Communication & Culture, Joint Program with Toronto Metropolitan University

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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Open Access
Navigating a Predominantly White Industry: Identity in Canadian Media
(2024-03-16) Seraphin, Perrye-Delphine; Walsh-Matthews, Stephanie
This thesis investigates the state of representation for Black and racialized talent (public personalities, hosts, anchors, and contributors) in both French and English Canadian media, specifically in broadcasting and digital media. It is also focused on understanding the experience of Black and racialized people who work in the Canadian media industry and how identity affects the opportunities of these individuals. Therefore, this thesis is guided by two research questions: What is the professional experience of Black and racialized people who work in Canadian media? Moreover, how do they negotiate their racialized identity in the Canadian media industry? Through a literature analysis, I explore how key scholars have critically examined whiteness, colorism and multiculturalism through a critical race theory lens. Through the use of surveys and interviews as methodological frameworks, this research provides insights based on the experiences of Black and racialized people. After analyzing through a critical discourse lens, four main themes are revealed: notions of otherness, barriers of entry, colorism and the experience in the workplace.
Open Access
More than a Monolith: Podcasting Authentic Self-Concepts and Cultural Expressions in Canada
(2024-03-16) Donison, Jeffrey Maxwell; MacLennan, Anne
This dissertation explores how podcasters from different racial and ethnic groups in Canada use podcasting to articulate their own identities and represent themselves and their communities through sound and language. Ten non-public podcasts were compared to ten publicly produced podcasts from the CBC between 2015 and 2020. In total, three episodes from each of the 20 podcasts were listened to for a total of 60 episodes. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to evaluate how podcasters linguistically self-express. Sound analysis helped examine how podcasters use voice, music, added FX, and archival audio to articulate their cultural identities. Interviews contextualized how podcasters conceived of their production, their motivations, and their podcast goals to represent community and revisit cultural histories in Canada. The findings indicate that “history” and “true crime” podcasters in public and non-public models tend to critique institutionally produced myths about Canadian identity that have shaped colonial understandings of Canada today and the people who are products of its systems. On the other hand, “society and culture” podcasters from public and non-public models tend to support cross-national communication where members of non-hegemonic groups address various communities as heterogeneous collectives rather than monoliths. Findings also indicate that public (CBC) and non-public podcasts both encourage open self-expression and national criticism. Podcasts can promote voices that are difficult to access elsewhere and deepen what people can learn about infrequently taught or underrepresented historical experiences and modern cultural practices. Podcasters in this study often authored their sense of selves using local, multinational, and diasporic labels beyond a “Canadian” label and its cultural connotations. Podcasters explicitly talking about their race or ethnicity often contextualized how it influences, and is influenced by, their professional, political, and social experiences. Sonically, podcasters audibly self-represented using their regular speaking voices that reject standardized broadcasting voices. Overall, this dissertation forwards that podcasts help critique Canadian history while celebrating non-settler histories and experiences that shape what podcasters believe to be their authentic selves exhibited in their vocalized values, attitudes, and beliefs. Thus, podcasts invite us to hear a diversity of peoples, perspectives, and cultures in public and non-public production spaces.
Open Access
Plastic Publics
(2024-03-16) Biddle, Erika Lauren; Bell, Shannon M.
My dissertation offers an intellectual history of the various technological, aesthetic, affective, and overtly political encounters that modulate people—not so much as individuals but as connected and controllable social groups, as well as processes of locating and then reconfiguring ourselves within networks. This is what I have come to refer to as plastic publics, keeping in mind the double-meaning of plasticity—that it is at once about altering and holding form. I propose ‘rethinking’ cultural shifts in behavioral determinism (the shaping of people) over the last 150 years, tying them to relations with technology and developments in neuroscience, to understand the governance of plastic publics. What emerges is an understanding of control that extends beyond coercion and instead relies on the brain’s mechanisms for learning, understanding, building habits, and making decisions to program and compose publics. New technologies have allowed an intimacy of control that has been absent since humans self-organized in small social groups. This, I will argue, is the “dark side” of McLuhan’s global village. Developments that have taken place as part of industrial capitalism’s shift into consumer capitalism, a framework driven by mass consumption that peaked in the twentieth century, signaled a trend of denoetization, or the loss of the ability to think critically that foregrounds the affective, contagious, and, in this sense, mimetic techniques at work/play in administering publics under the conditions of neurocapitalism. Digital networked technologies have altered the way information flows and how people communicate, but also the shape and composition of publics, in which we deem ourselves and become not subjects, but projects, always modulating. What has been emerging is a new form of social control that is conceptualized here as “incontinence.” We now have a neuroscientific framework that recognizes and seeks to understand the changes that occur when we plug into the rapid feedback mechanisms in networked culture, but we have yet to come to terms with the implications on a scale beyond the individual. If we want to reimagine the story of control, what we really want to do is reimagine the story of feedback.
