Background Outbreaks of disease are common fodder for political debate and public discourse. In the past decade alone, health officials have faced a steady stream of serious public health threats, from H1N1 to Ebola and Zika, as well as large outbreaks of measles and other highly contagious illnesses. These incidents command intense media attention and focus public conversation around questions of risk and responsibility. Analysis This article examines major frames in Canadian news coverage of the Disneyland measles outbreak in 2015 to show how public health events are translated into social problems that magnify moral and political concerns. It discusses how parents who reject or express worries about vaccination were portrayed, and traces which solutions were presented to address the problem of vaccine preventable illness. Conclusion and implications Media coverage focused heavily on “anti-vaxxers” as central characters in the outbreak story. The coverage conformed largely to an established biomedical narrative, in which medical and health experts set the definitional parameters around the outbreak causes and consequences, and the preventive measures that should be taken to prevent future occurrences.

This article summarizes two initiatives for artificial intelligence (AI) underway in the Canadian public service: public consultation and collaboration in compiling an algorithmic impact assessment, and a symposium on AI and human rights held by Global Affairs Canada. The findings contextualize the national consultations on digital and data transformation and future steps for more inclusive AI governance in Canada.

Background Examining press coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, this article analyzes the work of the hazmat suit as a visual signifier of disease. Analysis Hazmat imagery from Africa operated to make the disease visible, both “othering” it and contributing to fantasies of containment. In American imagery, the suit became a figure of biosecurity and reassurance, while also connoting the prospect of American “diseaseability.” Conclusion and implications African hazmat imagery reinforced pre-existing schema for understanding Ebola within a news category while American imagery straddled the boundary between the geography of disease fear and the imagined immunological community, potentially destabilizing press narratives of reassurance.

Background Canadian nontheatrical cinema has historically positioned natural resource extraction as intrinsic to the country’s economic development and national identity. During the 1940s and 1950s in particular with the discovery of Alberta’s vast oil reserves, industrial and documentary films about oil extraction associated petroleum with nation-building and modernization. Analysis This article examines The Story of Oil (1946, produced by the National Film Board of Canada), A Mile Below the Wheat (1949, sponsored by Imperial Oil), and Underground East (1953, sponsored by Imperial Oil) as examples of such “petro-films” following the oil booms in Turner Valley and Leduc, Alberta. Conclusion and implications The author demonstrates how these texts sought to position Western oil development in relation to contemporaneous resource industries, namely wheat agriculture and ranching. These films leveraged such comparisons to other regional “fuels” to situate petroleum within pre-existing national imaginaries about Canada’s twentieth-century resource economy, and normalize the oil industry’s land-use practices and transportation infrastructures like pipelines.

Background The rapid and near-total dismantling of federal assistance to magazines and newspapers has taken place in recent years. This has occurred behind the screen of a series of new program announcements, ostensibly designed to replace more than a century of support via Canada Post discounts to publishers.Analysis A review of funding recipient lists reveals a 97 percent reduction in project grants since 2001, following on the heels of a 90 percent drop in the number of titles receiving distribution support since 1990. How and why did this dramatic change occur?Conclusion and implications A close study of program history reveals that aid to Canadian periodicals presented a soft target for the globalizing trade instruments of international capital—a target poorly defended by successive national governments that had absorbed neoliberalism’s transformation of “culture” into “cultural industries.” The election of a Conservative government in 2006 merely served to accelerate a process already in motion, leaving Canadian publishers to stand alone against U.S. market domination. At the same time, new inducements to align editorial content with government objectives were introduced, accompanied by stronger direct political control over funding recommendations, as revealed by the researcher’s Access to Information requests. These trends disproportionately affected smaller non-profit magazines, many of them vocal critics of the same economic model that sought an end to substantive media development assistance in Canada.Keywords Publishing/Print policy; Magazines; Cultural industries policyContexte Au cours des dernières années, un démantèlement rapide et presque total de l’assistance fédérale accordée aux magazines et journaux a eu lieu. Celui-ci s’est passé sous couvert d’une série de nouveaux programmes, vraisemblablement conçus pour supplanter plus d’un siècle d’appuis aux éditeurs de magazines et de journaux au moyen d’une subvention gouvernementale des frais postaux.Analyse L’examen de listes de publications subventionnées indique une baisse de 97 pour cent depuis 2001 dans le financement de projets, à la suite d’une baisse de 90 pour cent depuis 1990 dans le nombre de titres recevant de l’aide pour la distribution. Comment et pourquoi ces baisses dramatiques ont-elles eu lieu?Conclusion et implications Une étude attentive de l’histoire du programme révèle que l’aide aux périodiques représentait une cible facile pour le capital international—cible mal défendue par des gouvernements nationaux successifs ayant accepté la transformation néolibérale de la « culture » en « industries culturelles ». L’élection d’un gouvernement conservateur en 2006 a accéléré un processus déjà entamé, laissant les éditeurs canadiens seuls devant le vaste marché états-unien. En même temps, le gouvernement a offert de nouvelles incitations aux éditeurs pour qu’ils alignent leurs contenus avec ses objectifs, et il a imposé un plus grand contrôle politique des recommandations pour subventions, tel que le révèlent des documents obtenus par les auteurs grâce à des demandes d’accès à l’information. Ces tendances ont eu un effet disproportionné sur les plus petits magazines à but non lucratif, dont plusieurs avaient vivement critiqué ce modèle économique consistant à mettre fin à l’aide aux périodiques canadiens.Mots clés Édition/Politiques sur l’édition; Magazines; Politiques sur les industries culturelles