Mini maker fair, fabrication showcase and documentary launch organized by Giuliana Cucinelli and Ann-Louise Davidson

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188h

Joins us at Concordia University on November 3, 2016 for “Making things…And making things private,” a one-day event held as part of Literacy Week organized by ACT co-applicant Giuliana Cucinelli and affiliated researcher Ann-Louise Davidson. A maker fair will be held from 2pm to 4pm, followed by a fabrication showcase and a documentary launch, both to be held from 4pm to 7pm. The event will be held at the Milieux Institute on the 11th floor of the EV building at Concordia University. See the event poster for more details.

Call for papers: Special Issue on Therapeutic Recreation in a Digital World

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The proliferation of digital technologies and the evolution of assistive technologies, virtual spaces, and new forms of leisure engagement raise key questions about the changing nature of therapeutic recreation and social justice. These varied technologies have the potential to benefit marginalized individuals and communities, but they may also be challenging and problematic. ICTs, therefore, have implications for therapeutic recreation (TR) professionals, educators, students, and researchers. The purpose of this special issue of the Therapeutic Recreation Journal (TRJ), therefore, is to critically explore opportunities and challenges associated with integrating technology in TR practice, education, and research.

TRJ is seeking manuscripts that address innovative uses and critical reflections upon a wide variety of technologies in therapeutic recreation. Manuscripts that address technology in research, education, and/or practice perspectives are highly encouraged. Additionally, qualitative, quantitative, and conceptual approaches are equally encouraged.

ACT at the Canadian Association of Gerontology Conference in Montreal

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ACT researchers will present as part of a panel titled Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a digital world in later life at the upcoming conference of the Canadian Association of Gerontology (CAG) to be held in Montreal from October 20 to 22. The ACT panel will take place on October 22 at 3:15pm.

The panel employs and explores a variety of methodologies to broach the study of old age, media and technologies in manners that reveal the heterogeneity of life courses and the multiple ways one can age with and through technologies. In “Media portrayal of grandparents,”, Shannon Hebblethwaite, Linda Quirke and Kelly Leonard  critically examine how old age, grandparents, and their engagements with technologies can be normatively represented in some media discourses. Then, we move to challenging these representations, drawing from interviews, and participatory and creative approaches to probe engagements between seniors and media. In “Living with media,” Kim Sawchuk explores the variegated digital practices of elders gleaned from interviews with octogenerians. Through the seniors’ “technobiographies,” Sawchuk challenges the simplistic binary of use and non-use. In a similar way, Kate de Medeiros draws from an autobiographical writing workshop for older adults to examine the importance of the processes of telling and listening as part of “Applied narrative gerontology”. Finally, Giuliana Cucinelli, Ann-Louise Davidson and Margarida Romero further delve into the potentialities of collaborative learning and play. In their presentation of “Participatory game design in intergenerational contexts,” they explain how the creative and intergenerational design of a game can work to challenge perceptions of seniors on technologies. Along with the panel, the ACT will co-host a kiosk with the research group VIES from October 20 to 22nd.

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Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a digital world in later life

Shannon Hebblethwaite, Concordia University; Linda Quirke, Wilfrid Laurier University and Kelly Leonard, Concordia University
“Media portrayal of grandparents: ‘Wise, white haired miracle makers’ or ‘Critics’?”

Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University
Living with media:  octogenarians, technobiographies and communicating digital “use and non-use”

Giuliana Cucinelli, Concordia University; Ann-Louise Davidson, Concordia University & Margarida Romero, Université Laval
Participatory game design in intergenerational contexts: Co-designing digital games for intergenerational learning using Scratch

Kate de Medeiros, Miami University, USA

Applied narrative gerontology: A case study on listening and the power of being heard

 

 

 

Shannon Hebblethwaite presents on “Grannie’s on the net” at McGill University

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Shannon Hebblethwaite, Assistant professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University, will present her ACT-funded study on the uses of Facebook for family communication. This comparative case study brings together research on social media use, specifically Facebook, in Romania and Canada. The purpose of the study is to investigate how grandmothers communicate with grandchildren who move far away from home. The presentation, titled “Grannie’s on the net: Intergenerational communication on Facebook” will take place on October 25, 2016 at 3:30pm in the Wendy Patrick Room on the first floor of Wilson Hall at McGill University.

More information about the talk is available by consulting this poster.

Generativity in older people: Later life as a time of development

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The Communication Networks & Social Change Research Group (CN&SC) and Aging2.0 in Barcelona is pleased to invite you to an open lecture offered by Prof. Feliciano Villar, member of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Barcelona and coordinator of the Research in Gerontology Group (GIG). The talk will take place at IN3 at the Open University of Catalonia in Castelldefels on October 14. The public talk is co-sponsored by ACT and will coincide with the first day of the annual ACT meeting, also to be held at IN3. For more information about the talk, including abstract and bio, please consult the website.

Ph.D. student position on older adults’ interactions with robots

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ACT partner institution, Ben-Gurion University in Israel, is seeking outstanding candidates for a PhD student position that entails conducting research on the topic of older adults’ interactions with robots. This position will be held in the Department of Communication Studies and the Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging of Ben-Gurion University. The deadline for applications is November 30, 2016. To read more information about the position, you can download this document.

PhD Defence: “Humor in Interpersonal Communication. The Functions and Benefits of Humor for Older Adults”

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Ioana Schiau, an affiliated ACT student from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania, is defending her PhD thesis next week, on September 29th. Her research explores the use of humor by older adults, its social and psychological benefits, as well as particular gender-specific and culture-specific communicational practices in the humor production of older adults.

 She would like to thank Loredana Ivan and Kim Sawchuk, the two ACT members who have played an invaluable role for her work, providing feedback at key stages, offering advice and encouragement.

http://doctorat.snspa.ro/2016/09/08/sustinerea-publica-a-tezei-de-doctorat-umorul-in-comunicarea-interpersonala-functiile-si-beneficiile-umorului-pentru-persoane-cu-varsta-peste-60-de-ani/

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.