Canadian Media Research Articles

Public Benefits or Private? The Case of the Canadian Media Research Consortium

The broadcasting regulator Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission established its Public Benefits program in the late 1970s. It eventually came to require a minimum 10 percent of the value of acquired broadcasting licences to be devoted to worthwhile initiatives. A portion of a CAD $230-million Public Benefits package in 2000 was devoted to funding a Canadian Media Research Consortium (CMRC) established between several universities. Mandated to “focus on the development of Canadian data for use in media planning,” the CMRC issued its first report in 2003, which was criticized for flawed methodology and cited as an example of “administrative” marketing research performed to the benefit of media owners rather than to the benefit of the public. The CMRC issued a five-year retrospective study in 2008 that addressed some of the earlier methodological flaws and perhaps, as a result, reached different conclusions.

Here today, gone tomorrow: The issue attention cycle and national print media coverage of prescription drug financing in Canada

Canada is the only developed country that has established universal coverage for hospital care and physician services that excludes medically necessary prescription drugs. Lack of public interest in expanding universal coverage to prescription medicines may be one critical factor in explaining this policy puzzle. Historical levels and patterns of attention to financing issues in the media may have implications for public awareness and support for such major health reform. We thus examined the quantity, context, and patterns of coverage of public drug financing in national print media in Canada from 1990 to 2010. We conducted a time series analysis of monthly newspaper article counts to quantify trends in coverage and analyzed article content by applying Down's theory of the “issue-attention cycle” of political attention. We found that baseline coverage of this issue was low throughout the past twenty years with few cycles of increased attention, initiated by focusing events related to general health reform. Issue-attention cycles were driven by coverage of proposed policy solutions simultaneously accompanied by lower levels of coverage of policy problems and barriers to change, before fading rapidly from attention. The observed patterns of media coverage and the intrinsic characteristics of this policy issue suggest that any momentum for reform (or lack thereof) is likely to be driven by elite members of the policy community rather than by way of public engagement. This has implications for the probability of reform and which options may be considered or eventually implemented, as policies developed within elite policy communities may tend to reflect niche interests rather than being reflective of principled policy goals.

The Media Gaze: Representations of Diversities in Canada by Augie Fleras (review)

Reviewed by: The Media Gaze: Representations of Diversities in Canada by Augie Fleras Sherry S. Yu Augie Fleras . The Media Gaze: Representations of Diversities in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011. 300 pp. References. Index. $32.95 sc. Positioned at the junction of two of today's inescapable realities—media saturation and diversity in our society—Augie Fleras' new book, The Media Gaze, explores the representation of diversities and difference in Canadian media. The book challenges the notion of media neutrality—the idea that media are conveyors of objective information—and aims to explore the logic and dynamics of media representation of race, ethnicity, aboriginality, gender, sexuality, class, age, and religion. To the author, such an understanding is important as media are our primary source of information in this media-saturated world we live in, and thereby shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us. Especially, in the absence of "meaningful first-hand contact with diversities and difference" (3), our perspective on the "other" is largely constructed by media messages. The book is organized into 14 chapters within four parts. Part I provides a theoretical framework for the book by deconstructing and defining the concept of the media gaze. Part II explores media as conveyors of socially constructed discourses through various types of media gaze, with case studies of the mis-representational process following in Part III. Finally, as a response to mainstream representation (Parts II and III), Part IV introduces the oppositional gaze from social/online media and populist media, that is, "media by, for, and about those demographics that public and private mainstream media tend to ignore or distort" (7). The author argues that consistent with mainstream institutions in general, the institutional principles and priorities of mainstream media embrace dominant ideologies that define what is "normal, acceptable, or desirable" (3). Mainstream media project mediated social reality through the media gaze, defined as "a media tendency to impose a specific view of the world without announcing its intention or underlying biases" (37). Various media gazes that derive from different ideological dimensions or a combination of these dimensions (corporate, racialized, Eurocentric, gendered or androcentric, classed, ageist, and secular) and media processes (news-casting, advertising, film, etcetera) are identified and analyzed. The author argues that through these media gazes, mainstream media construct "mediacentric" images in which marginalized demographics are continually "underrepresented in areas that count, overrepresented in areas that don't count, and misrepresented on both accounts" (4). Evidence of improvement in representation of racial minorities in news (Chapter 8), women in advertising (Chapter 9) and working-class men in sitcoms (Chapter 10), for example, are not absent. However, such changes are not transformative enough to challenge the status quo (media's foundational principles) [End Page 276] but rather reinforce it. Thus, the underlying messages are consistent with those of the past: marginalized demographics are "troublesome constituents" (viii). The cumulative effect of such biased, mono-cultural, and one-dimensional mediated projections on audiences is a concern: audiences begin to "see like the media" (37). In contrast, the oppositional gaze from social/online and populist media (Part IV) offers the other side of the story. Aboriginal media help the silenced voice of aboriginal people to be heard (Chapter 13). As well, ethnic media, as hybrid spaces of inward/outward and reactive/proactive dynamics, contribute to, rather than harm, Canada's commitment to multiculturalism and social integration of new members of society by facilitating bonding within and binding across communities (Chapter 14). The author concludes that the construction and distribution of mediated images are "fundamental to the exercise of power in society" (262). Therefore, misrepresentation of minorities will continue, and continually support "majority interests at minority expense," unless challenged (ibid.). The author argues for the importance of media literacy skills on the part of the audience as a tool to "see through a seeing like the media" (252). On the part of mainstream media institutions, institutional transformation, specifically, media workers and media structures, is critical. This may help "prevailing media gazes move beyond an 'us versus them' framework" (264) and move toward "living together" with diversities and difference (249). While the politics of representation of marginalized demographics have been...

