Search

Background Despite paid-duty policing and associated public opinions being an increasingly controversial topic in Canadian news media, there has been limited research about them. Analysis This article combines discourse and content analyses to examine the public opinions towards paid-duty policing in Canada expressed in the online readers'comment sections of news articles. Conceptualizing comments as popular texts, the article discerns several themes, including police impartiality., reputation, expertise, and performance. Most comments centered on the economics of paid duty. Conclusion and implications The article concludes by considering why economics prevailed over other themes and reflects on core concepts in the literature on online comment boards, including interactivity and counter-publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public support is essential for implementing policies that act on the underlying social determinants of health (SDOH), it is important to consider how the public is exposed to this issue. This article explores how the SDOH have been represented in Canadian news media articles from 1993 to 2014. Of the 113 articles that explicitly included SDOH, housing (12.9%), income (10.5%), and poverty (9.3%) were most frequently reported. Over time, the reporting of SDOH increased, with peaks of coverage occurring at different times for different determinants (e.g., housing in 2005, income in 2009). A framing analysis revealed that the SDOH are presented in multiple ways: as an actionable issue and responsibility of government, a moral responsibility, and-problematically-as an issue that only affects disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining the role of the Canadian press in framing health and social issues of immigrants, the authors highlight the issues of power and social injustice in which immigrant health is constructed and handled by Canada's health policies. Critical discourse analysis of 273 articles from 10 major Canadian dailies over one decade showed that pre-existing racializing discourses, which treat the immigrant body both as a disease breeder and an irresponsible health fraudster, continue to materialize in contemporary Canadian press coverage. A more balanced and fair media coverage of immigrant health will require deracialization of immigrant health issues as well as the transformation of the Canadian press toward greater inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore the role of the Canadian media during the 2008 parliamentary crisis. While the crisis was resolved when the Governor General granted a request for prorogation that allowed the Prime Minister to avoid a vote of no-confidence, debate persists about the wisdom of such action. We argue this event represents an important case study in understanding how the Canadian media communicates essential principles of parliamentary democracy. Five years later, and based on recent research, we compare survey results on the 2008 prorogation between 10 leading Canadian journalists and commentators, and 30 constitutional scholars and former advisers to the Crown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]