Communication - Publications

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Meanings of Diversity in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019–25: A Hermeneutic Text Mining Approach
(2026) Conway, Kyle; Donnelly, Sarah; Brockbank, Madison Lagasse
In the past decade, few policies have been politicized in U.S. higher education as much as those meant to encourage diversity among students and professors. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies have become a favourite target among politicians appealing to voters who see them as a symptom of a zero-sum game where people not perceived as “diverse” are valued less than others. This article examines 118 articles about diversity published in the Chronicle of Higher Education between 2019 and 2025. It uses text mining tools (specifically, sentiment, correspondence, and correlation analysis) to map changes in the ways the words related to diversity, in particular DEI and woke, were used. It then employs hermeneutic techniques, drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, to interpret the patterns identified through text mining. It shows points of continuity, resulting from the ways speakers respond to past discourse, and change, resulting from the ways they anticipate others’ responses and change their behaviour accordingly. Ultimately, this article documents an evolution in meanings of diversity characterized by growing pessimism in response to national and international politics and conflict.
Measuring Lexical Distance between Parallel Corpora: The Case of AI-Generated News Translation
(2025-11-25) Conway, Kyle; Gramaccia, Julie Alice; Scholz, Nikita; Averbeck, Téana
Since the University of Warwick's news translation project in the mid-2000s, it has been a truism that journalists rarely translate whole articles but instead compose stories using texts in other languages as one source among others. However, the development of AI-based machine translation has brought about a shift in journalistic practices. Increasingly, multilingual news agencies are using these tools to produce similar stories in multiple languages. One consequence has been that researchers can now compile parallel corpora of translated stories. This article proposes a method to characterize such corpora by measuring the distance between source and target texts, a method it applies to stories published in English and French on the website SwissInfo.ch. It describes the mechanics of corpus-building, article vectorization, and the creation of a lexical substitution list that makes measurement possible. It then proposes three measures -- Euclidean, Jaccard, and cosine -- which have complementary strengths and weaknesses. The value of these measurement tools is heuristic: they make it possible to identify patterns that can be investigated using other methods more familiar to news translation researchers, such as interviews or direct observation.
Translation and the Paradox of Cultural Flux
(2024) Conway, Kyle
The term culture, as theorists have long observed, describes at least two distinct things: a shared set of assumptions or beliefs shaping how a group of people interpret themselves and their place in the world, and the group of people itself. The boundaries between cultures, in both senses, are porous and shifting, and the words people use to name them are “essentially contested,” in the sense proposed by W.B. Gallie. This article explores the nature of that contestation in Canada, a country marked by considerable internal diversity, focusing on the role of translators funded by the Canada Council. It describes two trends: first, inside Canada, a decades-long history of translation occurring within the Toronto-Montreal corridor, and second, outside of Canada, a growing rate of translation of Canadian works by non-Canadian translators into languages other than English and French. These trends influence the ways that Canadian culture is essentially contested, and they point to a paradox: efforts to pin down identity have the opposite effect. The nature of contestation is such that efforts to define borders and establish categories produce the very churn they are intended to stop.
From social awareness to authoritarian other: The conservative weaponization of woke in Canadian parliamentary discourse
(2025-01-07) McCurdy, Patrick; Clarke, Kaitlin; Cammaerts, Bart
This study examines the evolution of (anti)woke discourse in debates within the Canadian House of Commons from 2019 to 2023, analyzing how “conceptual flipsiding” and moral panic operate to transform democratic language into tools of illiberal politics. Our critical discourse analysis of Hansard transcripts identifies three key themes: the semantic shift of woke from social awareness to authoritarianism, the strategic redefinition of woke by Conservative MPs — led by party leader Pierre Poilievre — to construct a moral panic around an anti-Canadian ideological Other, and inadequate attempts by MPs from other parties to challenge this negative framing. We argue that the discursive weaponization of woke demonstrates how political actors appropriate and invert democratic language to advance illiberal agendas while maintaining democratic legitimacy. This Canadian case illuminates broader patterns in how democratic language is manipulated across national contexts while revealing how ineffective counter-frames can inadvertently legitimize anti-democratic action within democratic institutions.
