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In our hyperdigital era, mass reading events provide opportunities for human interaction via a socially networked event that can be engaged online and offline, either once or repeatedly. These encounters [...]

Stan Persky. Reading the 21st Century: Books of the Decade, 2000-2009. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University of Press, 2011. 296 pp.; CA $34.95/US $29.95 ISBN 9780773539099 Over a recent lunch-time conversation with [...]

ROBERT FULFORD'S OCTOBER 2007 PIECE in the National Post re-ignited old debates about what kind of scholarly investigation is creditable and worthy of public funding. 1 am a researcher educated [...]

CBC Radio One's 'Canada Reads,' which aims to select a work of Canadian literature 'that all of Canada should read together,' was first broadcast as a network special in 2002. This essay undertakes an ideological analysis of the cultural work that 'Canada Reads' performs, focussing on the first three series and drawing upon original interviews with the show's producers, listeners, and cultural workers. The authors conceptualize the show as both a mass reading event and a media spectacle that reinforces the 'blockbuster culture' of contemporary Canadian literary publishing. They also contend that the model of nation 'imagined' by the content of 'Canada Reads' is problematically, if predictably, conservative (bilingual and uncritically multicultural); however, the authors position this ideological limitation against the potential for creative resistance produced by the show's multiple modes of delivery. L'emission de CBC Radio One intitulee Canada Reads qui choisit une oeuvre litteraire canadienne << que tout le Canada devrait lire ensemble >> a ete diffusee pour la premiere fois lors d'un special du Reseau en 2003. Le present article effectue une analyse ideologique des oeuvres culturelles choisies pour l'emission en mettant l'accent sur les trois premieres series et en se servant d'entrevues originales avec les realisateurs de l'emission, les auditeurs et les agents culturels. Les auteures conceptualisent l'emission comme un evenement de lecture de masse et un spectacle mediatique renforcant la << culture de superproduction >> de la publication litteraire canadienne contemporaine. Les auteures avancent que le modele de nation qui est << imagine >> par le contenu de l'emission est problematiquement, mais de facon previsible, conservateur (bilingue et aisement multiculturel). Toutefois, les auteures placent cette limite ideologique dans le contexte d'une resistance creatrice possible causee par les divers modes de delivrance de l'emission.

The article offers information on the "One Book, One Community" (OBOC) model, a reading event created by librarians Nancy Pearl and Chris Higashi, which is aimed at encouraging people and share their experiences about reading a particular book. Topics include the screenings of film adaptations, the limited interactivity due to budget constraints, and the tensions among the elite regime due to the selection of the book "Pride and Prejudice."

This article looks at issues of power in the relationships between the organizers of three city-wide book reading projects on the one hand, and their communities, funders, and partners on the other. We contend that a discourse of "organizational legitimacy" emerges from an analysis of discussions with the organizers of the reading programs. Organizational legitimacy here demonstrates that the power effects are self-regulated, as well as externally introduced, and that it has both strategic and ideological implications. Our identification and subsequent analysis of this specific discourse was achieved through the application of a critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993) designed to locate power and privilege in the production and reproduction of discursive language. We expand this analysis to employ a Foucauldian understanding of power in our analysis of the management strategies of libraries and partner organizations in book reading projects. Emerging from the discursive language highlighted in our analysis is a discourse of legitimacy reflective of a broader social discourse of capitalism. This discourse highlighted participation, democratic process, and funding concerns for individual participants as they tried to explain, describe, rationalize or question the "legitimacy" of their organization or initiative. This approach problematizes legitimacy as a discourse and allows for connections between the broader social discourse and the enactment of discourse at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a result of a transnational comparison of two broadcast book programs' influence on readers' book choices. Online surveys and focus group interviews in Canada and the UK illustrate active audience participation in the converged era of print books, the internet, television and radio. The analysis examines readers' negotiation of book choices through uses and gratifications theory as informed by a cultural critique of the programs themselves. Readers simultaneously respond to and create a hierarchy of cultural tastes that are bound up in the cultural assumptions that they have about the different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brave or naive, but aware of the research, teaching and play potential, the authors plunged into teaching part of an employee communication course at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Second Life, a virtual environment. Using the analytical tools of observational protocols, and discourse analysis of rhetorical accounts found in student and teacher reaction logs, discussion transcripts and focus group interviews, we situated ourselves among the learners to explore the threshold concept of information literacy in our classroom in Second Life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]