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Taking Sides
Taking Sides is WACC Global's take on the rapidly changing world of communications and social media. The aim is to highlight topics that are of more passing interest and likely to have a positive or negative impact on people's lives, in Canada and around the world.
Blog - Taking Sides December 9 Philip Lee | Canada should not introduce so-called "immunity passports," because they would create "a novel kind of biological divide between the haves and have-nots." |
Blog - Taking Sides October 20 Philip Lee | Stories reveal gender bias and extensive stereotyping that perpetuate marginalization, discrimination, and violence against women and girls. Men also have a role to play in addressing this inequality. |
Blog - Taking Sides August 21 Sarah Macharia | A Statistics Canada survey found 10 per cent of Canadian women were "very or extremely concerned about the possibility of violence in the home," during the pandemic. |
Blog - Taking Sides July 23 Philip Lee | Intrusive monitoring tools adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic may further normalize the surveillance of individuals by governments and private entities. |
Blog - Taking Sides July 3 Lorenzo Vargas | In Canada, there are renewed calls to rename monuments, buildings and streets across the country that honour colonial figures, not just as a symbolic act. |
Blog - Taking Sides June 29 Philip Lee | The Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom has urged Ottawa to "use its leadership role" to champion the need for international sanctions to protect media rights in the Philippines. |
Blog - Taking Sides June 12 Philip Lee | The right to communicate is never more urgent than when lives and livelihoods are at stake because access to trustworthy information and news is blocked. |
Blog - Taking Sides May 14 Philip Lee | A recent Angus Reid poll showed that 48 per cent of Canadians do not trust the news media to provide accurate information about COVID-19. |
Blog - Taking Sides April 7 Philip Lee | In Canada, privacy advocates are urging vigilance, noting that the feds and some provincial governments have not ruled out digital tracking of citizens to address the COVID-19 pandemic. |
Blog - Taking Sides March 20 Philip Lee | Trustworthy public service media are always needed, but never more so than in times of strife, disaster and emergency. |
Blog - Taking Sides February 22 Sara Speicher | The clamour for racial diversity in the newsroom is growing, not just in the United States, but in other migrant destination countries like Canada. |
Blog - Taking Sides January 24 Lorenzo Vargas | At this time of global anxiety, it is important for journalists everywhere to remember the lessons of the poor and often biased coverage of the Iraq War 16 years ago. |
Blog - Taking Sides December 14 Lorenzo Vargas, Amanda Soares | The UN has warned that Indigenous communities in Canada's north are among those most at risk from a changing climate, which threatens their safety and food security. |
Blog - Taking Sides December 6 Sarah Macharia | For decades now, "very few" stories in Canadian news media have challenged gender stereotypes, according to a global monitoring project conducted every five years since 1995. |
Blog - Taking Sides November 29 Philip Lee | About 96 per cent of Canadians are now connected to the internet, but a digital divide still exists. |
Blog - Taking Sides November 22 Jim McDonnell | Democracies are experiencing a crisis of trust, fuelled not only by the actions of those who seek to manipulate us but also by those who manage the networks that claim to enhance our lives. |
Blog - Taking Sides November 15 Tess Sison | People under the age of 18 are the fastest-growing online demographic in a world that is in the midst of the fourth Industrial Revolution, which offers greater opportunities and risks. |
Blog - Taking Sides November 8 Lorenzo Vargas | Developed countries like Canada are in the midst of transition from 4G to 5G networks. And yet Canada still suffers from a digital divide. |
Blog - Taking Sides November 1 Philip Lee | Nearly seven out of 10 Canadian millennials get their news from social media. Should we be worried? |
Blog - Taking Sides October 25 Sara Speicher | News agencies, civil society organizations, and concerned individuals in Canada and overseas have taken on the fight for "truth." But is what someone says "right" or "wrong," or somewhere in between? |
Blog - Taking Sides October 18 Philip Lee | Encryption is supposed to ensure that information stays private by scrambling data. In practice, security forces and corporate interests are keen to be able to crack any code. |
Blog - Taking Sides October 11 Philip Lee | As facial recognition becomes more and more common, there are also growing concerns about the gender and racial bias embedded in many systems. |
Blog - Taking Sides October 4 Philip Lee | Who will protect us from a collective vulnerability to misinformation, manipulation and cyber violence? |
Blog - Taking Sides September 27 Philip Lee | While climate change is already affecting Canada, its mainstream media are failing to provide citizens with adequate information about the issue and how it affects them at a global and local level. |
Blog - Taking Sides September 21 Philip Lee | The vast majority of Canadians have expressed concern about the protection of privacy, particularly around how online personal information is used. |
Blog - Taking Sides September 13 Philip Lee | Democracy fails when heads of state, populist politicians and unregulated corporate interests are allowed to ride roughshod over freedom of the press. |
Blog - Taking Sides September 6 Lorenzo Vargas | Linguistic issues do not make headlines every day, but the struggles of communities working together to bring greater attention to the concerns of ethno-cultural minorities are very real. |
Blog - Taking Sides August 30 Philip Lee | As migration and displacement of people worldwide have increased, so has media coverage, not all positive. |
Blog - Taking Sides August 23 Philip Lee | Accessibility and affordability are watchwords of the communication rights movement. Yet when it comes to digital access, governments still have not got their act together. |