Digital Media

A new e-book written as part of U of T's Scholars in Residence program shows how video games can be studied and critiqued the same way as classic literature

As digital gaming has become an integral part of today's pop culture, the study of video games has become more commonplace at universities around the world through courses and a growing number of specialized degrees (such as a new minor program at U of T Mississauga) But amid the increased interest in learning about the various aspects of video games, resources to help professors teach the subject are lagging behind.

“Video games studies is a very multidisciplinary field. It doesn’t have the same depth of focus or publication history as a single scholarly trajectory,” says Sonja Nikkila, assistant professor, teaching stream, in the department of English at the ��Ƶ Scarborough.

“For someone already working in a different discipline and wanting to [add] video games to their own teaching, there aren't a lot of textbooks and syllabi out there.”

Sonja Nikkila (supplied photo)

Nikkila, who teaches the course “Video Games: Exploring the Virtual Narrative,” says it makes sense to study video games like pieces of literature – many games also have rich characters, settings, plots and messages. Unlike static texts, however, there are different endings, side quests and optional plot points that make students’ play-throughs a completely different experience.

Some landmark games can’t be assigned as homework, either – they may take dozens of hours to finish or need to be played on expensive systems.

Yet Nikkila isn’t deterred. “I wanted to create a resource to show lots of ways you can approach games critically – and how even if you haven’t finished a game or got a different ending than somebody else, that experience is still critically valuable,” she says.

Nikkila recently teamed up with a group of students for one of six U of T Scarborough projects funded by the Jackman Scholars-in-Residence program, which gives students across U of T paid four-week research opportunities. Her team's quest was to create something to help students and teachers apply narrative theory – a classic approach to studying literature – to video games.

They came up with an e-book titled Critical Inventory of Video Game Analysis, which offers a series of frameworks that each make sense on their own but also link to one another, allowing readers to choose their own adventure.

Some cover core game elements such as plot and setting, while others delve into Marxism, disability studies and other areas of literary analysis. The frameworks include an overview of each topic’s relationship to video games, a case for the unique insights games can offer, essay prompts and lists of related topics and links.

They also include a section called "demonstrations of literary criticism," or DLC – a play on the ubiquitous acronym in the gaming world for downloadable content. In the e-book, DLCs are a series of sample essays looking critically at games, such as one by student Brennen Penney on the eco-feminist messaging in the Star Wars game The Force Unleashed, alongside other pieces by students Luna Chen, Jesse June-Jack, Lucas McGee and Toey Saralamba.

The DLCs are one of several clever nods to video-game lingo throughout, including the title ("inventory" is a standard video-game term). Another section titled "Lore" covers the context behind games that can help inform an analysis, from their creators to cultural impact. The introduction is followed by a section called “Introduction Redux” – redux is a term for a remastered game, but in the book it signifies space saved for the new introduction the nascent resource will eventually have.

Nikkila plans to use the e-book in her video games course and to regularly update the DLC section with additions from students. She’s hoping to publish the resource within the next year and make it publicly accessible for students to read and also contribute.

In August, the students who participated in creating the resource will present at a conference held in collaboration with the University of Waterloo’s Digital Pedagogy Institute, discussing how they produced the e-book and how it can be used to analyze video games.

“We want to think of this as a library of resources and perspectives that will constantly grow and evolve,” Nikkila says. “It might even be a document that preserves a little bit of how scholarship moves across [several] years.”

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Prof uses comics to explore students' linguistic identities, lived experiences

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:12:10 +0000

Prof uses comics to explore students' linguistic identities, lived experiences

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 11/10/2022 - 09:12

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Ai Taniguchi, an assistant professor of language studies, is using comics to share student stories about their lived experiences with language (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

When Ai Taniguchi immigrated to the United States with her family at age six, the permanency of the move hadn’t completely sunk in.

Taniguchi – now an assistant professor in the ��Ƶ Mississauga’s department of language studies – remembers goodbye parties and saying farewell to friends in Japan. She also recalls arriving in the United States and heading on a family trip to Disney World, which felt more like a vacation than a move. And she remembers driving to Georgia and settling into her new home in Peachtree City, an Atlanta suburb.

But when Taniguchi started school, that’s when it finally hit her: She was now permanently living in a new country, didn’t speak a word of English and had trouble communicating with teachers and other students.

“I cried all the time,” Taniguchi says, adding that there were very few options for English as a second language (ESL) classes in suburban Atlanta in the mid-1990s. “It was very, very scary.”

To express her feelings, Taniguchi turned to drawing: creating comic-style art inspired by her love for Manga, a style of graphic novels that originate in Japan and are a big part of Japanese culture for both children and adults.

The other children took notice of her drawings. It soon became a way for her to connect with her peers when linguistic communication was hard.

“I wasn’t the weird kid that couldn’t speak English. I was the kid that could draw and my classmates treated me like a friend,” she says. “The power of art is pretty universal.”

