François Demers

Biography

After 15 years of professional journalism, François Demers is engaged in the Department as assistant professor on doctoral equivalence. We are in 1980. The next 20 years will take him as administrator, teacher and ... student. Through a combination of circumstances, François Demers became secretary of the Faculty, acting dean and finally dean of the Faculty of Arts, where he manages a colossal deficit. In order not to risk "fossilizing in the administration", he was obliged to give three courses a year, write one or two scholarly articles and start a doctorate in political science which he would finish in 2000. Meanwhile, he teaches, develops research, creates, with colleagues, the master's degree in public communication and abolishes the Faculty of Arts. The Department is then attached to the Faculty of Arts. François Demers devoted the following decade to research: he built a network in Europe, Mexico and South America, mainly around journalism and its evolution. He is involved in the creation of the PNCP, a research group that studies innovative practices in public communication, and dedicates time to defining and modeling the concept of "public communication", which has become, in time, as unavoidable as the one of "public space". Always on the lookout for new technologies, François Demers created in 2003, the first course of journalism online, remotely and totally on the Internet. He is now passionate about multiplatform journalism, a passion he has kept from his former life as a desk chief, where he was already fascinated by the integration of texts, titles and images. François Demers offers to the students who come alongside him the great diversity of the themes he explores and a vision of teaching, which he calls "co-discovery"

Research Interest

Community and Alternative Media cyberjournalism Transformations of journalism Multimedia journalism, convergence and concentration of ownership Public Communication