Media Policy & Regulation

• Policy sets rules and guidelines for media operations, governing ownership, content, and public service.
• Policy creation involves governments using laws and regulations, influenced by corporations, interest groups, and lobbying.
• Canada's media policy is shaped by the CRTC, the government, and corporate stakeholders.
• The CBC is Canada's public broadcaster, funded to provide Canadian content and promote national identity.
• The CRTC regulates Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications for fairness, diversity, and Canadian content.
• The Broadcasting Act & Telecommunications Act governs Canada's broadcasting and telecom industries, setting rules for media ownership, competition, and content regulation.
• Media concentration occurs when a few companies own most media outlets, reducing viewpoint diversity (e.g., Bell, Rogers, Telus).
• Net Neutrality ensures internet service providers treat all data equally, without blocking, slowing, or charging extra for access.
• Copyright protects creative works, while fair use/fair dealing allows limited use for education, commentary, or research without permission.
• Piracy is the unauthorized use or distribution of copyrighted content, exemplified by illegal downloading.
• Open Source promotes free access to software and creative works, encouraging collaboration like Linux or Wikipedia.
• The political economy of communication involves social and power relations in the production, distribution, and consumption of communication resources.
• Market externalities are the costs and benefits of economic activities not accounted for in economic transactions.
• Chain ownership involves horizontal integration of companies in the same business.
• Vertical integration concentrates firms to extend control over production and distribution.
• Conglomerated ownership defines large companies with both related and unrelated subsidiaries.
• Policy is a set of rules, laws, and practices governing an activity.
• Legislation refers to acts and statutes passed by Parliament or a provincial legislature.
• Regulations detail the practical application of laws and are assigned within an Act.
• Governmental policy is established by governmental bodies at municipal, provincial, or federal levels.
• Non-governmental policy includes company policies and industry regulations.

Key players in Policymaking

• Governments at all levels create legislations, taxation, trade agreements, and culture (CUMSA).
• State-funded institutions, subsidies or grants, and public/private partnerships are examples of governmental policy
• International organizations, companies, corporations, and institutions of all kinds also make policies.
• Canadian media policy focuses on economic development and national identity.
• The Broadcasting Act aims to preserve Canadian identity within broadcasting and requires media to be distinctly Canadian.
• Policy debates happen, such as Bill C-11 and the online streaming act.
• The CRTC regulates Canadian radio, television, and telecommunications including content.
• The Broadcasting Act of 1932 promoted Canadian media ownership, representing Canadians in a cultural, political, and social context integrating both private and public broadcasters.
• The Telecommunications Act regulates Canadian carriers, preventing them from controlling content or influencing telecommunications' meaning.
• Canadian media policy creation started with the AIRD commission in 1929.
• The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission followed in 1932, a public broadcaster that distributed licenses, later diluted into CBC and CRTC.
• Canadian media policy is free from foreign influence, emphasizes public ownership, universal service, promotes multiculturalism and regionalism, and protects charter rights and freedoms.

Intellectual Property Rights

• Intellectual property rights include patents, trademarks, and copyright.
• Expiration of copyright is usually seventy years after the death of the holder, or 95 years after publication for corporations.
• Public domain is where everyone can use something.
• Fair Use (US) and fair dealing (Canada) allow using copyrighted works for purposes that enhance the public good, with exceptions.
• The nature of the original work favors the use of nonfiction and news-based work over creative/artistic content.
• First sale and public lending rights permit copyright owners to dictate terms of the first sale; it applies less with each new system.
• APTN and Broadcast Policy is indigenous media policy in Canada.

Digital Media Policy

• Convergence is digital merging of analog technologies, media forms, and media industries.

Technological Convergence

• Merging technologies into one exemplified by smartphones.
• Industry/Corporate Convergence involves media companies owning/distributing types of media.
• An example includes Disney owning Marvel, ESPN, ABC, and Disney+ for content release across platforms.
• Media Content Convergence is a single story or brand that appears across platforms like books becoming movies, video games, and trends.
• Net neutrality refers to ISPs treating all content and applications equally, without degrading or prioritizing service.
• Concerns over non-neutral networks stem from potential financial interests in discriminating.

Internet & Media

• The internet and common carriage convergence challenge media concentration.
• Algorithms play a key part in this.
• Political economy studies power relations around the distribution, production, and consumption of products.
• Media ownership relates to capitalism and the influence of companies over media.
• Chain and conglomerated ownership infiltrate media platforms.
• Chain ownership is a singular company infiltrating multiple industries, like Amazon Prime, Amazon groceries, and Amazon delivery.
• Conglomerated ownership involves large companies with influence in related and unrelated industries, like Uber and Uber Eats.
• Analog convergence into digital has transformed into corporations concentrating digital media initially utilized as an open landscape.
• Market failures occur when costs and benefits aren't accounted for during economic transactions.
• Media democratization includes public service broadcasting.
• Intellectual property involves turning ideas into commodities through patents, trademarks, and copyright.
• Patents cover media hardware/software and new, useful, non-obvious inventions.
• Trademarks cover branding/advertising using words, symbols, and colors.
• Copyright covers original literary, artistic, and musical works.
• Arguments against copyright involve colonial implications and cultural appropriation/extraction.

Copyright

• Fair dealing limits scale and economic impact and includes making use of work without permission.
• Public domain works are accessible without copyright infringement.
• Copyrighted works are copyrighted for the author's lifetime plus an additional fifty years.

Media, Culture, and Society

• Commodity fetishism separates production from consumption, masking labor conditions from the consumer.
• Through commodity fetishism happiness and satisfaction can be achieved.
• Advertising/promotional cultures shape views on social issues.
• Ads create needs and transform desires.
• Ads and branding create values/expectations attached to a logo.
• Convergence the merging of analog technologies, media forms, and media industries.
• Raymond Williams defines culture as a way of life, high culture, and popular culture.
• Culture is lived but subconscious, existing beyond direct realization.
• Culture as a way of life involves intersectionality, while high culture links to higher class.
• Popular culture includes subcultures like Kpop, activism using graffiti, and children's media franchises.
• Moral economy explores moral justifications of economics.
• Using digital media entails hyper-consumption, environmental and labor costs.
• Environmental crisis is represented through citizen science, visual culture, and data visualization.

Technology and Society

• Algorithmic bias stems from prejudiced collection strategies in biased datasets.
• Biased algorithms are coded by human beings which will embed values.
• Implications of this bias include employment ranking software and anti-terrorism measures.
• Data brokers collect cookies/trackers.
• Data involves algorithms, machine learning, and automation using historical information to predict the future.
• There are ethical concerns, such as Amazon job applications automatically rejecting female applicants who applied.
• Material media is affected by technological development's impact on physical worlds.
• Environmental communication includes visual culture, data visualization, and environmental catastrophe.
• Media, labor, and technology are key areas of study.
• Industrial society features Fordism, Taylorism, and assembly lines.
• Post-industrial labor involves the information economy and immaterial labor.
• Precarious labor includes contractual, contingent, casual, or part-time work without benefits or security.
• The gig economy involves contracting out, platform labor, and models like Uber and Airbnb.
• Algorithmic control uses technology as an instrument for labor exploitation.
• Unions and resistance movements seek to challenge algorithmic logic and fight for regulation.
• Digitization and automation mediate work, while deskilling and alienation occur.