Canada Reads 2020: Facebook Group Author Q&As

In our previous post, we gave an overview of how the Facebook Q&As worked and what the Q&As covered. Here, we’ll dive deeper into the discourse taking place during each Q&A.

To analyze the Q&As, we copied the questions and answers from Facebook into Voyant Tools, which we used to determine word frequency. After excluding common words such as ‘the’ or ‘it’ and frequently occurring topical words such as ‘CBC,’ ‘Books,’ and the author names, we identified common themes in the discussions.

Q&A with Cory Doctorow

There were a number of questions in Cory Doctorow’s Q&A regarding the genre of the book and, specifically, why Doctorow chose to write fiction instead of writing an essay to address the social issues taken up in Radicalized. These questions are reflected in some of the commonly used words: fiction (8), stories (8) and story (5), novel (6), essay (3), and nonfic (3).

Although these words weren’t frequently used, it’s interesting to see words like states (4) (sic, referring to the United States), trump (4) (sic, referring to Donald Trump) and incel (2) used during the Q&A—perhaps because of the plots of the four novellas in Radicalized. The novellas tell the story of a refugee confronting the software controlling her kitchen appliances, a superhero confronting racial violence in the U.S. police system, a man becoming involved in the dark web after his wife’s health insurance is declined, and a wealthy financier managing a doomsday vault.

Q&A with Eden Robinson

The most frequently used words in this Q&A included Jared (9), love (8), writing (7), characters (6), and stories (6). Here’s how the words were distributed throughout the Q&A:

Notably, the word “Indigenous” is only used twice in the Q&A, and so is “wee’git” (misspelled version of “Wee’jit”). The absence of indigeneity from the conversation is surprising considering the novel is part of Robinson’s trickster trilogy and is an Indigenous coming-of-age story. Although the word “trickster” is one of the most frequently used words, it is also in the book title, which increases its appearance in the Q&A but doesn’t necessarily indicate discourse regarding Indigenous writing.

Q&A with Jesse Thistle

The most frequently used words in the Q&A with Jesse Thistle included people (26), life (9), love (8), family (7), and brother (6).

Considering the content of Thistle’s memoir, it’s interesting that these words about family and people appear in such high frequency, whereas words like “addiction” or “homeless” and “homelessness” appear at a lower frequency. As the visualization below indicates, the word “police” was used five times, “rehab” was used four times, “addiction,” “homeless,” and “homelessness” were used three times each, and “drugs” was used twice in the Q&A.

In contrast with Eden Robinson’s Q&A, there was more discourse regarding Thistle’s Indigenous identity. For example, the word “Indigenous” is used five times and “Métis” is used four times—and three more times misspelled. Similarly, “reconciliation” is used four times—three times in terms of broader reconciliation between Canada and Indigenous peoples, and once in reference to Thistle’s reconciliation with his family.

Q&A with Samra Habib

Analyzing the Q&A with Samra Habib shows a number of words you might expect to see based on the content of the book, such as queer (4) and community (4). However, despite the book being a queer Muslim memoir, the word Muslim only appears twice.

Other frequently used words include “life”, “people”, “reading” and “writing”, indicating that participants had an interest in how the book was received, the author’s writing process, and the role of community in the book.

Q&A with Megan Gail Coles

The most frequently used words in the Q&A with Megan Gail Coles include change (10), people (10), writing (8), writer (6), end (6), and characters (5). As the word frequency indicates, participants were interested in Megan Gail Coles’ writing practice and her decision to become a writer. Participants were also interested in how she developed her characters and, in particular, in how she decided on the ending of the book.

Looking through the corpus, the words “people” and “change” were often used together to discuss social change for marginalized groups or how people can change for the better despite experiencing traumatic events.

Common themes

Analyzing all of the Q&As together, some common themes emerge. In terms of word frequency, the words people (48), writing (27) and write (26), love (22), Canada (19), and author (17) are the most commonly used words across all the Q&As.

This indicates that generally, participants are interested in learning about the authors’ writing practices, their inspiration for their novels and how the novels are received by others. The word “Canada” is frequently used as part of the program name, Canada Reads, but it is also used throughout the Q&As to discuss the year’s theme—one book to bring Canada into focus. In Jesse Thistle’s Q&A, the word “Canada” is also used in reference to reconciliation.  

Looking at the Q&As together can reinforce patterns across the contenders, such as the interest in learning about the authors’ writing practices which was evident across four of the five Q&As. It can also reveal word frequency patterns that wouldn’t otherwise be apparent. For example, the word “Canada” doesn’t appear frequently for any one author but does appear frequently across the Q&As. The frequency of the word “Canada” across all Q&As suggests the overall discourse is focused on the Canada Reads theme instead of on the individual books. This indicates that the Canada Reads program and theme frame the books differently from how they might be read on their own.