Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Educating The Multi-Ethnic Population On The Municipal By-Laws: City Of Windsor, Mohammed Shiblee

Major Papers

Although more difficult to articulate than implement, educating the multi-ethnic populace about municipal by-laws is among the most difficult tasks for any Canadian administrative institution, whether provincial, federal, municipal, or even grassroots. When considering such circumstances, the present state of the Corporation of the City of Windsor, or the City of Windsor as a whole, offers both a challenge and an opportunity. In terms of challenges, Windsor is home to a vibrant, multi-ethnic community comprised of local, diaspora and minority populations, which often encounters various socio-cultural obstacles concerning the understanding and upholding of municipal by-laws. From an opportunity standpoint, the …

The Downplayed Debt Attributes Of Bnpl: A Thematic Content Analysis Of Tiktok, Hongwei Ma

Major Papers

This research employs Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) to examine the downplayed debt attributes of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services, focusing specifically on the contrast between official narratives and critical discourse on TikTok. The study investigates how BNPL companies in North America employ promotional strategies on their official websites and in press conferences to downplay the debt aspect of their services. It further explores the role of TikTok as a platform for public discourse that challenges these dominant narratives surrounding BNPL debt attributes and breaks knowledge hegemony. By analyzing samples from BNPL service providers' websites and press conferences, the study …

Amending Amendments: Digital Colonialism, Bill C-11, And Assessing The Call For Improvement, Kayla Victoria Destiny Clarke

Major Papers

Media scholars Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias (2019) define digital colonialism as the “term for the extension of a global process of extraction that started under colonialism and continues through industrial capitalism, culminating in today's new form: instead of natural resources in labor, what is now being appropriated is human life through its conversion into data” (p. 22). This research will critically analyze the Canadian government’s ill-received Bill C-11: the Amended Consumer Privacy Protection Act by using digital colonialism as a conceptual framework to reveal the Bill’s essential limitations. It will consist of two sections: 1) an in-depth exploration of …

Reinventing Child Labour: A Contemporary Analysis Of Children's Participation In The Digital Labour Economy, Bayan Kojok

Major Papers

This major research paper explores the historical shifts in labour and childhood, highlighting children’s ongoing implication in the capitalist market. My focus is influencer marketing, the newest form of digital work. The onset of social media and the introduction of the “influencer” is a cultural and political-economic shift that has expanded the definition of labour, whether this form of labour is widely recognized or not. The Instamom has emerged from this redefinition of labour; these individuals have curated influencer status by advertising their life as a mom on social media, particularly Instagram. This becomes problematic as children are inherently involved …

Insight Into Project Insight: A Textual Analysis Of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Samantha Margaret Morneau

Major Papers

This paper employs textual analysis to critically examine how the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) represents post-9/11 surveillance technologies and techniques in light of the Edward Snowden revelations regarding data collection and analytics, the role of digital technologies in surveillance, and the sacrifice of democratic rights. It does this by employing David Lyon’s book Surveillance After Snowden (2015) to highlight core narrative points and scenic elements of the film that depict how surveillance is framed exclusively in terms of governmental surveillance practices, specifically drawing connections between the NSA and S.H.I.E.L.D. Focusing on narrative aspects of the film such …

Indie Developers And The Queer Content Renaissance In Video Games, 2013-2017, Shane Michael Hansaruk Mr.

Major Papers

Queer content in video games has existed since the 1970s, but as time and technology have progressed, so too have the potential for queer content in video games. During the mid-2010’s, a sudden increase in the number of games with queer content began, lasting between the years 2013 and 2017. This research project examines this period in great detail to determine the cause of this drastic increase. Through examining queer games literature, two queer games databases, and two select titles from this period, I determine that independent, or “indie” developers, have a substantial impact on the increase of queer games …

‘Go Out Museums!’ Museums’ Political Relevance Within The Current Media Environment, Carolina Betancur Botero Ms.

Major Papers

At their best, museums are institutions that create transformative experiences for their visitors. Therefore, many scholars and museum professionals have advocated for museums that do not only display narratives through their exhibitions but also take part in social change. This task becomes even more relevant when digital platforms and social media, today’s predominant sources of information as well as prime providers of spaces for social and political interactions, have proven to have negative effects for society. Despite their beneficial outcomes, new media technologies promote commoditization, ephemerality, immediacy and individualism, effects that disturb the sense of solidarity, empathy and sense of …

A Critical Investigation Of Bell Let’S Talk, Jasmine Vido

Major Papers

In September 2010, Bell created the Bell Let’s Talk campaign to help lessen the stigma of mental health illnesses in Canada. The objective of this paper is to tease out the “ambivalences” (see Banet-Weiser, 2012) surrounding a massive corporation’s leadership in mental health awareness by analyzing both the importance and controversy surrounding Bell Let’s Talk.

The first component of this paper is a literature review that seeks to answer the research question: “how may components of Bell Let’s Talk Day be understood as both progressive and regressive?” Although “social media is the next step in the war against silence” (Campbell, …

Rising Tides? Data Capture, Platform Accumulation, And New Monopolies In The Digital Music Economy, Leslie M. Meier, Vincent R. Manzerolle

Communication, Media & Film Publications

This article examines the roles of platform-based distribution and user data in the digital music economy. Drawing on trade press, newspaper coverage, and a consumer privacy complaint, we offer a critical analysis of tech-music partnerships forged between Samsung and Jay-Z (2013), Apple iTunes Store and U2 (2014), Tidal and Kanye West (2016), and Apple Music and Drake (2017). In these cases, information technology (IT) companies supported album releases, and music was used to generate user data and attention: logics of data and attention capture were interwoven. The IT and music industries have adapted their business strategies to what we conceptualize …

Refuting The Sharing Economy: An Examination Of Mainstream And Critical Perspectives, Samar El-Khatib

Major Papers

This Major Research Paper analyzes dominant corporate narratives of the sharing economy, as well as offers a critical perspective to the key tenants of this new economic model.

