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Week 7 9/14/2012 11:29:00 AM
Intro to Mass Communications in Canada
-Mark Hayward
CRTC-Canadian Radio Telecommunication Commission (Canadian Content Regulations) Certain
percentage of content must be Canadian ie. Corner Gas, Flashpoint, Drake, Nickelback
Rates for cable, cellphone
How people use communication technology, interpret texts,
Use mylaurier account to reach prof
Tutorials 30%, Midterm 20%, Research Paper 20%, Final Exam 30%
Midterm multiple choice
Office hours: Wednesdays 10:30 am-2:00 pm DAWB 4-103B
TA: Meagan Suckling Tuesday 3-4pm DAWB 3-127 [email protected] 48 hrs email
Complete all readings before lecture and tutorial
Lecture 2
What is Canadian Media Overview
o Content
Canadian production+actors
Refers to places+people in Canada+everyday life in Canada
May be apparent to non- Canadians might not
Restrictive if all Canadian media talks about Canada
Justin Bieber Canadian-No 1 else is who works with him
o Creators
o Ownership
Rogers, Bell(Majority held by Canadian Stock Holders) not required to show
Canadian content(Internet,cellphone)
o Consequences
Cultural Consequences- Community, sense of identity, people who create the
media define how we fit in canadian society,
Canada former colony of uk-british vs Canada,
American Influence on Canadian media (Language, Identity)
Economic Consequences
Canada smaller than America
Canadian rights must be respected
American record stores, movie theatres in Canada
Canadian media less profitable, so why include it?
History of Canadian media
The Aird Commission (1929)-establish public broadcaster
The massey commission(1951)-Outlines threat to Canadian culture and
identity due to America
The Fowler Commission(1955-1958)-The recommendation to create an
independent governing body for radio and television
The Broadcast Act(1991)- Lays out foundations is media law in Canada
to this day
Identity
o Consumers can access Canadian media (books, songs,shows,
movies)
o Access to be involved in Canadian media
o Laws+Regulations
o 80% live near American border (more influence)
o Canada Needs protection from American influence therefore
commissions are set in place
o Internet will not be regulated
Industry
o Bi lingual
o Public, private, community broadcasting
o CBC-Public
o Private-Regular shows
o Community-Station run by local
Content Regulation
o Serve to safeguard enrich the cultural political social and
economic fabric of Canada
o Should encourage the development of Canadian expressions by
providing a wide range of programming that reflects Canadian
values
o Freedom of Expression+Keep Canadians exposed to Canadian
content ( some international media outlets are not available in
Canada)
o No Quota on film/video games
o M A P L
Music-composed by Canadian
Artist-performed in Canada
Performance-the musical selection consists of live
performances that is recorded wholly in
Canada+boracasts live in Canada
Leader-Lyrics written entirely by a Canadian
Ownership
o 60% of television on CBC must be Canadian
o 55% of Private must be Canadian per channel
o 1/3 of radio music must be Canadian
o Specific times (prime time)
o Origin of Media in Canada(what’s Canadian about it)
o Ways in which Canadian Government has intervened in media to help
Canadians express themselves
Direct involvement in production or funding-supporting only Canadian
media
The institution of content quotas (setting parameters)
Canadian Tax goes to CBC (Advertisements helps funding)
Decreasing over time-1 B $ a year funding creates culture
protection for Canadians
Subsidies help Canadian media production
Canadian companies must give back to Canadian communities
with tax payer money especially when few competition ie Rogers,
Bell
Canadian Media Policy
o Multicultural media and Canadian Identity
Immigrants have effect on Canadian Identity in media
Canada stands for freedom of expression however immigrants have
different cultural backgrounds
Balance of protecting Canada’s media vs incorporating immigrants in
media
o Non-Regulation of new media
Internet
Introduction to research assignment
What are the cultural industries?
o Way of describing particular kinds of industries of cultural products Ex.
