Jumpstarting the Public Sphere: Information Policy Issues for the 21st Century
The Information Policy Committee of the BC Library Association presents a conference about net neutrality, media concentration, telecommunications policy, TILMA, access to information, and intellectual property. Join librarians and interested community members to discuss these pertinent issues and help come up with ideas for what you can do about them!
Media Democracy Day Vancouver
Media Democracy Day 2008 festivities will take place at the Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street, on Saturday October 25th 2008 from 12 noon to 6 pm. Admission is free and open to everyone.
UBC’s SLAIS Information Policy Blog on the conference
Kate Milberry of SFU bloggin’ MDD.
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Michael Geist, founder of Fair Copyright for Canada (now at 90,000 members) discussed the controversial Bill C-61, Canada’s Copyright Reform Bill, on September 15th. The audio of the talk is now available at the Canadian Journal of Communication site.
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Research project funded by Concordia University’’s General Research Fund, 2008.
This research interrogates specific U.S. and Canadian media policy issues and the impact of media justice organizations in influencing policy processes. Policy issues include media concentration and consolidation, internet freedom, and independent and community media. Media justice organizations include many non-profit and grassroots groups who view media as a civil rights issue, thus advocating for social justice through promoting informed media policy that particularly addresses concerns of gender, race, and class. Media justice is situated within the burgeoning global Media Reform Movement. “I don’t think there is a movement that has grown so fast in the last 7 years”, enthused Stanford University intellectual property scholar Lawrence Lessig at the 4th annual National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis in June 2008, which brought together over 3,000 participants - activists, scholars, and the general public. This movement is broadly concerned with media and democracy issues: the impact of increased media concentration of ownership on ensuring a diversity of voices and quality journalism; curbing market-led media policies favoring de-regulation that lead to an evisceration of independent, local, and educational media content; promoting policies for universal broadband access; and internet freedom, including network neutrality (the principle that all information sent over the internet should be treated equally–a design principle that ensures that a useful public information network treats all content, sites, and platforms equally). The GRF goals include:
»» Mapping Media Justice Policy Activism in the United States & Canada
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Last night Concordia
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Associate Professor at Concordia University. BA, Communication/Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego. MA, Library & Information Science, UCLA. PhD, Communication, McGill University.
My research and teaching for the last decade or so focuses on the social, policy, and ethical aspects of information & communication technologies. Keywords: internet, access, gender, public interest, feminist(isms), policy, media reform, youth, Canadian communication studies, and political economy.
