Robert Hackett at Media Democracy Days Vancouver

Robert A. Hackett is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

university professor and researcher. He has been a professor and researcher at the School of Communication in

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Public university, public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, British Columbia, Surrey, and ...

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, British Columbia, Canada since 1984. His main areas of research include

media activism Media activism is a broad category of activism that utilizes Mass media, media and communication technologies for social movement, social and political movements. Methods of media activism include publishing news on websites, creating video and ...

political communication Political communication is the study of political messaging that is communicated, usually to the public e.g. political campaigns, speeches and political advertising, often concerning the mass media. It is an interdisciplinary field that draws f ...

and news analysis. Since 1993, he has co-directed NewsWatch Canad

a news media monitoring project based at Simon Fraser University. He is also on the editorial board of several journals. He has conducted numerous media interviews and public talks, written policy briefs, and has helped to found several community-based media action and education initiatives, including Vancouver's annual Media Democracy Days. His work has been translated into Chinese, Serbian and Ukrainian.

Research contributions and interests

Hackett's research in journalism studies, news objectivity and normative paradigms centers around critiquing the existing structures of journalism objectivity with a focus on its political and ideological implications in a globalized and networked digital age. The research contributes to the analysis of emerging paradigms that challenge what he and his co-author coined as "the regime of objectivity" in North American journalism. His work in media democracy, media democratization,

social movement theory Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, political, and economic con ...

, communication rights and democratic communication models focuses more on citizen efforts to make media institutions more accountable and diverse, in alliance with social movements that aim to redistribute social, economic and political power and capital. In particular, Hackett has been concerned with media democratization as a rising social movement, the subject of his internationally circulated book with William K. Carroll, ''Remaking Media''. In conjunction with WACC and OpenMedia.ca, he has also researched Canadian activists’ views of communication policy in the Canadian context. He has also contributed to news analysis in peace and war;

peace journalism Peace journalism is a style and theory of reporting that aims to treat stories about war and conflict with balance, in contrast to war journalism, which peace journalism advocates say display a bias toward violence. The theory proposes practica ...

; media frames; content and textual analysis and news determinants. With Donald Gutstein, and at the invitation of the

Canadian Association of Journalists The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ; ''in French: Association Canadienne des Journalistes'') is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to advocacy and professional development for journalists across Canada. Founded in 1978 ...

, Hackett initiated NewsWatch Canada in 1993; initially a Canadian version of Project Censored, which identifies top stories missed each year by the corporate media in the US, NewsWatch has evolved into an occasional survey of Canadian news media coverage of selected issues. His research on media frames and the influences on news content took an international turn with his work on peace journalism and international news reporting of and in relation to conflict. Hackett is on the editorial boards of several publications, including ''Journalism Studies'', a peer-reviewed academic journal that critically discusses journalism as an academic inquiry and an arena of professional practice.

Books

*R. Hackett, "Pie in the Sky: A History of the Ontario Waffle". Monograph published as a special edition of Canadian Dimension, Vol. 15, No. 1 and 2, October/November 1980 *R. Hackett, "News and Dissent: The Press and the Politics of Peace in Canada". Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1991. *R. Hackett, "Engulfed: Peace Protest and America’s Press during the Gulf War". New York: New York University Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, 1993. *Robert.A. Hackett,

Yuezhi Zhao Yuezhi Zhao (; born 1965) is a Canadian sociologist. She is a Canada Research Chair in Communication and Media Studies and the founder of the Global Media Monitoring Laboratory at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Her research takes an interdisciplin ...

. "Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of objectivity". University of Toronto Press, 1998 *R. Hackett and K. Cross. "Political Communication and the News Media in Democracies: Competing Perspectives". Kyiv: Osnovy Press, 2000 (In Ukrainian only) *R. Hackett, R. Gruneau, D. Gutstein, T. Gibson and NewsWatch Canada. "The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada’s Press". Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives/Toronto: Garamond Press, 2000, * Robert A Hackett (ed.), Yuezhi Zhao (ed.). "Democratizing Global Media: One World, Many Struggles".Rowman & Littlefield, 2005 * William K Carroll, Robert A Hackett. "Remaking media: The struggle to democratize public communication". Routledge, 2006 * I.S.Shaw, J. Lynch and R. Hackett (eds). "Expanding Peace Journalism: Critical and Comparative Approaches". Sydney University Press, 2011

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hackett, Robert A. Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Academic staff of Simon Fraser University