This early experience planted the seed for Taniguchi’s Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment (L'IMAGE) project. She is working with linguistic-diverse and culture-diverse students at U of T to create digital comics about their lived experience with language and how they navigate their identities via language. The project is funded by U of T’s International Student Experience Fund (ISEF).

Taniguchi says digital comics give students an outlet to share their experiences with language (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Starting in the winter semester, the digital comics will be shared through U of T Mississauga’s International Education Centre via social media, as well as classrooms, student orientations and student-leader training programs to promote intercultural competence and empathy in the university community.

While her own early experiences laid the foundation for the project, Taniguchi says she was also inspired by her students’ stories about how they cope with their own language barriers – and how similar their stories were to her own.

“Students will tell me things like, ‘I'm so sorry, my English is so bad,’ or apologize about the language that they use,” she says. “That’s heartbreaking to me as a teacher because language is so strongly tied to your identity. It's a part of who you are.”

Taniguchi related to their struggles and wanted to provide these students an outlet to share their experiences. She felt that digital comics were a great way to do it: they can tell a story in a simple way, and they are accessible to everyone.

“There are a lot of things you can communicate with comics,” she explains, adding that they can be valuable tools for teaching technical aspects of language like sentence structure.

As a linguistics educator, Taniguchi feels that linguistics should be centred around lived experiences.

“I think comics humanize the discipline because you tell stories about a person, you see that person, you see the character telling us stories,” she says.

As part of the L'IMAGE project, each digital comic will also include an infographic that educates the readers about the language’s linguistics – for example, a comic about the Arabic language experience will be accompanied by an infographic about Arabic linguistics.

Taniguchi hopes that the project will empower linguistic-diverse and culture-diverse students at U of T.

“I hope that they feel that their linguistic identity is valid and that it's OK for them to have a complex multilingual identity. I hope they feel more proud of who they are after this project,” she says, adding that the project can also serve as an education tool for all students. “If you've never heard some of these stories before, I hope that you will learn to empathize with communities that you are not a part of. I think we can create a wonderfully inclusive, diverse and welcoming environment. That's my ultimate goal here.”

U of T researcher works with Indigenous communities to bring their traditional calendar systems online

davidlee1 — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 15:35:08 +0000

U of T researcher works with Indigenous communities to bring their traditional calendar systems online

davidlee1 Fri, 09/27/2019 - 11:35

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"Ultimately, I believe that digital technology can help contribute to Indigenous resurgence," says U of T's Jennifer Wemigwans (photo by Marianne Lau)

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Research & Innovation

Seven years ago, Jennifer Wemigwans received a call from Victor Masayesva Jr., a highly regarded Hopi Knowledge Keeper and artist, inviting her to a gathering of Indigenous Timekeepers from South and North America.

Wemigwans, an assistant professor in the department of leadership, higher and adult education in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the ��Ƶ, was taken aback.

Highly respected in their communities, Timekeepers are Indigenous Elders or Knowledge Keepers who carry sacred teachings from their communities’ traditional calendar systems – a gift she did not hold. Was this a mix-up?

It turns out the Hopi leader had an important request for her.

Masayesva Jr. was calling on behalf of 40 Timekeepers from across North and South America who wanted, for the first time in centuries, to begin publicly sharing knowledge from each of their calendars, said Wemigwans. Specifically, they wanted to share their calendars online and they knew that Wemigwans, an expert in translating Indigenous knowledge to new media platforms, would be able to help.

Followed by Indigenous communities prior to colonization, traditional calendars represent the world views of the nations from which they originate and are seen as an invaluable source of Indigenous traditional knowledge and ways of being. When Indigenous cultural practices were outlawed during colonization, many of these calendars were hidden away by Timekeepers who have been waiting for the right time to bring them back into the open.

In sharing the calendars online, the Timekeepers wanted to work with someone who not only understood new media technologies but also the complexity and responsibility involved in digitally reproducing sacred traditional teachings, said Wemigwans. It is an expertise that few possess, but one that Wemigwans has spent her career developing.

The Timekeepers hoped to produce something similar in impact to Four Directions Teachings, an Indigenous educational website site that Wemigwans produced in 2006 while pursuing her PhD at OISE. The project is of particular significance because it is the first educational website to feature digitized versions of Indigenous teachings shared by Elders and Knowledge Keepers in Canada.

Understanding the importance of sharing and preserving traditional Indigenous knowledge, Wemigwans immediately agreed to the collaboration, and this past summer, the Timekeepers Project officially kicked off. Alongside her research partners Mindahi Bastida-Muñoz and Geraldine Patrick Encina of the Centre for Earth Ethics, Wemigwans spent July and August meeting with Timekeepers in Central America to receive teachings from their respective calendars.