Vautrons-nous dans l'erreur
(2024-10-28) Bertrand, Labasse
Ce livre vise l'immense marché de tous ceux qui pensent comprendre le journalisme et la sphère de l'information en général, par quelqu'un qui est dans le même cas qu'eux... mais mieux selon lui. Derrière sa verve pétillante, cette sélection de chroniques publiées dans la section « Débats » d'une revue internationale de référence offre un éclairage d'expert particulièrement stimulant sur les bouleversements qui agitent les médias classiques et nouveaux, et à travers eux notre espace commun du débat public. S'il aborde avec malice des questions très sérieuses, l'auteur donne aussi à rire d'idées qui ne le sont guère. Sans aucune malveillance, insiste-t-il : "ce n'est pas de ma faute si toute personne travaillant sur ce thème est condamnée à entendre plus d'absurdités péremptoires qu'un tableau d'art moderne [...] si certaines idées ont l'air saugrenues dès qu'on s'y arrête un peu, tout le mérite en revient à ceux qui les professent." Il assume en revanche la paternité de ses conclusions... et même deux fois pour certaines d'entre elles: "dans une ardeur écologique qu'on ne manquera pas de saluer, quelques textes recyclent des bribes d'articles de recherche plus académiques, donc impropres à la consommation humaine et de ce fait promis à l'enfouissement". Ces textes étant parus dans une revue résolument attachée au libre accès, leur recueil l'est également (du moins au format PDF) : vous en trouverez donc un exemplaire de consultation en attachement. SOMMAIRE Une panique de notre temps L'effroi gagne les démocraties : voilà que la sphère publique est infectée par les fausses nouvelles. Mais si cette nouvelle-là s'avérait douteuse elle aussi, à quelle crainte pourrait-on donc se fier ? Cité à comparaître « Le XXIe siècle sera religieux ou ne sera pas », n'a jamais dit Malraux. En tout cas, la religion des fausses citations y a pris beaucoup d'ampleur. Malheur aux incroyants ! Vautrons-nous dans l'erreur ! Non seulement les médias se trompent, mais ils se trompent souvent mal. Au point de perdre tout le bénéfice de leurs faux pas, ne mesurant pas les avantages d'une bévue bien assumée. Sauf erreur de ma part. Enfin révélé : ce qu'est le journalisme De quoi parlent au juste les Cahiers ? Du « journalisme », sans doute, mais encore ? Après un quart de siècle d'existence et tant de numéros consacrés à ce terme vague, il est plus que temps de tirer les choses au clair. D'autant que cette question est devenue brûlante pour le journalisme lui-même. Quoi que ça puisse être. Les vertus du désastre En fissurant le modèle économique de la presse, les géants d'internet pourraient aussi scinder la dualité traditionnelle de l'actualité, production commerciale et service d'intérêt public. Si la loi de l'offre et de la demande ne suffit plus à préserver l'information de la collectivité, il faudra peut-être reconsidérer sérieusement la question. Délivrez-nous du mal Privé d'instinct moral à la suite d'un accident de jeunesse, l'auteur se penche néanmoins sur des dérives médiatiques bien connues. Mais son incapacité à distinguer le bien et le mal au premier coup d'œil l'amène à croire contre toute vraisemblance que leur dénonciation vertueuse les aide surtout à perdurer. Disruption, piège à cons (De quelques différences entre une analogie et une stratégie) Les métaphores sont de vieilles amies du journalisme... mais moins que le scepticisme. Avant de trop miser sur une similitude apparente, les professionnels de l'information feraient bien de l'examiner d'un peu plus près. Le problème avec les mots... Soupeser les termes de l'actualité est aussi fondamental que vérifier les faits ou les chiffres, mais bien moins gratifiant que l'investigation et de plus en plus lourd à assumer. Glissons-en quelques mots.
