Media, Elections and Democracy examines campaign communication in selected industrial democracies. Klaus Schoenbach, Karen Siune, Doris Graber and a host of authors around the world contribute critical overviews of the systems in their countries. The studies deal with a wide range of issues in modern communication, including the principles and practices of news and public affairs coverage and the impact of new technologies.
This is a comprehensive primary reference to a rich and often neglected storehouse of information on Canada's educational background. As the boundary between full-fledged royal commissions and other official governmental inquiries is not always clear -- and many legislative committee inquiries and special department of education investigations have been as significant in educational development as regular commissions -- Goulson has included all major ministerial-level governmental inquiries in Canadian education between 1787 and 1978. More than 300 inquiries are included, among them general, special interest, judicial, legislative, parliamentary, and other governmental committees. The information provided for each includes the type of commission or committee, its size, chairman, purpose, dates of appointment and reporting, and primary source references, as well as a selection of its major conclusions and/or recommendations. Official governmental records and documents including the Reports themselves, Legislative Journals, House Debates and Hansard, Sessional Papers, Statutes, and Department of Education records were used as the resource base. This volume will be of specific interest to teachers and students of the history of education, and most educators, no matter what their fields, will find it useful.
In Missed Opportunities, Marc Raboy reveals the short-sightedness behind the traditional view of Canadian broadcasting policy as an instrument for promoting a national identity and culture. He argues that Canadian broadcasting policy has served as a political instrument for reinforcing a certain image of Canada against insurgent challenges, such as maintaining the image of Canada as a political entity distinct from the United States and acting against internal threats, most notably from Quebec. It has served as a vehicle for the development of private broadcasting industries and to further the general interests of the Canadian state. Most of the time, Raboy maintains, this policy has been the object of vigorous public dispute.
Mary Vipond's approach is based on the idea that the development of radio broadcasting was a process that involved equipment manufacturers, broadcasters, and "audiences/customers." She charts the expansion of these three groups, surveys the development of advertising and networking as methods of financing, and analyses the evolution of programming. From 1922 to 1932, radio administration was the responsibility of the Radio Branch of the federal Department of Marine and Fisheries. Vipond discusses the regulatory policies of the branch. She completes her study with an analysis of the period from the formation of the Aird Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting in 1928 to the passage of the Radio Broadcasting Act of 1932. Between 1922 and 1932, virtually all Canadian broadcasting was in the private sector. The campaign in the early 1930s to institute a broadcasting system oriented more toward public service and the promotion of a national identity was partially successful. Vipond reveals, however, that the act that in 1932 set up the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, now the CBC, was much weaker than has generally been recognized. She argues that this weakness was a consequence of the fact that, over the course of the 1920s, broadcasters, listeners, and politicians alike had built up certain expectations of radio which could not easily be disregarded.
English-Canadian cultural critics from across the political spectrum championed self-improvement, self-awareness, and lively engagement with one's surroundings, struggling to find a balance between the social benefits of democracy and modernization and what they considered the debilitating influence of the accompanying mass culture. They used print and broadcast media in an attempt to convince Canadians that choosing wisely between varieties of culture was an expression of personal and national identity, making cultural nationalism in Canada a "middlebrow" project. As Kuffert argues, "if English Canadians are today more familiar with the ways in which modern life and mass culture envelop and define them, if they live in a nation where private citizens and cultural institutions view the media as avenues of entertainment, as businesses, or as the means to construct identity, they should be aware of the role of wartime and post-war cultural critics" in creating those orientations toward culture.
Media, Structures, and Power is a collection of the scholarly writing of Canada's leading communication and media studies scholar, Robert E. Babe. Spanning almost four decades of scholarship, the volume reflects the breadth of Babe's work, from media and economics to communications history and political economy. Babe famously characterized Canadian scholars' distinctive contribution to knowledge as uniquely historical, holistic, and dialectical. The essays in Media, Structures, and Power reflect this particular strength. With a clarity of vision, Babe critiques mainstream economics, Canadian government policy, and postmodernist thought in social science. Containing introductions and contributions by other prominent scholars, this volume situates Babe's work within contemporary scholarship and underscores the extent to which he is one of Canada's most prescient thinkers. His interdisciplinary analyses will remain timely and influential well into the twenty-first century.
Politics, Society, and the Media is the first comprehensive political sociology of the media to be published in Canada. Paul Nesbitt-Larking draws upon a range of disciplines, including cultural and media studies, political economy, social theory, and political science to provide an analysis of the relationship between power and representation in Canada. The framework for the book presents a model of the mutual interaction between politics and the media. Attention is focused in the early chapters on how cultural, ideological, economic, and governmental forces shape and condition the production of media in Canada. Chapters on the work of Innis, Grant, McLuhan, and their postmodern successors place the evolution of McLuhan's theoretical argument that "the medium is the message" at the heart of the book. Canadian identity, and how to understand Canadian media politically, is the subject of a chapter on textual analysis. Two extensive chapters follow on the media’s influence and effects on politics. In addition to standard topics on politics and the media, this new edition offers much more: an examination of the media on the politics of gender and aboriginal peoples, the micro-politics of the media workplace, and an exploration of important media-related considerations. Throughout, reference is made to relevant and compelling issues placed within the context of media theory.
Broadcasting Policy in Canada traces the development of Canada's broadcasting legislation and analyses the roles and responsibilities of the key players in the broadcasting system, particularly those of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
