Digital Democracy,Communication Rights and
the Media
Rhetoric
and Reality on the Internet
Ideology of the Internet
The Right to Communication
The Call to Citizens
CMNS 130
Rhetoric and Reality of the Internet
A David and Goliath story
 Internet enables consumers to download the
music they want, to break the power of the
multinational recording labels
 Plus:
 Internet opens up choice: alternative news
sources, alternative venues for distribution of
new artists
 Minus:
 enables pornography to spread, rapidly being
commercialised

CMNS 130
Ideology 2
Why have countries around the world failed to
see the Internet as offering a revolutionary
technology with as broad a social impact as the
radio in the 20s and the 30s? Why have they not
protected and invested in a public space?
 Why do they frame the Internet as a right for
consumers, and not a right for citizens?

CMNS 130
The Right to Communicate
Birdsall et al refrain from a full articulation.
 Why? Citizens should be involved in defining it
 Yet 1991 Canadian Act in Broadcasting did not
involve Citizens….1996 US Act involved citizens,
but the civic agenda lost

CMNS 130
Communication Rights
1.
2.
3.
4.
Right to inform and be informed
Right of active participation in communication
process
Right of equitable access to communication
resources and information
Right to privacy: individual and collective
source: Birdsall et al in courseware.
CMNS 130
Constitutional Framework
Stipulates “freedom of thought, belief, opinion
and expression, including freedom of speech and
the press and other media”
 In legal interpretation, both a shield and a sword
( unstable history) since may be subject to
‘reasonable limits’
 Need more affirmation of a Right to
Communicate
 A charter amendment
 A new judicial discourse
 A public internet/New Media policy( Birdsall et
al)

CMNS 130
Responsibilities to Communicate

Democracy thrives on creation of a culture of
citizenship
Individuals have to assume responsibility to keep
informed, participate in the political process, and
direct their communication rights
 The issue: if these responsibilities honoured,
does the State have to ensure there is noncommercial space for communication
alternatives?
 Intervene to ensure choice
 Fund alternative news sources
 Support the CBC
 But also support indie/grassroots media more

CMNS 130
Review
What is the theoretical framework for this class?
 What do people say are the effects of the
media?
 What are some of the central problematics in the
study of the media in Canada and around the
world?

CMNS 130
The Overall Framework
Cultural Model of Communication
 How do the media and communication
processes construct a map of meaning in
which people travel over time?
 Explores the predominant democratic values,
constitutional frameworks and ideologies about

what the media ‘ought’ to do

Also implies point of view in evaluating how well

they do
Explores lack of ‘culture of citizenship in the
media’

Introduces a ‘propaganda’ framework, in
CMNS 130
Assumptions of the “Cultural Model”


Both market , state and citizen decisions about the media create
our cultural worlds
Systems and structures of ownership and control create professional
environments and values which promote a certain capitalist world
view




“cultivation” of world views, consequences on social stability, political
cohesion and democracy are profound
The effects are cumulative: long term: still only in second
generation of their effects
If you are a liberal/pro democracy, this is not fundamentally
disturbing
If you are critical of capitalism or seeking to restrain its rapacious
excesses, you explore the operation of hegemony working to
suppress minorities, workers and the dispossessed.
CMNS 130
The Impact of Television: A Canadian Natural
Experiment
Communities like Igloolik twice voted against
having TV in the North
 Eventually conceded
 A study by Tannis McBeth Williams looked at a
natural experiment: before and after
introduction in 1970s. There was ‘notel’ ‘mulitel’
and a control
 A multi part study

CMNS 130
Impact of TV on Creativity ( Key to Culture of
Citizenship)

Does TV facilitate or inhibit creative thinking or
imagination?
 Looked at the alternate uses task
 (e.g. tell me the different ways you can use
a newspaper)
 Total number and originality scored
CMNS 130
Findings: Creativity
Notel scored higher before TV
A drop in length people would try to solve
problems
 Other dimensions: vocabulary use, spatial ability,
reading IQ followed similar trends
 Particularly marked among children
 Why?
 TV displaced other activities where creativity
is valued: displaced deeper information
processing, encouraged convergent, not
divergent thinking
 TV suppresses a culture of creativity, intrinsic
to a culture of citizenship


CMNS 130
Findings: Aggression/Civility ( Key to Culture of
Citizenship)







Looked at patterns of children’s play
Aggression used in place of a social solution
more often
Stereotyping and other expectations more
prevalent.
Emotion, not Rational problem solving during
conflict promoted
Rejection of any effects not logically tenable
TV cultivates a ‘mean world’ syndrome which
saps a culture of citizenship, a sense of
community empowerment
Clearly, proven to displace other leisure pursuits
CMNS 130
What are the Cultural Effects?
Media now predominantly commercially driven (
less than 3% of TV viewing is now non
commercial)
 Exist to sell ideas, products values
 Promote consumerism, individualism, will to
gratify individual choice
 Promote ‘lifestyle’ politics: branding of self and
identities
 “post” modern valorization of choice, diversity,
difference
 All as superficial style
 Promote an ethical relativism:

CMNS 130
What are the Political Effects?
Media set the agenda for what the public
thinks is important
 Public opinion polls repeatedly find what
people say is the top problem facing the
nation is what the media are covering
 ‘Frame’ news in a certain way
 So that elections are about the “horserace”
and not the issues : Mayor DaVinci
 So that there is a “war on terrorism” which
legitimates almost total suspension of civil
liberties
 Guilty of war, not peacemongering?

CMNS 130
The Conflict of Values in News Manufacture:
Democracy’s Oxygen

What sells
What is ‘hot’ recent
 What is close and
relevant
 Reports stars


Involves conflict

Easily labels:
reductionist






CMNS 130

What the society
thinks it values
What matters:
What is not
ambulance chasing
Reports broad
newsmakers and
NGOs
Features conflict
resolution
Complex
Context: history, a
What are the social effects?
Fleras: media express dominant culture, contain
minority cultures, establish hierarchy, exclusion
or inclusion
 Promote social tolerance/intolerance or
empathy/ indifference to ethnocultural or other
difference
 Now, media interaction requires higher and
higher access to money for the technology and
literacy: creating a wider digital divide: a middle
class gated community?
 The sociology of community is white, middle
class and gated

CMNS 130
Several Core Dichotomies to 130







Citizen versus consumer
Market versus state
Regulation versus deregulation
Censorship versus freedom of expression
Liberal versus reform responsibility
Democracy versus Propaganda
Cultural Democracy versus Cultural
Industries
CMNS 130
Citizen versus Consumer






The audience is the commodity in commercial
media: access to them is bought and sold to
advertisers
Their individual purchase/protest/switch off
power is limited
 Consumer can veto in the marketplace (
Napster) and win partial victory
Teeth of the self-regulatory bodies are weak
Consumer Sovereignty not all that is supposed
As citizens, they control the lawmakers
Are shareholders in the CBC: their only non
commercial ( and largest news source outside of
Canada and in Canada)
CMNS 130
Citizen versus Consumer

CITIZENS
 See a right to
communicate is
central
 Maximize collective
public goods
 Concerned about
digital divide and
growing gap rich
and poor
 Focus on public
CONSUMERS
 See freedom of choice


Maximize individual
wants
See media as mostly
entertainment, and a
luxury, for those who
can afford
 Focus on right to

CMNS 130
Censorship versus Freedom of Expression
There is no absolute right to freedom of
expression in the Canadian constitution
 There are unique protections for minority
expression, the consideration of when, in certain
cases, social good may outweigh individual or
corporate freedom of expression
 Canada has some of the most progressive
standards in the world ( Gendersetting, Violence
in Media etc)
 But every case is different: there is a
superordinate freedom of expression, and some
communities value it more highly than others:
but citizens must be aware of how to influence
community standards in its interpretation and

CMNS 130
Censorship Versus Freedom of Expression

Censorship
 May override basic
freedoms when
limits are
‘reasonable’,
‘democratic’( that
is, prescribed by
law) and
demonstrably
justified in a free,
democratic and
multicultural
society
 Censorship is social

CMNS 130
Freedom of
Expression
 Fundamental to the
individual, includes
the media
 Should therefore be
absolute
 Censorship is by an
elite/control
oriented and often
misdirected at
symptom, not
underlying cause of
social problems
Democracy Versus Propaganda
Historically, State’s have used propaganda
against their enemies in war, and certain
techniques on their own troops/citizens to
mobilize in a ‘just’, democratically constituted
war
 Propaganda involves censorship: it requires it to
work
 Traditional propaganda during war has now
expanded into ‘war on terrorism’ with no clear
time horizon or clear enemy
 Democratic regimes now use political marketing,
techniques of persuasion widely
 Sole protections: Ethics Commissioner, Access
to Information Acts, vigilant public press and

