Michael Lithgow

Michael Lithgow teaches communications at Athabasca University, and stewards the Writing for New Media focus area. His research interests are in citizen participation in public culture. Dr. Lithgow is currently one of a team of researchers in an international collaboration investigating the use of amateur images in network news coverage of the Arab Spring uprising. In 2015, he completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at McGill University, in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, exploring the narrative, performance and aesthetic dimensions of citizen participation in CRTC public proceedings. He completed his PhD in Communication at Carleton University, in 2012. His dissertation explored the aesthetics of discourse in activist interventions through community-based art and grassroots journalism. Prior to graduate studies, he worked as a community radio and television producer and freelance writer. In addition to various scholarly publications including articles in the Canadian Journal of Communication and the American Communication Journal, his first collection of poetry (Waking in the Tree House, Cormorant Books) was published in 2012.