By the end of this year, she will have met with Timekeepers from 10 communities across Guatemala (Achi, Kiche, Tzutujil), Mexico (Ñahñu-Otomi, Yucatec), Canada (Cree, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee) and the United States (Hopi).

From there, Wemigwans and her team will review their interviews with each Timekeeper, analyze the teachings, pull out key themes and, in close collaboration with each Elder, develop synthesized versions of the teachings for an interactive educational website that will launch in 2021.

This first iteration of the website will feature teachings from three selected calendars. The remaining calendars will be brought onto the site in a future phase of the project.

Marianne Lau spoke with Wemigwans to learn more about the project and transferring traditional Indigenous knowledge online.

Why do the Timekeepers want to create this online resource?

Since colonization, Timekeepers have been protecting their calendar knowledge and waiting for the right time to bring it back into the open. With the end of the latest Mayan calendar cycle in May 2013, many Timekeepers in South and North America feel that time is now. For them, the start of the new cycle marks the beginning of a new dawn of truth, recovery, reconciliation and investment in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. By sharing their traditional calendars online, the Timekeepers hope to facilitate a return to traditional Indigenous ways of living as well as the recovery and fortification of Indigenous calendar knowledge across Turtle Island.

There’s also a sense of urgency that’s driving this project. The Timekeepers feel that the knowledge in their calendars can play a role in responding to climate change. Indigenous calendar systems contain the original instructions for living on territories across Turtle Island, including foundational knowledge about diverse lands and the articulation of responsibilities and stewardship processes for those lands. The Timekeepers hope to help communities return to this knowledge and begin living in ways that can heal and mitigate some of the effects of climate change – and, in addition, educate non-Indigenous people on how to live with the land.

What will the final website look like to its users?

This is a hard question to answer because a lot of it will be determined by the content, which we are currently gathering. However, it will take the form of an online documentary that, like Four Directions Teachings, will be highly interactive and dynamic. Our goal is to develop a narrative and an interface that respectfully captures key themes and reflects the knowledge of the Timekeepers in ways that are culturally ethical and responsible.

With respect to interface design, the knowledge on the site will be presented through audio narrations and robust graphics that will visually reflect Indigenous pedagogical approaches, and will be available in both English and Spanish in order to facilitate knowledge sharing between Timekeepers and Indigenous communities in North and South America.

You’ve mentioned that this project will draw heavily from your work on Four Directions Teachings. What is Four Directions Teachings and how is it different from other Indigenous education websites?

Four Directions Teachings is an online Indigenous education resource that I produced in 2006 which features sacred teachings shared directly from Elders in North America, from the Blackfoot, Cree, Mohawk, Mi’kmaq and Ojibwe Nations.

The website is different in that most Indigenous online education resources are made up of interpretations of Indigenous knowledge that have not been verified by Elders or Knowledge Keepers – those who carry their community’s teachings. As such, many of these sites run the risk of inaccuracies and misrepresentation.

In contrast, all of the teachings featured on Four Directions Teachings were gifted to the project by Elders through their community’s protocols, and the representations of the teachings were developed in collaboration with them. In addition, we took care to ensure that Indigenous cultural protocols and ethics were being adhered to in every phase of the project.

You coined the term ‘digital bundle’ to refer to websites like Four Directions Teachings. Tell us more about this concept.

In Indigenous cultures, “community knowledge bundles” are collections of sacred items or knowledge held by a person with care and ceremony. Digital bundles, then, are places on the internet where sacred knowledge is represented, and naming them as such elevates these sites because Indigenous communities understand that knowledge bundles carry the protocols and responsibilities that come with such a designation.

In my book, A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online, I draw a distinction around what a digital bundle is, as well as the processes, ethics, methodologies and responsibilities involved in creating one. In doing so, I hope to help others broaden their understanding of Indigenous practices online.

What do you think will be your biggest challenge in creating this website?

The biggest challenge will be ensuring that the entire process of creating the online documentary respects each community’s cultural protocols. Indigenous protocols inform us of the responsibilities around a community’s knowledge – for example, how the knowledge should be transferred, how to maintain the integrity of the knowledge, and what can or cannot be shared publicly. Each community will have its own protocols for sharing Indigenous calendar knowledge and I will have to be mindful of, and responsible for, those protocols in ways that respect every single community that I am working with.

As an academic and cultural transmedia producer working in this area, it is a tremendous gift and honour to be invited to partake in and ethically share Indigenous community knowledge with a wide audience. Being honoured in this way means I must learn the protocols and be mindful of my accountability to the diverse communities that have shared knowledge with me.

How did you become interested in digitizing traditional Indigenous knowledge?

It was an idea that came to me in the early 2000s when I was working as an adult literacy educator for Indigenous organizations in Toronto. During my training, one of the first things Elders taught me was that the most important thing we could offer Indigenous learners was an understanding of traditional Indigenous knowledge.

This made me feel really challenged. I thought, ‘Then you need to be in the classroom, because you’re the Elder. You’re the one who carries sacred knowledge. I’m just an instructor.’ Of course, I knew this wasn’t possible – Elders and Knowledge Keepers already face multiple responsibilities and demands from their own communities. So, my fellow instructors and I began having conversations around what it would be like to build a culturally sensitive pedagogical resource online that could help Indigenous educators like ourselves introduce and share aspects of traditional Indigenous knowledge with students.

Around that time, I was also starting to think about how the internet could be used to lead to greater empowerment for Indigenous Peoples. I thought that the flexible ways in which the internet can be explored was well suited to adult learners who want to gain knowledge at their own pace. And because the internet can present information in both visual and audio formats, I felt like it was a good medium for helping Indigenous people experiencing learning issues related to literacy, perceptions of learning and learning styles.

These experiences eventually led to Four Directions Teachings. When the website was finally launched in 2006, I received many letters from Indigenous communities across Canada saying they wanted to see more resources like it. That’s when I thought, “Yes. This is the work I need to be doing.”

What impact do you hope your work will have?

Indigenous communities everywhere are talking about representing their Knowledges online but aren’t sure what it might look like. I hope my work contributes to that conversation so we can see more digital bundles come into being. Ultimately, I believe that digital technology can help contribute to Indigenous resurgence, and while digital bundles can never replace face-to-face time spent with Elders and Knowledge Keepers, they can help provide a really good introduction to traditional teachings and a safe space for investigation, exploration and dialogue.

Digital generation: U of T researchers work with UN to support children's rights online

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:24:47 +0000

Digital generation: U of T researchers work with UN to support children's rights online

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 07/15/2019 - 13:24

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Faculty of Information researchers Sara Grimes and Leslie Shade are hosting workshops at U of T to collect information on children's digital lives that will be shared with the United Nations (photo by Alex Potemkin via Getty Images)

Topic

Faculty of Information

Global

internet

Knowledge Media Design Institute

United Nations

Researchers at the ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Information are holding a series of workshops with children to better understand how they use digital technology – information that will be shared with the United Nations as it looks to update its Convention on the Rights of the Child for a digital world.

The workshops, held tomorrow and Wednesday at the Faculty of Information, will see participants aged 10 to 18 sharing their thoughts and engaging in interactive activities like drawing pictures, voting in polls and filling out surveys. Directed by Associate Professor Sara Grimes and Professor Leslie Shade, the consultation is focused on issues like online privacy, identity, freedom of expression and equality.

Grimes says she’s particularly concerned with the practice of banning children from online spaces to “protect” them – children have to be at least 13 before they can create a Facebook account or start a YouTube channel – rather than finding better ways to support their rights and presence in the digital realm.

“Not only do many kids ignore these age restrictions, their parents will often allow them to do it because they think the bans are silly or unnecessary,” says Grimes, who is the director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI).

The problem? When kids ignore the rules, they have no legal rights.

“Kids' content can be removed, their accounts suspended and their complaints ignored because they are not officially allowed to be there,” says Grimes, who sees a growing gap between regulatory policies and user practices. “Rules like not allowing kids to upload content to YouTube, or turning off the comment function on videos featuring kids, results in a big loss in opportunity for kids to engage and to achieve.

“After all, uploading a copyright-infringing cover of a Ne-Yo song to YouTube is how Justin Bieber became Justin Bieber.”

Grimes and Shade (left) boast considerable experience and expertise in the field of children’s digital rights and cultural participation. Their research includes studies on how young people develop strategies to protect their own privacy online as well as on explorations of children’s “folk understandings” of the complex legal concepts and relationships they encounter when they make and share digital content.

Grimes says children and their parents are bombarded with contradictory messages about the online world. On one hand, they’re told iPads are crucial tools for children learning to read and that educational apps can teach kids to code. On the other, there are ubiquitous warnings about how technology is turning kids into sedentary screen “addicts,” ruining their lives and their brains.

While Grimes acknowledges there are dangers online that understandably provoke emotional reactions, she says the “fears are greatly exaggerated and the risks for encountering the types of dangers sensationalized by certain news media are quite small.”

She believes that restrictions need to be balanced with children’s right to freedom of expression, and that the job of keeping kids safe online is being “put on the backs” of children, parents and teachers instead of on media and internet companies, which could invest more, for example, on moderation and tracking down people engaging in abusive behaviour. She describes current practices as a form of “labour exploitation” of platform and app users, who are asked to invest significant time trying to navigate “blackboxed business processes that gird children’s lives in the digital realm.”

Many of KMDI’s research initiatives are focused on supporting children’s rights as participants and cultural producers in digital contexts. Its work expands on the Kids DIY Media Partnership, a recently completed multi-year, Canada-U.S. research collaboration on the same topic.

