Ivor Shapiro

A new public database of journalism research being done in Canada  has been announced.

At the moment, the database includes 252 research projects being undertaken almost exclusively by academics in journalism and media studies.

While only two projects deal with medical or science journalism per se, other topics of study are related (e.g., body-checking in minor hockey) or have implications for medical journalism (e.g., the effect of public relations on journalism).

However, the database isn’t complete yet, according  to the story in J-Source, a publication of the Canadian Journalism Project. The project started using easily-available, online information from a few universities. The journalism schools were then informed of the database so their researchers could verify and correct their entries.

Project organizers encourage researchers not yet included to add their work to the database.

“It’s a fabulously wide-ranging list.” – Ivor Shapiro

The database project is headed by Ivor Shapiro, chairman of Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, who told J-Source he hoped the it would facilitate collaboration among researchers.

“The cool thing is just how broad it is,” he added. “Quite a few people are studying journalism pedagogy, social media, gender issues, ethics, special areas such as science journalism and freedom of the press. It just goes on and on and it’s a fabulously wide-ranging list, which is exactly what I was expecting it to be.”~TM