McGill/Concordia Graduate Student Joint Symposium On Global Media Policy, Transnational Activism and International Communication

Tuesday 7 April, 5:30 pm in Arts W215

James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International, will speak at a Media@McGill event co-sponsored with the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, and the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy.

NGO efforts to reform the World Intellectual Property Organization
http://media.mcgill.ca/en/node/1399

Wednesday 8 April, 9:00-4:00 pm in Arts W220 – Student Symposium

McGill/Concordia Graduate Student Joint Symposium On Global Media Policy, Transnational Activism and International Communication

Download Schedule here
mcgill-conu-symp-sked-final-april54

Download Abstracts here:
mcgill-conu-april8-symp_abs

Convenors:
Profs. Marc Raboy and Becky Lentz, McGill, and Leslie Shade, Concordia

Guest and Respondent:
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International

Agenda

9.00-9.15: Welcome and opening

9.15-10.15: PANEL 1 – International Communication: Culture, Critique and Activism

Mobilization and the Role of Celebrities in the Live 8 Campaign: Citizens consuming or Consuming Citizenship?
Valerie Khayat, Concordia University

Punk as “Glocal” Cultural Product: Wrench in the Gears or Neo-liberal Quisling?
Cyrus Lewis, Concordia University

Fluxtuation, Globalization, and the Spaces and Places of Public Screens
Zach Melzer, Concordia University

10.15-11.15: PANEL 2 – Media and Democracy
All Politics is Personal: Ethos and identity in Barack Obama’s Direct Messaging Strategies
David Godsall, Concordia University

Radio France International: Serving French Soft Power in Western Africa?
Jeanne Dorelli, Concordia University

The Measure of Democratic Potential – Imagining A Global Method for Evaluating News Media Performance
Christine Crowther, McGill University

11.15-11.30: Health break

11.30-12.30: PANEL 3 – Canadian Policy: Opportunities, Challenges, Responses

Creating the Ideal: Diminishing Notions of Citizenship within Canadian Telecommunciations Policy
Roddy Doucet, Concordia University

Art at the Edges: Advocating for the Avant-garde in Canada
Patti Schmidt, McGill University

When Saying “Local” isn’t Enough: Local Television Regulation as a Discursive Formation in American and Canadian Broadcasting Policy
Christopher Ali, Concordia University

12.30-1.30: Lunch
(Provided by the Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications)

1.30-2.30: PANEL 4 – The Impact of Global Policy Institutions

The Post-WSIS Challenge: Global Civil Society and Communication Reform in the Face of Technocentrism and Corporate Steering
Svetla Turnin, Concordia University

Listening Locally? UNESCO Cultural Diversity and Canadian Campus Radio
Brian Fauteux, McGill/Concordia University

How Globalized Communications are Challenging Cultural Expressions
Marie-Eve Gagnon, McGill University

2.30-2.45: Health Break

2.45-3.45: PANEL 5 – Rethinking Intellectual Property Policy Issues

Fixing Sound: Phonograms, IP, and the Political Economy of Sound
Daniel Moody-Grigsby, McGill University

Opening the Vault: Copyright Ownership of Digitized Art Images in the Museum
Valerie Doucette, McGill University

Copyright or Copycat? Impacts of Globalization on ‘Made-in-Canada’ IP Policy
Stephanie Dixon, McGill University

3.45-4.00: Wrap-up

A Guide to Collaborative Inquiry and Social Engagement

A Guide to Collaborative Inquiry and Social Engagement
Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel J. Buckles
 
Sage India/IDRC 2008
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-130303-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

Meanwhile, the citizens are upset….

From NPR and AP: G-20 protesters break into Royal Bank of Scotland
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102590869

Colonialist Couture

Suzy Menkes, Out of Africa NY Times (3/30/09):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/fashion/31iht-fafrica.html?_r=1&hpw

The masked face with its feathers of hair glares from the instep. And the savage hybrid of a shoe mixes python straps and a sky-high heel with beads, wooden pearls, a cord and a tassel.

When it appeared on the runway at the Louis Vuitton show in October, who could have believed that the fantastical footwear — selling at €1,250 to €2,250 (about $1,650 to $3,000) a pair — could be the hottest item for summer 2009?

No wonder that the designer Marc Jacobs baptized it the “Spicy,” giving a name to the shoe, as had previously been the custom with the now-fading It bags.

To spice up this footwear, the designer added everything but the kitchen sink — as long as it was out of Africa. Snakeskin, plumes and semiprecious stones set the tone for a shoe that was inspired by Josephine Baker, the famous singer and dancer of 1920s Paris. She resonated with the exotica that was prevalent in a period when the Ballets Russes had set off one fashion trend and the discovery of Egyptian mummies another.

But the surprising thing about the 2009 spring season, where African style is a drumbeat through clothes and accessories, is that it isn’t about the ethnic.

Instead, it is the sculpted, geometric shapes of Africa and its rich, spicy colors that are the strongest forms of identity.

—

The colonial world has also been mined for inspiration. The heat-and-dust colors of stone gray and sand beige, with a hint of military khaki, produced another African scenario. For Hermès, that meant re-creating the effect of desert sands on the surface of rippling suede dresses. For Ralph Lauren, the colonial looks fell somewhere between India and Africa, with low-crotch pants — those sarouel and jodhpur styles that are so à la mode this summer.

Mobile Phone Use Passes Milestone (UN)

Chris Tryhorn. A UN report reveals that half the globe now pays to use one, with the fastest growth taking place in Africa. The Guardian (3.3.09).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/03/mobile-phones1

The speed and scale of the world’s love affair with mobile phones was revealed yesterday in a UN report that showed more than half the global population now pay to use one.

The survey, by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an agency of the UN, also found that nearly a quarter of the world’s 6.7 billion people use the internet.

But it is the breathtaking growth of cellular technology that is doing more to change society, particularly in developing countries where a lack of effective communications infrastructure has traditionally been one of the biggest obstacles to economic growth.

GhostNet

John Markoff, Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries, New York Times, 3.29.09.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html

TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.

…

The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware…

Globe and Mail, 2.39.09: Meet the Canadians Who Busted GhostNet, by Omar El Akkad:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090329.wcomputerspy0329/BNStory/Technology/home

Against the backdrop of humming computers in the underground lab in Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, a screen flickered, and the most politically explosive cyber-spy network in the world began to reveal itself.

Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa.

Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa.

Edited by Mirjam de Bruijn, Francis Nyamnjoh and Inge Brinkman.

Langaa Publishers / ASC, 2009. Available on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Phones-Talking-Everyday-Africa/dp/9956558532/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237981472&sr=1-1>
and ABC Books.

We cannot imagine life now without a mobile phone is a
frequent comment when Africans are asked about mobile phones.
They have become part and parcel of the communication
landscape in many urban and rural  areas of Africa and
the growth of mobile telephony is amazing: from 1 in
50 people being users in 2000 to 1 in 3 in 2008. Such
growth is impressive but it does not even begin to tell
us about the many ways in which mobile phones are being
appropriated by Africans and how they are transforming or
are being transformed by society in Africa. This volume
ventures into such appropriation and mutual shaping.
Rich in theoretical innovation and empirical substantiation,
it brings together reflections on developments around
the mobile phone by scholars of six African countries
(Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania)
who explore the economic, social and cultural contexts in
which the mobile phone is being adopted, adapted and
harnessed by mobile Africa.

Radio Okapi

A joint project in the DRC by the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) and the Fondation Hirondelle

http://www.radiookapi.net/

It celebrates its seventh anniversary:
http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/radio-okapi-celebrates-its-7th-anniversary

On 25 February, Radio Okapi celebrated seven years of broadcasts to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Its launch coincided with the launch of the Inter Congolese Talks in Sun City, South Africa, which culminated in the transition to peace. Radio Okapi broadcasts to a large part of DR Congo’s territory, with impartial, reliable, objective and professional information to accompany the peace process.

Radio Okapi is the fruit of a great ambition shared by its two founders: the United Nations and Fondation Hirondelle, which is a Swiss Non Governmental Organisation specialising in media projects in countries devastated by armed conflicts.

Along with its head studio in Kinshasa, Radio Okapi has nine regional stations and about twenty relay stations. It employs more than 200 staff, including journalists, presenters and technicians who work seven days a week to broadcast reliable and credible information in French, as well as the four national languages of Lingala, Swahili, Tshiluba and Kikongo.

Chantal Kanyimbo, President of the DRC National Press Union, said that “Radio Okapi shows that Congolese journalists are professionals; that they have the capacity to do their job correctly when the conditions are right, in terms of salaries and equipment.”

November, 2008: DIDACE NAMUJIMBO, RADIO OKAPI JOURNALIST MURDERED IN BUKAVU (DRC)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/218498/122747194989.htm

and notice from WACC: http://www.waccglobal.org/component/content/article/1491:radio-okapi-journalist-.html

Shock Waves, Hélène Magny and Pierre Mignault
http://www3.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=55981

Missile Dick Chicks

http://www.missiledickchicks.net/

Singing Raging Grannies

In Edmonton at International Peace Day:

The Barenaked Grannies – If I had a Billion Dollars

An oral history of the Grannies