Looking forward to learn from you

[Thaddeus Hwong]

Hi, as kindly prompted by Teun, I would like to briefly share with you my
research interests.

A former journalist, I am a doctoral candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School at
York University in Canada. I am conducting research on the impact of the
interactions among the corporate elite, political elite and the mainstream
press on the public policy-making process that shapes the development of the
law.

My doctoral dissertation is tentatively entitled "Selling Tulips, Buying
Boom" with the subtitle of "How the Elites Won the Press and the Press Lost
the People in the Latest Public Pension Policy Shuffle." Using the 1997
Canada Pension Plan reforms as a case study, I would try to prove that the
participation of the mainstream press in the power game along the nexus
between the corporate and political elites crowds out the public interest on
public pension as a social insurance. I focus on the elite-press linkage
rather than elite-people linkage. Moreover, I focus on the spinning of the
press rather than the shaping of public opinion. In analyzing the agenda
setting and agenda denial by the elites, I would bring in ideas in discourse
analysis to the further my exploration of the policy process that shapes the
law.

A related research project of mine is about editorial diversity in Canadian
journalism after the Canadian regulators allowed cross-media ownership in
the past couple of years. I think ideas in discourse analysis could play a
part in understanding source diversity, content diversity and what I call
demographic diversity, i.e. the reach of the news media and the opportunity
for the people to access the news.

I look forward to learning from you all. Thanks a lot for your attention.
Peace.