Barbara Schneider, a University of Calgary communications studies professor, decided to give homeless Calgarians a voice via a blog titled Write to Speak.
She began doing research more than a year ago on how homelessness is represented in newspapers, specifically The Globe and Mail, the Calgary Herald and the Vancouver Sun.
“I thought we were going to see just one version of homelessness across the country, but it’s just not so,” says Schneider.
“In Calgary, there’s much more positive coverage of homelessness and there’s a sense that the community can do something about it,” she explains. “In Vancouver it’s much more negative.
“In the Globe and Mail, it’s represented as a local problem, so that correlates to the fact there’s no national strategy for homelessness in Canada.”
Visit the blog, Write to Speak.