Edward A Comor
Biographic Data
| ID | 4211293 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Edward A Comor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Edward A |
| FAMILY NAME | Comor |
| SIGNATURE | COMOR E A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Communication, Bias, and Survival: Harold Innis’ Final Course
Background: Shortly before Harold Innis’ death in November 1952, Tom Easterbrook took over teaching Innis’ signature course on communications at the University of Toronto, making it both Innis’ final course as well as the first course taught on Innis. Analysis: This article discusses lectures prepared by Tom Easterbrook for Harold Innis’ signature course on communications. Conclusions and implications: In his effort to explain Innis’ search for a…
Revisiting Marx's Value Theory: A Critical Response to Analyses of Digital Prosumption
In their assessment of value creation through prosumption and other activities related to the use of digital technologies, despite significant differences, Fuchs (2010) and Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) misinterpret Marx's value theory. Through their analyses, a totalizing or new form of capitalism is said to have emerged, but these, I argue, entail demonstrably idealist theorizations. The end result is that these authors occlude more than they c…
McLuhan and World Affairs
Digital Engagement: America’s Use (and Misuse) of Marshall McLuhan
In recent years the United States has turned to digital technologies to buoy its response to anti-Americanism in the so-called “Muslim world.” At least three concepts appear to be shaping this effort. The first is a marketing-based strategy called “engagement.” The other two are derivations of Marshall McLuhan’s “global village” and his aphorism that “the medium is the message.” This article focuses on the uses and misuses of McLuhan’s work by fo…
America’s ‘engagement’ delusion: Critiquing a public diplomacy consensus
The Obama administration has embraced ‘engagement’ as the dominant concept informing US public diplomacy. Despite its emphasis on facilitating dialogue with and among Muslims overseas, this article demonstrates that, in practice, engagement aims to leverage social media and related technologies to persuade skeptical audiences to empathize with American policies. Indeed, its primary means of implementation – participatory interactions with foreign…
Contextualizing and Critiquing the Fantastic Prosumer: Power, Alienation and Hegemony
The 'prosumer' has emerged to become a central figure in contemporary culture. Through the melding of production with consumption, both mainstream and progressive analysts conceptualize prosumption to be a liberating, empowering and, for some, a prospectively revolutionary institution. In this article, these fantastic associations are critically assessed using an approach that situates prosumption activities, including contemporary online applica…
Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village – By Richard Barbrook
Consumption and the Globalization Project: International Hegemony and the Annihilation of Time
This book examines commodity consumption both as an ongoing problem for capital and a complex mediator of the post-Cold War political economy. Comor assesses consumption as a core but contradictory no
Harold Innis and 'The Bias of Communication'
Fifty years after his death, Harold Innis remains one of the most widely cited but least understood of communication theorists. This is particularly true in relation to his concept of ‘bias’. This paper reconstructs this concept and places it in the context of Innis’ uniquely non-Marxist dialectical materialist methodology. In so doing, the author emphasizes ongoing debates concerning Innis’ work and demonstrates its utility in relation to contem…
Harold Innis in the New Century, Reflections and Refractions
This is an ambitious collection. Its chapters-initially presented at a conference organized for the 1994 centenary of Innis' birth-assess Harold Innis' work in the context of the contemporary "era of globalization, resurgent nationalism, identity politics, and new technologies of communications" (p. 14)
The Role of Communication in Global Civil Society: Forces, Processes, Prospects
The author examines the concept of global civil society (GCS) through the use of theoretical tools and empirical evidence related to the study of International Communication. He demonstrates that scholarship on GCS tends to simplify the process through which information becomes knowledge and that the state system–GCS relationship often is presented in terms of an ahistorical power dichotomy. In relation to these problems, what the author calls “G…
Politics in Wired Nations: Selected Writings of Ithiel De Sola Pool
Governance and the “Commoditization” of Information
The United States and the Global Information Infrastructure: Orchestrator, Functionary, or Mediator
This article examines the position of the American state in contemporary information and communication sector globalisation activities. Through an assessment of the role played by the United States in Uruguay Round GA TT services and intellectual property rights provisions and related global information infrastructure developments, the author argues that advancements in analytical precision and subsequent strategic opportunity can be attained by …
The Global Political Economy of Communications
The Global Political Economy of Communication
Harold Innis’s Dialectical Triad
Perhaps Harold Innis’s most important yet least understood contribution to social science is the development of a relatively original dialectical materialist methodology. This methodology can be conceptualized in the form of a dialectical triad involving the categories "wealth," "knowledge" and "force." The author argues that a core component of this triad is the much misunderstood concept of "bias." Guided by Innis’s contribution, a modified for…
The Global Political Economy of Communication: Hegemony, Telecommunication and the Information Economy
Contextualizing and Critiquing the Fantastic Prosumer: Power, Alienation and Hegemony
The 'prosumer' has emerged to become a central figure in contemporary culture. Through the melding of production with consumption, both mainstream and progressive analysts conceptualize prosumption to be a liberating, empowering and, for some, a prospectively revolutionary institution. In this article, these fantastic associations are critically assessed using an approach that situates prosumption activities, including contemporary online applica…
The Role of Communication in Global Civil Society: Forces, Processes, Prospects
The author examines the concept of global civil society (GCS) through the use of theoretical tools and empirical evidence related to the study of International Communication. He demonstrates that scholarship on GCS tends to simplify the process through which information becomes knowledge and that the state system–GCS relationship often is presented in terms of an ahistorical power dichotomy. In relation to these problems, what the author calls “G…
America’s ‘engagement’ delusion: Critiquing a public diplomacy consensus
The Obama administration has embraced ‘engagement’ as the dominant concept informing US public diplomacy. Despite its emphasis on facilitating dialogue with and among Muslims overseas, this article demonstrates that, in practice, engagement aims to leverage social media and related technologies to persuade skeptical audiences to empathize with American policies. Indeed, its primary means of implementation – participatory interactions with foreign…
Revisiting Marx's Value Theory: A Critical Response to Analyses of Digital Prosumption
In their assessment of value creation through prosumption and other activities related to the use of digital technologies, despite significant differences, Fuchs (2010) and Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) misinterpret Marx's value theory. Through their analyses, a totalizing or new form of capitalism is said to have emerged, but these, I argue, entail demonstrably idealist theorizations. The end result is that these authors occlude more than they c…
Digital Engagement: America’s Use (and Misuse) of Marshall McLuhan
In recent years the United States has turned to digital technologies to buoy its response to anti-Americanism in the so-called “Muslim world.” At least three concepts appear to be shaping this effort. The first is a marketing-based strategy called “engagement.” The other two are derivations of Marshall McLuhan’s “global village” and his aphorism that “the medium is the message.” This article focuses on the uses and misuses of McLuhan’s work by fo…
Politics in Wired Nations: Selected Writings of Ithiel De Sola Pool
Harold Innis’s Dialectical Triad
Perhaps Harold Innis’s most important yet least understood contribution to social science is the development of a relatively original dialectical materialist methodology. This methodology can be conceptualized in the form of a dialectical triad involving the categories "wealth," "knowledge" and "force." The author argues that a core component of this triad is the much misunderstood concept of "bias." Guided by Innis’s contribution, a modified for…
The Global Political Economy of Communication: Hegemony, Telecommunication and the Information Economy
The Global Political Economy of Communication
The United States and the Global Information Infrastructure: Orchestrator, Functionary, or Mediator
This article examines the position of the American state in contemporary information and communication sector globalisation activities. Through an assessment of the role played by the United States in Uruguay Round GA TT services and intellectual property rights provisions and related global information infrastructure developments, the author argues that advancements in analytical precision and subsequent strategic opportunity can be attained by …
The Global Political Economy of Communications
Governance and the “Commoditization” of Information
Politics in Wired Nations: Selected Writings of Ithiel De Sola Pool
Harold Innis and 'The Bias of Communication'
Fifty years after his death, Harold Innis remains one of the most widely cited but least understood of communication theorists. This is particularly true in relation to his concept of ‘bias’. This paper reconstructs this concept and places it in the context of Innis’ uniquely non-Marxist dialectical materialist methodology. In so doing, the author emphasizes ongoing debates concerning Innis’ work and demonstrates its utility in relation to contem…
Harold Innis in the New Century, Reflections and Refractions
This is an ambitious collection. Its chapters-initially presented at a conference organized for the 1994 centenary of Innis' birth-assess Harold Innis' work in the context of the contemporary "era of globalization, resurgent nationalism, identity politics, and new technologies of communications" (p. 14)
The Role of Communication in Global Civil Society: Forces, Processes, Prospects
The author examines the concept of global civil society (GCS) through the use of theoretical tools and empirical evidence related to the study of International Communication. He demonstrates that scholarship on GCS tends to simplify the process through which information becomes knowledge and that the state system–GCS relationship often is presented in terms of an ahistorical power dichotomy. In relation to these problems, what the author calls “G…
Consumption and the Globalization Project: International Hegemony and the Annihilation of Time
This book examines commodity consumption both as an ongoing problem for capital and a complex mediator of the post-Cold War political economy. Comor assesses consumption as a core but contradictory no
Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village – By Richard Barbrook
Contextualizing and Critiquing the Fantastic Prosumer: Power, Alienation and Hegemony
The 'prosumer' has emerged to become a central figure in contemporary culture. Through the melding of production with consumption, both mainstream and progressive analysts conceptualize prosumption to be a liberating, empowering and, for some, a prospectively revolutionary institution. In this article, these fantastic associations are critically assessed using an approach that situates prosumption activities, including contemporary online applica…
America’s ‘engagement’ delusion: Critiquing a public diplomacy consensus
The Obama administration has embraced ‘engagement’ as the dominant concept informing US public diplomacy. Despite its emphasis on facilitating dialogue with and among Muslims overseas, this article demonstrates that, in practice, engagement aims to leverage social media and related technologies to persuade skeptical audiences to empathize with American policies. Indeed, its primary means of implementation – participatory interactions with foreign…
Digital Engagement: America’s Use (and Misuse) of Marshall McLuhan
In recent years the United States has turned to digital technologies to buoy its response to anti-Americanism in the so-called “Muslim world.” At least three concepts appear to be shaping this effort. The first is a marketing-based strategy called “engagement.” The other two are derivations of Marshall McLuhan’s “global village” and his aphorism that “the medium is the message.” This article focuses on the uses and misuses of McLuhan’s work by fo…
McLuhan and World Affairs
Revisiting Marx's Value Theory: A Critical Response to Analyses of Digital Prosumption
In their assessment of value creation through prosumption and other activities related to the use of digital technologies, despite significant differences, Fuchs (2010) and Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) misinterpret Marx's value theory. Through their analyses, a totalizing or new form of capitalism is said to have emerged, but these, I argue, entail demonstrably idealist theorizations. The end result is that these authors occlude more than they c…
Communication, Bias, and Survival: Harold Innis’ Final Course
Background: Shortly before Harold Innis’ death in November 1952, Tom Easterbrook took over teaching Innis’ signature course on communications at the University of Toronto, making it both Innis’ final course as well as the first course taught on Innis. Analysis: This article discusses lectures prepared by Tom Easterbrook for Harold Innis’ signature course on communications. Conclusions and implications: In his effort to explain Innis’ search for a…
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Economics (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Economic system (4 works)