CMNS 130
Traditional Theories of Persuasion
Appeals based on ethos ( character and credibility)
Pathos ( emotion or feeling)
Logos ( argument)
The psychosocial dimension:
Totalitarian propaganda plays on fear of other,
will to security, uncertainty, tendency to
conformity
Democratic Propaganda plays on desire for well
being, happiness. Sense of belongingness
CMNS 130
Democracy Versus Propaganda






Democracy
Appeals to Ethos:
egalltarianism,
individualism
We-ness
Decentralised
Lives on myth of rule
of the people
Indirect censorship
Propaganda
 Appeal to Pathos: fear

Other
 Centralised
 Lives on myth of ruler


CMNS 130
Direct censorship
Democratic Propaganda
We are taught this is an oxymoron
 Since it is in aid of the ‘good’ it is not
propaganda
 But it is not: democracies have become markets
based on persuasion
 When is the continuum of persuasion antithetical
to democracy, to civil rights and to justice?
 When it perpetuates hate
 Leads to Subjugation, dehumanization
 When it uses the big lie
 When it censors, before after and during

CMNS 130
Democratic Propaganda
See the Fleras piece in the courseware(53-54)
 How does he define it?

 Central
argument: media work as discourses
in defence of ideology
 Reference to media as democratic
propaganda provides a fresh and
unconventional way of understanding
mainstream media in terms of what they do
and how
 But:
 Do not underestimate the gap between
CMNS 130
Propaganda Methods










-
Black art: Name calling and demonization of
the other
Glittering Generality
Transference:
Testimonials
Card Stacking:
Lie by omission:
Quote out of context
Bold assertion
Twisting or Distortion
Logical Fallacies
Manipulation of Language
CMNS 130
Media in a Time of Crisis
Aftermath of 9-11 proves civil liberties are
vulnerable
 State control of military intelligence information
is now very tight
 Press not able to find out: about interned
prisoners ( importance of Arar case)
 Canada not able to challenge US military
intelligence or find out about detained citizens

CMNS 130
Crisis Cont’d
US now threatening video surveillance cameras
at the border: ‘dictating’ 3 fold increase in
military expenditures ( Rumsfeld); a new
Canadian identity card; “surveillance society” of
George Orwell’s 1984 that threatens spillover
 In the US, dissent is unpatriotic, “soft” or worse,
terrorist
 A return to propaganda, racial profiling, risk of
McCarthy era in Cold War: and which press is
writing about this? The story is only beginning

CMNS 130
The Media, Politics, Marketplace and Democracy
We have been and will continue to be involved in
major global transformations of economies,
democracies, cultures and societies
 The best way to monitor the impact of such
change is through a vigorous news media,
committed artistic community, and impassioned
debates over ethical and democratic issues

CMNS 130
Media Reform Movements in Canada







Social movements emerging ( Mediawatch,
CRARR, Impacs, Fraser Institute)
Observatories: global media monitoring lab
Anti war,and pro citizen and pro privacy
Calls for increasing support for CBC:
Increasing $ to alternative media
Federal investigation into mainstream
oligopolies: a pressure which is rising now that
Minister Rock wants to deregulate the restriction
on 20% foreign ownership
More teeth– and supreme court challenges—on
complaints on the quality of media coverage to
do with equity, or fairness
CMNS 130
The Public Opportunity
Venues like the World Information Summit (
sponsored by the UN)
 The International Cultural Accord which calls for
fair trade in Culture ( UNESCO) led by Canada
and supported by over 50 countries
 WTO: challenging again and again the
economism of their world view
 In Canada: Senate Inquiry, Next Election, Child
Pornography Bill, Proposed change to Foreign
Investment laws etc. a Big Agenda

CMNS 130
Recommendations for Democratic Communication
CULTURAL DEMOCRACY
 Support public,
alternative, noncommercial space for
the media
 Build media literacy
and awareness
 Monitor and critique
mainstream media
 Increase the quality
and coordination of
self-regulation






CMNS 130
CULTURAL
INDUSTRIES
Protect the Freedom
of the Press
Support private media
outlets against unfair
competition from the
US
Build audiences for
Canadian media
Monitor and critique
alternative media
De regulation: there
is sufficient
CMNS 130 Bottom Line
Media Politics Matter
 Citizens must be aware of the democratic
consequences of the media worlds they swim in
 The best counsel for media tyranny is
indifference: beware of the Brave New World

CMNS 130