically turned to promoting financial investment for citizen wellbeing over social spending as a response to shifting framings and consensus that government spending on social programs was the primary cause of rising economic inflation. Social programs had been lauded in the 1960s and early 1970s as necessary to achieve maximum economic growth and ensure citizen wellbeing, and were building off Keynesian-oriented economic ideology from the 1940s which proposed that full employment would optimize economic production. These beliefs were embedded in the initial purpose for the publication of the Economic Reports of the President which was mandated by the Full Employment Act of 1946. This dissertation proposes that with the shifting perceptions of social programs, inflation and finance in the 1970s, the Economic Reports of the President assumed a role of posturing responsibility for citizen wellbeing and economic productivity while shifting the deliverance to investment, which yielded widening inequality. The analysis of the Economic Reports of the President in this dissertation illustrates specific policies adopted by presidential administrations in the 1970s to promote investment, including: Gerald Ford’s administration criticizing social spending policy and the Jimmy Carter administration implementing pro-investment policy such as reducing the capital gains tax, approving of housing inflation, creating the 401(k) pension system and rebranding social spending as charity. As this dissertation shows, presidential administrations through the 1980s and 1990s continued to actively promote financial investment for citizen wellbeing instead of social spending. This dissertation uses a biopolitical framework to trace the evolving commitments to citizen wellbeing of government from the 1960s to the 1990s and the overlap with governance and economic growth strategies. It suggests that governments of the 1960s and early 1970s viewed citizen wellbeing as central to high productive economic growth while later governments do not view citizen wellbeing as central to economic growth, and instead as a secondary strategy to be achieved via financial investment. The dissertation also proposes that the Economic Reports of the President analyzed produce economic rhetoric and expectations for wellbeing as much as they reflect political discourse. As such, the turn to consistent promotion of investment to achieve citizen wellbeing in the Economic Reports of the President has created consequences wherein citizen precarity is normalized and accepted as the authentic limits of government provision, and not as a fabrication based on bipartisan framing of a historic economic crisis that was produced and narrated in the Reports themselves. The final chapter of the dissertation focuses on contemporary impacts of the turn to financialization of citizen wellbeing in the Economic Reports of the President, suggesting that the renewed use of the term “American Dream” to connote financial achievement in Economic Reports of President in the twenty-first century indicates attempts to create collective ideology around economic inequity while the deliberately anti-inflation themes of names of recent social spending bills and their limited range reflect the hauntings of the framings of the 1970s inflation. The dissertation proposes that there is a need to de-financialize economies and provision of citizen wellbeing, to achieve greater future equity and shared wellness.
Access status: Open Access ,
Best of Both Worlds: A Phenomenological Exploration of East Asian Diasporic Identity Through Virtual Reality
(2024-11-07) Ashizawa, Kaede Claire; de Jesuús, Desirée
While East Asian diaspora studies have addressed inequities imposed by hegemonic epistemologies on diasporic communities and identities, expressing the equally important politics of diasporic agency and joy is also essential. My research-creation intervenes in this knowledge space through a phenomenological framework informed by cyborg theory and assemblage theory in a Virtual Reality experience. Reiterating metaphors of prostheses for diasporic transcendence, I consider if instrumental and ecological cultural affinities of East Asian-Canadian identity can be perceived as such. Mediated by the VR experience, I visualized this by inquiring about diasporic upbringing, everyday life, personal and institutional relationships, and cultural interactions. Informed by autoethnography and semi-constructed interviews with 14 East Asian-Canadian participants, I investigated what hybridity and empowerment look, feel, and mean when extensions of diasporic selfhood are metaphorized as prostheses in an assemblage network. I also explored the affordances of VR as a pedagogical medium to visualize this analysis.
Access status: Open Access ,
Examining the impact of new media on the news media from the integrated viewpoint of media ecology and the political economy of communication
(2024-11-07) Miroshnichenko, Andrey; Reisenleitner, Markus
This dissertation combines the methodologies of media ecology and the political economy of communication to explore the dramatic decline in the news industry, accompanied by the growing public distrust in the news media. The internet introduced more advanced platforms for news consumption and ad delivery, thereby depriving the news media of their former monopoly over news and advertising. The dissertation research identified a significant shift in the print media business model worldwide in the early 2010s: advertising revenue fell below the level of reader revenue (subscriptions and copy sales) for the first time in a century. Concurrently, all news media outlets transitioned online in efforts to establish digital modes of operation and revenue generation. In transitioning from the advertising-funded model that was predominant throughout the 20th century, the print media, the primary focus of this dissertation, shifted towards prioritizing digital subscriptions. This led them to become increasingly dependent on digital audiences. Given that textual media (the press) have historically been the primary drivers of discourse in the public sphere, the significant changes in the press and the digital challenges faced by other forms of news media have had a profound impact on professional standards of journalism and the principles of discourse formation in society overall. Connecting media ecology and the political economy of communication is an interdisciplinary approach that provides new angles for analyzing changes in the news media and journalism in the digital era. To advance this novelty, the dissertation employs a variety of methods from both media ecology and the political economy of communication.
