Today I ventured into the drizzly day to have lunch in Hamilton and then work in my office on the second edition of the textbook of which I am writing the second edition: Understanding Human Communication, Canadian Edition. Lunch at Bad Dog Café on Locke to talk social media… I went to bed late, because …
Category Archives: Research
Launched new publication: Journal of Professional Communication !
I thought that this warranted its own entry! Today, I launched the Journal of Professional Communication at the Public Relations Leadership Summit. The JPC will be a forum where academics, PR practitioners, marketers, political communicators, and multimedia artists and designers can exchange ideas, publish case studies and discuss the actual state of and future of …
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COMM-Lab: Communication Metrics Laboratory is LAUNCHED!
Today, we launched the COMM-Lab: Communication Metrics Laboratory, of which I am the founder and co-director with my colleague, Dr. Philip Savage. COMM-Lab was created because of a dearth of empirical and evidence-based research on communication studies in Canada. Many scholars, practitioners and MPs have told Philip and me that more data is needed to …
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Guest lecture from Andrew Laing of Cormex Research at McMaster
My 4th-year News Analysis class had a special treat today. We had a guest lecturer – Dr Andrew Laing, president of Cormex Research. Cormex Research is Canada’s leading media content measurement and analysis firm. Here’s an example of the sort of work Cormex does. Andrew is a unique and admirable person. He took time out …
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Canada’s choice: political communication as dance or war?
Yesterday afternoon, I gave a lecture to my first year communications class on George Lakoff’s idea that our thinking is fundamentally rooted in metaphor. Lakoff explains that the underpinnings of how we structure our understanding of the world is metaphorical. He gives the example of “Time is money” – a metaphor that expresses a principle …
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Variables, Sampling and Content Analysis
I had a seminar class today with my Communication Studies 4N03: News Analysis class. It was great. We focused on units of sampling, variable selection and defining the population. I really enjoy teaching this class, because it is problem- and project-based. The class is divided into 7 groups, each of whom is taking on a …