Alternative Media in Canada

by Kirsten Kozolanka
Alternative Media in Canada
Author: Kirsten Kozolanka
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2012-04-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774821671
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Alternative media hold the promise of building public awareness and action against the constraints and limitations of media conglomeration and cutbacks to public broadcasting. These media are becoming key venues for community expression and political debate, but what is it that makes them alternative? The contributors to this path-breaking volume answer this question by examining the evolution of various kinds of alternative media – including indigenous, anarchist, ethnic, and feminist media – against the backdrop of political, economic, and cultural developments in Canada. They get at the heart of alternative media by focusing on the three interconnected dimensions that define them: structure, participation, and activism. Alternative Media in Canada not only reveals how alternative media are enabled and constrained within Canada’s complex media and policy environment; it also shows that, in the context of globalization, the Canadian experience parallels media and policy challenges in other nations.

Journalism and Climate Crisis

by Robert A. Hackett
Journalism and Climate Crisis
Author: Robert A. Hackett
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2017-02-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317362004
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Journalism and Climate Crisis: Public Engagement, Media Alternatives recognizes that climate change is more than an environmental crisis. It is also a question of political and communicative capacity. This book enquires into which approaches to journalism, as a particularly important form of public communication, can best enable humanity to productively address climate crisis. The book combines selective overviews of previous research, normative enquiry (what should journalism be doing?) and original empirical case studies of environmental communication and media coverage in Australia and Canada. Bringing together perspectives from the fields of environmental communication and journalism studies, the authors argue for forms of journalism that can encourage public engagement and mobilization to challenge the powerful interests vested in a high-carbon economy – ‘facilitative’ and ‘radical’ roles particularly well-suited to alternative media and alternative journalism. Ultimately, the book argues for a fundamental rethinking of relationships between journalism, publics, democracy and climate crisis. This book will interest researchers, students and activists in environmental politics, social movements and the media.

The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media

by Chris Atton
The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media
Author: Chris Atton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 615
Release: 2015-05-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317509412
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The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media provides an authoritative and comprehensive examination of the diverse forms, practices and philosophies of alternative and community media across the world. The volume offers a multiplicity of perspectives to examine the reasons why alternative and community media arise, how they develop in particular ways and in particular places, and how they can enrich our understanding of the broader media landscape and its place in society. The 50 chapters present a range of theoretical and methodological positions, and arguments to demonstrate the dynamic, challenging and innovative thinking around the subject; locating media theory and practice within the broader concerns of democracy, citizenship, social exclusion, race, class and gender. In addition to research from the UK, the US, Canada, Europe and Australia, the Companion also includes studies from Colombia, Haiti, India, South Korea and Zimbabwe, enabling international comparisons to be made and also allowing for the problematisation of traditional - often Western - approaches to media studies. By considering media practices across a range of cultures and communities, this collection is an ideal companion to the key issues and debates within alternative and community media.

The Media Gaze

by Augie Fleras
The Media Gaze
Author: Augie Fleras
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774821396
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While Canada is known for its official commitment to diversity, a close look at our media reveals that though they frequently promote superficial representations of difference, they actually play a pivotal role in producing and reproducing the values, structures, and priorities of a predominantly “straight,” white, male society. The Media Gaze exposes how newscasters, advertisers, filmmakers, and television programmers attempt to co-opt audiences into believing that media depictions entail neither prejudice nor perspective. In truth, the experiences of those who fall outside of the media’s preferred populations are actively ignored or misrepresented. In this timely audit of the Canadian mainstream media, sociologist Augie Fleras draws on compelling case studies to explore the societal implications of the industry’s hidden bias. He also examines alternative forms of media and media literacy to present readers with tools to challenge the dominant agenda.

