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Dr. Alex Sévigny: Research

Public Relations and Communications Management

My primary field of research is the analysis and measurement of the content of communication, both interpersonal and mediated. I have a particular interest in political communication, public relations and social media messaging. I have developed expertise in the practical study of communications management for internal communications, government and political communications and marketing applications. I have listed some areas below that I am looking for MA or MCM students to work with me on. If you feel you have an idea that could become an undergraduate thesis or a MA research project or MCM capstone project in one of these areas, please contact me.

Current research opportunities for students involve:

1. Content analysis of news media and current affairs programming in Canada
2. Social media measurement
3. Applications of research techniques to public relations (reputation and message management)
4. Internal communications
5. Communications management and corporate strategy
6. Political and government communications
7. Pragmatic theory for communication analysis

Indigenous Studies

While this is no longer an active field of research for me, I am still very interested in First Nations matters .

Please communicate with me if you have a project in mind related to First Nations or Indigenous Studies in:

1. Dictionary or Cultural Archive Contruction (Digital and Print)
2. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) of news related to Indigenous Peoples

Selected related publications:

1. Cyr, D., E. Metallic & A. Sévigny, 2006. The Metallic Dictionary of Contemporary Mìgmaq. Québec City: Presses de l'Université Laval.
2. Cyr, D. & Sévigny, A. 2003. "Critically examining the construction of a endangered language dictionary." In Clarke. S. (ed.), PAMAPLA 26, St. John's,NFLD: Memorial University Press, pgs. 91-104.
3. Cyr, D. & A. Sévigny, 2004. "Traduire pour transmettre: le cas des langues amérindiennes", Linguistica Antverpiensia N.S., 2, pgs. 167-183.
4. Cyr, D. & A. Sévigny, 2007. "Uniying the resources Unifying resources for Mìgmaq literacy: partnership, process, planning." Plurilingua XXX

Communication, Culture, Cognition

I am interested in investigating how we can use cognitive, behavioural and neuroscientific techniques to supplement traditional qualitative and quantitative social scientific measurement techniques, such as content analysis, surveys and focus groups to measure communication content and how that content is effective. Students interested in this research should contact me to inquire about possibilities.

Macedonian Language and Culture

A native speaker of Macedonian, I have always been fascinated by the culture and language of my ancestors. As such, I am investigating issues of Macedonian linguistics, pragmatics and culture (identity, diaspora, etc). For the linguist, Macedonian presents many interesting challenges: object doubling, clitic doubling, many modal particles, a grammaticalized sense of speaker view and speaker horizon, etc. For the theorist interested in processes of identification, diaspora and displacement, Macedonian also offers a rich tapestry of corpus and data to investigate, as the Macedonians lived as a colonized people for 500 years under the Ottoman Empire and then scattered into global diaspora throughout the 20th Century. I recently gave a talk at the 5th International Conference on Macedonian Studies organized by Brian Joseph at the Ohio State University. Current research initiatives involve: