Browsing by Author "Elliott, Charlene"

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    Children and Privacy in Microcelebrity Apology Videos
    (2022-09) Kardal, Jenna; Shepherd, Tamara; Keller, Jessalynn; Elliott, Charlene
    In recent years, family YouTube channels have gained popularity, and have raised a number of concerns about children, privacy, and exploitation in the context of sharenting and microcelebrity. Sometimes, viewers’ concern about children’s well-being leads to backlash against microcelebrity parents. In response, these parents often release apology videos on YouTube in order to repair their image and maintain good standing with their audience. My thesis examined such apology videos to investigate how microcelebrity parents employ children’s privacy in order to repair their image and further their brand according to the ethos of calibrated amateurism. I performed a textual and visual analysis on four YouTube apology videos from two family channels, Myka Stauffer and DaddyOFive, that found themselves at odds with their viewers when their sharenting practices resulted in significant controversy. I employed both Benoit’s (2014c) theory of image repair and Abidin’s (2017) notion of calibrated amateurism as my theoretical perspectives to identify some key conventions of apology videos. In accounting for the comments on these videos, I further analyzed how apology videos are received when microcelebrity parents deploy notions of their children’s privacy as part of this image repair. I found that the conventions of these family apology videos manifested calibrated amateurism while the microcelebrity parents used the language of privacy to protect their brand image in a way that contradicted some of their previous sharenting practices.
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    Cultivating School Food Community: An Ethnography on Nutritional Wellbeing in a Calgary Public School
    (2019-01-18) Cottle, Tamara; Hayashi, Naotaka; Smart, Alan; Elliott, Charlene; ell
    The nutritional health of Canadian children has declined over the last 30 years. Public health campaigns and health education programs have been developed to address increased rates of obesity and overweight in young people. Schools are popular sites for health education programming in this regard. Although policies and initiatives have been used to improve student nutritional health, low-nutritional value foods (LNVFs) continue to proliferate in the school food environment (SFE). Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA) considers the social, political, economic, and environmental factors that interact with the body to impact overall health and may help shed light on why young people continue to consume LNVFs in school. CMA is both a theory and practice that can be used for improving health and wellbeing in communities. This thesis utilized CMA in an ethnography at a school in Calgary to better understand what factors influence food choice among students. Interviews, group discussions and participant observation were conducted between January 2015 and June 2015. Through collaborative initiatives including a garbology study and a cookbook project, students, teachers and researcher uncovered valuable information to help inform future food programming in schools.
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    Experiences and perceived outcomes of a grocery gift card program for households at risk of food insecurity
    (2022-01-28) Lee, Yun Yun; Olstad, Dana; Shearer, Jane; Elliott, Charlene; Campbell, David
    Purpose: Food support programs, such as I Can for Kids (IC4K) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, aim to reduce the prevalence and severity of household food insecurity by providing grocery gift cards (GGC) to low-income households with children. There are currently no qualitative studies that have explored whether and how GGC programs influence food access among food insecure households. I explored program recipients’ and program deliverers’ experiences and perceived outcomes of receiving or distributing GGC from IC4K. Method: I used qualitative descriptive methodology for this study. Data generation and analysis were guided by Freedman et al’s theoretical framework of nutritious food access. Fifty-four participants were purposively recruited. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between August and November 2020 with 37 program recipients who accessed IC4K’s GGC program and 17 program deliverers who facilitated it. Directed content analysis was used to analyze the data using a deductive-inductive approach. Codes were combined into subthemes and themes that summarized program recipients’ and deliverers’ experiences and perceived outcomes of receiving or distributing GGC, and suggestions to improve IC4K’s GGC program. Findings: Three themes were generated from the data. The first theme was related to how IC4K’s GGC program promoted a sense of autonomy and dignity among program recipients. The second theme was related to improved dietary patterns and food skills. The third theme was related to program logistical strengths and limitations, including the program’s impact on program deliverers’ connection with clients, their workload, experiences of differential access to GGC among recipients, and the importance of increasing program awareness to reach more food insecure households. Conclusion: IC4K’s GGC program enhanced recipients’ sense of autonomy and dignity and improved dietary patterns and food skills. Facilitating IC4K’s GGC program improved program deliverers’ connection with clients and reduced their overall workload. I also found experiences of differential access to GGC among recipients and the importance of increasing program awareness. I used my study findings to inform three recommendations to improve the experiences and perceived outcomes of future recipients who access IC4K’s GGC program: 1) increase the number of GGC; 2) establish concrete guidelines governing GGC distribution; and; 3) increase program awareness.
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    Experiences and Perceived Outcomes of Low-Income Adults During and After Participating in the British Columbia Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study
    (Elsevier, 2022-03-28) Caron-Roy, Stéphanie; Lee, Yun Yun; Sayed, Sayeeda Amber; Lashewicz, Bonnie; Milaney, Katrina; Dunn, Sharlette; O'Hara, Heather; Leblanc, Peter; Prowse, Rachel J L; Fournier, Bonnie; Raine, Kim D; Elliott, Charlene; Olstad, Dana Lee
    The British Columbia Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program (FMNCP) is a farmers' market food subsidy program that provides low-income households with coupons valued at $21/wk for 16 weeks to purchase healthy foods at participating BC Association of Farmers' Markets members' markets.
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    Healthy Food Looks Serious: How Children Interpret Packaged Food Products
    (Canadian Journal of Communication, 2009) Elliott, Charlene
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    Hunting for Food Citizenship: Food, Politics, and Discourses of the Wild
    (2017) Carruthers Den Hoed, Rebecca; Elliott, Charlene; Schneider, Barbara; Rock, Melanie; Colpitts, George; Knezevic, Irena
    In the words of food hunting advocate Tovar Cerulli (2012a), hunting is taking a seat at the table of food “citizenship”: it is increasingly positioned as a way for people to engage with questions about how food and people ought to be governed. While a burgeoning literature on food citizenship exists, it focuses on agrarian citizenship projects and overlooks wilder food practices, like hunting. Given that several prominent food activists are now advocating the practice, food hunting warrants careful examination as a model of food citizenship. This study uses a Foucauldian view of discourse to explore the food citizenships mobilized in food hunting lifestyle manuals. It finds that models of food citizenship mobilized by these food hunting texts echo elements of agrarian food citizenships, but also diverge from them in startling ways—rendering hunting-based food citizenships nigh unrecognizable as expressions of food citizenship, at least by agrarian standards. Rather than champion reconfigurations of agrarian-industrial food networks to foster close-knit communities and relations of care, food hunting citizenships aim to reconfigure human-nature relations so that humans are compelled—via appeals to biological and genetic destiny—to govern themselves in ways suited to the Anthropocene, the current ‘age of humanity,’ in which humans must contend with (and check) their power to threaten nature, and endure the power of nature to threaten humans (Davoudi, 2014, p. 360). As of and for the Anthropocene, hunting-based food citizenships are rather grim and defeatist: prudent hunters exercise vigilance and self-control in the wild, minimizing human-wrought destruction threatening human and food security; whereas resilient hunters cultivate the readiness and resourcefulness required to endure disruptive changes wrought by wild-nature and the perpetual vulnerability of humans in wild food systems. Hunting-based food citizenships, however, open up space to consider the role of sentient animals—as autonomous, self-governing actors—within models of food citizenship. They also render visible wild species, wild lands, and wild discourses as integral to debates about food policy.
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    Identifying food marketing to teenagers: a scoping review
    (2019-08-19) Truman, Emily; Elliott, Charlene
    Abstract Background Teenagers are aggressively targeted by food marketing messages (primarily for unhealthy foods) and susceptible to this messaging due to developmental vulnerabilities and peer-group influence. Yet limited research exists on the exposure and power of food marketing specifically to teenage populations. Research studies often collapse “teenagers” under the umbrella of children or do not recognize the uniqueness of teen-targeted appeals. Child- and teen-targeted marketing strategies are not the same, and this study aims to advance understanding of teen-targeted food marketing by identifying the teen-specific promotion platforms, techniques and indicators detailed in existing literature. Methods A systematic scoping review collected all available literature on food marketing/advertising with the term “teenager” or “adolescent” from nine databases, as well as Google Scholar for grey literature, and a hand search of relevant institutional websites. Included were all peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and grey literature in which food marketing to youth was the central topic of the article, of any study type (i.e., original research, reviews, commentaries and reports), and including any part of the 12–17 age range. Results The 122 articles reviewed define the scope of existing literature on food marketing to young people age 17 and under, identifying leading trends in countries studied (United States, 52%), populations identified (children and teens studied concurrently, 36%), outcomes measured (advertising exposure, 54%), study type (cross-sectional, 58%) and methods used (content analysis, 46%). The promotion platforms and techniques used by food marketers to appeal to young people (as reported in the literature) are also identified and classified. Few studies (7%) use indicators to identify teen-targeted food marketing. Conclusions Unique treatments of teen populations are limited in food marketing literature, as is the application of clear indicators to identify and differentiate teen-targeted food marketing from child- or adult-targeted content. Given the need to better measure the presence and power of teen food marketing, this is a significant oversight in existing literature. The indicators identified will help researchers to develop more accurate strategies for researching and monitoring teen-targeted food promotion.
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    An Investigation into Teacher Conceptualizations of Food and Food Literacy: Pre and Post Teaching a Media Literacy & Food Marketing Lesson Plan
    (2019-01-23) Bischoff, Madison; Elliott, Charlene; Burwell, Catherine; Stowe, Lisa
    This study investigated how a Media Literacy & Food Marketing lesson plan, targeted at children, influenced teacher understandings of food and food literacy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three time points with ten elementary or junior high teachers, the transcripts of which were approached using five core elements of food literacy: knowledge, skills and abilities, attitudes and confidence, culture and environment, and food decisions. Results indicate that participants expanded their understanding of food literacy definitions, and five themes were identified within participant discussions of food literacy: understanding food and food information, application of abilities relating to food, food as fuel, the role of moderation, and the complexity of food literacy as a topic. Findings suggest that teachers can advance their knowledge and attitudes towards food marketing as well as expand food literacy conceptualizations, demonstrating the importance of providing continuing education for teachers in order to improve not only their own health but that of their students.
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    Marketing Foods to Children: Are We Asking the Right Questions?
    (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2012) Elliott, Charlene
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    Molecular imaginaries of aging and age intervention: A discursive analysis of popular science and technology coverage of developments in the field of anti-aging science, medicine, and technology
    (2019-03-08) Ellison, Kirsten L.; Elliott, Charlene; Schneider, Barbara; Marshall, Barbara L.; McCoy, Liza; Sawchuk, Kim
    As technologies of visualization and intervention advance in the fields of science and medicine, aging has become increasingly visible in popular coverage of anti-aging research as a site of molecular intervention. Focusing on coverage of developments in the field of anti-aging science and technology in a selection of popular science and technology magazines published between 2010 and 2015, this study addresses how a “molecular vision of life” (Rose, 2007) is popularized for mass consumption, looking specifically at the use of image and metaphor. Both, I argue, are significant in how we relate to our own bodies and the changes that come with living in a body over time. Through image, the aging bodies of molecular intervention are visualized along a continuum of openness, ranging from transparency to complete absence, as sites of action, evidentiary displays, and spatialized narratives of metamorphosis. Many of these images are furthermore visualized through a collapse of scale, enacting a corporeal sensibility that moves between scales of vision. Through metaphor, bodies are taken up as either serviceable mechanical casings or sites of inner turmoil. In these metaphorical mappings, the abstract world of molecules is rendered sensible through familiar narratives of intervention: cars that need servicing, clocks that need rewinding, computers that need upgrading, systems that need (re-)organizing, walls that need fixing, houses that need cleaning, and enemies that need neutralizing. By highlighting the multidimensional and multimodal means through which aging and age intervention are rendered visible and sensible at the molecular scale, this study contributes to scholarship concerning molecularization, representations of aging, and the popularization of science and aims to carve out a critical space from which we can create, resist, incorporate, or redefine the kinds of futures, bodies and selves that enliven our imaginations.
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    Ordering Off Western Canada’s Menu: Public Dining in Alberta, 1880s-1920s
    (2016) Kvill, Kesia; Marshall, David Brian; Jameson, Betsy; Elliott, Charlene
    This work examines the history of public dining and restaurants in Alberta from the late 1880s to the 1920s by using food and experiences in public dining to explore the changing and complex spectrum of Western Canadian identity. Menus, newspaper advertisements, and business directories are utilized to piece together the development of cafés, restaurants, and dining rooms in the West. These sources suggest that the public dining industry was a challenging one that was influenced heavily by the prevailing assumptions of race, class, and gender. Seen as cultural institutions, public dining establishments were part of the region’s attempts to prove its modernity, sophistication, and respectability. Ultimately, the food available on menus suggests that Western Canadians found their identity through connections with the British Empire, the rest of Canada, and their own past and through their cultural equality with their Eastern counterparts.
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    Parents’ views of supermarket fun foods and the question of responsible marketing
    (Emerald Publishing, 2013) Den Hoed, Rebecca C.; Elliott, Charlene; Calgary Institute for the Humanities
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    Power, Packaging and Preferences: How Children Interpret Marketing on Packaged Food and Its Implications for Communication Scholarship
    (2020-09-11) McAlorum, Courtney Alexa; Elliott, Charlene; Stowe, Lisa; Shepherd, Tamara
    This thesis explores how children interpret the marketing of child-targeted packaged food and negotiate these interpretations among peers with a specific emphasis on infused character licensing. Infused character licensing food describes instances where the processed food hinges on entertainment content via the use of shape(s). By asking children their opinions on packaged food, this thesis also examines what makes value and meaning for children. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted with 27 participants between 8- to 12-years-old, and focus group data was approached using paratextual theory. Study results indicate that using promotional characters on packaged food, especially through infused character licensing, is a polarizing marketing approach for children because its effectiveness tends to rest on their assigned value of the specific cartoon under discussion. In conclusion, the outcomes of this thesis divulge that child-targeted packaged food promotes food to children through both the text itself and the paratexts that surround it.
