Communication Media: A Critical Perspective PDF

Communication media pervade practically all facets of our lives. They encompass traditional media--- film, books, magazines, television and radio broadcasting, newspapers, telecommunications---as well as an increasing range of digital information and communication technologies. We began our study of...

Communication media pervade practically all facets of our lives. They encompass traditional media--- film, books, magazines, television and radio broadcasting, newspapers, telecommunications---as well as an increasing range of digital information and communication technologies. We began our study of media and communication by considering the shifting nature of communication technology, reflecting on how media and communication systems are central to the functioning and operation of society, and examining how they orient our understanding of the world and our actions within it. We considered the broad history of media and the ways they have been implicated in political, economic, and social development. We looked at a wide range of media theories, considered the different perspectives they provide on the broad processes of communication---particularly encoding and decoding---and weighed the different accents they put on the importance of structure and agency. We examined the dimensions and character of advertising and promotional culture and how, as forms of communicative practice, they are deeply tied to our economy and culture. We also reviewed the formal institutions of communication and the influence that professional values have on their operation, and we considered the role of larger social forces, such as politics and economics, in shaping the development and character of these organizations' activities. As we have seen, the influence exerted by these media ranges across all dimensions of society: politics, economics, education, culture, the family, and individual lives. The media also have an enormous impact on our worldview and our frame of reference on events. But, as we have seen, media are incomplete and imperfect tools for understanding our world. To study the dynamics of media, as we have been doing in this book, is to attempt to understand the dynamics of representation and the ways in which it informs our understandings of the world and our place within it. This final chapter summarizes the various ideas and perspectives on media and communication that we have considered, and points the way to future study and directions of growth and development of the field. The Shifting Character of Media Media are central to how we understand culture and society and share in them. In this context, we have approached the study of media and communications from a critical perspective. That is, we have been considering how media are implicated in our knowledge and understanding of the world. Our discussion of oral, literate, and electronic forms of communication introduced how media of communication can influence social form and structure. Our discussion of oral communication, for instance, illustrated that media shape the production and transmission of knowledge. An examination of written or literate communication shows how media can shrink social distance and shift relations of political power. Digital electronic communication does all this and more. It can have both binding and fragmenting effects as barriers to constructing relationships across space collapse. While many digital divides continue to cause inequalities both at home and internationally, the electronic media overall contribute to shrinking social, political, economic, and geographic distances. Who will reap the majority of the benefits from these changes remains to be seen. But as we have discussed, technology is not the sole defining feature of media systems. While specific types of media might have particular propensities, media systems are the product of a much larger set of political, economic, social, and cultural forces. Broadly speaking, in the context of Western societies, contemporary media reflect cultural forms and social practices engendered by the shift from feudal to industrial society, and the migrations and divisions of labour that characterized that shift. Moreover, in a large 300 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World industrial nation such as Canada, the media are complexly woven into the social and cultural fabric. The unique characteristics of Canada, such as its large land mass, a small population spread primarily along the border with the United States, its regionalism, two official languages, and multiculturalism, have all laid their stamp on the structure and character of the Canadian media. Rising from these circumstances, media both orient and animate social life. On the one hand, they reflect the larger set of social and cultural values that frame our lives. On the other hand, we come to know our society---its institutions, organizations, relationships---and the ideas, values, beliefs, and art forms that make up our culture largely through media and our engagement with them. Set in this context, some of the questions we have considered are the following: Does it matter who owns the media? How does advertising influence what we see in the media? What roles do the media play in the economy?... in globalization?... in the construction of our tastes and desires and personal identity? Does it matter if Canadian media are dominated by foreign, mainly US, media products? Are television sitcoms, shows promoting celebrities, and other seemingly innocuous programs simply entertainment, or do they play other roles in our lives? In other words, whose or what interests do media serve, and what roles do they play in creating and maintaining social relationships, particularly relations of wealth and power? In considering these questions we have seen that communication technology, and the social forums it creates, are currently key sites of social change and struggle as a range of social interests fight for position in the shifting social landscape. Some might shy away from terms like social struggle. Neo-liberal critics might prefer "new, open, more competitive markets" or, as those of a more idealist bent might put it, a "new chance for democracy." But a social struggle it is. Because they are embedded in a larger set of social and political circumstances, changes in our media systems signal much broader social change. In the current environment, we are not merely throwing out a bunch of old machines and bringing in some new, sleek, quieter, more effective ones. Rather, we are setting in motion the revision and reformation of the jobs associated with those machines. We are encouraging the reorganization and perhaps the re-establishment of associated organizations and institutions. We are opening up for reconsideration the foundations of public policy governing those activities and institutions. And we are recasting the dimensions of the economy, the location of labour, and the role of the consumer. In some ways, we are also recasting notions of citizenship. Practices and institutions of mass communication are currently being undermined by the fragmentation of media markets and the rise of a sophisticated, publicly accessible transmission system---the internet. Internet television, radio, and podcasting, for example, can circumvent the state and commercial apparatus controlling mass broadcasting. Independent recording labels and bands who sell their music via the internet have been able to get around the control of the recording industry giants, such as Sony, EMI, Universal, and Warner. Consider as well open-source software, which is a concerted effort on the part of digital labourers to undermine the centralized production and market domination by a handful of companies such as Microsoft. News production, once generally the purview of large media corporations, is being taken up by bloggers, citizen journalists, and a host of small and financially tenuous news producers (see Box 12.1). Similarly, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube offer an increasing range of new forms of social interaction. These are but a few examples in the growing range of interactive communications. At the same time, the shifting structure and character of media industries is raising a host of new political, economic, and cultural issues. Over-the-top program distributors like Netflix and Amazon Prime TV are circumventing regulations, undermining the viability of Canadian screen industries, and raising new concerns about cultural sovereignty. Traditional jobs in journalism and the media are becoming 12 Media and Communication \| 301 increasingly precarious. There is a growing digital divide both domestically and internationally, and multiplying concerns over privacy as both industry and government strive to more closely track our activities. The foundations of this change from mass distribution of centrally produced media products to mass communication by and through an expanding range of people and institutions can be understood by recalling the definitions introduced in Chapter 1: Mass communication is the centralized production and wide dissemination of information and entertainment. Mass communication is the decentralized production and wide accessibility of information and entertainment by means of public access to the internet. Mass communication is the interactive exchange of information (or messages or intelligence) among a number of recipients. As we have seen, the latter two meanings of the term mass communication are relatively new. The processes they describe are not new: decentralized, widespread production of content describes early newspapers and small literary magazines; widespread person-to-person communication by means of the postal system is very old; and the telegraph