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Unpossible
Posted on November 21, 2016 3 Comments
‘Post-truth’ was named the Oxford Dictionary word of the year. No fitting word reflects the strangeness of 2016 with the exception of unpossible, a word I made up and in a post-truth world might as well be as legitimate as many of the arguments being made about the most important things of the day, which […]
The more we get together
Posted on June 18, 2016
As we forge ever-greater connections online to each other and the world of ideas the thinking was that we would be far better off, more tolerant, educated and wise and yet there is much evidence to suggest this isn’t the case. What does it mean to come together and how can we do this that […]
Shaking the System of Knowledge Translation and Journalism
Posted on September 10, 2013
Leveraging systems change comes when you are willing to examine the system itself, not just the component parts. News media is struggling to remain financially viable in a time when readership / viewership is high and revenues low by considering ways to adapt to an online world and the way it thinks about the problem […]
300: Crises in Complexity, Opportunities in Design
Posted on August 31, 2013 2 Comments
In 2009 Censemaking was launched as a platform to explore issues in complexity and ways we can make sense of it to design for better futures and a sustainable world. After 300 posts it has become evident that there is much more to write as we see ever-new crises from complexity and ever-greater design opportunities […]
Designing for Empathy and Health
Posted on July 29, 2013 2 Comments
When does common sense make little sense? How do we sense-make evidence when it seems to make little sense? The answers could lie in getting inside the heads of those we seek to influence and designing our communications for empathy and health. Evidence in public / health Last week there was a brief uproar in […]
Of digital riptides and original sin — was the decline of newspapers inevitable?
Posted on July 25, 2013
Originally posted on Gigaom:
At the Brainstorm tech conference on Wednesday, several media-industry heavyweights talked about a video project they did for Harvard University in which they interviewed leaders in the industry about the rise of digital and the decline of newspapers as a force in the media business, and also gave some of their…
Public Health and Social Media: Catching Fire From Small Sparks
Posted on July 24, 2013 4 Comments
Public health is regrettably not a field that I often think of when I consider powerful examples of using social media for change and impact, but every so often something changes that. Monday something changed. Toronto Public Health, one of the largest health units of its kind in North America, took to Twitter to voice […]
Twitter shows how the news is made, and it’s not pretty — but it’s better that we see it
Posted on April 15, 2013
With the tragic events surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings today, the strength and weaknesses of Twitter and the new media for journalism gets brought out for everyone to see. The news is changing and the importance of traditional journalism and citizen witness reporting all comes together. Much to consider as we reflect on the ways […]
The Importance of Journalism to Public Health: 10 Years After SARS How Are We Doing?
Posted on April 4, 2013 2 Comments
If a health scare manifested itself in the world and there were no journalists to cover the story, what would the impact on the public be? That is a question that lingered with me throughout the start of the 2013 Ontario Public Health Convention (TOPHC) which began with a morning dedicated to improving public health communication. Opening up […]
The Fourth Estate of Health and Medicine
Posted on December 11, 2012 2 Comments
Journalists occupy an important, yet often unacknowledged, role in the health system by providing a dispassionate account of the system’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to the public. It is through journalists that much of the research we scientists and practitioners produce gets communicated to the audiences likely to use them. This fourth estate is also […]