(Experiences-Museum, Exposed to Disney World
o Cultural institutions generate dollars from tourist + community
o They include areas to film and television, publishing, music, museums
o Defines ways to remember past/think about who we are
o Digital Era-all media on one format-internet, tv, computer, phone(music, video,
picture, text)
Cross media convergence
o Economic convergence- concentration of ownership
o Canadian media was discussed in terms of contents creators and owners
o The importance of media was discussed from a cultural point of view the
argument that Canadian media needed to be protected for Canadian Identity
o Economy keeping revenue from media in Canada
o Products are often central to how individuals and communities view themselves
and the world around them
o Many of the products while reproduced on a mass scale make use of craft forms
of production and creation
o Vertical Integration- Buy out manufacturers, internalize a business
o Horizontal integration- Buying competitor out(Best Buy+Future Shop same
owners)
o Henry Jenkins outlined the following forms of convergence:
Technological-different kinds of technology in laptops,
Economic-
Social
Creative
Global
Trends in media ownership
New Lecture
What is an Audience-That which could be heard
o Conceptions of audiences are often grounded in particular contexts (industry,
governments, scholarly research
o Mass Media audiences are theoretical constructs as much empirical realities
o Audiences- construct ways of thinking about people
o Governments interpret Audiences as groups of citizens, that need education, have
rights+right to be informed,
o Industry for Profit method-what is this person interested in watching, what kind
of advertisements should be shown
o Research audiences as a social formation a way of describing how people behave
in relation to media
o How does video game play affect family relationships?
Industry doesn’t care-interested in consumption
What is the affect?
Is media consumption a focused and sustained activity? Or is it a brief encounter?
o Multi task or just consume media, Eat+media?
o Amount of attention spent on media piece
o Norms and beleifs are internalized through repeated exposure
o Relatively passive rather than interpreting media messages
o Hypodermic needle model- Internalizing media exposed, some not true
Uses + Gratifications
o Audience chooses to consume to satisfy needs and fufill wants
o Freedom to select what they watch and how they interpret it
o What do people do with Media? –to be entertained…..etc
Media could be consumed everywhere-how do we think about this?
o Transmedia strategies- ways of thinking about audiences as they move between
different media as they consume it at different+same times
o Democratizing but also commodified
Old Media/New Media
Old media-dying, dead, or undead
o Bruce Sterling coined the term dead media as a way of talking about media move
from contemporary to media that didn’t make it
o Forgets how to use old media, record players-needle outside or inside
o When will the web interface become a dead medium
Media change: emergent, dominant, and residual
o Emergent-new and developing ideas, practices and artifacts that may become
dominant
o Dominant- Those ideas, practices and artifacts that play a structuring role in
society in a particular area of society
o Residual- Ideas, artifacts or practices from the past that continue to be present
today, although often combined with dominant or emergent practices
Residual technology of record players linked to turn tables
The death of the newspaper: An economic explanation
o An economic justification for its decline
o A case based on the habits of readers
o Rise of craigslist, move to online advertising guaranteed to finding guaranteed
interested consumers
o Changes in habits, linked to commuting have meant less time/space for newspaper
for reading (Mass transit instead of private cars)s
o Declining revenue has made financing tranditional news production less viable
(Paying journalists)
o Online media compete for readers but are not usually subscription based nor do
they possess the public service mission of many newspapers
o Free newspaper draw large audiences in urban areas but do not necessarily lead to
newspaper purchase down the road
o They play a key role in informing citizens allowing them to participate in
democratic society
o As a media form, the allowed for extended coverage of issues and topic, less
amenable to television or online media (less info even though more images,
audio)
The death of the newspaper: A reader’s perspective
3 types of bias
o Media Bias
Focus more on expression+emotion to entertain
o Ideological Bias
How eveins are discussed when they are covered
Think perceptions of scenarios, want everyone to understand it in the same
way
o Gatekeeping Bias
Whether or not a particular story is covered and how much coverage is
given
the first part of the term is how mass media is structured in Canada
-policies:
-structure: patterns of media across the entire sector, if different media had -occupied
separate sectors one trend that has taken place is that the bringin -together of these
companies.