and telephone have been with us since 1846 and 1876, respectively. What is new in the case of widespread production of cultural products is vastly increased ease of access and interaction. The greater variation of media text, sound, and image, together with the capacity for immediate transmission, storage, and manipulation, greatly extends the capabilities of traditional media. The social challenge new media present is how they might be put to work in the broader public interest rather than the interest of large private corporations---particularly foreign corporations with little to no concern for issues of Canadian sovereignty. Communication and Democracy Developments in communication media may interact with the fundamentals of democracy, particularly in terms of how ownership and control of media may enable or constrain the range of ideas and perspectives found in those media. The history of this interaction can be traced back at least to the printing press in the midfifteenth century, which at first was controlled by 12.1 The Media Co-op One of the most innovative online media organizations in Canada is The Media Co-op (www. mediacoop.ca), which was founded in 2006 and has three types of members---readers, contributors, and editors---all with their own respective interests and roles in the organization. In an effort to promote a more horizontal relationship between readers and the news organization, reader members are invited to participate in decision-making in terms of both developing story ideas and administrative issues. Journalist members are the main-story contributors, and the editors do the administrative work for the organization. While some of the published material is contributed by volunteers, the cooperative pays contributors wherever possible, in both cash and exchange. The organizational goal is to set up local media cooperatives across the country that produce news at both the local and national levels. At present, there are local cooperatives in Halifax, Toronto, and Vancouver, and more are said to be on the way. Each of these organizations has its own website for local news as well. Despite the ongoing struggle of raising money and developing resources, the cooperative has been operating for over 12 years. 302 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World the state or governing elite. But as the potential of communication technology for undermining and shifting the bases for political power became apparent, struggles over its control ensued. First, in the case of religion, in sixteenth-century Europe, Protestants such as Martin Luther sought to undermine the social control held by the Catholic Church. Later, governments sought to control the press and the flow of ideas that might stem from it. And in the twentieth century, the corporate control of media became a central question of concern. Should media organizations be free to use their potential power to advance their biases in favour of business, certain political parties, and specific policies (such as free commercial speech)? Or should they act in a more constrained fashion, as self-aware institutions with a privileged position in society and, consequently, a responsibility to act for the social good of all, for a larger public interest? These questions exemplify how communication interacts with notions of democracy. We saw in Chapter 2 that the social responsibility thesis, particularly in Canada, has provided a backdrop against which media performance in this regard might be measured---at least until the late twentieth century---not only in the press but also in the founding of broadcasting and specifically through the creation of a national public broadcasting service. Even more than the press, broadcasting was seen as a potential harbinger of greater social coherence, public expression, and responsibility in the media, offering enlightenment to individuals and encouraging the pursuit of democratic ideals. Drawing on Canada's tradition of governmental or public enterprise, CBC gave the state the chance to finance a medium of communication on behalf of the people and the nation itself that would counterbalance the commercial media, which are often financed 80 per cent or more through commercial advertising. At the international level, the efforts of UNESCO---beginning in the 1970s and carrying through to the 2000s---to extend the ideals of public communication through a new world order were founded on a similar idea of social responsibility. Dubbed "fair flows of information" rather than "free flows" (where the strongest in the market were free to dominate), the New World Information and Communications Order was championed by UNESCO in the 1980s as the possible impact and potential of new communication technology was becoming apparent. In large part, however, these efforts were squelched by the United States and the United Kingdom when they withdrew their support for UNESCO. The desire of these two countries to maintain their predominance as exporters of information, entertainment, and ideology to the world overrode any sense either had of social justice or of the value of celebrating diversity on a worldwide scale. Canadian policy was mostly set against this kind of imperialism, and with the help of favourable government policy, this country built up cultural industries capable of carrying Canadian creative content to domestic audiences in the face of the dominance of US media products in Canadian markets. More recently, given the ongoing advantages enjoyed by US and other foreign media producers, pressures have mounted to revisit current Canadian regulation that allows for more open markets. Critics have been raising questions as to the continued ability of Canadian perspectives to maintain their place in the Canadian mediascape. In the digital age, because of the opportunities new media present for expanding public participation in formerly cloistered venues of decision-making, the question is perhaps how quickly and extensively large corporations will move to consolidate their predominance and, hence, their control of changing media and media markets. This is already happening in terms of concentration of ownership of traditional media; the vertical integration of content producers, such as television networks and newspapers, with the telecommunications companies that provide access to the internet; and corporate consolidation and control of web-based media organizations such as Google, Facebook, and Netflix. In the face of this ongoing consolidation, media policy becomes a particularly important 12 Media and Communication \| 303 vehicle for ensuring public participation and representation in both the development of new media and, perhaps more importantly, issues of governance in general. As illustrated in Box 12.2, "Advocating for Change," struggles to help ensure that the media are responsible to the greater public interest have a long history in Canada and continue today. Content and Audiences When we study communication, especially content, we are generally studying practices or processes of representation---that is, the act of putting ideas into words, paintings, sculpture, film, plays, television programs, websites, podcasts, or any other medium of communication. In this context, communication, or the making of meaning, is an active process that requires specific engagement at the levels of both encoding and decoding. In the study of communication, the importance of a statement is not limited to whether it predicts events, can be refuted by others, or generates other interesting hypotheses---all standards used in science. The focus is on how an act of communication represents or reconstructs something, and what gives a particular representation its force or its ability to persuade. Whatever makes a particular novel, painting, or film more popular or revered than another--- or perhaps even a novel more powerful than a film---cannot be satisfactorily discussed by reference to the relative truth of each communication. Such media and individual works are discussed by communication scholars in terms of their rhetorical force or in terms of the nature or style of their representation. Communication researchers use a range of analytical theoretical perspectives to wrestle content into some meaningful framework so that they might better understand how it is generated and how it frames our understanding of the world. Each theoretical perspective provides a particular point of view on understanding content. And different perspectives can be deployed as the situation demands. From a critical theoretical perspective, however, our task is not to understand variables affecting communication in an effort to attain seemingly perfect communication, as a mathematical model might lead us to do in another field of study. Indeed, as we have seen, because everybody approaches the act of communication with different histories and assumptions, such an ideal is impossible. Our task is instead to understand the social processes involved in the creation and transmission of meaning. In approaching this task, we can focus, for example, on the agency of the individual producers: on the life and intent of the author and the dynamics involved in the publication of a particular media text. Working from another direction, we can consider the ways in which larger social structures and processes impose limits and pressures on the media and media messages. Like structuralists and semioticians, we can consider how both the organizational dimensions of a story and the signifiers deployed refer back to a larger set of social circumstances and ideas, how the sign system is itself part of a larger set of social processes and circumstances, or, following the lead of the post-structuralists, we can delve into the particularities of the meaning system that has been