Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An advanced seminar on the normative debates, social bases, and strategic potential for media democratization in the context of economically developed liberal democracies like Canada and the United States. This course complements other courses which critically examine state communication policies and the political economy and allegedly ideological character of corporate media. Here, we focus on campaigns and movements in civil society to define and build alternative communicative forms based on equality, democratic participation and/or human rights. Students with credit for CMNS 428 or 487 under the same title may not take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

Overview:

Ours is a world in crisis. Too often, the response of corporate and state media to the current threats of climate chaos, terror war, and fascistic ‘populism’, has been inadequate, or even complicit.  What kind of media structures, policies and practices do we need to revitalize democracy? Or, indeed, to survive?     

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 US, and Britain – with some attention to struggles elsewhere. The course assumes some background in critiques of dominant state and corporate media, and focuses mainly on popular efforts and movements to define and build positive alternatives. Students are being asked to consider, and engage in, normative reasoning. As a starting point, the course requires no particular political perspective other than a value commitment to democracy, and a willingness to seriously (and critically) consider “progressive” critiques of, and alternatives to, dominant media.

Course Themes Include:

• Media and democracy.  How should we understand the relationship between capitalism, democracy and media?  What roles should the media play in a democracy?  In what ways, according to progressive critics, do the corporate media fall short of realizing communication rights?  What alternative structures and paradigms are being proposed?

• Historically, what political and social processes and groups have favoured or hindered media democratization?  What strategic routes, and what forms of struggle, have popular groups adopted in their efforts to win communicative space?

• What social contradictions – from class domination and racial inequality to environmental injustice – have given rise to ‘rebellious communication’?  What struggles and resources could be a potential “springboard” for further media democratization?

• What can we learn from the practice of independent, radical media? How can media better respond to crises of democracy and environment?

• Is there a coherent movement for media democratization, and what might be the most fruitful strategies for its growth?

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: