June 5, 2008

 

To: Dr. David Okeowo, ASU Professor, CMM Chair; Dr. Thelma Ivery, ASU COA&S Dean; Communication Faculty

 

From: Dr. E-K. Daufin, Professor

 

RE: Report on the 59th Annual International Communication Association, Montrèal, Quebec, Canada

May 22 - May 26 - Theme: Communicating for Social Impact

 

                I am grateful the department was able to support about 22% of the conference cost and here is my report.

 

               OPENING PLENARY: FILMMAKER-IN-RESIDENCE

Chair: Andre H. Caron, University of Montreal, Canada

Tom Perlmutter, National Film Board of Canada

Gerry Flahive, Filmaker-In-Residence Producer, Canada

                The Filmmaker-in-Residence is an award-winning experimental, immersive, online, interactive documentary series and website that has been described as, "engrossing" as well as, "refreshing, engaging and political."  The works pull the viewer into the lives and struggles of ordinary people.  It also shows the remarkable positive outcomes that can manifest when governmental initiatives fund creative opportunities for community members to portray their lives via media artistry and to advocate on their own behalf. Presenters underscored the immensely positive impact government and media can have when they work together for the public good.

                The National Film Board of Canada, in cooperation with a Toronto-based, university-affiliated hospital, worked with the medical frontline staff and a single filmmaker, letting the documentary subjects emerge from the needs of the clients.  This five-year, ultra low-budget ($450,000 including salaries, travel and production costs!) project yielded 4 one-hour documentaries (homeless mothers self-photo project, AIDS in the Canadian African community, health issues of the homeless with the formerly homeless mothers interviewing the ill homeless people, etc.) and a website.

                See: www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence

 

                COMMUNICATION HISTORY INTEREST GROUP

                The centerpiece of this meeting was a screening of The Road to Decatur with filmmaker Glenda Balas.  Other filmmakers included Peter Simonson and Jason Balas.  The documentary tells the story of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld's important book Personal Influence.  It recreates the intellectual and institutional environment that informed the creation of the book.  The funny and fascinating work includes interviews with important figures at Columbia University and the Bureau of Applied Social Research including David Sills, Thelma McCormack, Gertrude Robinson, Charles Wright, Rolf Meyersoh and Elihu Katz himself.  The research is based on a marketing study of 800 Midwestern women and concluded that the mass media influence social leaders who in turn influence broader groups.  The 50's B-roll was delightfully creative.

 

                BEAUTY IDEALS AND GENDERED FRAMES AROUND THE WORLD

                The Feminist Scholarship, Intercultural and Popular Communication Divisions cosponsored this panel.  Alison Denise Brzenchek of the University of Massachusetts presented a study titled, "Sex and the City: The Western Beauty Ideal and Consumption Practices in Women."  She found that this program encouraged women to have poor financial planning and exhibited insensitivity to lower and middle class issues a, for example, the main character said she feared becoming a bag lady, even if she were, "a homeless Fendi bag lady."

                Shelley-Jean Bradfield of Indiana University presented, "(Re-)Inventing 'Home Affairs': Feminist Solidarity and the South African Nation."  Dr. Bradfield studied a soap opera that is explicitly created to assist the citizenry with reconciliation and reunification.  The series has 9 storylines, each about  a woman from one of the nation's 9 major ethnic groups.  I raised the issue of African grandmothers traditionally raising the grandchildren while the mothers generate income or grow food, rather than an aberration of the traditional Western nuclear family as Dr. Bradfield suggested.

                Researchers from the University of Tennessee, University of North Florida and Shenandoah University presented, "Depictions of Women and Men in Advertisements Featured in Japanese Fashion Magazines." I defended their coding schema that labeled women "silly" who were always smiling, happy models, who are often actually in grave discomfort,  pain or even danger on a shoot. 

 

                SEXUAL VIOLENCE, SEXUALITY, GENDER, RACE & MEDIA

                Dr. Barbara Barnett from University of Kansas presented her work-in-progress, "Sports Talk: How the News Media Framed the Duke University Lacrosse Case."  I learned from Dr. Barnett that the young Black woman who says that some of the Duke University lacrosse team members raped her was also a college student at a local historically Black university.  Duke's public relations arm issued over 100 messages framing Duke as the victim and the reasonable ones.  The HBCU administration issued only 3 press releases about the issue only saying that the university trusted the criminal justice system to sort things out.

                Nancy E. Worthington from Quinnipiac University presented, "Of Conspiracies and Kangas: 'Mail' and 'Guardian' online coverage of the Jacob Zuma Rape Trial."  She covered issues of power and gender and rape in the media.  A younger female daughter figure/friend of the family says popular politician Jacob Zuma raped her when she stayed in a guest room at his home and in terror she froze (She had been raped before and psychologists note this is a typical response.).  Zuma claimed the sex was consensual though he had been accused of rape more than once before by different women.  The victim was vilified in the pro-Zuma press and the victim's home was ransacked. 

                THE SESSION I CHAIRED: PRIVATE STORIES, PUBLIC ACCOUNTS, AND THE COMPLICATED NARRATIVES OF WOMEN WE INTERVIEW

                Dr. Ilia Rodriguez of the University of New Mexico presented: "Immigrant Women Braving Cultural Isolation: Ethnographic Research and Theoretical Insights on Dialogic Communication."  While doing a client survey for a group of public service providers for rural Latinas in New Mexico, the researchers found the profound isolation of the research subjects required a deeper ethnographic study in progress.

                Dr. Zhoujun Joyce Chen of the University of Northern Iowa studied 13 online questionnaires completed by breast cancer survivors she had worked with in another service project earlier.  The work is titled, "Perceptions and Actions of Breast Cancer Survivors: Pessimistic or Optimistic?"

                Dr. Glenda R. Balas of the University of New Mexico/New Mexico State University presented "Public Narratives by Private People: Reflections on a Rural Live."  She conducted in-depth case study interviews of rural, head-of-household female farmers and ranchers.  Dr. Balas described the heart-warming and sometimes difficult role of researcher-come-friend.

 

                I attended many other sessions (Reading Popular Media from the Margins: Emerging Directions in Women of Color Audience Studies, Politics & Gender in the Age of Interactive Mass Media, etc.) and the Feminist Scholarship Business Meeting.  Though too many to mention them all, I was impressed with the research of Dr. Diana Rios from the University of Connecticut and Dr. Betty Houchin Winfield of the University of Missouri.  I enjoyed the challenge of practicing my French in the Francophone Montrèal.

 

If anyone would like to see the conference book and information on WordStat and QDA Miner qualitative research mapping software (on which I attended a tutorial session), I have them available in my office through the end of the Fall 08 semester.

 

Respectfully

 

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin

Professor of Communications

Alabama State University

915 S. Jackson St.

Montgomery, AL #6101-0271

334-229-6885

Thanks in advance for your research & creative activity referrals: 

http://home.earthlink.net/~ekdaufin

 

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