COMS 644 - Media Policy - Fall Semester 2010
COMS 644 - Media Policy
Fall Semester 2010
Wednesday 1:15-4:00
Professor Leslie Regan Shade
Communication and media policy – the principles and procedures of action that govern the multifarious uses of communication resources – is an increasingly important site of deliberation and contestation as digital technologies become a necessary ingredient in our everyday lives as we traverse our various and interrelated roles as consumers, students, workers, family members, and citizens.
This course will provide students with a critical look at the evolving debates and issues surrounding media and communication policy, primarily in Canada, but also touching upon international arenas. It will also provide students with examples – academic and activist – in communicating policy to a broader public.
Other objectives for the course include an enquiry into:
–Identifying research methodologies for communication policy;
–Identification of stakeholders and vested interests in the policymaking process (governments, industry, civil society);
–The vexed nature of the public interest in media and communication policy;
–Themes and tensions: jurisdictional quandaries, the difficulties of law and governance within a global media system;
–Integration of gender perspectives and feminist analysis in communications policy;
–Media policy activism and currents around the media reform/media justice movement
Assignments will include informal weekly class presentations on the readings, a critical paper identifying and analyzing an emerging research issue in communication policy, and a collaborative class project on a policy issue that can be used for wider communication policy education.
Course readings will include:
Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada, Marc Raboy & Jeremy Shtern (with McIver, Murray, O Siochru, and Shade), UBC Press, 2010.
http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=299172935
Communications Research in Action: Scholar-Activist Collaborations for a Democratic Public Sphere, edited by Philip M. Napoli & Minna Aslama, Fordham University Press, 2010. http://www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823233472
And readings by Paula Chakravarty and Katharine Sarikakis, William Dutton, Patricia Aufderheide, Des Freedman, Sonia Livingstone, James Boyle, Laura Stein/Dorothy Kidd/Clemencia Rodriguez, and potentially many others.
Students are encouraged to email the professor if they have further questions and/or are interested in pursuing a specific facet of communication and media policy, so as to potentially influence the course readings.
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