Islands of Resistance

by Andrea Langlois
Islands of Resistance
Author: Andrea Langlois
Publisher: New Star Books
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2010-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1554200504
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Since radio's invention, some Canadians have been concerned about the increasingly commercialized and centralized nature of medium. Sometimes working alone, more often in teams, and always illegally, these activists represent islands of resistance within the ocean of homogenous frequencies, pirating radio signals for personal, political and artistic expression. In the first book published on the subject, Islands of Resistance gives you a view from the crowsnest of the phenomenon of pirate radio in Canada. Here is a collection of seventeen activist manifestos, artistic treatises of intent, historical essays on the development of radio and its regulatory bodies, sociological examination of pirate radio's application in new social movements, and personal anecdotes from behind the eyepatch. Just as the new media ostensibly renders the old obsolete, Islands of Resistance unveils the existence of a thriving clandestine counterculture. An invaluable addition to an unscrutinized subject in Canadian media studies, Islands of Resistance appeals to the anarchist, anti–authoritarian impulses in all of us. Visit the Islands of Resistance website for more about the book and to hear audio clips of pirate radio.

Alternative Journalism

by Chris Atton
Alternative Journalism
Author: Chris Atton
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2008-11-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 085702681X
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"A provocative, inspiring and challenging intervention in both journalism and media studies.... Alternative Journalism is that rare book that services students as much as scholars. It widens the trajectory of media studies and creates different modes of reading, writing and thinking... It offers an alternative history beyond the tales of great men, great newspapers, great editors and great technologies. It adds value and content to overused and ambiguous words such as "community" and "citizenship" and captures the spark of new information environments." - THE, (Times Higher Education) Alternative Journalism investigates and analyses the diverse forms and genres of journalism that have arisen as challenges to mainstream news coverage. From the radical content of emancipatory media to the dizzying range of citizen journalist blogs and fanzine subcultures, this book charts the historical and cultural practices of this diverse and globalized phenomenon. This exploration goes to the heart of journalism itself, prompting a critical inquiry into the epistemology of news, the professional norms of objectivity, the elite basis of journalism and the hierarchical commerce of news production. In investigating the challenges to media power presented by alternative journalism, Atton addresses not just the issues of politics and empowerment but also the journalism of popular culture and the everyday. The result is essential reading for students of journalism - both mainstream and alternative.

Journalism in Crisis

by Mike Gasher
Journalism in Crisis
Author: Mike Gasher
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2016-11-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442625201
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Journalism in Crisis addresses the concerns of scholars, activists, and journalists committed to Canadian journalism as a democratic institution and as a set of democratic practices. The authors look within Canada and abroad for solutions for balancing the Canadian media ecology. Public policies have been central to the creation and shaping of Canada’s media system and, rather than wait for new technologies or economic models, the contributors offer concrete recommendations for how public policies can foster journalism that can support democratic life in twenty-first century Canada. Their work, which includes new theoretical perspectives and valuable discussions of journalism practices in public, private, and community media, should be read by professional and citizen journalists, academics, media activists, policy makers and media audiences concerned about the future of democratic journalism in Canada.

Converging Media, Diverging Politics

by Mike Gasher
Converging Media, Diverging Politics
Author: Mike Gasher
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780739113066
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What purpose does the news media serve in contemporary North American society? In this collection of essays, experts from both the United States and Canada investigate this question, exploring the effects of media concentration in democratic systems. Specifically, the scholars collected here consider, from a range of vantage points, how corporate and technological convergence in the news industry in the United States and Canada impacts journalism's expressed role as a medium of democratic communication. More generally, and by necessity, Converging Media, Diverging Politics speaks to larger questions about the role that the production and circulation of news and information does, can, and should serve. The editors have gathered an impressive array of critical essays, featuring interesting and well-documented case studies that will prove useful to both students and researchers of communications and media studies.

Media Literacy for Citizenship

by Kirsten Kozolanka
Media Literacy for Citizenship
Author: Kirsten Kozolanka
Publisher: Canadian Scholars’ Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-08-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1773380796
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Offering a critical perspective, Media Literacy for Citizenship emphasizes the ability to analyze media messages as a fundamental component of engaged citizenship. The ten chapters of this text are divided into two sections: the first six chapters explore the landscape of the media today, and each of the final four chapters examines how the media presents specific issues, all of which are of vital importance to civil society. Each chapter forms a mini-lesson and encompasses three core elements: an essay on a subject area important to critical media literacy; a list of case examples that can be used for assignments; and a list of key terms common to all chapters and cases. The diverse topics of study and the rich pedagogy make this book a perfect resource for courses in communications, journalism, media studies, and education.