Open Access
Locating the Farang Teacher Within and Across West-Thai Encounter(s): From the King and I to Contemporary TEFL
(2024-03-16) Durdle, Leanna Cheryl; Pelkey, Jamin
Taking the contemporary idealization of NESTs as a starting point, this research draws on critical Thai studies (i.e., Harrison & Jackson, 2010; Jackson, 2008; Kitiarsa, 2010; Winichakul, 1994; 2000) to conceptualize the farang teacher and attempt to "locate" this figure across 150 years of Thailand's relationship with the 'West'. Guided by the assertion that "… contemporary modes of proximity reopen prior histories of encounter.” (Ahmed, 2000, p. 13), I use Systemic-Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) to analyze both the 1956 film The King and I and the popular travel website gooverseas.com, asking how the farang teacher emerges both historically and today. I then consider my findings through the lens of my own experience, asking how the cultural meanings surrounding the farang teacher manifest within the face-to-face encounters facilitated by contemporary English language teaching. I conclude my work with a reflection on the possibility of a "pedagogy of encounter".
Open Access
Patient Experience and Virtualized Healthcare: Thematic analyses of news, scientific literature, and user experience discourses
(2024-03-16) Smith, Hanako Alexandra; Davis, Charles
This dissertation uses mixed methods to examine three discourses of patient experience of virtualized healthcare. The three discourses examined are: (1) a news discourse, (2) a scientific literature discourse, and (3) a user experience discourse. Virtualized healthcare is defined by this dissertation as healthcare activities specifically conducted via mediated communication. Uptake in virtualized healthcare has accelerated as many Ontario practitioners have recently offered this form of care due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Ministry of Health creating temporary “COVID-19 pandemic allowance” for all physicians to bill for virtual care. As a period of initial unregulated use of virtual care by Ontarians ends, there is now an opportunity to take a closer look at the patient experiences of these healthcare services. By analysing the three distinct discourses (each of which is a form of health communication), this dissertation maps central themes that are consistently brought up in discussions of virtualized healthcare and patient experience. Comparing the themes that come up in the discourse genres of scientific literature and news articles provides an understanding of how patients may come to understand the phenomenon of virtualized healthcare. Adding an analysis of user experience discourse to this understanding provides findings of what themes overlap in both public discourses and accounts of personal experiences of virtualized healthcare. The themes found across the three discourses are ultimately developed into three recommendations the implementation or practicing of virtualized healthcare, which are to be tested and evaluated in future research programs. The three recommendations (engaging patients in healthcare innovation, viewing healthcare as a hybrid patient-centric network, and understanding that virtualization requirements of healthcare interactions vary) are ways of thinking about how healthcare can become virtualized, and what affects the potential virtualization of healthcare. These recommendations are evidenced based, proven to not only be observed in user experience discourse, but also in how researchers and the public discuss issues and concepts of virtualized healthcare. Different and overlapping elements of each recommendation are highlighted by each discourse. Each of the recommendations is discussed in terms of its theoretical and practical implications.
Open Access
“Now I See the Importance of History”: Tracing the Geneaology of Hip Hop, Young People and the Academy
(2024-03-16) Faber, Tamar Michelle; Dlamini, Nombuso
This dissertation analyses the development of hip hop’s use in research and pedagogy in academic researching institutions. In particular, my research traces scholarly/ journal documentation of hip hop as an example of youth identity culture, taking seriously the ways that research has historicized and constructed the relationship between hip hop and Black youth over time. I reviewed over 2000 documents using a Systematic Integrated Literature Review (SILR) whereby I manually coded academic peer-reviewed journals according to specific exclusionary criteria. Ultimately, 414 documents were collected, coded, and analysed according to various abundance and variety criteria such as keyword frequency, publishing year, journal, field of study, and methodology used. The trends and patterns that emerged formed the basis of my thematic analysis. Through this comprehensive review, terms such as Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Identity, Urban, Marginality, and Resistance emerged as leading concepts that often explain Black youth positionality in hip hop culture. This dissertation asserts that the terms and methods used to articulate an image of Black youth identity can lead to particular outcomes for how such youth are imagined in academic spaces. There is confusion and complexity in the use of terminology regarding youth attitudes and behaviours, and this complexity often results in similar ideological narratives being produced time and time again. My work joins with other scholarship that takes seriously the links between culture and power, and it highlights how academic and ideological legacies can be furthered and extended to reflect the young people at the centre of the research. The findings illustrate in part how institutional research can conceptualize, frame, reify, and position young people.
