Watch this video with Janet Wasko, Chair of the IAMCR/UCF Selection Committee, announcing the award winners, and short statements by the accomplished individuals themselves.
IAMCR is pleased to announced that the 2023 Urban Communication Award has been awarded to three papers that develop and explore innovative approaches to urban communication. The award-winning papers are:
- "Urban Data?/Block Sidewalk/Resistance to Smart City AI Data Exploitation in Toronto"
by Sandra Jeppesen (Lakehead University), submitted to the Participatory Communication Research Section
- "Branding a City Through Sport Event News: Evidence from Beijing's Two Olympic Games"
by Mingjun Zhao and Yongliang Liu (Tsinghua University), submitted to the Media, Communication and Sport Section
Download this paper here
- "Relatos y Vivencias Sobre la Conformación Urbana Decomunidades Autoorganizadas: Dos Estudios de Caso”/"Stories and Experiences about the Urban Conformation of Self-organized Communities: Two Case Studies"
by María Isabel Norena Wiswell (Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios - UNIMINUTO) and Maria Helena Botero Ospina (Universidad del Rosario), submitted to the Participatory Communication Research Section
The award will be formally presented at a special session to be held on 13 July during the main IAMCR 2023 conference in Lyon.
Sandra Jeppesen
Professor in Media, Film and Communications at Lakehead University, Canada and co-founder of the Media Action Research Group, Dr. Jeppesen’s research covers intersectional grassroots community communications, political economy of alternative media, data justice, data journalism, activist countermapping, and smart cities. Dr. Jeppesen is co-editor of Media Activist Research Ethics: Global Approaches to Negotiating Power in Social Justice Research (2020), author of Transformative Media: Intersectional Technopolitics from Indymedia to #BlackLivesMatter (UBC Press 2021), and co-author of The Capitol Riots: Digital Media, Disinformation, and Democracy Under Attack (Routledge 2022).
Abstract
Urban Data? Block Sidewalk Resistance to Smart City AI Data Exploitation in Toronto
In 2017, Waterfront Toronto put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) to develop a small piece of land in a post-industrial waterfront area in the east end of the city called Quayside. Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google, won the bid and started developing a Smart City proposal that included data exploitation and self-regulatory frameworks. A citizen group called Block Sidewalk contested the Smart City paradigm proposed by Sidewalk Labs, demanding community consultations to foreground citizens’ rights and needs. Considering the complex tensions and contradictions in Smart City developments, the paper maps out the technocentric-capitalist conditions of dataveillance, artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms in which Smart Cities such as Waterfront-Sidewalk Toronto are being developed. Using Sidewalk as a case study, the paper considers three key issues that emerged—regulatory frameworks, data imaginaries, and social imaginaries—which will be essential to address in future urban developments. I interrogate how Smart Cities can move beyond technological solutionism to ensure citizens’ urban communication rights. Finally, I argue for the creation of a global regulatory framework to govern smart city technologies based on the principle do no harm.
Announcing its decision the Urban Communication Grant Selection Committee, said:
This paper presents a case study which raises questions about surveillance and the use of data which go well beyond the specificities of the Toronto context. The paper interrogates the development of Smart Cities and critically analyzes the potential of collective citizen intelligence to contest the intensification of datafication, dataveillance, data extraction, and data exploitation of Smart City blueprints. The author directs attention to how citizen groups might address data divides so that Smart Cities, and the AI and algorithms that support them, may support intersectional liberation for citizens living and communicating in urban spaces. The paper was submitted to and accepted by the Participatory Communication Research Section.
Mingjun Zhao
Mingjun Zhao received her Bachelor’s degree from the School of Environment at Renmin University of China. During her undergraduate studies she minored in and obtained a second degree in journalism.
She is currently a Master’s student in the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University.
Her research interests include environmental communication, international communication and social media.
Yongliang Liu
Yongliang Liu is a PhD student in the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, supervised by Prof. Qingan Zhou. His research interests lie in risk communication, journalism, and media effects. He has presented his work at conferences such as IAMCR, ICA, and AEJMC. His research has also been published in SSCI Q1 journals including Public Health, as well as CSSCI journals such as Journal of Intelligence. Yongliang is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and proficient in English and Dutch.
Abstract
Branding a City Through Sport Event News: Evidence from Beijing's Two Olympic Games
Hosting mega events is regarded as an excellent opportunity for the implementation of city branding. Beijing, the first city in the world to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, branded itself through these two Olympics. Studies of Beijing city branding mostly focus on tourism management, audience attitudes, and destination image. There is still a gap in the field of how organizers brand Beijing through the media.