Access status: Open Access ,
The cultural mediation of the margin
(2024-11-07) Haque, Abu Faiz Md Aminul ; Reisenleitner, Markus
Identities are never fully unified but are considered fragmented and a process of becoming rather than being, in which the process of identification privileges some and excludes others. Identities also become complicated through the cultural and technological mediation of the dominant ideologies within the mechanisms of power and control. Hence, it requires a cross-cultural fluidity to unpack the alienation and entanglement brought about by the everyday spatial practices of the dominant culture into a space that is also occupied by other ethnocultural groups. The research does not rely on a particular discipline. Rather, it draws on several interdisciplinary fields of study including Canadian Cultural Studies, Visual Culture Studies, Marginality Studies, Ethnic Studies, Identity Studies, and Spatial Studies, as Communication and Culture by nature is interdisciplinary. It challenges the discursive practices perpetuated by the dominant ideologies that shape the identities of marginalized groups in an otherwise hybrid living environment in Canada. The research uses a triangulation of methodologies: a visual narrative, an analysis of images from two newspapers, and participant interviews to explore the cultural mediation of the margin. The visual narrative analyzes the images shared by the participants as well as the photos taken by the researcher. It also analyzes the images used in two newspapers. The images shared by the participants explore their homes, workplaces, and social spaces, including their culture, festivals, family life, leisure activities, etc. The analysis of the images supplements the interviews, while the visual narrative provides an introspection of the marginal space along with their struggle. The findings suggest the existence of a hegemonic culture, a set of ideologies and body politics that privilege the dominant group(s) to reproduce a specific national discourse and pedagogy. However, a hybrid form of living also constantly challenges this narrative to facilitate the voices of the other: the marginalized, the displaced, and the immigrants. The research thus expands our knowledge of the cultural production of identities within the national discourse of the so-called multicultural Canada.
Access status: Open Access ,
Retro Resonance: The Hauntological Power of Post-Retro Aesthetics in Videogames
(2024-11-07) Dolan, Patrick Ronald; Boyd, Jason
Modern mainstream video games, or AAA games, are perpetually pushing toward hyperrealist graphics and complex gameplay, requiring higher budgets and ever-growing development teams while controlling risk as much as possible. The result is a homogenized product that appeals to the sensibilities of a limited demographic of young, white or Japanese, straight, non-disabled, and neurotypical men and end up excluding or alienating others. This state of the industry has historically been seen as not only unproblematic, but as normal. This is partly due to our current state of “capitalist realism” (Fisher, 2009), where society not only sees oppressive capitalist practices as natural but cannot even imagine an alternative. Santiago Zabala (2017) claims that to break out of naturalizing ideologies like capitalist realism we need an aesthetic force: something to shock us out of our distribution of the sensible (Rancière, 2011), our stable and secure sense of how the world is and interrupt the flow of this stagnant progressivism. I argue that one aesthetic force in video games are pixel graphics and simplified gameplay, or post-retro gaming (Fulton & Fulton, 2010) from recent games, that use hauntology to glean elements of the past to create new experiences and stories. Hauntology is a progressive artistic practice that imagines a better future by salvaging parts of the past (Fisher, 2012, 2014), more nuanced than regressive nostalgia, though it can be entangled with it. To explore the connection between hauntology and post-retro games, this project outlines the problems with AAA games industry, examines the misconceptions of indie games today, and lays out in detail the relation of hauntology to theories on affect, aesthetics, and video games. This is followed with a critical analysis of games such as Dys4ia (2012), Undertale (2015), and Celeste (2018) for how exactly they use hauntology to create powerful, affective experiences that subvert narratives and gameplay of the problematic video game mainstream and point to a better future in games. I conclude by problematizing commercial indie games and pointing ultimately to anti-capitalist, DIY gamemaking platforms, in particular the accessible, 1bit engine Bitsy, as the future of hauntology in games culture.
