Full Description
Digital Media has transformed the way Canadians socialize and interact, conduct business, experience culture, fight political battles, and acquire knowledge. Traditional media, including newspapers and conventional TV networks, remain the primary link to Canada's political sphere but are under concerted attack. YouTube, blogs, online broadcasting, Facebook, and Twitter have opened new and exciting avenues of expression but offer little of the same "nation-building glue" as traditional media. Consequently, Canada is experiencing a number of overlapping crises simultaneously: a crisis in news and journalism, threats to the survival of the media system as a whole, and a decline in citizen engagement.
In Digital Mosaic, David Taras both embraces and challenges new media by arguing that these coinciding crises bring exciting opportunities as well as considerable dangers to democratic life and citizen engagement in Canada.
Contents
Acknowledgements
1. The New Architecture of Media Power
Understanding Media Shock
Media Change and Canadian Public Spaces
Looking Ahead
2. Identity and Citizenship in Canada.ca
The Unlikely Country
The Public Participation Scorecard
Turbulent Times: the Effects of Economic and Media Change
3. The Ownership Juggernaut
The Powers That Be
The Power of the Powerful
Corporate Rules: Values, Ideology, and the News
Democracy Insurance
4. Me-media and Political Connectedness (or Not): Cable, Blogs, and YouTube
The New Debate about Media Effects
The Cable Explosion
The Blog Hierarchy
YouTube and Video Politics
The Politics of Me-media
5. Connecting and Disconnecting on the Social Media Frontier
Is Facebook Your Friend?
"Put Down Twitter and Slowly Back Away?"
Welcome to the New World
6. Falling Stars: The Future of Newspapers and Conventional Broadcasting
"Every Newspaper Reader That Dies Leaves No Heir"
The Great Canadian Television Crisis
Music and Radio: Hits and Misses
Are the Traditional Media Doomed to Extinction?
7. The Ever-shrinking World of Public Broadcasting
Triple Jeopardy: Budget Cuts, Hockey Night in Canada, and Big TV
Re-imagining the CBC
8. Are Journalists and Politicians Abandoning the Public?
Blind Spots, Cutbacks, and the Decline of Political Reporting
Totally Scripted: Avoid, Bypass, and Stick to Your Message
Nowhere to Hide: The Value and Politics of Debates
The Last Disconnect
9. Finding Citizenship in the Digital Mosaic
It's Time to Do Better
Bibliography
Index
