Discover Francophone electoral coverage in the media
Ce billet est aussi disponible en version française.
There exist two quite different media coverages in Quebec, based on the English and French languages. To the extent that each linguistic culture is exposed to, and sensitive to, different issues, the media reflect this difference. Conversely, differences in media coverage are reflected in the culture.
To better understand media coverage in each other’s language, my anglophone friend, Tom Robinson, and I are using the pretext of the 2015 electoral campaign to exchange articles in our respective mother tongues. Throughout the campaign, each of us will select a link each day to an article about the 2015 federal election in our respective languages. Our objective is to create a panorama of viewpoints allowing each of the two solitudes to see how the media cover the campaign in the other language. The links will be published daily on a Twitter account and a Facebook page created for this purpose. Because we lack the resources to do so, as well as copyright considerations, the articles will not be translated. Therefore a certain level of bilingualism is assumed for reading articles in the other language.
Thus two articles, as far as possible, will be published each day. The two articles will not necessarily cover the same aspect of the electoral campaign. They may not even be from the current day (we are not creating a newswire). We will select articles that we judge pertinent for highlighting a given treatment or viewpoint to the readers of the other language. Selection of articles will not necessarily reflect our own political opinions, nor promote a particular party or political option. Rather, the goal will be to highlight issues of interest to Quebecers, both because we live here and because we are more exposed to the media here. At the same time, we will not restrict ourselves to this geographic area, either in source material or subject matter.
While the project took form with newspapers in mind, we will not be constrained to any particular medium in what we define as an "article". All digital media freely accessible through a browser (video, twitter, blog, etc.) may be subject to our exchange of links. As well, the term "reader" should be understood as someone exposed to media, independent of platform or format.
We reserve the right to change the selection criteria during the campaign if this will attract greater interest. Each of the daily links will be published via a Twitter account and a Facebook page created for this purpose:
https://twitter.com/Elxn42Solitudes
https://facebook.com/Elxn42Solitudes
Articles in French will have the key-word "#Elxn42FR" while those in English will have "Elxn42EN".
We invite all those with a Twitter account to subscribe to this account or, if you do not, to visit the page regularly. Please don't hesitate to interact with us via this medium, either to comment on our selections or to propose one of your own!
After the election, the links will be made available in a table on the following web-page:
//ptaff.ca/elections2015