Access status: Open Access ,
“No one said anything about driving in Film Preservation 101!”: The Lived Experience of Disability, Chronic Illness, and Neurodiversity in Moving Image Archival Education
(2024-11-07) Marlatt, Michael Alexander; Marchessault, Janine
Disability, neurodiversity, and chronic illness are underrepresented in moving image archives. Lack of representation is felt within collections, users of archives, and most importantly for the purposes of this project, staffing. Archivists often need advanced level education to work in the field. Archival education is the first potential employment barrier. This project highlights accessibility gaps in North American moving image archival education programs by sharing the lived experience of disabled students, neurodivergent students, and students with a chronic illness studying and working within moving image archives. Through semi-structured interviews with students, alumni, and faculty of George Eastman Museum’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation; NYU’s Moving Image Archiving Preservation program; UCLA’s former Moving Image Archive Studies program at UCLA and current MLIS Media Archival Studies specialization; and the Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management program at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), students and alumni share their experiences from the application process until graduation. My own perspective is also included as a person with epilepsy who graduated from the program at TMU. Key theories in archival studies, archival representation, film preservation, disability studies, cinema studies, and archival accessibility practises inform contextualization and analysis of these testimonies to lived experience, with a constant awareness of the interdisciplinarity existing within these fields. Concepts emphasized throughout include the political/relational model of disability, care, affect, universal design, academic ableism, trauma-informed archival practise, archival silences/bias, “the archive” vs archives, the person-centered archive, and community archives. Students’ experiences are organized around three themes: institutions hosting the programs, the programs, and the archival space. I argue that to create more inclusive archival education programs and overall field, it is vital to engage with the lived experiences of disabled students, neurodivergent students, and students with chronic illnesses. Knowledge mobilization is at the center of this project. This dissertation not only highlights accessibility gaps in moving image archival education but also gives suggestions for how to correct them. Collaboration is necessary for archival inclusion; the student perspective is critical for inclusionary growth.
Access status: Open Access ,
Climate Crisis, Youth and Media: a story analysis of Geo-Doc videos as agents for social transformations
(2024-11-07) Alsop, Dylan Wallace; Tschofen, Monique
The last three decades have witnessed paradigmatic transformations in how youth engage in climate crisis advocacy practices. My thesis offers analysis of a United Nations-endorsed policy advocacy project, The Youth Climate Report (YCR). The project comprises short youth documentaries geo-positioned on a virtual map combined with an annual report submitted to United Nations Council of parties (COP) negotiations. Inspired by the project as an initiative of “Speaking Youth to Power” (Terry, 2024), my thesis seeks to better understand, celebrate, and contribute to this initiative and more broadly to youth climate crisis documentary multimedia. Recognizing that climate crisis is in part a storytelling crisis and drawing on selected scholarship in media studies (McLuhan, Williams), youth studies (Hall, Castañeda, Foucault), and climate studies (Callison, Hulme, Solnit), I reflect on ways in which climate crisis and youth are framed and formed in stories bound up with social power relations. I analyzed a sample of YCR Geo-Doc media documentaries—20% of those available, n=130—asking two questions: How do Geo-Doc videos story climate crisis? How do Geo-Doc videos story youth? My comparative analysis reveals four influential climate stories (Impacts, Humans, Resources, and Solutions) entangled with four stories of youth (as Witnesses, as Heroes, Inheritors and as Vulnerable). My conclusion follows a political stance in which I interrogate these eight stories and alternatives and the extent to which they reproduce pre-existing stories with associated power relations thereby supporting the status quo and/or offer new ways that resist and challenge these. These discussions are more normative, seeking to identify youth climate crisis stories that are underrepresented and now urgently needed.
Access status: Open Access ,
Community, Housing, and Crime: Framing the News Coverage of Lawrence Heights and Rexdale
(2024-11-07) Boateng, Mary Ann Asantewah; MacLennan, Anne F.
Why is there less media coverage or public outcry when Black or racialized people lose their lives in Lawrence Heights and Rexdale? My dissertation started with this simple question. By studying the intersection of media, housing, community and crime, my dissertation sheds light on how mainstream and independent new sources contribute to stereotypes and metaphors that influence the public perception of Lawrence Heights and Rexdale. Starting in 1960, ending in 2020, I collected news from the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and Share in the three categories of housing, crime, community. I used 9 variables to determine what type of news appeared in a higher frequency to show how independent, Black news media has told a more nuanced story. My research found there is work to do in countering the high frequency of crime stories in the mainstream news, and the presence of independent publications like Share are vital in presenting counternarratives that give a voice to the community. As well as representing how residents, community groups and activists have come and are coming together to reclaim their right to the city.
Access status: Open Access ,
Networks of Care: Digitally mediated mutual aid during the Covid-19 Pandemic
(2024-11-07) Lyne, Isabella May; Singh, Rianka
Throughout the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic, mutual aid, especially digitally mediated mutual aid, proliferated as communities responded the challenges of the pandemic and its social, political and economic consequences. This thesis explores how social media platforms shaped the practice of mutual aid throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic in Toronto, and how those engaged in mutual aid navigated the challenges created by those platforms. The thesis combines a review of the online content of three digitally mediated mutual aid projects (the Facebook group CareMongering-TO, and the Instagram accounts OpenYrPurse and Climate Justice Toronto (CJTO)), with two interviews with account administrators. Drawing on both platform studies and feminist media studies, it argues that while social media enables new forms of care to emerge, it can also create profound challenges for people, particularly marginalized people, as they try to care for each other.
Access status: Open Access ,
Mediated Meat: Buying and Selling Beef in Canadian Supermarkets
(2024-07-18) Speakman,Kelsey Leigh; Berland, Jody
Revealing supermarkets as significant mediators of food ethics, this dissertation delves into the contemporary “beef” with beef. Critics wonder if ethical beef consumption is possible, since dominant beef systems have been associated with environmental deterioration, health crises, and unsafe work. As supermarkets are primary places where people encounter beef, they are valuable sites for research on these deliberations. The ubiquitous role that supermarkets play in beef distribution is indicative of the power they hold at key junctures of the material and affective networks that facilitate foods’ movements. To assess the extent to which supermarkets promote ethical beef consumption through these “infrastructures of feeling”, the dissertation presents a case study of beef shopping in supermarkets owned by Canada’s largest food retail company, Loblaw Companies Limited. The study compiles evidence from promotional materials, in-store observations, expert interviews with management, and focus groups with shoppers. Using critical discourse analysis, it investigates the relationships between beef shopping participants that are expressed in the data. The project builds on the literature of “cryopolitics” (the governance of frozen time-spaces between life and death) to characterize Loblaw’s supermarkets as “cryopolitical mediators” that shape conditions for flourishing in Canada’s cattle-beef infrastructure. Chapters address central themes that emerge from the data—trust, choice, ghosts—to depict multiple interpretations of the (un)ethical beef futures that Loblaw offers: from support for Loblaw as a credible risk manager; to critiques of Loblaw’s activities that have been reinvented as corporate social responsibility initiatives; and rejections of Loblaw’s plans for beef provisioning, as inspired by haunting signs of organic mutability. The study finds that Loblaw approaches ethical beef consumption through a logic of freshness, whereby profitable elements of the current cattle-beef infrastructure are preserved based on perpetually deferred promises of nourishment. The dissertation reimagines the apparent gap between eaters and food sources that has been blamed for perpetuating the harms of the beef industry. Whereas an emphasis on separation invokes corrective efforts to fill in missing information, the framework of mediation shifts attention to the work of adjusting perceptions in the interest of finding responses to the relational entanglements of eating and being meat.
Access status: Open Access ,
Clocked by the App: Discovering Queer Identity on TikTok
(2024-07-18) Argyle, Sophie; Driver, Susan
Since 2020, anecdotes of ‘TikTok knew I was queer before I did’ have been prevalent. To examine this phenomenon, this thesis uses semi-structured interviews with five TikTok users in Canada who discovered one facet of their queer identity on the platform. This study seeks to understand these users’ experiences with identity discovery on TikTok and how TikTok’s affordances and limitations contributed to their experiences. This study finds that queer assemblages operate on the platform, users have paradoxical experiences with TikTok, and as a corporate platform, TikTok is limited in what it can offer queer users. These findings uncover fertile areas for future research and offer valuable insights for queer people to imagine a platform that better serves our needs.