People’s Daily, founded in 1948, is the largest state-owned newspaper in China and the most influential and high-profile central media. Compared to other commercials or non-mainstream media, People's Daily is better placed to highlight the national agenda. This paper discusses the city’s image presented in the People’s Daily and the branding strategies adopted by the central media during the period between the success of Beijing’s two Olympic bids and the end of the Games.
1599 reports on two Olympics were selected from People’s Daily. Taking reference to the existing city brand evaluation methods, this paper coded reports into the following 10 categories: politics, economy, ethics, environment, prerequisites, culture, science, education, globalization, and irrelevant reports.
Analysis of People’s Daily’s urban brand building of Beijing during the two Olympic Games indicates that the number of reports on the political topic had the highest percentage during both Olympics. People’s Daily branded Beijing as a united city dominated by the government during the 2008 Olympics while describing Beijing as a political center with responsibility during the 2022 Olympics. Comparing the narratives of the different themes reported during the 2008 and 2022 Olympics and the Beijing city brand presented under the theme, this paper concluded that the number, main topics of coverage, and the proportion of each topic all differed during the two Olympics. Different national leadership, stages of economic development, guiding philosophies of the two Olympic Games, the underlying national conditions, and the characteristics of media in different eras could explain those differences.
Download "Branding a City Through Sport Event News: Evidence from Beijing's Two Olympic Games"
The UCF Award Committee shared the following statement regarding Mingjun Zhao and Yongliang Liu's paper:
The authors of this paper discuss Beijing's image and the branding strategies that were adopted by the central media during the period between two Olympic bids and following these games. The study found that People’s Daily branded Beijing as a united city dominated by the government during the 2008 Olympics, while the city was described as a political center with responsibility during the 2022 Olympics. They conclude that different national leadership, stages of economic development, philosophies of the two Olympic Games, underlying national conditions, and characteristics of media could explain these differences. The paper was submitted to and accepted by the Media, Communication & Sport Section.
María Isabel Norena Wiswell
Professor and researcher at the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios - UNIMINUTO, Bogotá.
Her areas of work focus on: Strategic communication, interculturality and environment; involved with the participatory communication. Researcher of the project: Colombian cities as scenarios for Social Inclusion that is part of the Alianza EFI.
Coordinator of the Working Group on Communication and sociocultural studies in the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers - ALAIC; member of ACICOM (Colombian Association of Communication Researchers) and of the IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communication Research).
Maria Helena Botero Ospina
Director of the Center of Urban Studies and Associate Professor in International, Political and Urban Studies at Rosario University in Bogotá, Colombia.
She received her PhD in Geography from Warsaw University, her Master's Degree in Management and Analysis of Public Policies from Geneva University, her Postgraduate Degree in Urban and Regional Planning and her BA in Public Administration from the National School of Public Administration in Bogotá, Colombia.
Her work areas involve governance, public policy evaluation, regional and local development, democracy and participatory urban planning. She has worked as a Professor for undergraduate and postgraduate studies in local and regional government, urban and regional planning, local and regional development, and public policy evaluation from 1990 until today.
Relatos y Vivencias Sobre la Conformación Urbana Decomunidades Autoorganizadas: Dos Estudios de Caso”/"Stories and Experiences about the Urban Conformation of Self-organized Communities: Two Case Studies
In this project, we work to understand how actors are involved in the participatory process to make decisions and how people can build associative governance to access better life conditions in informal settlements.
The UCF Award Selection Committeedescribed María Isabel and María Helena's paper as:
This study explores stories and experiences of self-organized communities related to urban conformation. The authors ask how it is possible through knowledge of urban dynamics, to promote mechanisms of demarginalization and social inclusion that facilitate transformations towards friendly cities for all. The authors used Social Game Theory (Carlos Mantus 2021) as an approach to analyze two different neighborhoods. This involved designing a game, developing game workshops and analyzing interviews. They found that the role of communication was important in negotiating processes and in the formation of co-production in these self-organized communities. The paper was submitted to and accepted by the Participatory Communication Research Section.
Urban Communication Award 2023 Selection Committee
- Janet Wasko, University of Oregon (USA), Chair
- Nico Carpentier, Charles University (Czech Republic)
- Yong-Chan Kim, Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea)
- Yiannis Christidis, Cyprus University of Technology (Cyprus)
- Deborah Phillips, University of Brighton (UK)
- Cees Hamelink, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)