Stream - Inspiring Critical Thought (E-Journal)
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Urban-Rural Mobility through the Lens of Food Documentary: A Case Study of “A Bite of China: Season Two”
Get PDFThe combination of traditional Chinese food processing techniques and contemporary commercial food production forms the main topics of “A Bite of China: Season Two” (ABOC-2). Built upon the success of its first reason, ABOC-2 has achieved a record high TV rating among domestic audience and also made history by becoming the best-selling Chinese documentary overseas. By examining the individual experiences of migrant workers shown in ABOC-2, this paper discusses the important role of rural Chinese cuisine in maintaining the urban-rural mobility of contemporary China. We argue that one major storyline of ABOC-2, in which migrant workers maintain their inherent economic and social connections with their native countryside through cooking and consuming hometown dishes, sheds light upon migrant workers’ active resistance to the partially rational yet overly standardized ways of urban living. By showing respect to rural traditions and culture, ABOC-2 has successfully promoted the dignity of Chinese migrant workers and depicted their spiritual plight in contemporary China’s drive toward modernization
Digital Communications and Society: Student Proceedings from the 2018 Canadian Communication Association Annual Conference: Communications Web et Société: Actes des Communications Étudiantes du Colloque Annuel de l’Association Canadienne de Communication 2018
Get PDFIt is our privilege to publish this special section of the current issue of Stream: Inspiring Critical Thought devoted to publishing the student proceedings from the Canadian Communication Association’s 2018 Conference at the Congress for the Social Science and Humanities held at the University of Regina. In its third year, these proceedings sought to provide a space for graduate students in communication studies across the country to publish their works.
C’est un privilège pour nous de publier une section spéciale du numéro actuel de Stream: Inspiring Critical Thought, consacré à la publication des actes des communications étudiantes du colloque de l’Association canadienne des communications 2018, colloque organisé dans le cadre du Congrès des sciences humaines à l’Université de Régina. Pour une troisième année de suite, cette publication vise à fournir un espace aux étudiants et étudiantes de deuxième et troisième cycle en communication à travers le pays leur permettant de publier leurs travaux de recherche
“Celebrate your bloom story”: An Automedia Analysis of Social Media Influencers
Get PDFUsing 27-year-old Canadian beauty blogger Estée Lalonde as a site of automedia analysis (Maguire 2015), this paper argues that through the enactment of domestic femininity in the public sphere, social media influencers embody postfeminist ideals of individual empowerment while selling their branded selves through networked intimacy (Abidin 2015; Gill, 2016). Methodologically, I approach the case study with an understanding of the intersection between online platforms of the intersection between online platforms, life writing, and constructions of the self. Using cross-promotion, scheduled posts, and self-branding, influencers create a cohesive branded self, emphasizing perceived authenticity and a sense of community among followers. The exercise of self-branding is used to gain cultural and material capital (Hearn, 2008). Understanding postfeminism as an analytical lens through which we can problematize media texts (Gill, 2016), I argue that influencer marketing privileges a one-dimensional, postfeminist representation of an empowered young woman following her life’s passion (Duffy & Hund, 2015)
I/O: Reinforcing Newsmaking Practices Through Algorithmic Media
Get PDFRecent developments in communication and information technology have disrupted the long-established dominance of mass media over the production and distribution of news. As an effort to reclaim their role of society’s information gatekeeper, media companies absorb digital technology as instruments of institutional power to reproduce its own logic in the digital space. This paper dis-cusses two interrelated modalities of algorithmic news: economically efficient production, where news outlets utilize quantitative metrics to improve content effectiveness and desirability; and shared-gatekeeping, where visibility and distribution of information are contextual and based on users’ behaviour. The paper proposes that algorithmic media hides under its supposed objectivity and neutrality to become a new gatekeeper “organism”, which not only regulates flows of infor-mation, but also interprets and negotiates both public interests and the value of the news
A Critical Analysis of Canada's Sex Work Legislation: Exploring Gendered and Racialized Consequences
Get PDFIn 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that three sections of the Criminal Code of Canada pertaining to sex work were unconstitutional. In response to this ruling—otherwise known as the Bedford Decision—the Conservative government introduced the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) in 2014. In this paper, I ask: to what extent does the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act meet its stated goal of addressing the health and safety of those who “engage in prostitution”? In exploring this question, I first trace the legal terrain leading to the PCEPA’s conception. Following this, I show that the PCEPA has failed to address its stated goals in two central ways. First, by co-opting the progressive framing of the Bedford Decision in a way that obscures the situations of violence it seeks to address, and second, by making the most precarious category of sex work even more dangerous through its implementation. In order to render the actual foundations of the PCEPA visible, I draw upon critical race and feminist theory. Through this analysis, I show how gendered and racialized hierarchies regulate violence along and within the sex work spectrum. Overall, this paper argues that the PCEPA has failed to address the health and safety of “those engaged in prostitution,” and instead, has facilitated racialized patterns of gender violence against vulnerable populations
Public Sphere(s), Public Narratives, and Counter Public(s): Student Papers at the 2017 Canadian Communication Association
Get PDFIt is with enthusiasm that we present this special issue of Stream devoted to the student conference proceedings from the 2017 Canadian Communication Association annual meeting during the Congress for Social Science and Humanities held at Ryerson University. As current graduate students, we understand and appreciate the challenges that graduate students face and having a medium like the annual CCA-ACC conference provides the kind of professionalization that graduate students need to continue a career as academics
Utilisation de l’humour dans le contexte d’une crise d’entreprise: Le cas de la communauté du jeu No Man’s Sky