-ways of thinking
-thinking about media
audience that used to be stable and didn’t move from one mean to another is now
nomadic and distracted.
Industry produce, audience consumes, and government regulates is no longer relevant.
Now there is a shift that merges all these three
Industry now regulates itself and social media are also involved in setting regulations
(Anonymous, hacktivist)
Globalization and digitalization
Phenomenology: how is it that experience/phenomena takes shape
o Each new media fundamentally changes how we see things and ourselves
Medium theory: Marshall mccluen (the Canadian school of media studies)
o Each new media changes the scale and the individual experience
o Televison: it changes the scale of society and the way we experience the world
around us (changes what we can see easily: planet earth) we are now more aware
of war climate change, it also changes how we see things and what we are able to
see: slow motion)
o What we see in the visible world has also changed:
Slow motion has changed what refs rule in a sports game
o The reason Europeans countries are smaller is because of less developed
communication technologies
o Global village: rapid and easy communication around the world
o
In theories of globe:Replace counter flows with diaspora
Media and cultural Cultural imperialism, counter flow, globalization
Apa citation embedded in parentheses
Cultural production:
o Fordism and after
The relationship between Fordism in relationship to post-ford is central to
understanding the ways in which it relates to economy and society as a
whole, but also how the consumers react
o Fordism: three components (ford revolutionized the production of automobiles)
o He introduced the moving assembly line, increasing efficiency and specialization
decreases training. The reduction of labour to a single action
o He also makes the decision to pay his employees enough to eventually buy the
cars that they are making, creation loyalty and bettering his brand
o Is it possible to do this in China now?
An economy around mass production and mass consumption
Goods are produced on a mass scale with a standard level of quality
Efficient production organized through the formalization of labor (taylorist
factory)
1914 Taylor comes back to the notion that it wis better to use
scientific management to specialize
o Fordism adaptions
Hollywood studio system (1925-1960)
Organizing the production of films, by standardizing
Holding employees on contract with teams of writers and they
would write film scripts, directors would be assigned to make films
People on screen were also on contract, whether is good or bad the
actors have to do it because of their contracts
Tin Pan Alley (1885-1935)
New york city was thought to be the noise from hundreds of songs
playing (industrialize song production)
Both of these systems became under a lot of stress because it is
tremendously expensive to maintain large cast of people hanging around
in case they are needed in a film
They’re still getting paid even if they aren’t working or if they films don’t
sell they still need to pay all the worker
The studio system wasn’t very responsive to changing taste in music or
genre of film
Open market allowed actors and producers to make more when they
weren’t under life time contract, on the contrary film guys and technical
staff are still benefitting off long term contracts
Consumers want individuality because if they like the same things as
everyone else they aren’t different
This leads us to post Fordism
o
o Post Fordism:
Economy based on mass consumption of differentiated good
Customize what were purchase, in car industry and culture. We
now have the ability to customize what we wear and what we listen
to, the top 10 doesn’t necessarily cater to your taste because we
look at ourselves as defined through what we consume
The organization of production
Flexible organization of the supply chain “just in time production”.
Once we find out what the demand is we can make it for the
consumer quickly rather than guessing what they want
Precarious labour contracts, contingent of demand of the market
Before you would work for the same company for your whole life,
now you switch between jobs very often with short term contracts.
Work is depended on the demands of the market, when they need
more people somewhere they hire, when they don’t need they fire.
Christmas is a great example of high demand of labour.
Examples of this In the Media
You assemble a team on a contract for a single project, production unit:
director, writer cast are assembled for that project alone and at the end that
unit is disbanded.