Canadian Media’s Discourse on Older Workers: Reinforcing the Dichotomy of “Good” vs. “Bad” Old Age?

Canadian Media’s Discourse on Older Workers: Reinforcing the Dichotomy of “Good” vs. “Bad” Old Age?

“Nothing Short of a Horror Show”: Triggering Abjection of Street Workers in Western Canadian Newspapers

Over the past decade, Canadian media coverage of street sex work has steadily increased. The majority of this interest pertains to graphic violence against street sex workers, most notably from Vancouver, British Columbia. In this article, the authors analyze newspaper coverage that appeared in western Canadian publications between 2006 and 2009. In theorizing the violence both depicted and perpetrated by newspapers, the authors propose an analytic framework capable of attending to the process of othering in all of its complexity. To this end, the authors supplement a Foucauldian analysis of abjection by considering the work of Judith Butler along with Julia Kristeva's conceptualization of abjection. Using excerpts from western Canadian newspapers, the authors illustrate how the media's discursive practices function as triggers for the process of cultural abjection by inscribing street sex workers with images of defilement. The authors argue that newspaper coverage of street sex workers reinforces the inviolability of normalized life by constantly reiterating the horror reserved for abjected bodies.

The pharmacist as prescriber: A discourse analysis of newspaper media in Canada

Legislation to expand the scope of practice for pharmacists to include authority to independently prescribe medications in Alberta, Canada was announced in 2006 and enacted in April 2007. To date, very little research has explored public views of pharmacist prescribing. This study analyzes newspaper media coverage of pharmacist prescribing 1 year before and 2years after prescribing was implemented. News items related to pharmacist prescribing were retrieved from 2 national, Canadian newspapers and 5 local newspapers in Alberta over a 3-year period after the announcement of pharmacist prescribing. A purposive sample of 66 texts including news items, editorials, and letters were retrieved electronically from 2 databases, Newscan and Canadian Newsstand. This study uses social positioning theory as a lens for analyzing the discourse of pharmacist prescribing. The results demonstrate a binary positioning of the debate on pharmacist prescribing rights. Using social positioning theory as a lens for analysis, the results illustrate self- and other-positioning of pharmacists' expected roles as prescribers. Themes related to the discourse on pharmacist prescribing include qualifications, diagnosis, patient safety, physician support, and conflict of interest. Media representations of pharmacist prescribing point to polarized views that may serve to shape public, pharmacist, physician, and others' opinions of the issue. Multiple and contradictory views of pharmacist prescribing coexist. Pharmacists and pharmacy organizations are challenged to bring clarity and consistency about pharmacist prescribing to better serve the public interest in understanding options for health care services.

Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature by Herb Wyile (review)

Herb Wyile. Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier up, 2011. 294 pp. $42.95 paper. When you one of best Canadian literature book titles of last several decades on your cover there is a danger that contents will not live up to it. Herb Wyile more than delivers on title's promise. This engaging and lively discussion of contemporary Atlantic-Canadian literature offers far more than an explication of ideology that situates a fictional creation, world-famous girl with ginger hair, within a network of commodities that also contains Canada's favourite doughnut store chain. Simply put, Wyile's impassioned study reminds us why literature matters in neoliberal times. It matters because, as Wyile demonstrates repeatedly, literature can explore human costs of living in a time of unfettered free-market economics in subtle and creative ways that render visible moral ambiguities as well as social and material inequities. Wyile begins his introduction with contention that the Atlantic Canada of today is very much caught up in profound economic, political, cultural, and social shifts that come to be described by term 'globalization' (1). Writers from four Atlantic provinces are thus well placed to critique fallout from so-called flows of global capital (that would be flow that rushes right past your small rural community or through your region's natural resources and on to somewhere else). This is, after, all, a region that is still frequently depicted in Canadian media and, as Wyile notes, in speeches by federal ministers, as a have not, cash-sucking part of nation-state inhabited by people who ought to shut up, ship out, and get a job in Alberta oil sands. Such attitudes alone would be sufficient to inspire many creative writers to produce counter-narratives about their home places, but Atlantic Canadians must also grapple with popular images that posit their region as a leisure space for tourists and as site of Folk archetypes and Edenic bliss. In many ways, as Wyile reveals through his close reading of a staggering range of texts, these images are trickiest ones for writers to negotiate because they are, in part, self generated. The Folk haunt popular and literary culture of Atlantic Canada and form a kernel around which this book is formed. In many respects Wyile's study can be understood as a long conversation with Ian McKay's The Quest of Folk (1994), a seminal critique of Folk paradigm that has had a profound influence on contemporary field of Atlantic Canadian studies. One of achievements of Anne of Tim Hortons is that Wyile appreciates McKay's delineation of anti-modernist ideology but that he also successfully fulfils his aim of pushing against historian's tendency to frame activities associated with Folk--fishing, farming, fiddling--as either naive, ironic, or cynical (25). Rather, through his lively and careful interpretations of novels, poetry, and plays, Wyile is able to identify how fiddles and shopping malls, lobster boats, and satellite dishes can and do happily and unselfconsciously coexist (25). At times, passing of maritime or rural traditions may be elegized or satirized by writers, but iconography arising from those traditions is also questioned, contemplated, and taken seriously. Here is a body of literature, Wyile argues, that is at once cosmopolitan yet astutely engaged with expectations that it will be anything but that. The book's introduction offers a compelling synthesis of theory about neoliberalism and globalization, as well as an energetic discussion of how and why contemporary Atlantic-Canadian writers understand and contest political, economic, and cultural realities that surround them. Keeping faith with argument that region's writers are well-placed observers and sophisticated critics of ways that neoliberal economics reshape work patterns, communities, and understandings of time and place, book is organized into three sections, each with its own introduction and conclusion. …

Literature Review: Journalism and Disability from a Canadian Perspective

Using a dual lens of disability theory and journalism, this literature review compacts a wide range of sources to investigate the reasons for the nature of journalistic representations of disability in Canadian media, and the subsequent interpretations of these by disability scholars and advocates. Through five key themes – attitudes, representation, language, framing, and a broader category of gate-keeping, agenda setting and editorial controls -- this review recognizes longstanding and persisting gaps between journalists’ understanding of disability and disability advocates’ understanding of journalism, as well as a jarring lack of Canadian research to these ends. Encouraging a shift from dialogue about disability and journalism to a dialogue between players in both fields, this paper calls for further Canadian-based research at a time when journalistic stories are shaped by more than journalists’ attitudes towards disability, and disability representation exists stereotypically or out of synch with journalistic principles of fairness and accuracy.

Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes

Comparing Climate Change Coverage in Canadian English and French-Language Print Media: Environmental Values, Media Cultures, and the Narration of Global Warming

This article compares how climate change is presented in English- and French-language print media in Canada. In recent years, climate change has become an increasingly divisive issue, with the media playing a central role in the promotion of competing claims and narratives in the public sphere. Using concepts from environmental sociology and the sociology of journalism, we examine content from six English- and two French-language newspapers from 2007-2008 (N=2,245), and find significant evidence of both convergence and divergence across the language divide. Among the most significant findings are differences in how complexity is handled: English outlets present diverse coverage that is highly compartmentalized, while the French newspapers present a narrower range of coverage but with thematically richer articles that better link climate change issues to the realms of culture, politics, and economy.

Environment Canada cuts threaten the future of science and international agreements

In August 2011, 300 Environment Canada scientists and staff working on environmental monitoring and protection learned that their jobs would be terminated, and an additional 400‐plus Environment Canada employees received notice that their positions were targeted for elimination. These notices received widespread coverage in the Canadian media and international attention in Nature News. Environment Canada is a government agency responsible for meteorological services as well as environmental research. We are concerned that research and observations related to ozone depletion, tropospheric pollution, and atmospheric transport of toxic chemicals in the northern latitudes may be seriously imperiled by the budget cuts that led to these job terminations. Further, we raise the questions being asked by the international community, scientists, and policy makers alike: First, will Canada be able to meet its obligations to the monitoring and assessment studies that support the various international agreements inTable 1? Second, will Canada continue to be a leader in Arctic research.

Communicating in Canada’s Past: Essays in Media History

Acknowledgments Introduction: Media History as Concept and Practice Gene Allen and Daniel J. Robinson Part I: New Research in Canadian Media History The Catholic Press: A Challenge ot the 'Journalism of Information' Paradigm Dominique Marquis Old Media, New Media and Competition: Canadian Press and the Emergence of Radio News Gene Allan Britishness, the BBC and the Birth of Canadian Public Broadcasting, 1928-1936 Simon J. Potter The Luxury of Moderate Use': Seagram and Moderation Advertising Daniel J. Robinson Evelyn Dick, Soap Star: Newspaper Coverage of the Torso Murder Case Alison Jacques Variety Show as National Identity: CBC Television and Dominion Day Celebrations, 1958-1980 Matthew Hayday Politics? Fear Not!: The Rise of the Average Superhero in the Visual Rhetoric of Bill Davis' 1971 Election Pamphlet James Cairns Part II: Historiography and Media History Whence and Whither: The Historiography of Canadian Broadcasting Mary Vipond Recent Trends in Research on the History of the Press in Quebec: Towads a Cultural History Fernande Roy Encounters with Theory Paul Rutherford

Demand for Substance Abuse Treatment Related to Use of Crystal Methamphetamine in Ontario: an Observational Study

Concerns about methamphetamine/crystal methamphetamine (MA) have featured prominently in the Canadian media and on addiction treatment agency agendas. We examined MA admissions at addiction treatment agencies to determine if a service gap existed. In 2006, all addiction treatment agencies (n = 124) in Ontario, Canada were invited to complete an on-line survey. The provincial database provided admissions data for 2006–2008. Amongst participants (n = 100), 53% reported an increase in clients with MA problems between 2004 and 2005. Nine percent considered MA to be a significant problem and 60% indicated that MA was a minor problem or not a problem in 2005. Forty-seven percent of participants said that MA problems were more common among males and 60% of MA clients were aged 16–24. Most (89%) agencies integrated MA clients into regular programs and 73% had not considered developing specialized MA programs. MA admissions peaked at 2.4% of admissions in 2005 and dropped to a lower, stable percent (2006–2008). Media and public alarm about a MA ‘epidemic’ is not consistent with admissions data or agency experience. Consideration of objective evidence before demands for additional resources is necessary.

Submarines, Oil Tankers, and Icebreakers

Canadian policymakers, academics, and the general public have long had a fascination with the Arctic. It resonates in Canada's culture and in its national identity, and it can even be found in the English version of the Canadian national anthem. There is little doubt that Canadians see themselves as a northern people - even if the vast majority live along a narrow band along its southernmost border. The harsh climate and resulting ice conditions have meant that Canadians have been able to believe that few have challenged Canadian claims to have its secure and sovereign Arctic. As climate change begins to open the Arctic to the international community, Canadian policymakers and academics are wrestling with new requirements, and there is a tendency to look to the past to determine the response to the future.1 Both the academic discourse and the existing policy framework are based on the twin assumptions that the main international issue facing Canada is with regard to challenges to its sovereignty and that these are generally from the US.But what if this narrative has missed significant elements of the full picture? What if important events, actions, or realities simply were missed or ignored by the government, academics, and the general public? Could such omissions skew Canadian understanding of this important issue? Could they undermine the existing framework that now exists?This article contends that there has been such an omission. From the early 1960s onward, American (and possibly French and British) and Soviet submarines played deadly games of cat and mouse in and around the Arctic Ocean.2 Both the maintenance of nuclear deterrence and the conduct of war if deterrence failed depended heavily on what happened within the Arctic maritime regions.3 Although fundamentally important to Canadian security and welfare, very little of this seems to have entered the deliberations of Canadian policymakers. If the government could not see it, it did not exist. This omission is also notable in the academic discourse on the Arctic. Very few studies have attempted to integrate the actions of submarines into the greater understanding of Canadian policy.4However, any effort to better understand the impact that this element of the Cold War had on Canada is shrouded in secrecy. Very little is known publicly. Therefore it is impossible to know with any degree of certainty what did happen (and what may still be happening). While this issue seems to be relevant only for the past, the current efforts of those who have developed and built nuclear-powered submarines - the US, Russia, UK, France, and China, and those who plan to bund nuclear-power submarines, like India - suggest that Canadian officials must not become complacent. The commitment of these states to dedicate substantial resources to retaining this capability points to the perceived utility of nuclear-powered submarines. Given the geographic position of the Arctic Ocean it is unlikely that some or all of these nations will forsake the opportunity to send their submarines into this region. This is not just a historical issue but one that will continue to challenge Canada.The article examines four possible scenarios. Each of these scenarios makes certain assumptions about the conduct of submarine activity in the Arctic and the Canadian government's response to it. Each of these will then be assessed for their impact on Canadian Arctic sovereignty and security in terms of policy and academic understanding. It is first necessary to discuss what is meant by Canadian Arctic sovereignty and security. The next step is to review the dominant understanding and policy framework.CANADIAN CONCEPTS OF ARCTIC SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITYOne of the greatest challenges for any discussion of Canadian Arctic sovereignty and security is understanding these concepts.5 Efforts to have policy reflect the terms Arctic sovereignty and Arctic security have often been frustrated by the tendency of Canadian policymakers, media, and academics to treat the two terms as separate and distinct concepts. …

Space of Possibilities: Civic Discourse and Multicultural Citizenship in Locally Produced Chinese Television Programs in Metro Vancouver

This paper uses content analysis and interviews to produce case studies of Fairchild Group’s Talentvision (Mandarin) and two local current-affairs talk show programs in Mandarin. Based on the concept of geo-ethnic media and multicultural communication infrastructure model, the paper argues that geo-ethnic media can be a powerful means to promote civic virtues in a large, pluralistic modern society and to help new immigrants transform their “formal” citizenship into a “substantive” citizenship. The geo-ethnic media also provides a transnational supplement to the mainstream public sphere, which allows a sub-national ethnic community to maintain its cultural identity. The paper concludes that further efforts should be made to foster communication and interaction between the mainstream media and the diverse world of ethnic media in Canada.