created by audience members in the act of interpretation. Similarly, political economy offers insight into how politics and economics give form to media content. From this perspective, we can examine the production of content in terms of the interests of the producers and those paying for production, as well as the impact on content of government regulation, professional codes and values, and, especially, the profit motive. This perspective provides an account of why certain kinds of content are produced and disseminated while other kinds are not. At quite a different level again, organizational analysis provides insight into how the characteristics of specific organizations---such as whether an organization is mandate driven or profit 304 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World 12.2 Advocating for Change Efforts by citizens' groups to encourage the development of comprehensive media and telecommunications systems have a long history in Canada---sometimes to encourage the growth of public ownership and/or Canadian-owned industry; other times to mitigate the effects of market forces on the cost and character of services and products. Precedents go back at least to the early decades of the twentieth century and the fight by citizens of the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to establish public ownership of telephone systems (Babe, 1990: 102--11). As distinctions were drawn between content and carriage during that period, however, telecommunication and media regulation began to develop largely independently of each other (202--07). In that process---driven by values such as the need for an informed citizenship, access to a diversity of media, and cultural sovereignty--- media regulation took on a higher public profile. In this regard, federal government inquiries and commissions have often played an important role in animating public debate around media. In 1929, for instance, the government struck the first major inquiry into media: the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting (Aird Report). The struggle for public broadcasting developed out of this inquiry, with the Canadian Radio League using it as a springboard to develop a broad public campaign that led to the institution of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission---the predecessor to today's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation---in 1932. As media industries expanded through the middle part of the twentieth century, government sponsored inquiries continued to play an important role in highlighting and bringing forward issues concerning their growth and development. Pressures to increase profits encouraged escalating concentration of ownership, which took a toll on content. The overall number of reporters and editorial voices declined as newspapers and broadcast newsrooms shared stories and other material across the chain, and owners took increasing liberties in shaping stories and other editorial content. Public outcries spawned several inquiries through the 1970s and '80s, including the 1970 Special Senate Committee Report on the Mass Media and the 1980 Royal Commission on Newspapers (Canada, 1971; Canada, 1981). These investigations provided forums for expressing public discontent on the state of these industries, and, rising from those concerns, pressure from activists helped shape the development of alternatives to corporate media, such as community television and radio (see Goldberg, 1990; Girard, 1992; Hackett and Carroll, 2006: 167--8). However, in terms of large corporate media, few of the recommendations of these inquiries were ever acted upon (Skinner et al., 2005: 56--64). Following changes in regulations that had been designed to keep newspaper, broadcasting, and telecommunications companies separate, a series of cross-media ownership deals were struck in 2000 that radically altered the Canadian mediascape. This was the first round of corporate consolidation designed to reap the supposed economic benefits of technological convergence. However, layoffs and corporate tinkering with editorial policy followed, prompting public calls for a federal inquiry into the effects of these mergers. And, in the mid-2000s, more public inquiries were conducted to look into the impact of concentration of ownership on the media, particularly news and editorial content. Today, organizations such as Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (www.friends.ca)and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (cippic.ca) continue to lobby governments and advocate on broadcasting and telecommunications issues on behalf of the public. Founded in 1985, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is a strong advocate for public broadcasting and Canadian journalism and storytelling. By permission of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. 12 Media and Communication \| 305 oriented---impinge on media content. We can also gain an understanding of content through analyzing the characteristics of particular media forms, such as news stories, ads, soap operas, documentaries, and music videos: how ads are constructed to draw us in; how news presentation privileges the news anchor or one of the protagonists in a story; how investigative television can present a convincing veracity where there may be none at all; and how soap operas captivate audience members in their presentations of fictional characters. Each of these perspectives contributes to the richness of our understanding of both referents (signifieds) and the symbols (signifiers) used to represent them. With the overall understanding these various perspectives make possible, we can then extend our understanding of the nature and roles of the media in society. We can understand, for example, how the media are separate from, yet intrinsic to, society. We can appreciate the role they play in incorporating content from subcultures, making it part of the culture as a whole, or how they can reject as legitimate perfectly normal styles of living that are a part of any culture. We can also gain a sense of how autonomous the media are in their capacity to create their own realities, what their inherent shortcomings are, and, by extension, why we might need mechanisms that help ensure they cannot entrap us in a world of their own construction. But the encoding or construction of media messages is only one side of the equation. Decoding, or how they are received, is another. Thus, we have also considered how audience members engage with the media---what they take from the media and how. The first principle in understanding content-- audience interaction is recognizing that it is an active process. Even when distracted, audience members are meaning-generating entities. That is, they filter information and entertainment through their own histories and understandings of the world, through established opinions and knowledge, and through situational variables--- fatigue, their assessment of the presentation, other pressing concerns of the day, their anticipation of certain events, their position in the workforce, and so on. Similarly, the media are active generators of meaning insofar as they create programs targeting certain audiences, with certain intensities, designed to engage audience members in a certain fashion. Early studies of audiences perceived them as relatively passive, and the media as having direct effects on human behaviour and attitudes. While evidence for this latter notion is controversial at best, the argument that media serve some sort of agenda-setting function, or that they work to cultivate particular conceptions or attitudes, has gained some credibility among researchers. From this perspective, media don't so much tell people what to think as they do what to think about. Another perspective drawn from early effects research that we considered was uses and gratifications research, which analyzes the uses to which audience members put media content and the satisfaction and reward audience members feel they derive from media content. Working from a different starting point, we also considered theories that focus on the ways that the media position audiences to reproduce dominant social ideas and values. Marxist perspectives on media, for instance, illustrate how they often serve to promote the ideas and values associated with capitalism, while the Frankfurt School's examination of the industrialization of the production of information and entertainment illustrates how economics structures cultural form in general. In the face of these critiques, researchers of British cultural studies strove to better understand the complexity of the dynamics between media and audiences. Working with youth subcultures and social movements, their emphasis was on audience members as active agents and the numerous ways different groups of people engaged with media content. Working from yet another direction, feminist research illustrates how media and practices of communication contribute to social inequalities in terms of sex and gender. 