Kids DIY brought together academics, child advocacy groups, platform developers, media companies and public broadcasters to discuss key issues relating to children’s digital media making and to collaborate on a series of related research projects.

Among its many recommendations: Terms of service contracts and privacy policies on children’s platforms must not be tilted in favour of business interests, nor infringe upon or omit children’s rights; that children have the same copyrights over their creations as adults; that concerns about safety and risk must be balanced with proper consideration of children’s rights and autonomy; and that age restrictions should only be applied if there is a real justification for excluding children.

The workshops Grimes and Shade are overseeing are similar to others being conducted in 24 countries in partnership with the RErights project, a collaboration between 5rights, Western Sydney University and the London School of Economics. Grimes says RErights was instrumental in convincing the UN of the need for this “general comment,” as the guidelines for interpretation of various treaties are known, and that its workshops are well designed and thought out. She will focus on facilitating the participation of the study’s younger study participants while Shade will focus on teenagers.

Participants’ written answers and ideas will be sent back to the RErights project team, which will analyze and compare them with results gathered from the other global workshops. The findings of this cross-cultural analysis will ultimately be compiled into a report to be used by the UN committee to write its general comment later this year.

Media ethics in the fake news era: Conference at U of T builds on Marshall McLuhan’s legacy

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 16:23:50 +0000

Media ethics in the fake news era: Conference at U of T builds on Marshall McLuhan’s legacy

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 06/24/2019 - 12:23

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The University of St. Michael’s College in the ��Ƶ and U of T are co-hosting the Media Ecology Association's annual convention this week (photo by Makeda Marc-Ali)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Information

University of St. Michael's College

In a world of fake news, hyper-connectivity and rapidly advancing means of communication, the humanistic and critical perspective of famed media theorist – and ��Ƶ professor –Marshall McLuhan can feel almost prophetic. So it’s fitting that, this week, hundreds of scholars will converge on U of T’s downtown Toronto campus to address many of the most important and challenging questions about media and society today.

From June 27-30, the University of St. Michael’s College in the ��Ƶ and U of T will co-host the Media Ecology Association (MEA) for its 20th annual convention. This year’s theme is “Media Ethics: Human Ecology in a Connected World,” and the itinerary includes 80 sessions and events that feature 300 speakers from 30 countries.

The international conference is timely, with elections on the horizon in both Canada and the United States.

“Given St. Mike’s long tradition of teaching and research infused with a focus on ethics and values, it’s fitting that we, along with U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science, Faculty of Information, and the Centre for Ethics, have joined together with the MEA to inspire the next generation of media scholars,” said St. Michael’s President David Sylvester.

Paolo Granata, an assistant professor of book and media studies, is the chair of this year’s conference. He organized the event with an eye on a technological society developing so quickly that lawmakers and ethicists are struggling to keep pace. Granata explores these ideas in his research and teaching, including the McLuhan Seminar in Creativity and Technology, an SMC One program that features a learning experience in Silicon Valley for first-year students. A number of Granata’s students will also be on hand to participate in and support the proceedings while making connections with scholars in the field.

The proceedings will kick off on Wednesday with a pre-conference panel discussion on how the internet is affecting civil society featuring Mark Kingwell, a professor in U of T’s department of philosophy. Presented by the Toronto Reference Library and the McLuhan Salon Series, “The Social Cost of the Information Age” networking event is free and open to the public.

The formal opening of the convention is on June 27 and will include remarks from the Honourable Karina Gould, Canada's minister of democratic institutions.

“The Media Ethics conference provides an important space for Canadians to discuss how they use platforms, the information they are seeing on these platforms and the level of trust they have for these platforms,” says Gould.

“Democracy is rooted in the trust of the people in the process and in the legitimacy of the outcome.”

The unique way Germany handles press conferences: U of T symposium considers journalism in digital age

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 04:00:00 +0000

The unique way Germany handles press conferences: U of T symposium considers journalism in digital age

noreen.rasbach Mon, 04/22/2019 - 00:00

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a Bundespressekonferenz in July of 2018, with Gregor Mayntz (right). Mayntz will be taking part in a media symposium at Massy College on Wednesday

Richard Blackwell

Topic

City & Culture

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Citizen Lab

Digital Media

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Journalism in Canada and around the globe is under siege as attacks on journalistic integrity abound. What is the best way to improve the public trust in journalism, and at the same time strengthen the foundations of democracy?

That question will be front and centre at an April 24 media symposium co-hosted by the German Consulate General in Toronto, Massey College and ��Ƶ Communications. “(Un) Truth – Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age” will examine journalism from European and North American perspectives, looking at the media’s role in promoting democracy through the presentation of facts.

The sessions will be moderated by Jeffrey Dvorkin, director of the journalism program at U of T Scarborough, and will include German and Canadian panelists including Globe and Mail columnist Elizabeth Renzetti, Toronto Star Public Editor Kathy English, German journalist and author Ursula Weidenfeld, and Peter Loewen, a professor in the department of political science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. Ron Diebert, director of Citizen Lab at the Munk School, will be delivering the final keynote on targeted espionage.