Open Access
Queering the Cable Airwaves: The Evolution of LGBTQ2+ Community Television in Ontario, Canada (1977-2001)
(2024-03-16) Demus, Axelle; MacLennan, Anne
Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, and close reading, this dissertation develops a history of LGBTQ2+ cable access television programming in the province of Ontario, Canada from 1977 to 2001. In particular, this dissertation traces cable access’s entanglements with local LGBTQ2+ groups and movements, as well as with other forms of media dedicated to amplifying LGBTQ2+ causes in the province. I argue that LGBTQ2+ community television programming was guided by what I conceptualize as queer access mobilization, a process through which queer individuals and groups mobilize to increase access to media and information, as well as access to social, cultural, and/or political networks. In other words, I show that local queer groups and individuals took to the platform with hopes of reaching out to wider constituencies, building solidarity with other groups and individuals at a time when the LGBTQ2+ movement was gaining ground in the province and in Canada as a whole, and communicating information that was not readily available via the mainstream media. I further posit that queer access mobilizations are deeply rooted in an ethics of care and a praxis of connection, as I attend to the relational and affective dimensions of cable access programming. This dissertation, therefore, tells both the story of the LGBTQ2+ movement in Ontario through the lens of cable access television, and the story of the medium of cable access television through the eyes of the LGBTQ2+ movement. It proposes an innovative way of doing media history and queer history, while foregrounding the voices of individuals who were often not included in official histories of LGBTQ2+ activism in the province. It also tells the story of LGBTQ2+ cable access archives, how they came to be, how they can be recovered, and how they can be mobilized in the digital age.
Open Access
Virtual Influencers and the New Wave of Digital Labour Exploitation
(2023-12-08) Hughes, Calvin; Bergstrom, Kelly
Virtual influencers (VIs) are animated replacements for human social media influencers, with popular VIs like Lil Miquela garnering millions of followers. This thesis explores the unaddressed ways VIs enable the exploitation of the human labourers creating them. As human influencers have become more powerful and expensive to work with brands and marketers have sought to regain control over them. The behind-the-scenes workers creating VIs have limited ownership of the characters they create, and a system of NDAs, job insecurity, and exploitation of worker passion discourages workers from discussing labour conditions. These conditions complicate primary research on VI creators, pushing me towards influencer studies and digital labour literature as the unit of analysis for my exploration of labour conditions in the VI industry. Political economy, emotional capitalism, and affect theory frameworks guide this analysis. I argue that the labour ecosystem surrounding VIs represents concerning future trends in labour exploitation.
Open Access
Storytelling, Myth, and the Dreams Therein: A Critical Analysis of the Intertextuality of Christianity, Capitalism, and Americanism
(2023-12-08) Buesink, Jeremy John; MacLennan, Anne
This dissertation, while dealing with many aspects of Americanism, argues that the hegemonic history of Christianity in America and the centrality of capitalism in national ethos have contributed to an impulse in the national psyche towards illusion. I argue that due to this impulse and privileging of illusion, and/or various ‘realities’, over actuality, much American violence takes place both within and without the nation’s borders. I demonstrate the harmful but seldom examined paradoxes produced and sustained by treating American values as sacrosanct in American life and in individual American lives, despite the varying definitions of those values along the spectrum of political and religious belief, the ways they are interpreted, and the manners in which they are executed. Underpinning my examination of the intertextualization of Christianity and Americanism, are queer theory, postmodern theory, and critical race theory, thereby employing theoretical perspectives that are not strictly associated with benefitting examinations of Christianity or Americanism, which is to say that these perspectives can broaden our appreciation of the outcomes of intertextuality.