SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

CMNS 487-4

SPECIAL TOPICS:
THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF MEDIA

Prerequisites:

Required: At least 75 credit hours and a CMNS honours major or joint major. At least one of the following is strongly recommended: CMNS 240, 331, 333, 334, 335, 422, 425 or 435.
Students who took CMNS 487 as “Democratization of Media” in summer 2000 or 2001 may not take this course for further credit.
Admission to students from other departments is by permission of the instructor.

Overview:

Does critical communication scholarship leave you frustrated and depressed? Aware but disempowered?
This course starts where many others end – the need for a democratic renewal of the media system in economically developed liberal-democracies like Canada. The focus, however, is not on the critique of actually-existing media, but on popular efforts and movements to define and build positive alternatives. Students are being asked to consider, and engage in, normative reasoning. The course takes as a starting point a value commitment to democracy, but students are certainly not asked to accept any particular political position. They are asked, however, to seriously (and critically) consider “progressive” critiques of, and alternatives to, the dominant media.

Possible topics include:

- Are the dominant media sufficiently democratic? Market liberal, progressive & other perspectives.
- Envisioning alternatives: What would more democratic media look like?
- Democratization “through” media: the communication practices of progressive social movements.
- Democratization “of” the media. Different forms: alternative media; culture jamming; community freenets; media watchdogs; policy advocacy; media education; media reform coalitions, etc.
- Is democratic media reform a social movement in its own right? What are its conditions of emergency, obstances, prospects for success? Case studies.

Format:

Two participating lecture/seminars per week, 3-4 hours each, during the May/June Intersession. Ongoing participation and keeping up with the readings are essential.
Required Course Texts: Three of the following four books will be required. Consult the instructor before buying.

- Kate Duncan, ed. The Liberating Alternative: The Founding Convention of the Cultural Environment Movement (1999)
- Philip Lee, ed. The Democratization of Communication (1995)
- John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney, ed. It’s the Media, Stupid (2000)
- John D.H. Downing, Radical Media (20 01)
- Custom courseware package.

Assignments and Grades:

Subject to change with notice.
20% Seminar participation/presentations.
20% Periodic in-class “pop quizzes”.
20% Brief written report on local media activism.
40% Final take-home paper (due in July).

CMNS 487 is open to graduate students, with appropriate modifications, as a Directed Studies, or as a special topics course if enrolment warrants.

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to “Intellectual Honesty”, and “Academic Discipline” (see the current Calendar, General Regulations Section).