Exploring Equity and Inclusion in Canadian and Quebecois Contexts
(2024) Zaky, Radamis; Somda, Aris
This open-source resource is mainly designed for communication students who are studying organizational communication and primarily focused on the Canadian context. It fills an important need as most of the available textbooks are mainly American-focused textbooks and as a result, do not properly represent the complexities of the Canadian context. This resource is divided into four chapters. The first one provides different definitions and explanations for equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDID). The second chapter focuses on the existing legal frameworks that are meant to legally organize EDID in both Canada and Québec. The third chapter focuses on the importance of the culture of EDID as legal frameworks alone will not achieve effective EDID. Chapter 3 also provides readers with some practical recommendations for best practices that organizations can use to achieve EDID for hiring practices. The last chapter focuses on the ramifications on mental health when EDID is not achieved.
The World in Front of the Text: Landscape as Medium of Mutuality
(2024) Conway, Kyle
This article describes an approach to interpreting landscape derived from the work of Paul Ricoeur. It examines a photograph of signs erected by oil companies in North Dakota forbidding entry to a well site, using these signs as a starting point to explore a paradoxical feature of a geographic site-as-text, namely the way that such sites exist within the world but also as texts that produce a world of their own. In the play between these two worlds, the first ostensive, the second not, landscape opens up a relational space of mutuality where imagination plays a central role.
How to Read Like You Mean It
(2023) Conway, Kyle
In this candid and concise volume, Kyle Conway, author of The Art of Communication in a Polarized World, considers how we can open ourselves to others and to ideas that scare us by reading difficult texts. Conway argues that because we resist ideas we don’t understand, we must embrace confusion as a constitutive part of understanding and meaningful exchange, whether between a reader and a text or between two people. Building on the work of hermeneutics scholar Paul Ricoeur, Conway evaluates the recurring paradox of miscommunication that results in deeper understanding and proposes strategies for reading that will allow individuals give up the illusion of certainty. In elegant and compelling prose, Conway introduces readers to the idea that it is through uncertainty that we can gain access to new and meaningful worlds—those of texts and other people.
Reading oil (back) into media history: The case of postwar television
(2023) Conway, Kyle
This article extends recent research about the material impact of energy-consuming media technologies by describing the role of oil and its derivatives in the production and consumption of television in the United States after the Second World War. It starts by exploring reasons why the material dimensions of oil have received limited scholarly attention in media history. Then it examines television by describing how the component parts of a TV receiver—the cathode ray tube, the chassis into which it was set, and the cabinet housing the chassis—incorporated elements made with oil. Finally, interpreting prior historiography through the lens of oil, it describes the role these different components played in conflicting discourses about the space of the home, especially the living room, in postwar America.
Teaching, Research, Poiesis
(2022) Conway, Kyle
In this paper, the author presents a different approach to research writing by first looking at the nature of the research being written. He calls into question a distinction all too often taken for granted, namely that between research and teaching, to shed light on the important links between the two. The experiential aspect of a course suffers the moment it is written down and the content set in stone. That is the first paradox. The second relates to the content itself. A course’s content is a stream of signs too dynamic for our conventional analytical tools. The third paradox concerns this setting-in-stone, which, no matter what, does not stop the course-as-text from becoming an experience once more. This is where the potential of teaching-as-research is fully realized. These analyses revisit the first two paradoxes before tackling the third in the conclusion, where the author describes how a course-as-text can become an event to be experienced once again.