306 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World Industry-based research approaches audiences from another direction, as commodities to be sold to advertisers. Such a perspective emphasizes quite different variables. At a first level, the number of people in the audience is of central importance. Then come their age, education, gender, income level, location, and so forth, followed by a consideration of how these elements are indicative of certain characteristics, such as specific attitudes; consumption patterns of particular products; and the time they spend listening, reading, or watching. Such information is valuable for the business of buying, selling, renting, and accessing audiences, and is also valuable in understanding general patterns in society. The media and audiences tend to engage each other in diverse ways, and the resulting interaction creates many social issues. The various starting points and perspectives we use to gain insight into what audiences make of content reflect that diversity. In simple terms, media content, such as hate speech, may serve as an igniting spark for anti-social behaviour---a good reason for us to be concerned about content generation and how media might contribute to anti-social behaviour. But media content may also inspire lifelong ambition, grand humanitarian gestures, respect for individual freedom, social plurality, cultural values, and the building of community. This positive spark is even more important to understand. As interactive public communication systems become more common in society, it is increasingly important to understand how media systems and content frame and animate social life. The Social Dimensions of Media and Communication Having acquired some understanding of the character and history of media, as well as some of the key perspectives on their content and interaction with audiences, we can turn to some of the larger social dimensions of media and communications: (1) advertising and promotional culture; (2) policy, or, more comprehensively speaking, law and policy; (3) ownership and control of communication institutions; (4) the role and actions of professionals; and (5) information and communication technology and globalization. Advertising and Promotional Culture As we have discussed, advertising is ubiquitous in our society and has taken over many public and private spaces and places. It is an integral component of modern culture and creates a vast system of symbols and ideas that reflect and shape our cultural values and understandings. By creating awareness and demand for products and services, it is a fundamental component of our economic systems and structures, and lies at the very foundation of the commercial mass media, financing the production and distribution of most information and entertainment. Embedded in our culture, advertising is a system of meaning making with ideological and cultural dimensions that shape, inform, and reflect our views on social issues. It serves to hide or mask the conditions of production and instill commodities with new meanings that appear to be inherent in the commodities themselves, such as fashion, strength, athleticism, wealth, and love. In this context, branding is a key element of advertising and promotional culture. A brand is a promise, a set of values and expectations attached to a name/logo. Branding is about giving products and companies human characteristics and extends beyond products or companies to a wide range of institutions and organizations, including churches, universities, countries, political parties, and people. In the digital world, the business of advertising focuses on collecting and monetizing information about consumer behaviour (thus raising concerns about privacy). But advertising has more profound impacts than simply communicating product information. It is an entire cultural system, a social discourse whose unifying theme is promoting consumption. Our voracious appetites for consumer goods have had a huge impact on the environment, and, in the face of global warming, 12 Media and Communication \| 307 the effects of advertising and promotional culture may be catastrophic. Public Policy Policy provides a set of rules and regulations governing the way information and media products are created and consumed. For instance, the Broadcasting Act describes the roles and responsibilities of the various elements of the broadcasting system, helping ensure that Canadian ideas and perspectives are represented in Canadian media content. Copyright legislation works to develop markets for media products and other forms of intellectual property. Privacy legislation works to protect the rights of individuals. Advertising regulations frame the kinds of claims advertisers can make and the kinds of products they may advertise. Libel laws structure the way journalists and news organizations operate. And income tax policies encourage advertisers to spend their ad dollars with Canadian media outlets and ensure Canadian ownership of newspapers. Creating a Place for Canada At a more basic level, policy also creates opportunities for Canadian media producers. As we have seen, the market is itself a form of regulation, and left to its own devices favours some interests over others. Because of the economies of scale involved, it is simply much cheaper for Canadian broadcasters to buy foreign programming than it is to produce their own. Thus, particularly in English Canada, without Canadian-content regulations there would be even more US programming on television than there is now. Similarly, as we have seen, prior to the enactment of content regulations for radio in the 1970s, less than 5 per cent of the music played on domestic radio stations was Canadian. This was not because Canadians did not make good music, but because of the marketing and publicity spilling over from US markets into Canada, as well as other factors. It was simply more lucrative for Canadian radio owners to play American music. As well, there is not the same market in the States for Canadian cultural materials as there is in Canada for US products. Again, this is not because Canadian products are somehow of inferior quality but the result of simple economics. American producers generally supply more than enough product to meet demand in their home markets and---due to economies of scale--- it is cheaper to use that product than to purchase Canadian content. These economics necessitate some form of regulation if Canadian media products are going to find space on the shelves in their home markets. The situation is somewhat different in Quebec, where a range of cultural factors allow homegrown products to compete successfully with foreign fare. In short, public policy shapes the ground--- particularly the economic ground---on which media products are created and, in turn, influences the character of those products and the ways they represent the world. Ownership A longstanding focus in Canadian media policy has been concerned with forms of ownership, and the interests of owners are seen to have significant effects on the content and character of media. In the face of cheap US media products, Canadian ownership and content regulations have been used to create an economics of Canadian production and to prevent Canadian media companies and markets from becoming simple extensions of their American cousins. In the broadcasting, cable, and telecommunications industries, legislation imposes limits on foreign ownership. In the newspaper industry, tax policy ensures that newspapers stay in Canadian hands. At the same time, as we saw in Chapter 7, a number of public inquiries have voiced concern about how the economic forces underlying private ownership lead to escalating concentration of ownership and a narrowing range of voices and perspectives in the media. Consequently, issues of ownership in Canada have been framed by various government regulations that, on the one hand, have tried to keep the ownership of 308 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World Canadian media in Canadian hands and, on the other hand, have wrestled with the drawbacks and supposed benefits of allowing for large, privately owned media companies to get a foothold in the industry. As a result, no media industry in Canada is governed exclusively by free-market economics; the industries are framed by regulations that, in some cases, reflect a complex mixture of public and private enterprise. The central difference between public and private forms of ownership pertains to the mandate or purposes that guide their operations. In contradistinction to privately owned media that foreground the profit motive, public and community media are mandated to serve broad social purposes. As laid out in the 1991 Broadcasting Act, section 3(1)(l), for instance, CBC is to "provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains." Just as CBC did in the development of television, in the face of shifting technologies today, it has moved to develop a range of web-based services. Chief among these are an increasing number of television programs, shows, podcasts, documentaries, French programming, and more than 50 music streams that can be accessed from its Gem website (gem.cbc.ca). Community media also are expected to fulfill social goals. For instance, while the mandate of community television stations is not enunciated in legislation, in its 2016 Community Television Policy the CRTC specifies that "community 12.3 National Campus and Community Radio Association / Association Nationale des Radios Étudiantes et Communautaires (NCRA/ANREC) Broadcasting in over 60 languages, member stations of the NCRA/ANREC employ over 220 full-time (equivalent) staff and 7,000 volunteers, who work an estimated 25,000 hours per week. Community radio is about volunteerism, social engagement, independent music, learning by doing, community capacity building, citizen journalism, and more. The NCRA has more than 192,000 watts of broadcasting power. Source: www.ncra.ca/about-cc-radio. On the left is NCRA volunteer Cousin Awd (Zoë Ludski), host of CJMP's 42 Fish in Powell River, BC, meeting with Vancouver-based CITR volunteer news reporter Deepi Leihl at the National Community Radio Conference hosted by CFUV in Victoria. Used with permission of Zoe Ludski and Deepi Leihl. 12 Media and Communication \| 309 programming should reflect the communities served and that community channels should reflect the official languages, ethnic and Aboriginal composition of the community" (CRTC, 2016). Similarly, but set at the organizational level, the Statement of Principles of the National Campus and Community Radio Association / Association Nationale des Radios Étudiantes et Communautaires (NCRA/ANREC), which represents 80 campus and community stations across the country, notes "that mainstream media fails to recognize or in many instances reinforces social and economic inequities that oppress women and minority groups of our society" and commits members to "providing alternative radio to an audience that is recognized as being diverse in ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical and mental ability" (NCRA, 1987). Still, private ownership is the dominant ownership form within the media system, and, in the face of ongoing pressure to tie the expansion of Canadian media to the profit motive, to what degree a larger set of public purposes might be maintained within the system is in question. One of the central features of Canadian media policy has been to protect the revenues of Canadian media producers in order to ensure that they are profitable enough to invest in production. Yet, as we have seen, particularly in the broadcasting sector, it has always been a struggle to get the big private corporations to invest in quality Canadian programs, and changes in technology are working to narrow the range of private corporations at work within the Canadian mediascape. With the digitization of information, communication systems that were once capable of carrying only one type of message can now carry a range of signals. Telephone, cable, and satellite systems all can be used to transmit television, telephone, and computer data. Webcasting is poised to supplant traditional television and radio broadcasting, and traditional newspaper and periodical delivery as well. And information-based products, like news and advertising, once destined for one medium, are now tailored for use across a range of media. Spurred by this technological convergence, companies in what were once separate industries, like newspapers and television or cable television and telecommunication, have broken into each others' markets and fuelled corporate convergence---in other words, concentration of ownership. With companies trying to capture cost savings by forging new economies of scale and scope, recent trends toward concentration of ownership have raised particular concerns. Some of the important synergies---as the efficiencies gleaned from consolidation are sometimes called---sought by these corporations are reduced labour requirements, cross-promotion of media products, larger and more flexible advertising markets, the repurposing of content created for use in one medium for use in another, the integration of executive and administrative functions, and vastly increased barriers to entry for would-be competitors. Consequently, concentration is seen as narrowing the range of perspectives and distinct voices available in the media, while new editorial policies and sanctions evolving through these changes are raising fears for editorial independence. But as we have seen, while the internet presents many new opportunities for producing and distributing media content, it is not the fountain of alternatives to traditional media that some pundits claim. High-quality media content is expensive to produce. Most of the news found on the internet comes from professional organizations, and most blogs and posts simply republish or comment on it. Professionalism Professionalism governs communication and cultural production in its own way. Cultural producers are not, strictly speaking, "professionals" in the same manner that lawyers and doctors are. Law and medicine require accredited formal training and permission to practise from recognized licensing bodies, and they are subject to their own specialized regulatory authorities. But cultural producers nonetheless derive a sense of professionalism from their specialized skills, 310 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World their practice-specific codes of ethics, recognized sets of qualitative conventions, and, above all, the conviction that their work is an essential contribution to culture in the fullest sense of the term. Like other kinds of professionals, cultural producers owe some allegiance to their employers or clients, and they remain subject to laws particular to the communication field, such as those pertaining to libel, copyright, privacy, and access to information. But their professionalism means that cultural producers are especially responsible for upholding and advancing the recognized standards of their practice and earning the respect of their peers. Cultural producers' sense of professionalism is tied very closely to the Enlightenment ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press, of questioning and challenging received wisdom and other forms of authority. They promote the notion that mass communication, in all its manifestations, is a key element of a democratic society. While we might attribute these ideals most readily to journalists, most cultural producers might make the claim that their communicative activities serve the cultural, political, social, and economic goals of society. This sense of professionalism, though, is being eroded. Employers are increasingly treating cultural producers simply as workers like any others---replaceable parts in the assembly line of production, subject to layoffs and buyouts, relegated to contract work, compelled to emphasize quantitative efficiencies over qualitative merits. Newsrooms are shrinking across all platforms, television dramas share prime time with reality formats, radio hosts are replaced by computerized music programming, and freelance magazine writers work for the same rates they were being paid 30 years ago. The government policies that promote cultural production in Canada, as we described in Chapters 7 and 8, do little to protect cultural producers within their own industries. Faced with fragmenting audiences and shrinking revenues, media corporations are laying off full-time employees and turning to contract workers or freelancers who are generally paid less and have little if any job security, and few benefits. For people trying to get their first job in media, unpaid internships have become a seemingly necessary rite of passage. But paid employment often remains elusive for many, and governments have recently begun to crack down on internships that they perceive to be illegal and exploitative (Global News, 2016). At the same time, labour unions such as the Canadian Media Guild (www.cmg.ca) have been focused on helping to improve conditions for this new army of part-time workers through a range of supports, including training and mentoring. Information and Communication Technology and Globalization Technology does not exist in a vacuum or as a social force on its own. While different theoretical perspectives on technology afford both its developers and adopters differing Many students do internships as a way to get experience in the field and on-the-job training. The Canadian Intern Association (www.internassociation. ca) advocates against the exploitation of interns and aims to improve the internship experience for both interns and employers. Weekend Images Inc/iStockphoto. 12 Media and Communication \| 311 levels of agency, as we have seen, technology is the product of a complex set of political, economic, and social forces that work to shape and configure its development. Policy also helps to set the context for technology. Whether in terms of government aid for research and development, licensing that allows organizations to offer particular technological services (e.g., cellphones, cable or satellite TV), tax incentives that encourage individuals or organizations to adopt particular technologies (or ownership mandates), policy can play a number of important roles in technological development. In communication, policy issues---such as who can use what technology for what purpose, who can control that technology, and how that control can be exploited---are critical. Because technology encompasses machines, techniques, and social institutions, it has a substantial impact on the structure and functioning of society as a transformative agent, an agent of change that may bring both negative and positive consequences. And while we often think of information and communication technology (ICT) in terms of content, such as film, video, television, or music, one of the most dramatic changes it might be implicated in is a shift in the locus of control: the greater the ability to communicate, the further the control system can be from the phenomenon being controlled. As the history of communication illustrates, communication developments have often led to increased centralization of control. Whether in terms of the centralization of political control, as in the case of the railway and communication technology enabling early Canadian governments to exert east--west control over the northern territory of North America, or in the case of the centralization of economic control, as today's transnational corporations harness information technology to coordinate supply and demand in global markets (media markets and others), ICT is often a key vehicle for addressing issues of spatialization. ICTS are not the first set of technologies that have been seen as reshaping society (see Box 12.4), but the social changes arising from the widespread implementation of ICTS are far-reaching, and they are central to the industrial restructuring taking place both at home and abroad. The global economy is not a new development; there has been strong global trade for over 500 years. But since the mid-1970s economic recession and the lure of cheap labour have fuelled international trade agreements and the investment of manufacturing capital in places like Southeast Asia, China, northern Mexico, and the American Sunbelt. To combat this competition, companies remaining in traditional industrial centres restructured, reducing staff and adopting labour-saving technologies. Through facilitating the movement of capital and goods, ICT has been important in facilitating this shift in labour processes, providing a vital link between the newly industrialized countries where these goods are now produced and Communication and accompanying media pervade our lives in modern society. The power of both the worldwide transmission of messages and the transformation that digital communication offers is the foundation for the remaking/reordering of society. Scott Greene, Channel Babel, oil on canvas, 1998. Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA. 312 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World the markets in old industrialized centres, such as North America and Western Europe, where they are consumed. ICT also has been central to the reorganization of industry in these old industrial centres, where it has been used to centralize control over operations, amalgamate responsibilities and functions, and more closely monitor and coordinate employees as companies have restructured to confront new global competitors. As the information economy has taken form, ever-growing types of information commodities, both products and services, have been created. Changes in copyright legislation, for instance, provide legal sanctions against the unauthorized copying of computer software, video and sound recordings, television programs, and other forms of data, and these changes have been instrumental in developing and expanding multi-million dollar markets for these products. Similarly, sanctions against photocopying for other than personal use and royalties on public photocopiers and blank CDs have created new revenue streams for media companies and creators. Twenty-five years ago, professors often copied class readings and other course materials and handed them out to students for the cost of the copying. Today, such behaviour might be subject to heavy fines or even imprisonment. The television universe available via cable, satellite, and the internet also has expanded dramatically, as has the cost. Video games have become big business. Education, a necessarily information-based activity, has become increasingly commercialized and responsible to market forces. The internet has given rise to an expanding range of new webbased businesses and services, and access to the 12.4 Kondratiev Waves: Tracking Technological Change Nikolai Kondratiev hypothesized that economies expand and contract with the introduction of new technologies. According to this theory, the waves or cycles last approximately 50 years and there have been five such waves since about 1800, based on (1) steam power, (2) the railway, (3) electrical and chemical engineering, (4) petrochemicals and automobiles, and (5) the current cycle of information technology, with its basis in the microchip and digitization. FIGURE 12.1 Kondratiev wave Source: Nikolai Kondratiev, The Major Economic Cycles (1925). 1800 1850 1900 1950 1990 P: prosperity R: recession D: depression E: improvement 1. Kondratiev 2. Kondratiev 3. Kondratiev 4. Kondratiev 5. Kon\... P R D E steam engine cotton railway steel electrical engineering chemistry petrochemicals automobiles information technology 12 Media and Communication \| 313 internet itself has become an increasingly costly service. With a whole new set of mobile telecommunications and internet-based services and products soon to hit the market, the information economy is proceeding apace. Issues and Policy Trends In the shifting field of communication various new issues are rising, and old concerns are taking new form. Over-the-Top Video As we illustrated in Chapter 8, online or overthe-top (OTT) video delivery services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime threaten to overwhelm the Canadian television system. Because the CRTC has previously ruled that that it would not regulate internet content, these services lie outside the regulatory system. Consequently, without the obligation to contribute to the production of Canadian programming, or even to ensure that Canadian programs are available on their systems, they sidestep the regulations that literally make Canadian television possible. While some people argue that it is impossible to regulate the internet, and that we should finally surrender to the logic of the market, as we have seen in previous chapters, new technologies have long threatened to overwhelm the Canadian broadcasting system with foreign programming. And, with varying degrees of success, regulators have found ways to meet with those challenges. In 1932, for instance, as a flood of US radio signals threatened to smother the nascent Canadian radio broadcasting system, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission was put into place to help counter that threat. In 1952, with US television signals rolling across the border and attracting Canadian audiences, CBC and the government mounted a feverish campaign to build a Canadian television system. And in the mid-1960s, when cable TV was set to overwhelm the adolescent Canadian system with popular US channels, the 1968 Broadcasting Act made cable companies responsible to the broad social purposes of broadcasting, and a series of regulations like simultaneous substitution helped make the industry a responsible player within the system. In the 1980s, and again in the early 1990s, signals from US satellite broadcasters sent regulators scrambling to find ways to keep Canadians tuned in to the system. Scores of new pay-TV channels and a boost to the Canadian production industry was the response to that crisis. In the face of all these technological threats to the domestic mediascape, regulators were able to forge a system that delivered Canadian perspectives to Canadian viewers. As its many critics point out, the current regulatory system is not perfect. And if history is to be our guide, any regulatory solutions to the current problems facing the system will inevitably be temporary and fleeting. To surrender to the latest technology, however, might well lead to the representation of Canadian ideas and values being overwhelmed by foreign programming on the growing range of screens watched by Canadian audiences. Solutions to these concerns, such as geo-blocking, do exist. Whether the CRTC and/or the federal government choose to exercise these options remains to be seen. Foreign Ownership Increasing foreign ownership of Canadian media is also a developing issue. Some argue that increasing foreign ownership in the telecommunications sector will boost investment in the industry and result in lower mobile telephone prices and better services. Others, however, point out a number of problems with this plan. First, given the growing cross-media ownership between telecommunications and broadcasting companies, allowing foreign ownership of telecommunications will inevitably lead to foreign ownership of broadcasting and a decline in investment in Canadian media production. Second, they argue that there is no incentive for foreign companies to invest in providing services in areas that present little return, such as in rural communities and the Far North---the areas most in need of investment 314 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World to bridge digital divides. And third, there is concern that regulators are less able to exert control over foreign-owned companies than over their domestic counterparts. How this issue plays out could affect Canadian control over the long-term development of both the telecommunications and broadcasting fields. Digital Divides At another level, digital divides at the local, regional, national, and global levels threaten to split the information society into a world of haves and have-nots. Without computers and highspeed access to the internet, or the knowledge of how to use these technologies effectively, many people are excluded from the political, economic, and social benefits enabled by these technologies. As acquiring information increasingly hinges on the ability to pay for it, it is difficult for schools, universities, and public libraries to keep up with the rising cost. Consequently, the quality of education and general availability of information are being reduced and those people and organizations that cannot pay for it are in danger of being deprived of these crucial communication resources. Digital literacy is also an issue, as low-income people and people living in remote communicates can experience difficulty accessing training to acquire digital skills (CBC, October 19, 2018). There are also many places on earth outside the wired world and, thereby, outside the reach of information technology. In Canada, rural areas with small populations such as in the Prairies and the North don't present the economies of scale to make it profitable for large corporations to invest in communication infrastructure and to supply services. Such areas, then, are sometimes left outside the digital world. Similarly, in many areas of the Global South, people simply cannot afford to buy into the communication transformation taking place. Privacy Privacy, too, is of rising concern. As social life is increasingly mediated by ICT, information about our activities is being monitored and collected by numerous organizations and government agencies. The unauthorized use of this information threatens our privacy in a number of ways. In the workplace, ICT can be used to monitor email and telephone conversations, or to count keystrokes and attempt to measure the volume of work undertaken by employees. (Charles Frederick Taylor, the originator of scientific management in the workplace in the early twentieth century, would be pleased!) Insurance companies purchase health