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    President's Choice: exploring discourse, food and taste in Canada
    (1996) Elliott, Charlene; Acland, Charles R.
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    Public Participation, Mediated Expertise, and Reflexivity: How Multiple Medical Realities Are Negotiated in Runners’ Self(Care) Practices
    (2016) Campbell, Patricia Ann; Einsiedel, Edna; Schneider, Barbara; Elliott, Charlene; Estefan, Andrew; Denison, Jim
    Research from science and technology studies (STS) has called for increased public participation and representation in science and technology that often challenges the boundary between expert and lay knowledge. While many scholars have focused on governance and formal interventions, this thesis attends to how laypersons participate in shaping technoscience of their own accord. Contextualized by a broader communications studies approach, the study’s theoretical framework builds on science governance discussions regarding the nature of expertise by applying the model of coproduction and the concepts of tinkering and care to settings of spontaneous, user-based participation. To access these settings, this thesis examines laypersons’ negotiation of multiple medical realities in their (self)care practices through the lens of two communities: the online social network of the website, Running Mania, and the face-to-face running group, the Red Deer Runners Club. The ethnographic methods include participant observation of the Running Mania injury forum and thirty-seven email/face-to-face interviews. The findings indicate that this collective running practice shapes runners’ reflexive understanding of medical expertise, which often challenges the sociocultural biases of the supposedly “objective” institutional framing of medical discourse. Running bodies are the site of multiple sources of mediated expertise that articulate with their caring practices: healthcare and medical professionals, running-specific social networks, and website/print sources. Within the running collective, lay expertise and medical expertise join to coproduce a hybrid discourse of care, particularly in settings of controversy. As individuals, participants negotiate multiple medical realities in the lived experience of their (self)care practices by tinkering with technologies, bodies, and multiple expert discourses. Using runners as a lens, the thesis demonstrates how laypersons participate with expertise as they (re)produce medical knowledge in their everyday practices. It also challenges determinist approaches to communications technology by illustrating the subtle ways in which processes of mediation are implicated in the sharing and (re)production of this expertise. Finally, it calls for increased reflexivity from healthcare providers and attentive experimentation in the enactment of “good” care.
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    The Media Literacy & Food Marketing Lesson Plan II: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Students’ Learning Experiences
    (2017) Loewen, Jewel; Russell-Mayhew, Shelly; Elliott, Charlene; Kassan, Anusha; Burwell, Catherine
    The Media Literacy & Food Marketing Lesson Plan II is an initiative designed to increase young people’s media and food packaging literacy. The current study provided a qualitative assessment of the program from a Comprehensive School Health (CSH) perspective, examining the experiences of six Grade 8 students one month following participation. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach was applied, utilizing semi-structured interviews to capture the participants’ firsthand accounts. The results provided valuable insight into the perceptions of the participants, illuminating their reflections about becoming critical consumers through Lesson Plan II, as well as finding personal meaning in the topics at hand. These results were discussed in relation to the four interrelated pillars of the CSH model, namely: Teaching and Learning, Social and Physical Environments, Healthy School Policy, and Partnerships and Services. The findings hold important implications for the continued application, evaluation, and refinement of Lesson Plan II curriculum.
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    "We're tryna improve our life everyday": Digital literacy in policy and practice
    (2019-04-30) Henderson, Monica Jean; Shepherd, Tamara; Burwell, Catherine; Elliott, Charlene
    In this study, drawing on a Foucauldian framework, I explore how through processes of governmentality, neoliberal discourse is taken up in both policy (governance) and adult learner subjectivity (self-governance) pertaining to digital skills. To do this, I conducted critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Alberta’s Living Literacy policy framework, then used ethnographic methods to observe a basic digital literacy classroom and conduct interviews with adult learners. My findings indicate that literacy is a useful area for investigating how neoliberalism and entrepreneurial subjectivity are (re)produced in policy and social practice. This is done through individualizing and responsibilizing discourse at both policy and individual levels. However, I also identify how, despite the strong neoliberal tendencies of the policy, adult learners understand literacy as extending beyond the economic. For them, literacy is also a practice of community, representation, and health. Using these findings, I argue that literacy is a practice for improving one’s life – though not solely through economic means, despite the policy’s attempt to quantify and invest in literacy as an economic project toward innovation.
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