Enseignement, recherche, poïésis
(2022) Conway, Kyle
Avant de parler d’une manière d’écrire la recherche autrement, l’auteur identifie la nature de la recherche à écrire. Il met en cause une distinction trop souvent tenue pour acquise, à savoir celle entre la recherche et l’enseignement et qui dissimule des liens importants entre ces deux tâches. Un cours se dénature en perdant sa qualité événementielle au moment où il est transformé en texte et que son contenu est fixé. C’est le premier paradoxe. Le deuxième se rapporte à ce contenu. En tant que flux de signes, ce contenu est trop dynamique pour nos outils analytiques conventionnels. Le troisième paradoxe porte sur cette fixité : malgré tout, elle n’empêche pas le cours-comme-texte de redevenir événement. C’est à ce moment que le potentiel de l’enseignement-comme-recherche se réalise pleinement. Ces analyses permettent de revisiter les deux premiers paradoxes avant d’en arriver au troisième dans la conclusion, où l’auteur décrit comment un cours-comme-texte redevient un événement.
Chez moi, loin de chez moi : Paradoxes identitaires de la pétromodernité
(2022) Conway, Kyle
Dans cette courte réflexion, je me penche sur quelques paradoxes de l’appartenance à l’ère de la pétromodernité, ou le mode de vie en Amérique du nord (et ailleurs) dont la structure dépend de la production et de la consommation du pétrole. Depuis une décennie, mes recherches portent sur un boom pétrolier qui s'est déroulé entre 2008 et 2014 dans l’État américain du Dakota du nord. Ma famille vit dans cet État, mais ce boom a remis en question la manière dont de je m’identifie à la région. J’explore donc trois paradoxes — celui de l’inscription des limites, celui du positionnement identitaire et finalement celui de la distance et du mouvement — pour expliquer pourquoi et comment j’y appartiens même si je n’y appartiens pas.
DH2020 Book of Abstracts
(2020) Crompton, Constance; Estill, Laura; Guiliano, Jennifer
The DH2020 Book of Abstracts is an important contribution to the field of digital humanities as it captures the presentations at the annual international conference hosted by the Alliance for Digital Humanities Organization. At 598 pages long, this volume brings together 475 abstracts for paper presentations, panels, posters, lightning talks, and workshops. The contents showcase the work of authors from five continents, highlighting the latest in all areas of digital humanities research, including history, GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), literature, art, linguistics, digital pedagogy, geospatial information systems, and more. The DH2020 conference was slated to be held at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University in July 2020, but was cancelled in March due to the covid pandemic. The abstract texts are available under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-4.0.
Translation in Global News: Proceedings of the Conference held at the University of Warwick, 23 June 2006
(2006) Conway, Kyle; Bassnett, Susan
In 2006, the University of Warwick hosted a conference on the theme "Translation in Global News." This book, one of the first in the field of news translation, includes its proceedings. Contributors include Susan Bassnett, Yves Gambier, Martin Montgomery, Miren Gutiérrez, Sara Bani, Kyle Conway, Claire Tsai, M. Cristina Ciamott, Paule Salerno-O’Shea, Suvi Hautanen, and Stella Sorby.
Modern Hospitality
(2017) Conway, Kyle
This essay examines the roots of modern anxiety, in particular the loss of ontological security, in relation to people’s impulse and ability to practice hospitality. It argues that hospitality is rooted in paradoxical notions of reciprocity. Reciprocity cannot be imposed: demanding that a guest conform to a host’s expectations denatures the act of hospitality itself. At the same time, absolute hospitality, or the idea of opening our doors unconditionally, is risky. We make ourselves vulnerable at a time where we’re already haunted by the idea that however much we do, it might not be enough to keep us safe. This vulnerability, however, is valuable because it is risky: showing vulnerability can have a humanizing effect for the people to whom we let ourselves become vulnerable because it demonstrates trust.
