Seminar: Becoming old in the age of mediatization (ABSTRACTS DUE SEPT. 15th 2016)

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Reminder: Our deadline for abstract submissions is Thursday 15 of September.

Here for more details.

We are proud to present our two keynotes for our seminar: Andreas Hepp and Kim Sawchuk:

Keynote: Media generation as a process: The generational self-positioning of elderly people in times of deep mediatization

Professor Andreas Hepp, University of Bremen, Germany

Does the population of elderly people represent a ‘media generation’ that differs from ‘digital natives’? Or is the media use of elderly people so variable that we cannot consider them as a homogenous group or ‘media generation’? These are the two questions I want to start my keynote with. In so doing, I first want to clarify what a ‘media generation’ might be. My core argument is that a media generation is not just a cohort of media users. Moreover, it would fall short to understand a media generation as an age group of people with the same patterns of media use. In contrast to such a concept, I want to suggest a ‘process understanding’ of media generations. From this point of view, a media generation consists of people who expe-rience certain forms of mediatization in relation to a certain stage of their life course. The ways media are appropriated in a media generation differ, often greatly. However, their mem-bers share a self-understanding as a certain generation of media users: ‘we, as the ones who grew up with radio and television and before the computer’, for example.
Taking this as a starting point of analysis, I want to focus on the media-generational self-positioning of elderly people. Taking the results of an empirical research project that com-pares different media generations in Germany, three points are striking: First, elderly people’s dissociation from digital media technologies: Even ‘digital pioneers’ (e. g. zero-hour comput-er programmers) from a certain point on disconnect from recent developments like the social web. Second, elderly people experience their own generation as ‘insufficient’ or ‘catching up’ in a troublesome process. Third, in our data, elderly people are the group with the biggest differences in their media use when it comes to communitization. Discussing this data on the basis of various examples, I want to sketch an understanding of what it means to be a member of the ‘analogue media generation’ that became adult before the deep mediatization of digital media and is now confronted with these changes.

Keynote: “Researching with…”: mediatization, research-creation and ageing together

Professor Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University, Canada

This paper critically ruminates on discussions and debates on the concepts of mediation and mediatization (Hennion; Williams; Lundby; Hepp). It does so through a reflection on a set of community-based ‘digital literacy’ projects with older adults, living in Montreal, Québec being conducted by ACT- Ageing Communication Technologies: experiencing a digital world in later life under the rubric of research-creation. This Canadian term recognizes that knowledge may be generated by engaging in creative collaborations with research participants. Engaging in research-creation may be one way that: older adults may engage in digital learning; play with media technologies to challenge current “myths” (Barthes) about what it means to live in networked societies (Castells) as ageing subjects; become implicated in research processes that ostensively are about them; and finally lend insight into mediatization as a concept.

ACT internship on Ageing, Technology and the City at Concordia University

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159HACT has obtained funding to host an international intern through the Mitacs Canada Globalink program. This internship will take place at Concordia University in Montreal over three months in the summer of 2017. We seek a senior undergraduate student to work as a researcher within ACT in collaboration with plural actors in the Montreal community to find ways of interjecting in dominant discourses about aging in the city, and to interrogate the connections between policies, technologies and aging. To apply, you can visit this page and search for our project “Eng/aging the city” with Kim Sawchuk.

My Experience at GUSEGG 2016: Transformation, Transgression and Trust

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In the Aging, Communication and Technology seminar (Ageing with Technology: “Digitally Ageing/Digital Ageism”), professors Dr. Kim Sawchuk, Dr. Line Grenier and Dr. Stephen Katz led my classmates and I through interdisciplinary approach which considers the “art of ageing” in connection to computer-mediated communications and networked societies.

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Age 3.0: The Creative Aging Fair is coming to Concordia on August 25

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The creative trade fair brings ageing to the forefront of public, commercial and academic discourses.Right now, Canada has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 15, and in 40 years, seniors will make up one quarter of the country’s population.

Terms like “silver tsunami” alongside headlines like “Baby boom to ageing gloom” indicate the negative light that is often cast onto this demographic shift. However, not everyone views our ag

Right now, Canada has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 15, and in 40 years, seniors will make up one quarter of the country’s population.

Terms like “silver tsunami” alongside headlines like “Baby boom to ageing gloom” indicate the negative light that is often cast onto this demographic shift. However, not everyone views our ageing population this way. Instead, many are imagining the creative potential of such a population.

On August 25, Concordia will host Age 3.0, a fair to explore the multiple intersections of innovation, the creative economy, emerging technologies and ageing.

The event is co-organized by the Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) Project, a research group directed by communication studies professor Kim Sawchuk, and Communautique, a hub dedicated to learning, collaboration, research and experimentation in social and technological innovation.

The event will also include participation from local businesses and community organizations and the purpose of the day is to provide a space for conversations about creative ways people are thinking about growing older.

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Age 3.0 is open to academics, businesses, students and the general public alike. It will bring together researchers working on the topic of ageing from fields such as architecture, communication studies, psychology, education and fine arts to speak on panels about the ways university research can foster creative and complex approaches to ageing processes that challenge normative or stereotypical understandings of later life. A poster session will showcase the projects of graduate students from around the world.Throughout the day, Concordia’s Black Box theatre will feature lively community art interventions created by seniors organizations through collaborative research, and will feature groups and projects such as Respecting Elders: Communities Against Abuse (RECAA), the St-Henri Art Hive, The Yellow Door and the Atwater Library and Computer Centre.

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Live performances, knit-ins and multimedia presentations will occupy the Black Box theatre space (EV Building – S3.845) and visitors will be invited to interact with the installations. The ground floor of Concordia’s Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex (EV Building) will be home to kiosks hosted by companies and research groups working to bring ageing to the forefront of public, commercial and academic discourses.

Age 3.0 takes place on August 25 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the atrium of the EV Building of Concordia University in Montreal at 1515 Saint Catherine St. W. The event is free and open to the public. More information about the day’s events is available here. You can register at the fair for free here. 

This article was written by Kendra Besanger and Constance Lafontaine and originally published on the Concordia University website.

Statistics Canada Study on Women in Canada features a chapter on Senior Women

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The recent Statistics Canada Study on Women in Canada features a chapter on older women, titled Senior Women. The report, published in March 2016, features data as recent as 2015 and provides comparative analyses of various topics, including demographic trends, internet use, employment rates of older women and social participation. Summary points are available in the press release and the full report is also available on the Statistics Canada website.

Art for Social Change: WEAAD event on June 9

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WEAAD RECAA

To mark World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, elders make waves towards an age friendly city.

On Thursday June 9th, Montreal-based groups RECAA, Union United Church and Le Groupe Herencias/Encounters project will join forces with their partners to bring community awareness to the importance of an age friendly city in preventing elder abuse. Starting at 11 am, local groups, including mostly seniors, will meet at the Lionel-Groulx metro and march to the Union United Church. Once at the church, lunch will be served. There will be speeches and more arts-based interventions. The purpose of the day’s activities is to engage the public with work that is being done by local groups to prevent elder abuse. Under the banner of “Elders Make Waves towards an Age Friendly City”, the groups have been focusing on issues of accessible transportation, social inclusion, and health and social services. This event is being held in anticipation of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD), which happens annually on June 15th. Media and the public are invited to join.

Date of Event: Thursday, June 9 (11am to 3pm)

Location of Event: Lionel-Groulx metro (at 11am) and the Union United Church, 3007 Delisle Street (12pm-3pm)

Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews on Cultural Representations of Widowhood

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ACT is pleased to host Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews, Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia and former Director of the CIHR Institute of Aging. Dr. Martin-Matthews will present her talk “Cultural Representations of Widowhood: Insights from Social Media”.
Dr. Martin Matthews will discuss her current research on cultural representations of widowhood in later life, first considering ‘ways of knowing’ about widowhood in more traditional research literatures. Representations of widowhood in social media, in contrast, (appear to) place more emphasis on widowhood that is off-time, dis-enfranchised, and associated with a foregrounding of a declared status. Blogs, Instagram and Reddit AMAs also imply both empowerment and challenging of stereotypes, but suggest less reliable sources of the account.
Wednesday, February 24 at 10am
Samuel Bronfman Building (SB) (1590 Docteur Penfield, corner of Côte-des-neiges)
Room 407

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) Postdoctoral Fellowship Deadline: February 6, 2016

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An ACT Postdoctoral Fellowships will be awarded to an emerging researcher working within one or more core areas of the SSHRC-funded research project “Ageing, communication, technologies: experiencing a digital world in later life.”

ACT is a multi-methodological project that brings together researchers, local community partners and international institutional partners to address the transformation of the experiences of ageing with the proliferation of new forms of mediated communications in networked societies. It encompasses research that is conducted along three axes:

1) Agency in ageing: collaborative creativity and the digital arts in later life entails a program of research that involves individuals and communities in the development of participatory action research projects that have both scholarly and creative outcomes.

2) Critical mediations: everyday life and cultures of ageing examines the everyday life practices and the variegated mediated experiences of adults in later life, including by looking at how older adults engage with music, photography, film, television or gaming.

3) Telecommunication technologies: ageing in networked societies investigates ageing in the context of networked societies. Research in this area bridges internet and telecommunications research with ageing studies.

POSITION

The ACT Postdoctoral Fellowship entails a yearly salary of $45,000 and can begin as early as April 2016. Applications for one-year projects will be considered and there may be an opportunity for re-application for a second year. The ACT Postdoctoral Fellowship will be housed at Concordia University in Montreal, but can be undertaken in collaboration with a partner institution of ACT (see the website for the full list of partners).

A central goal of ACT is to train a new generation of Canadian scholars in the study of ageing from the perspective of the social sciences, the arts and/or the humanities.

As such, in addition to conducting and completing their own research project in coherence with the ACT mandate, the successful candidate will be expected to participate actively in the intellectual development of ACT, to work on a regular basis from the ACT offices located in downtown Montreal, and to perform some of the following tasks that are intended to complement their postdoctoral training:

– Assist in the organization and implementation of academic and community events, including conferences and workshops.

– Conduct public and university lectures.

– Contribute to the development of collaborative ACT projects including existing ones like ACTipedia, Ageing Media Watch and Interaction.

– Assist in the preparation of grant applications.

ELIGIBILITY

The successful candidates will have a Ph.D. in hand before beginning the position and will have received their Ph.D. no earlier than March 31, 2012.

APPLICATION

In a single email addressed to application@actproject.ca, please provide the following three components as individual attachments.

– A letter of intent (maximum 3 pages) that articulates the research project to be undertaken, how the research fits within the mandate of ACT, the candidate’s suitability and expertise, the applicant’s timeline and collaborative interests within the ACT network.

– A CV.

– A list of three references with complete contact information, who could be called upon to write letters of recommendation.

The deadline for this call is February 6, 2016.

Questions pertaining to this position should be sent to Constance Lafontaine (admin@actproject.ca).