The study focuses on answering the following question: To what extent does the municipal government of Toronto’s Sharing Economy webpage provide a favourable representation of the sharing economy, one that aligns closely with the dominant corporate narrative?

With a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of The City of Toronto’s Sharing Economy webpage found within the Policy, Research, Public Consultation and Events section of their website, this research aims to obtain an in-depth understanding …

Native Advertising Disclosures In Journalism: An Assessment On The Accurate Reporting Of Disclosure Wording In Conveying Advertising Intent, Darko Milenkovic

Major Papers

The struggling journalism industry adopted the practice of native advertising to raise digital revenue. This practice offered advertisers a chance to purchase the services of a publication in order to have their story published. The goal of native advertising is for advertising to become invisible to consumers, and to be presented to audiences as if were regular editorial content. The only distinguishing feature is a disclosure, often identifying the accompanying article as being “Sponsored Content,” “Promoted Content”, “Custom Content,” or a “Paid Post.” This research paper discusses the struggles of journalism and digital advertising. It examines the many definitions of …

Mobilizing The Audience Commodity 2.0: Digital Labour And Always-On Media, Vincent R. Manzerolle

Communication, Media & Film Publications

This paper re-examines the work of Dallas Smythe in light of the popularization of Internetenabled mobile devices (IMD). In an era of ubiquitous connectivity Smythe’s prescient analysis of audience ‘work’ offers a historical continuum in which to understand the proliferation of IMDs in everyday life. Following Smythe’s line of analysis, this paper argues that the expansion of waged and unwaged digital labour facilitated by these devices contributes to the overall mobilization of communicative, cognitive and co-operative capacities--capacities central to the accumulation strategies of ‘informational capitalism.’ As such, the rapid uptake of these devices globally is an integral component in this …

’Dynamic’ Obama Lectures ‘Bumbling’ Castro On Race Relations In Cuba, Oblivious To Black Lives Matter Movement In The U.S., James P. Winter

Communication, Media & Film Publications

No abstract provided.

Argumentation In Large, Complex Practices, Mark Aakhus, Paul Ziek, Punit Dadlani

OSSA Conference Archive

Differences arise in macro-activities, such as the production of energy, food, and healthcare, where the management of these differences happens in polylogues as many actors pursue scores of positions on a variety of issues in numerous venues. Polylogues are essential to the large-scale practices that organize macro-activities but present significant challenges for argumentation theory and research. Key to the challenge is conceptualizing the variety of argumentative roles that go beyond the classic normative definition of protagonist and antagonist. A macroscope is devised for identifying argumentative roles in the communicative work of organizations, and the communicative work of the network of …

On The Transactional Ecosystems Of Digital Media, Vincent R. Manzerolle, Allison Wiseman

Communication, Media & Film Publications

This article contributes a framework for understanding the convergence of two ‘transactional ecosystems’ or, put differently, the convergence of two types of currency: money and attention. The former is represented in the push to make commercial transactions ubiquitous and seamless (e.g. as in mobile payment systems), while the latter is represented by theories of the ‘attention economy’ and subsumed in the ‘attention and engagement’ metrics that currently shape the production and distribution of content on digital and mobile platforms. The means of communication and commerce, of payment and attention, are increasingly wedded together in the same device or platform implying …

Technologies Of Immediacy / Economies Of Attention, Vincent Manzerolle

Communication, Media & Film Publications

This chapter contextualizes and expands upon Smythe’s contributions to the critique of capitalist media within an environment increasinglydefined by the rapid global development and adoption of mobile de-vices and ubiquitous wireless connectivity (UC). Specifically it theorizes theevolutionary trajectory of mobile media and wireless connectivity within thecontext of Smythe’s analytic focus on the audience commodity as: a) the organizing principle of commercial media; and b) a central component in the development of “consumption relations” including those “that motivate the population to buy consumer goods” (Smythe 1994, 239–240) necessary toinformational capitalism.

The Rise, Fall And Future Of Blackberry(Tm) Capitalism, Vincent Manzerolle, Andrew Herman

Communication, Media & Film Publications

The original inspiration for this chapter was a story about Barack Obama and his BlackBerry. In the run-up to Obama's inauguration as the forty-fourth President of the United States (POTUS), there was considerable coverage in the global media concerning the fate of his beloved BlackBerry. One of the hallmarks of Obama's triumphant political persona at the time was his 'street cred' among the digerati as a savvy internet user. His reliance on the iconic BlackBerry mobile communications device in the conduct of his successful presidential campaign became legendary Clifford (2009). So it was with great tribulation that the world waited …

The Communication Of Capital: Digital Media And The Logic Of Acceleration, Vincent Manzerolle, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen

Communication, Media & Film Publications

This paper argues that questions concerning the circulation of capital are central to the study of contemporary and future media under capitalism. Moreover, it argues that such questions have been central to Marx’s analysis of the reproduction of capital vis-à-vis the realization of value and the reduction of circulation time. Marx’s concepts of both the circuit and circulation of capital implies a theory of communication. Thus the purpose of our paper is to outline the logistical mechanisms that underlie a Marxist theory of media and communication and thereby foregrounding the role new media plays in reducing circulation time. We argue …