The Art of Communication in a Polarized World
(2020) Conway, Kyle
People’s minds are hard to change. In North America and elsewhere, communities are fractured along ideological lines as social media and algorithms encourage individuals to seek out others who think like they do and to condemn those that don’t. This social and political polarization has resulted in systemic discrimination and weaponized communication trends such as gaslighting and fake news. In this compelling new book, Kyle Conway confronts the communication challenges of our modern world by navigating the space between opposing perspectives. Conway explores how individuals can come to understand another person’s interpretation of the world and provides the tools for shaping effective arguments capable of altering their perspective. Drawing on the theory of cultural translation and its dimensions of power, meaning, and invention, Conway deepens our understanding of what it means to communicate and opens the door to new approaches to politics and ethics. An essential guide for surviving in our polarized society, this book offers concrete strategies for refining how values and ideas are communicated.
Sixty Years of Boom and Bust: The Impact of Oil in North Dakota, 1958-2018
(2020) Conway, Kyle
In the 1950s, North Dakota experienced its first oil boom in the Williston Basin, on the western side of the state. The region experienced unprecedented social and economic changes, which were carefully documented in a 1958 report by four researchers at the University of North Dakota. Since then, western North Dakota has undergone two more booms, the most recent from 2008 to 2014. Sixty Years of Boom and Bust republishes the 1958 report and updates its analysis by describing the impact of the latest boom on the region’s physical geography, politics, economics, and social structure. Sixty Years of Boom and Bust addresses topics as relevant today as they were in 1958: the natural and built environment, politics and policy, crime, intergroup relations, and access to housing and medical services. In addition to making hard-to-find material readily available, it examines an area shaped by resource booms and busts over the course of six decades. As a result, it provides unprecedented insight into the patterns of development and the roots of the challenges the region has faced.
The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of North Dakota
(2016) Caraher, William; Conway, Kyle
In 2008, the Bakken went boom. Thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing, oil production in western North Dakota exploded. As the price of oil went up, so did the oil rigs. People came from all over the country (and the world) in search of work, and cities and towns struggled to keep up. This book is about the challenges they faced. It is about the human dimensions of the boom, as told by artists, poets, journalists, and scholars. It captures the boom at its peak, before the price of oil fell and the boom went bust. This is the only book on the Bakken to bring together such a wide range of voices. It captures a fascinating moment in the history not only of North Dakota, but of global oil production. It sheds light on the impact of oil on local communities that, until now, had not attracted much interest from the outside world. And it shows how North Dakotans, both old and new, have found ways to address the challenges they face in a turbulent, changing environment. With contributions from Carenlee Barkdull, Karin L. Becker, Sebastian Braun, Nikki Berg Burin, Angela Cary, Kyle Cassidy, Heidi Czerwiec, Simon Donato, Rebecca A. Dunham, Julia C. Geigle, John Holmgren, Heather Jackson, Ann Reed, Andrew Reinhard, Richard Rothaus, Melissa Rae Stewart, Jessica Sobolik, Laura Tally, Ryan M. Taylor, Bret A. Weber, Joshua E. Young
Method and Its Undoing: Research Methods, Fall 2020
(2021) Conway, Kyle; Ichiba, Maryame; Zhao, Zixuan
In the field of communication, method is typically treated as belonging to one of two categories — qualitative or quantitative. Even mixed method approaches take these categories for granted. But this dichotomy hides as much as it reveals, and other modes of inquiry, responding to other concerns, are not only possible but desirable. This book is the record of a doctoral-level methods seminar at the University of Ottawa in Fall 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors ran the seminar through email, preserving their messages here. The readings challenged familiar methodological paradigms by questioning their epistemological and ontological bases. The first half of the seminar asked about language and persuasion, which are not neutral tools. Indeed, they actively shape our encounter with the world we claim to be studying, and their methodological implications demand sustained reflection. But these approaches, too, hide as much as they reveal: the philosophy that grounds them is subject to politics and, in some cases, the bald assertion of power. Thus the second half examined challenges to Western methodological hegemony, in particular from Indigenous perspectives.
Éléments pour une éthique amorale du journalisme
(2010) Labasse, Bertrand
in M-F Bernier (ed.), actes du Colloque "Les journalismes : réalités plurielles, éthique commune ?". Ottawa : CREJ

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