Get PDFCet article cherche à comprendre le phénomène des réactions humoristiques sur un média socio-numérique en situation de crise. Plus précisément, la question de recherche suivante guide cette réflexion: dans un contexte de crise, comment l’humour est-il utilisé pour porter une critique et répéter des «vérités» au sein d’une communauté de jeu vidéo? À partir d’un cadre conceptuel inté-grant autant l’approche pragmatique et rhétorique que les actes de langage humoristique et les concepts foucaldiens de discours et de vérité, un cas a été analysé en détails: la crise ayant affecté la communauté du jeu vidéo No Man’s Skysur le subredditofficiel du jeu. Par l’analyse qualitative et quantitative d’un corpus de cinquante unités humoristiques, les résultats indiquent une tendance à employer l’humour dans le but de critiquer le jeu et le studio derrière celui-ci. Les types d’humour favorisés (ironie, sarcasme et parodie) montrent que les locuteurs font appel à des savoirs préa-lables sur les événements entourant la culture du jeu et cherchent à créer un jeu de connivence avec les destinataires. Ainsi, une «vérité» émerge par la production, valorisation et réitération de dis-cours humoristiques qui véhiculent explicitement ou non diverses critiques. L’effet de ces actes humoristiques sera donc de renforcer la cohésion de communauté et de confirmer les croyances, normes sociales, idéologies et savoirs partagés. À la lumière de ce cas, il apparaît que le regroupe-ment d’une communauté sur le Web et la communication au sein de celle-ci puissent effectivement amplifier le phénomène de crise. Ceci est d’autant plus vrai lorsque l’entreprise à l’origine de la crise évite d’intervenir et de répondre aux consommateurs, laissant ainsi la communauté à elle-même
"Keeping the Road Clear between Us": Indigenous Infrastructure and the Potential for Transformative Design
Get PDFAs scientists and science educators challenge the epistemological hegemony and cultural imperial-ism of Western modern science by insisting that definitions of science be expanded to include other scientific traditions including traditional ecological knowledge (Berkes 1988, 1993; Inglis, 1999; Warren 1997; Williams & Baines 1993; Snively & Corsigila 2000), we have not seen much of a coe-taneous movement in civil and natural resource engineering. The decolonization of Canadian cities must begin with the acknowledgement of the role engineering, architecture and urban planning has had in the perpetuation of colonialism. This paper works to identify directions for the decoloniza-tion of infrastructural systems through a reconsideration of pre-contact Indigenous architectural and infrastructural histories, a recognition of the ways in which infrastructure was often used as an instrument of colonial land claims, and the various ways in which Indigenous peoples, communities, and knowledges have contributed to the infrastructures that populate our contemporary geography. It is through an acknowledgment of infrastructure as actant in colonialism and the contributions Indigenous peoples and knowledges have had in the development and implementation of our infrastructural systems that we can begin to expand and deepen our understanding of the relationings between knowledge, infrastructure, ecosystems and Indigenous peoples. Finally, this paper considers the ways in which Indigenous design principles offer a great deal of potential in the creation of more environmentally and socially sustainable communities, and even regenerative design
Time-Space Analysis of Facebook News Feeds
Get PDFIn the 20th century, several scholars across different disciplines have explored the relations between sociality and the associated perceptions of time and space. This paper draws on their theories to study how the Facebook News Feed feature inscribes users with a certain kind of temporality and spatiality. Building on Manual Castells' characterization of online activities as a "temporal collage" it argues that, through the interactions with News Feeds, users encounter the desequencing of the temporality of their social space. It further analyzes a News Feed page as a temporal object as defined by Bernard Stiegler, and adopts his critique of cinematic time to reveal how this feature inscribes an "always on" behavior for users even when they are offline. It concludes by discussing the political significance of this temporality and spatiality in two different senses: the constant acceleration in the pace of life and online surveillance. It draws on David Harvey's concept of space-time compression to discuss the relations between the temporality of Facebook and capitalism, and on Anthony Gidden's time-space distantiation to discuss the power relations of online surveillance
From the Margins to the Centre(s) of Social Change: An Exploration of the Contributions of Latin American Communication Research
Get PDFLatin American communication research has a long history of considering communication as a participatory and horizontal process. However, this research is not necessarily widely known in the West. This paper analyzes the work of some of the main foundational and contemporary communication scholars from Latin America, and the contributions and limitations of this body of work in relation to global communication. This paper draws mainly from the work of foundational and contemporary scholars from Latin America. To a lesser extent, it draws from the work of scholars from other countries from the West and the Global South that can inform the understanding of communication research in Latin America. An exploration of the main work and thought of some of the foundational Latin American communication scholars indicates that most of this literature has focused on empirical contributions, assessing, questioning, re-contextualizing and adapting the theories from the West to the local settings, and that less emphasis has been placed on generating unique theoretical concepts and frameworks emerging from the region. However, a review of the work of some contemporary scholars from Latin America – especially the ones focusing on participation, decoloniality and the conceptualization of the margins – suggests that there could be a shift in the focus of Latin American communication research, and the contributions that it could have to the theory and practice of global communication. The analysis of the literature indicates that the work of some of the contemporary Latin American scholars focusing on decoloniality and the conceptualization of the margins could contribute to build theoretical work emerging from the region and, in this way, help increase, re-value, and distribute the literature making unique theoretical contributions to the study of communication from Latin America. This work could have important theoretical and empirical contributions to communication research in Latin America and beyond. Future research in the region should take these considerations into account, while also studying the possibilities and limitations of emerging information technologies in different contexts