and accident records in an attempt to assess the potential risk of applicants, sometimes denying coverage on this basis. Law-enforcement agencies are considering ways to use the information contained in databases to identify potential criminal suspects. And in both Canada and the United States, there is ongoing debate between law-enforcement agencies and public-interest groups over the right of government agencies to monitor electronic conversations and data flow. These concerns are compounded by the fact that both personal information and important social, legal, and economic information is often stored and processed outside the country. Private corporations, governments, universities, libraries, and the legal and engineering professions all sometimes use data services and networks outside Canada to process and store personal tax, credit, and medical data, as well as educational materials and information on natural resources and other matters of national import. Because this trans-border data flow places the information outside of the reach of national laws and regulation, it raises a host of issues for both Canadian sovereignty and the economy, and it leaves Canadians vulnerable to a host of potential problems, including trade sanctions, bankruptcies, and theft. Regulation Keeping regulatory frameworks relevant in the face of rapid technological change is also an issue. As convergence accelerates, for instance, the CRTC is faced with trying to improve the overall coherence of the regulatory framework, and there are discussions around merging the Broadcasting 12 Media and Communication \| 315 and Telecommunications Acts. A concern here is what might happen to the cultural objectives of broadcasting should such a merger take place. Shifting Economic Currents The changing media environment is not only animating change in the realm of public policy, but, as some critics argue, it is also shifting the economics of media production. The Long Tail Popularized by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, in a book of the same title, the long-tail phenomenon refers to what appears to be a change in the economics of media production brought on by the electronic storage and distribution of media productions. The book begins with a bow in the direction of blockbuster hits, which, as Anderson points out, are the foundation of massive media and entertainment industries. Hits rule, he says, and, thus, the factors that are fundamental to making hits also rule: centralized production, celebrities, huge production budgets, massive marketing campaigns, restricted distribution systems, and formulas that attract members of the mass public, who are seeking entertainment. Everyone makes money when a hit comes along. The author J.K. Rowling earned a substantial amount of money when each new title in the Harry Potter series was published; sharing in the economic windfall were her agent, her publishers around the world, the designers, the editors, the warehouse staff, the booksellers, the filmmakers, the actors, the theatre owners, and the lawyers who draw up the movie rights, toy rights, and product rights. In fact, everyone benefits financially---right down to the babysitter who fills in because the usual sitter must go and see the latest movie adaptation. So lucrative are hits that the entire industry is hooked on finding the next blockbuster. Potential sales channel and determine retail opportunities, whether space on a bookshelf, music store shelf, or magazine rack, screen time in a movie theatre, or a time slot or playlist on television or radio. To gain exposure, a product must fit an established category that sells. In books, such categories are mysteries, biography, romance, politics, self-help; on TV they are drama, reality TV, news, current events, game shows, and sports. Once comfortably slotted into a consumer category, the product must perform in comparison with established norms---it must sell at a certain pace from the opening days of its availability or else it vanishes unsold from the mainstream marketplace. Cultural markets work in such a manner because the distribution and display system is both costly and highly competitive. Hits are the high flyers, but for the normal to slow sellers, it is a dog-eat-dog world; sales monitored week by week tell the tale of what products will survive and which will vanish. If a product isn't selling as quickly as retailers think it should be, away it goes and a new version takes its place. The point Anderson makes in his book, however, is that distribution/display costs are much more forgiving in the online world. Once digital copies of a piece of music, a book, a film, or a game are uploaded into an online inventory, they can stay available indefinitely at a very low cost, perhaps selling only a few copies each year. Figure 12.2 has been adapted from an online essay of Anderson's which illustrates this point (available at www.wired.com/2004/10/ tail). It depicts a typical long-tail distribution and describes the different sales and availability at Walmart (a "bricks-and-mortar" chain) and Rhapsody (one of the first music streaming services): Walmart carries 39,000 titles; Rhapsody well over 200,000. At the left-hand side of the graph are the hits and other bestsellers, with the vertical axis representing the number, or frequency, of sales. Moving to the right, we see the pattern of sales for those titles that are not bestsellers. As the curve suggests, most surprisingly, a high percentage of the products available on the right side of the curve are accessed by consumers. In other words, a significant number of sales come from this extended inventory. 316 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World The pie graphs in Figure 12.2 indicate that the sales of music not carried by Walmart and other major music stores are not trivial. They account for 20 to 25 per cent of the profit for an online retailer like Amazon. True, they may represent as much as 90 per cent of inventory, but when the cost of holding and managing the inventory is reduced to close to zero, as it can be with digital products and computerized control, there is a viable business. Online services carry far more inventory than traditional retailers. In Anderson's example, for instance, Rhapsody offers 19 times as many songs as Walmart's stock of 39,000 tunes. The appetite for Rhapsody's more obscure tunes (charted in dark blue) makes up the so-called long tail. The selection enabled by this kind of inventory provides online retailers a distinct advantage over bricks-and-mortar ones. Moreover, having such an expanded inventory provides more sales opportunities, as consumers purchasing a copy of a currently popular song, film, or book can be automatically directed to similar products found in the long tail. As the automated message one receives after making an online purchase reads, "Customers interested in (insert popular song, book, film title you purchased here) were also interested in (insert long-tail title here)." More recent research appears to illustrate that the long tail is a key part of the marketing strategy for companies such as Spotify and Netflix (Flanagan, 2016; Arzavi, 2015). \*inventory in a typical store 735,000 songs 2.3 mil books 25,000 DVDs\* 39,000 songs\* 130,000 books\* 3,000 DVDs\* Rhapsody Walmart Amazon Barnes & Noble Net€ix Blockbuster Obscure products you can\'t get anywhere but online -- product not available in of€ine retail stores (% total sales) 22% 25% 20% Rhapsody Amazon Net€ix Average number of plays per month on Rhapsody Titles ranked by popularity 39,000 100,000 200,000 500,000 1,000 2,000 6,100 Songs available at both Walmart and Rhapsody Songs available only on Rhapsody TOTAL INVENTORY THE NEW GROWTH MARKET FIGURE 12.2 Anatomy of the long tail Online services carry far more inventory than traditional retailers. Rhapsody, for example, offered 19 times as many songs as Walmart's stock of 39,000 tunes. The appetite for Rhapsody's more obscure tunes (charted in dark blue) made up the so-called long tail. Meanwhile, even as consumers flock to mainstream books, music, and films (bottom), there is a real demand for niche fare found only online. 12 Media and Communication \| 317 "Free" Market for Cultural Products? Is the unfettered market the best way to produce and consume social resources? As a society, we don't seem to think so in terms of big issues like health care, education, and the environment. In fact, leaving such important social resources to a simple calculus of commercialism would necessarily lead to greater social inequity and environmental devastation as the market sorted between the services and activities that were the most profitable and those people that could afford to pay to access them. In other words, particularly in terms of education and health care, we would end up with fewer options and fewer people being able to access them---in short, greater ignorance and illness. In terms of the environment, such a rationale would allow natural resources to be put to the purposes commanding the highest price, with little regard to the interests of the people or other flora and fauna that depend on the natural world for their survival. Global warming and the wholesale devastation of forests, fish, and other wildlife species are clear evidence of where this path leads. By the same token, in the context of ICT and the media it encompasses, should our perspectives, knowledge, and understandings of the world be subject to a purely economic rationale? Historically, as we discussed in Chapter 7, the Canadian public and policy-makers have 12.5 The Radical Fringes of the Long Tail As we have seen, working with what Chris Anderson (2006) described as the "long tail phenomenon" (Figure 12.2), online retailers and video and music streaming companies like Amazon, Apple, and