Listen Now: Colbert Cancelled – Comedy Communications
Where are my teeth? Wasn’t a question I was expecting to ask myself this week. But of course, what’s a week without some odd questions to oneself? I know I’ve needed a logo since I started this project, but now that I’ve turned it into a podcast, even more so. I’m also not the best with graphic design, but if I’ve got a photo, I can work some magic. So pretty soon, “where are my teeth” turned into “there are my teeth!” and then “there are my teeth, but as a vector graphic!” Cause when I think comedy, I think laughter, smiling, and I think teeth. Now that may not be most people’s trains of thought, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.
Logos are incredibly important to a brand; they help customers and clients easily identify their favourite brand from a mile away. After all who can’t remember the iconic golden arches, or the Nike swoosh? Hence the creation of our new logo, my very own teeth!
Now this week we saw Prime Minister Mark Carney go to the United States to meet with Donald Trump and we also saw the ushering in of the first American Pope, Pope Leo XIV. Now, both of these events were covered extensively by the media this past week, so I think I’ll leave them there and talk about our main topics for this week instead. Because what I want to talk about is influencers and the French! Not the French French, like France French, I mean Canadian Quebecois French!
Now, this week I read a couple of reports, but the one that really caught my eye was a new report on social media influencers and elections. The report is titled Influencers and Elections: The Many Roles Content Creators Play, andwas written by Elizabeth Dubois and Louise Stahl from the University of Ottawa’s Pol Comm Tech Lab.
In the report Dubois and Stahl explain the roles that content creators play during election cycles. They suggest that there is significant appeal in the use of influencers in political campaigns due to their audience, their relationship with their audience, and their platform knowledge (pg 10). While these influencers can sometimes offer an excellent return on investment, with micro-targeting, their skills, and reputation, there are some concerns to be had with their use for political campaigns.
They go on to suggest that while yes influencers are often well trusted by their audiences, if influencers don’t fact check their claims, or disclose fact from opinion, it can lead to the spread of mis, dis, or mal-information (pg 28). Dubois and Stahl also go on to point out that one key issue with influencers is that they are not beholden to the same ethical and journalistic standards as traditional journalists, and therefore run an increased risk of performing unethically or in an unfactual/biased manner.
Another report I looked at highlighted some media consumption habits between English and French speakers in Canada. Based on the Reuters Institute Digital News Report for 2024 (pgs 120-121) we can see that Canadian’s trust in news has continued to fall amongst both English and French speakers (now at 39%), but that French speakers generally have more trust in the news than English speakers (46% vs 37%). On top of this I find it fascinating that French speakers also have a much higher concentration of viewership when it comes to TV, Radio, and Print when compared to English speakers. By this, I mean to point towards their most used TV, Radio and Print news sources. When you compare the top two French sources you’ve got 51% and 41% using these two sources weekly or more. Compared to English speakers, we’re looking at their top two sources at 28% and 24% used weekly or more.
Now I won’t pretend to know the real reason for this off the top, but I do wonder if it is perhaps a result of a higher concentration of French news sources when you compare to their English counterparts. Or perhaps is there a cultural component to it?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve bounced around covering different topics, and asking a lot of questions, while answering, lets be honest, very few. Next week I’m going to list all the questions I’ve come up with over the last several weeks and bring them together into one master list, so that together, we can finally start to find some answers! Of course we’ll still have some rambles here and there, just structured!
Comedy Communications 