Convergence after the collapse: The ‘catastrophic’ case of Canada

Convergence has been a controversial concept since it was first advanced by many in the 1990s as the inevitable future form of mass media. Media owners urged the loosening or removal of regulations restricting cross-ownership of media, but others expressed concern about the increased size and influence of media conglomerates enabled by convergence (Bagdikian, 2004; Klinenberg, 2007; McChesney, 1999). The lofty financial expectations that multimedia owners had for convergence initially went unrealized however, after the bursting of the stock market ‘bubble’ in technology stocks in the early 2000s. While some online-only ventures failed, this period proved only a temporary setback for most cross-media operations. An even deeper recession at decade’s end, however, left most multimedia companies in dire straits financially, and in a few notable cases even in bankruptcy. This cast even more serious doubt on the long-term viability of convergence as a business model for media. This article examines the situation in Canada, where convergence was perhaps adopted most widely at the millennium due to a lack of restrictions on cross-media ownership. It shows how the unregulated convergence of Canadian media in 2000 resulted by decade’s end in television station closures, political consternation, a bitter labor dispute, and public campaigning for regulatory relief by media corporations claiming financial hardship. As is often the case with politics and convergence, however, hyperbole and reality diverge considerably.

An energy superpower or a super sales pitch? Building the case through an examination of

In 2006, Stephen Harper boldly pronounced Canada as an “emerging energy superpower” to a variety of international audiences, including the G8 meeting. While this label is likely more representative of a marketing campaign than reality (Hester, 2007), it is important to understand the degree that the Canadian media have embraced it. This paper determines the extent to which Canada’s national newspapers, The Globe and Mail and the National Post, adopted the “energy superpower” frame in their reporting about Alberta’s oil sands over a 25 month time period. The oil sands were selected as a case study because proponents of Canada as an “energy superpower” cite the development of Alberta’s oil sands as a key component of the country’s new-found status. To discover how this new label was intertwined into the broader discourse on oil sands development, I used content and discourse analysis to examine newspaper stories over 300 words in length that contain “oil sands or tar sands” in the lead paragraph and/or headline. While my study found few instances of the national newspapers using the term, it did find the national newspapers more closely adopted Harper’s underlying ideas about what an energy superpower was than the more activist state traditionally associated with the term.

Confidence: How Much is Enough?

Did Prime Minister Stephen Harper, faced with almost certain defeat in the Commons in December 2008 on a matter of confidence, act unconstitutionally by seeking to prorogue a newly elected parliament that had been sitting for only two weeks? And did Governor General Michaëlle Jean violate the principles of responsible government by granting prorogation? These questions have been the subject of intense debate in the Canadian media and may rank with the King-Byng crisis of 1926 in future academic and legal discussion of the constitution. In my opinion, while the prime minister tested the limits of “responsible government,” the Governor General respected precedent and acted appropriately and wisely in her decision.

Erasing Race in the Canadian Media: The Case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud

This article proposes a critical race theoretical approach to news discourse to counter the erasure of race in Canadian public discourse, using media coverage of the Suaad Hagi Mohamud affair as a case study. Between May and August 2009, Mohamud, a Canadian of Somali origin, was stranded in Nairobi, Kenya, because Canadian authorities voided her passport on the erroneous grounds that she was an impostor and consequently procured her prosecution by Kenyan authorities. While Mohamud’s case received extensive media coverage in Canada, much of the coverage failed to interrogate the possibility that her experience was racially motivated, despite facts that should have raised such concerns. Consequently, this article adopts a critical race perspective in discussing mainstream media coverage of the case and suggests alternative media discourses that engage with the race question in relevant cases.

From Active Young Explorers to Passive Young Consumers: The Commercialization of Canada's OWL Magazine

This article provides a content analysis of OWL magazine, a popular Canadian children's periodical published initially by a non-profit organization and, after 1997, by a for-profit corporation. Researchers examined issues of OWL from 1982, 1992, and 2002 to assess changes in the magazine in response to commercial ownership. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used to show how OWL has shifted from a primarily science and animal-themed magazine to a general interest “consumer” magazine for children with features like video game reviews. This shift from 1982 to 2002 is discussed within larger changes in Canadian children's commercial media and marketing. Canadian and American children's commercial media “boomed” during the 1980s and 1990s, placing additional pressure on OWL to incorporate content that met advertisers' interests and emerging consumerist outlook of Canadian children. We conclude by discussing how this research informs ongoing theoretical debates about the commercialization of childhood.