Walmart have created demand for a wide range of relatively obscure books, songs, and videos that otherwise may have gone unnoticed by potential audiences. But while recommending products that seemingly resemble those that people search for on online platforms seems to both increase consumer choice and feed the profits of large online companies, as Conor Friedersdorf points out in a March 2018 article in The Atlantic, algorithms that exploit the long tail can have a darker side. Citing the work of internet scholar Zeynep Tufekci, Friedersdorf illustrates that watching relatively moderate political content on YouTube can quickly lead to radical fringes. As Friedersdorf states, Tufekci was watching Donald Trump rallies while conducting research, sitting through clip after clip, when eventually she noticed "autoplay" videos "that featured white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content." Then she watched a bunch of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders videos. Soon, "I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast," she wrote, "including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11." Consequently, Friedersdorf writes, "YouTube is unwittingly radicalizing some of its viewers through the videos that it automatically recommends that they watch next." Whether or not people buy into the ideas and perspectives propounded by this radical content requires serous research. However, the fact that misguided algorithms may lead people wanting to learn more about the politics of the day into a dark web of dangerous and misleading misinformation should be a point of concern for the public and regulators alike. For more on this  story, see Conor Friedersdof, "YouTube Extremism and the Long Tail" (March 12, 2018), www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/ youtube-extremism-and-the-long-tail/555350/. 318 \| Part IV An Evolving Communication World answered with a resounding "No." For over a century, governments and others have recognized the need for regulation if Canadians are to enjoy fair and affordable access to communication services and media as well as cultural content that represents the breadth of Canadian perspectives. Common-carriage regulation in telecommunications, the founding of CBC, ownership regulations, Canadian-content regulations, production funds, and numerous other regulatory initiatives have been put into place to help ensure these purposes are met. Yet over the last several decades, a pattern has emerged of cutting back on various forms of media regulation in favour of leaving business to market forces alone. Cuts to CBC's budget, a gradual loosening of ownership regulations, including those governing foreign ownership and concentration, a winnowing of support for community and indigenous broadcasting, and the CRTC's reluctance to regulate the internet all exemplify this trend. Although the internet is often touted as the solution to the traditional problems plaguing our media systems, left to simple market economics, the internet holds little promise for increasing the range of media products and perspectives available to us. For film and television products, the internet does nothing to address the economic advantages conferred by economies of scale, and just as our television, movie, and computer screens are now dominated by US products, so, too, will they probably continue to be as the internet takes on a greater role in the distribution of such products. Although bloggers, citizen journalists, and a number of web-based news sites seem to have increased the range of news available to us, quality news production requires a high degree of knowledge and skill on the part of the people producing it, and because of this expense most internet news sites act as aggregators rather than producers of original news reports. Bloggers tend to offer little more than opinions gleaned from professionally produced news. At the same time, and perhaps most importantly, cross-media companies that count newspapers, broadcast, and web-based media among their holdings have business strategies that hinge upon repurposing media content generated for use in one medium for use in another. Consequently, whichever medium we turn to for news, the content is virtually the same. The Cultural Commodity? Compounding these problems is the fact that, as commodities, information and cultural products have quite different economic characteristics than other products such as soap, clothes, or cars. As Canadian lawyer Peter Grant and journalist Chris Wood point out in their book, Blockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World (2004), laws fundamental to economic thinking do not apply in the same way to information and cultural production. Rather, information and cultural products display a number of anomalies, or different economic characteristics, from other types of commodities: Anomaly 1: Cultural products such as TV programs, movies, and music are not consumed--- in the sense that they are not destroyed in our use of them. Your listening to music does not deprive the next person from listening to the same music on the same CD. The market for cultural products behaves differently from normal commodities markets. Anomaly 2: The relationship between firstcopy costs and run-on costs is dramatically different in cultural production than in the production of other commodities. In other words, the cost of making the "first copy" of a cultural product---such as a film, a television program, a concert, a novel, or a textbook---is enormous compared to the cost of subsequent copies. For instance, reportedly the budget for the film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was \$225 million---that, then, is the cost of the "first copy." Making an electronic copy of the film, however, costs little more than the cost of download or a DVD (a few cents). Compare that dynamic to theatrical performances for which the players 12 Media and Communication \| 319 must gather each night to put on the play; or manufacturing automobiles, where each "copy" requires a substantial outlay in parts and labour. For the cost of a cultural product to be the same as other kinds of commodities, the creation of each CD or DVD would require an artist to record anew. Similarly, for normal economic laws to hold, concert-goers would each suck out a little of the sound so that with a maximum audience there would be no sound left over. For books, the implications of consumption would be that as each page was read (perhaps not by the first, but let's say by the fiftieth reader) the print would disappear and by the end, the book would collapse into dust. Anomaly 3: Consumption patterns of cultural products and services are also different. Certain cultural products---blockbusters--- command a major share of the market, while others don't come close to earning back their costs of creation. For instance, as few as one in ten feature films make big profits, three to five may break even, and the others lose money. Moreover, reduced pricing is rarely successful in persuading a person to watch an unpopular movie, read a bad book, or listen to a dull, tedious piece of music. Anomaly 4: Hidden consumer subsidies in the form of advertising or grants (by governments or those with a vested interest) can make cultural commodities available at a much lower price than their cost of production (e.g., magazines, newspapers) or, at times, even "free" to consumers (e.g., TV). Indeed, those with a vested interest can buy their way into cultural products---such as product placement in movies---so that the cultural consumer inadvertently consumes images that cause him or her to associate a product with a certain social dynamic (e.g., Apple laptops and powerful people). Anomaly 5: The appeal of any particularly cultural good is not readily predictable, a characteristic that is captured by Grant and Wood with the phrases "Nobody knows" (whether a cultural product will succeed in the marketplace) and "All hits are flukes." With normal commodities, most manage to capture some share of the market at some price. These anomalies illustrate the fact that cultural products are quite different from standard industrial commodities. They call into question the appropriateness of applying standard economic theory to cultural products and underline the importance of regulations to help nurture and support the economic development of cultural industries at the local, regional, and national levels. One other particularly important anomaly rests on the fact that information is not value-neutral. Economic analysis generally assumes that similar commodities are substitutable for one another. For instance, all things being equal, a stove from the United States is seen to be as good as one from Peru; or clothes made in China are as good as those made in Montreal. While there are a number of problems with this assumption, a key concern when applying this idea to media and information products is that the information such products contain is not value-neutral. As we have seen, Canadians often seem to know more about US politics, history, and culture than about their own. In this regard, media and information products reflect particular ideas and attitudes, and those ideas provide specific ways of approaching and thinking about the world. Do imported educational materials, for example, incorporate Canadian values of diversity, tolerance, and common purpose, or are they underwritten by notions of competitive individualism that place the interests of the individual over the community at large? Do reports and studies authored elsewhere in the world and used by Canadian governments and industry to formulate policy and investment decisions take into account local and national environmental and community concerns, or are they simply based on abstract