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, Montrčal, 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 Montrčal.
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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