Another keynote speaker will be journalist Gregor Mayntz, chairman of the unique German institution, the Federal Press Conference (Bundespressekonferenz). The BPK, created just after the Second World War and run by journalists, convenes three press conferences a week to which politicians, bureaucrats and other leaders are invited. The BPK is a powerful institution, and politicians ignore it at their peril. Because of it, the levers of political communication are in the hands of journalists, not the politicians.

Mayntz spoke to U of T News in advance of his presentation to the symposium, which will take place at Massey College on Wednesday.

How does the Federal Press Conference format help maintain the quality of news coverage, compared to what happens in North America?

When you look at the White House, where the President can decide not to invite some journalist [to attend], we see the advantage of the Federal Press Conference. We fix the rules, we host, and the politicians are our guests. Our rules are very simple: Every member can ask any question.

Do politicians feel compelled to show up and participate?

They are not forced to come. But the reputation of a politician depends on his or her attitude, and how clever they are when confronted with our questions, outside of the protected space within the ministry.

So it helps them if they perform well in this environment?

I think so. And in the past we have seen the opposite, when someone came and didn’t answer the questions very well, and then they lost their job. This has happened once or twice over the years.

In North America, some politicians are trying to go around the traditional press, and communicate with constituents directly through Twitter, Facebook or other means. Is that an issue in Germany?

Yes, we see this trend in Germany as well. Every politician thinks it is better to communicate directly with the public. But if you see the number of viewers on their own Facebook pages, it is sometimes just 20, or 200. It’s not nearly as big an audience as the politician can get if they come to the Federal Press Conference. We have 900 participants – almost all newspapers and broadcasters are members.

How does the Federal Press Conference handle bloggers, web outlets and other new media?

We have some members who are bloggers. Our requirements for membership say you have to make a living from your profession, and you have to cover foreign policy. If you can fulfil these requirements, you can be a member.

Are there any restrictions on how members handle the material from the press conferences?

The members decide how they will cover what happens at the press conference. If they want to cover the whole press conference, or one sentence, or nothing, they decide on their own.

In asking questions, is priority given to traditional media?

No. Every member has the same right as the others. Whoever puts their hand up first will get the first question. Sometimes, before we start the press conference, we ask which themes and topics are of interest to more than one member. Then those will be discussed first. But the principle is that every member can ask any question. We also work with the foreign press association, so if you are a correspondent from a Canadian newspaper, and you become a member of the foreign press association, you can attend the conference and ask any question you want.

Does this format help strengthen trust in the media, and guard against accusations of “fake news”?

Yes, it may help. You can ask questions over and over again, and the politicians who are our guests have the chance to give answers that give the whole picture in some circumstances.

Would this kind of format work in North America?

I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder why the idea of freedom of the press involves waiting for the government to invite journalists to a press conference. It is more direct to have journalists decide when a press conference should be. They should invite the politicians.

What can journalists do to fight against accusations of fake news?

The only solution is to do the job as we have done it for decades: to report what you know to be the truth.

Is a robust media environment crucial to any Western democracy?

I am deeply convinced that a functioning democracy doesn‘t happen by itself – and won‘t stay in place by itself. You have to pay attention to essential preconditions, and among these a free, robust and responsible media is not the least important one.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Time for a digital detox? U of T expert training journalists for the ‘fake news’ era

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 18:40:10 +0000

Time for a digital detox? U of T expert training journalists for the ‘fake news’ era

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 07/13/2018 - 14:40

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Jeffrey Dvorkin, the director of the journalism program at U of T Scarborough, has written a new book to help train journalists in an age of disinformation (photo by rawpixel via Unsplash)

Topic

When Jeffrey Dvorkin began his journalism career at CBS News in 1972, “the assumption was that no one is going to lie to you.”

“There was a complete agreement that the news you got from your local newspaper or off the local radio or television was fine,” says Dvorkin, who was then a graduate student. “Partly because we may have been a bit naive, but it was also about how news and information was a kind of cultural glue that kept a society together.”

Nearly 50 years later, Dvorkin is the director of the journalism program at the ��Ƶ Scarborough, where graduates enter an entirely transformed media environment. In the midst of the digital era, news organizations' resources are plummeting while the quantity of information – and the speed that it's delivered to consumers – is skyrocketing. To prepare up-and-coming journalists for this environment, he wrote Critical News Literacy, a textbook that hits shelves this summer.

The book covers topics including truth and verification, bias (both good and bad), deconstructing news and its sources, and the consequences of fake news. The book also calls for the “best traditions of journalists” – which Dvorkin dubs “curiosity and skepticism” – to be imparted to the public. Each chapter concludes with an ethical dilemma ripped from the headlines of Dvorkin’s time as the first ombudsman for National Public Radio (NPR).

