Project Title: COVID-19 Community Media Map

Objective:

Our broadcast news and social media feeds are being flooded with articles and updates with respect to changing social conditions caused by the current COVID-19 pandemic. With the influx of information from the various local, provincial, national, and international news media outlets, it can be difficult to keep track of the information and updates relevant to our community and individual interests.

In line with ACT’s mandate of addressing systemic inequalities resulting from digital ageism, this project acts as a hub for collecting, triaging, and monitoring the developments of the COVID-19 pandemic as it appears across Canadian journalism. The curated articles for this media monitoring project reflect ACT’s goals in tandem with its other projects – to bring to the forefront news media that affect older adults. Issues of particular concern during this time is how concerns regarding older adults during this crisis are being represented in news media. As a research tool, keywords detailing the principal thematic contents of the articles are included as well as the exact search terms used for the initial search of the articles online, where applicable. The project highlights news coverage responding to updates that are clear and concise while keeping abreast of major updates and changes to health and safety protocols as it relates to ageing and other vulnerable communities .

Methodology:

For this project, we are seeking to collect and consolidate key pieces of news media that detail multi-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. As this project is based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the corresponding research and articles gathered pertain primarily to news and events at these three levels of government and community with some additional international news media that contextualize some of the actions taken at municipal, provincial, and federal levels.

The bulk of the collected news media occurs from March 10th onwards – the date the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. While prior to this announcement preventive and screening actions were being taken in Montreal and Quebec City, federal and Canada-wide community actions did not seem to be taking place until after said announcement. The majority of articles were sourced from Canada’s largest and most reputable broadcast and distributed English-language news sources including the CBC,The Globe and Mail, National Post, CTV, Global, and VOX, among others. Additional material were gathered from community publications, official government press statements, Public Health Agency of Canada, Santé Montréal, university publications and others. Further French-language publications were consulted in order to ensure francophone community news and events were not being overlooked. These courses included ICI Radio-Canada, La Presse, and Le Devoir.

The articles were entirely sourced online and were selected based on key search terms relevant to ACT’s mandate and the project objectives. Some of these terms included groceries, seniors, community aid, elderly, prevention, safety, and care work. The articles are organized (and can be filtered) by date published, article title, news source, author, and regional specificity. Each article is accompanied by a brief summary, as well as a live URL and a link to an archived PDF copy for reference. This analytical grid provides ACT and community researchers the ability to quickly search through a wide array of sources given their desired timeline, affected community, and research interests.

Sources:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid19-qc-march13-1.5496340

https://globalnews.ca/news/6800118/pandemic-one-month-timeline/

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/national/the-road-to-canadas-covid-19-outbreak-timeline-of-federal-government-failure-at-border-to-slow-the-virus/

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/the-road-to-canadas-covid-19-outbreak-pt-2-timeline-of-federal-government-failure-at-border-to-slow-the-virus-2/

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/national/the-road-to-canadas-covid-19-outbreak-pt-3-timeline-of-federal-government-failure-at-border-to-slow-the-virus/

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-in-quebec-a-timeline-of-key-dates-and-events-1.4892912

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/a-timeline-of-the-novel-coronavirus-in-quebec/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Quebec

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-19-timeline-canada-who-pandemic-1.5529920

https://santemontreal.qc.ca/en/public/coronavirus-covid-19/

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