Access status: Open Access ,
Anatomy of Higher Education Fundraising in Canada
(2024-07-18) Leibel, Cynthia; MacLennan, Anne
Fundraising campaigns have made a significant difference in the communities they work within, for the causes and initiatives that matter to donors. Within Canada, we have one of the largest and most vibrant not-for-profit sectors, including charities supporting the arts, environmental protection, professional associations, health and education (Hall, et al., 2005). To support these campaigns, Canadians donated approximately $10.6 billion in 2020 to charitable organizations across the country, a number decreasing every year (Government of Canada, 2022). The potential then for a systematic approach in profiling is critical to success, allowing for a more targeted approach for increased fundraising success and measurement (Smith & Lipsky, 1993). With over $22 billion dollars being donated online in 2010, an increase from around $7 billion dollars in 2006, online giving represents a significant portion of fundraising and continues to grow every year (Castillo, et al., 2014). Although there are large-scale philanthropic donations, there are many smaller donations that contribute to many organizations. Fundraising online creates a field where “equally important as the club of billionaires is to the future of philanthropy, so too are the contributions Americans of modest means channel through mass appeals that have so often worked in sync with large donations” (Zunz, 2012, p. 298-299). The focus of this research is that identification, relationship and social capital influence supportive behaviours for any not-for-profit. Social media data was scrapped from Instagram and X accounts from a select group of Universities in Canada, and a data analysis was then applied used Python and VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning) to understand sentiment, opinion and popularity of each accounts content. This work suggests that (1) marketing and communications practices are as important to not-for-profit organizations as they are for profit organizations, and this remains an area that it is a field of fundraising and communications practice that remains underserved, (2) that the factors that influence relationship in the alumni and student stakeholder groups are not utilized in communications strategy, specifically in social media groups and online communication, and (3) identify five potential strategies for communications success in fundraising and long-term post-secondary success.
Access status: Open Access ,
Manufacturing Dissent: A Mixed Methodological Analysis of Human Thought, Algorithmic Mediation, and Political Electioneering on Twitter
(2024-03-16) Ricciardone, Sophia Marie; Pelkey, Jamin; Walsh Matthews, Stéphanie
The invisible entanglements of deep learning algorithms with political communication on social media platforms like Twitter have complicated political discourse and the formation of public opinion in the digital age. Consequently, as we engage with the content distributed on social media, it is difficult to know whether we are engaging with virtual peers or political bots. At the same time, the invisible interventions of bots also conceal the electioneering processes set in motion within political discourse on social media. Evidence has shown that because our minds cannot discern between tweets posted by human peers and those posted by bots, we intuitively engage with all tweets as though they were produced by social peers. Thus, the nature of our cognitive engagement with all tweets posted on social media conforms to the same social psychological principles that we engage when interacting with other social beings. Across this dissertation, I contend that the convergence of human thought, digital mediation, and digital electioneering creates distortions in logic on Twitter, resulting in a phenomenon I call botaganda. As the decussation of three different modes of reasoning infiltrate discourse within online spaces, the nature of discourse within public debate becomes convoluted, rendering human thought and public opinion vulnerable to the interference and manipulation of political actors. I aim to demonstrate that botaganda compromises the cogency and reliability of political communication in the digital age, but it is also the driving force behind the tenor of bipartisan incivility, politically motivated expression of moral outrage, and polarization of constituencies in the digital age. This dissertation also proposes that the political instrumentalization of deep learning algorithms on social media platforms to shape political discourse violates citizens’ fundamental rights to the freedom of thought, judgement, and conscience according to Section 2 the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Access status: Open Access ,
Determining the Value of Open-Source Intelligence for Public Safety
(2024-03-16) Cioffi, Giovanna; Visano, Livy A.
The intent of this work is to determine the regard to which open-source intelligence (OSINT) is an effective tool for emergency management, especially in relation to public safety. This work seeks to accomplish this through meeting the following objectives: (1) examining OSINT from a public safety perspective, (2) identifying potential challenges and barriers that may limit an analyst’s use of OSINT tools and techniques; (3) exploring the changing nature of threats to national security and identifying how OSINT may provide a direct means of assisting with mitigation, prevention, preparation, response, and recovery; and, (4) by understanding how government analysts are training in OSINT collection and methodologies. The methodological approach to this research is qualitative in nature, focusing on case studies, tool exploration, and Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests. Although the results of this work concluded that OSINT can be regarded as an effective tool in maintaining public safety, it also raised concerns regarding legislation, policy, training, and technical infrastructure that must be addressed if OSINT were to remain effective. All this in consideration, the results of this work were impacted by limitations in access to information. Given the sensitive nature of some collection procedures and the overstrained ATIP request portal, a number of documents were not made available for evaluation and analysis - likely a result of classification level, security requirements, or the overall time it takes for ATIP coordinators to make these documents available for public disclosure. Moreover, in consideration to the results of this work, two main recommendations were provided: (1) Legislation & Policy: clarification of legislation, effective policy development, ongoing communication, and oversight; and (2) Training & Technical Infrastructure: establish clear OSINT tiers, establish mandatory training plans, and establish standardized methods to account for attribution. Together, these two recommendations can further strengthen the OSINT capability as a whole and ensure that it continues to be an effective tool for public safety.

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