The transformation away from the studio towards a variable way of
producing film
The studio is never obliged to hire you again, due to personal scandals
they can cut you right off: example Mel Gibson and Charlie sheen
With fixed term contracts you work like its your first day every day
because of the uncertain working conditions
Unpaid or underpaid labour: Interns
o Training experience and networking but there is no living wage
o It is not measured by the clock, you can end up working some crazy hours
o Sites of work are now sites of enjoyment and this blends work and play, making
work more a part of our life than ever
Copyright in media-new lecture
o Fordism and Post-fordism in cultural production
o New forms of labour (Dyer-Witherford and Dr. Penter)
o The blurring distinction between work and play
Intellectual property and copyright
o For profit industries and survive because they have exclusive right of service or
product
o To maintain exclusive right is intellectual property
o Intellectural property-creations of the mind inventions literary artistic works and
symbols names images and designs used in commerce
o Copyright grants the right to copy-exclusive right to owner to copy
o The statute of anne (1710)-first modern piece of legislation outlying what
copyright is sets the right for 14 years-only books
o Donaldson vs Beckett (1774)-enforces that copyright is held for limited duration
o Berne Convention for the Protection of literacy and artistic works (1886)-first
copyright convention on copyright law followed by revised versions
o The goal of copyright is to
Encourage individuals to be creative and innovative by providing
monetary compensation
Ensuring people have incentive to create media
To do so in a way that does not interfere longterm development of cultures
o Rights of fair dealing in copyright law grants users limit rights to quote and use
media with citation-circulate knowledge in culture
o The development of copyright
Recognition and adaptation to new forms of media reproduction
1942 AFM went on strike-refused to go into studios not enough pay
New lecture
Media and the Environment
o Communicating the environment
Discussions of the wilderness vs civilization, country vs city in
historical documents throughout history.
Different perspectives of environment between city and country
Awareness of concerns and problems in environment through news
coverage
Framing what kinds of actions and initiatives might make a
difference
Awareness of the world-communication
Historically chronicles of travels maps narratives have shaped how
people saw the world
In modern times travel writing or nature shows sell the idea of
undiscovered or unspoiled natural beauty
Communicating the environment
Climate change: according to environment Canada there
was a 70 percent decrease in ocerage of climate change
related stories between 2007 and 2010
Resource Extraction: Re branding the tar sands as the oil
sands, the campaign to improve the image of fuel of such as
coal and nuclear power
Ways information is presented (coverage) using different
words-alters how people think
Is this fair??
Raw materials used to produce electronics, media devices
o Media vs material objects: an ecological approach
o Greening the media
Lots of waste-as technology develops slowly people are
encouraged to buy new electronics within a short period of time
(old phones-environment affects)
Devices full of toxic materials-lots of waste
Lead, cadmium, tonnes of mercury (toxic metal- cause serious
health problems)
More than half of waste is being exported to Asia+Africa
Media outlets aware of people’s activity
o Google account-searches connected to youtube
Media and energy sources
o Media is a significant consumer of energy
o Google alone consumes enough energy to pwer 200,000 homes on an
ongoing basis
o Data centers consume electricity that would be the equivalent of 30
nuclear power plants,
Canada has approximately 17 plants providing 15% of nations
electricity
Communicating the environment
o Media shapes how we experience the environment
o Media plays a role in shaping how we view environmental problems and
solutions
o Media as material objects an ecological approach
Media devices often require significant amounts of raw materials
and energy
They produce a large amount of toxic write materials
Canada signed the Basel Convention in 1989 limiting the export and transportation of
toxic materials
As of 1994 amendments to the convention have effectively banned the export of toxic
matierals. (opposed by Canada).
Waste diversion act 2002
10 percent of e-waste in trash, 30 percent of electronic technology are kept in homes
Illegal to export waste, however material still makes it out (shadow economy) 7
Media production must be slown down, repaired/upgraded rather than replaced
Using more recycled materials