One of the book’s major themes is understanding what constitutes reputable information, suggesting the acronym “VIA,” which stands for “verification," “independence" and “accountability."

“If one of those elements might be missing from a piece of journalism or a news report that you’re looking at, reading, listening to, then you should be questioning the whole thing,” Dvorkin says.

“There’s still a lot of people who are easily changed by that misinformation and disinformation.”

Dvorkin argues the problem of fake news is magnified by an assumption in journalism: digital is better for communicating and, thus, more digital is even better

Inspiration came to Dvorkin in New York, at Stony Brook University, where he teaches four journalism classes per year by video. He observed American students struggling to be part of the “Trumpian environment.” Upon learning of Dvorkin’s planned study leave, one professor encouraged him to write a book on that very theme.

In 2017, while redesigning introductory courses for the U of T Scarborough journalism program, Dvorkin realized his 12 lectures could be written into chapters (the book will not be required for his courses).

He argues the problem of inaccurate information, including fake news, is furthered by a an assumption in journalism – that digital is better for communicating and, thus, more digital is even better.

“Instead, people are so overwhelmed by this stuff that they’re in retreat,” Dvorkin says. He explains that this is why some pull away from the news, only visit sites that confirm existing beliefs or withdraw entirely to watch cat videos.

He says the solution is to develop a new set of instincts. Dvorkin hopes Critical News Literacy will introduce students to the idea that it is acceptable to take regular breathers from technology.

“It’s a big challenge, but it’s one that I think is urgently needed at this point,” he says.

This would require a mental shift for students since it would require to them to view technology as a tool. However, Dvorkin says this could “give them a kind of an empowerment.”

Dvorkin hopes this sense of control will extend to other aspects of digital life, including self-image, insecurity and the mental health issues that impact young people who grow up entrenched in technology.

“I think that this idea of a digital detox is really important. We have to figure out the ways we can do it,” he says. “One way is to give people a sense that they control the information, not the other way around.”

U of T breathes new life into Marshall McLuhan’s Toronto School

Romi Levine — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 13:50:47 +0000

U of T breathes new life into Marshall McLuhan’s Toronto School

Romi Levine Thu, 10/13/2016 - 09:50

Cutline

Paolo Granata, McLuhan Centenary Fellow and Toronto School conference chair (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Marshall McLuhan

Faculty of Information

President Meric Gertler

city-building

communications

Digital Media

Subheadline

Conference brings influential media thinkers back into the spotlight

Toronto has its fair share of cultural icons. Today, it’s Drake – our chart-topping, Raptors-loving rap superstar whose nickname for Toronto, “the 6ix,” has become a part of our daily lexicon.

In the 1960s, it was a group of forward-thinking intellectuals led by Marshall McLuhan, one of ��Ƶ's most famous professors. He became a celebrity as his ideas on mass media, culture and technology attracted fans like John Lennon, Woody Allen and Pierre Trudeau.

A heritage plaque dedicated to McLuhan was unveiled Wednesday at the coach house where he taught and hosted discussions for much of his career. The building is now called the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology.

Starting today, the McLuhan Centre, which is part of the Faculty of Information, will be launching a series of events that explore the value and importance of McLuhan and the famed group of intellectuals who were called the Toronto School of Communication. The McLuhan Centre hopes to spark a conversation that will inspire a new generation of thinkers with a three-day conference called Toronto School: Then, Now, Next.

"McLuhan famously broke and transcended boundaries – between disciplines, between academia and popular culture, between the local and the global," said U of T President Meric Gertler at the unveiling event.

"But he was rooted here, among colleagues from a range of disciplines, in what would become known as the Toronto School of Communication – a brilliant talent-cluster that helped accentuate U of T’s position as a world-leading centre for creativity and leadership in the humanities," he said.

Also in attendance was McLuhan’s son, Michael, who said that what keeps his father “relevant and marvellous today” are the people who continue to debate and discuss McLuhan’s ideas.

“[The conference] just speaks to the far reach that he has all over the world, not just here in the city of Toronto,” he said.

McLuhan along with Harold Innis, Eric Havelock, Northrop Frye and musician Glenn Gould formed the Toronto School of Communication, which forever changed how we view our relationship with media and technology.

The three-day conference, which starts today, features guests and speakers from 21 different countries.

"We are really building a community around the label of the Toronto School,” says Paolo Granata, McLuhan Centenary fellow and conference chair.

McLuhan’s insights have never been more relevant than they are today, says U of T alumna and editor of The Toronto School of Communication Theory, Rita Watson.

His ideas eerily foreshadow our Internet-obsessed culture and the rise of social networks.

“He predicted a crisis in the modern era as literate ‘mentalities’ that had evolved in literate cultures tried to integrate the effects of electronic media,” says Watson, who will be speaking at the conference.

McLuhan knew electronic media would change our lives, says Granata.

“This kind of network is where the ideas come from. It’s where innovation comes from,” he says.

(Marshall McLuhan at U of T in 1973, U of T archives)

The Toronto School conference is also an opportunity to give a voice to a more diverse group of media theorists.

“A lot of young women are involved in this conference as student volunteers or as panellists,” says Emma Findlay-White, a fourth-year student at Victoria College in book and media studies and the conference’s volunteer coordinator. “There’s a lot of different ways women are getting their perspective and views out there. It’s important that we’re changing the role women play in media.”

And change is good for the Toronto School.

“We are at the McLuhan Centre not to say what McLuhan said," Granata says. "We are here to do what McLuhan did: foster conversation, participation, foster the awareness about how we can look at the contemporary world.”

Privacy, technology and advertising

sgupta — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:13:59 +0000

Privacy, technology and advertising sgupta Wed, 03/07/2012 - 04:13

Cutline

Professor Dilip Soman sees the use of facial recognition technology in advertising as an evolution of marketing. (Rotman School photo)

Anjum Nayyar

Author legacy

Anjum Nayyar

More News

Rotman

Digital Media

Subheadline

Professor Dilip Soman discusses the use of facial recognition software

Recently a London ad campaign on an Oxford Street digital billboard raised some eyebrows. The billboard was equipped with facial-recognition technology that can tell with 90-per-cent certainty the gender of someone standing in front of it. This “skill” allows it to display a full 40-second ad for Plan UK, an international charity that helps children in the developing world, to women only. Men aren’t able to see the ad and instead are directed to Plan’s website. U of T News spoke to Dilip Soman, a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, about whether this type of targeted data collection and marketing is an invasion of privacy.

Is this type of data collection an invasion of privacy? Is there anything an individual consumer can do to stop it?

I actually love the idea. I see it as an evolution of marketing -- something that is inevitable and something that could truly add value to consumers. The question about whether it’s an invasion of privacy is a separate question from the technology; it has to do with how the technology is used.

Let's think about the privacy issue more deeply for a moment. Guessing who you are and delivering an appropriate message is not an invasion of privacy. In the olden days, advertisers used different versions of ads in Vogue, Time and Sports Illustrated. That's because they had data that predicted the profiles of readers, and hence, they customized messages and content to match that profile. The next stage in the evolution is online; online marketers can get a good sense of what your needs are by your browsing behaviour and can deliver appropriate messages. I see the e-billboards as a natural progression of this basic idea of targeting messages to the right segment.

A violation of privacy occurs if your data are used in an intrusive manner, share it with others or somehow broadcast it. One thing I would worry about is the manner in which the e-billboard delivers messages. If the billboard delivers messages that could be potentially embarrassing in a public place, that might be an issue (but again, not a privacy issue per se).

A privacy violation would occur if the billboard used data that was not publicly visible. Let's say the billboard used face recognition technology to pull out your data from a grocery store loyalty program and delivered an ad for a hygiene product based on your usage patterns in the past; THAT would be a violation of privacy. Otherwise it is simply using data that is visible to anyone around the person.

Is this kind of targeted marketing the wave of the future?

It is indeed. The trick is for a) marketers to develop technology that does this in a cost-effective manner and b) to deliver messages those do not violate privacy and cause embarrassment. If these conditions are met, it is clearly a win-win situation. Marketers reduce wastage by focusing their advertising dollars on relevant audiences, and consumers do not get to see ads that they will likely never want to view in the first place.

One simple "fix" to the possibility of upsetting consumers is to allow them to opt-out. Suppose the billboard showed a standard ad, but had a button which could let the consumer control whether they wanted customized ads. This concept would work for online targeting, billboards, kiosks, cellphone advertising etc., and would go a long way in alleviating concerns about the potential “creepiness” of such targeted advertising.

Can this be something Canadians would soon see here as well?

That's a harder question to predict. I can certainly see why this would have appeal universally. I also think the younger generation in Canada is technologically savvy enough to want targeted marketing like this. The question is whether our markets are large enough to make the technology cost effective.

What are Canada’s rules around marketing procedures when it comes to marketing to the public? What generally do our laws say on what’s permissible and what isn’t?

As far as I know, this is permissible in our laws because- again, it’s simply a contemporary way of delivering advertising using principles that are age old. If this is illegal, then personally referring to women as "Madam" and men as "Sir" based simply upon seeing them and assessing their gender should also be illegal.

What is the potential for discrimination in this kind of marketing via this technology?

This is simply a technology; it enables whatever a marketer wants to do. So if someone wants to discriminate, yes they can do it. But they can also do it today -- so, if the question is "does the technology INCREASE the potential for discrimination," I'd say no. By taking control away from a human being, I would almost say that it reduces the randomness of certain individuals who might have discriminatory tendencies.

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