Book and Media Studies

Since 1952, CBC television has played a unique role as the primary mass media purveyor of Canadian history. Yet until now, there have been no comprehensive accounts of Canadian history on television. Drawing on a wide range of sources, MacDonald explores how producers struggled to represent the Canadian past under a range of external and internal pressures.

The emergence of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (the FAANGs) has created an unprecedented challenge to Canada's news, television and film businesses. In this book Richard Stursberg offers a brief account -- often based on his insider's experience -- of how Canada's cultural industries were built. And he explains that independent Canadian media and cultural industries are unlikely to survive due to the large share of ad dollars and audience attention captured by the big digital media companies.

Making Canada New draws links among new and old media, collaborative labour, emergent scholars, and digital modernisms. In doing so, the contributors reveal that renovating modernisms does not need to depend on the fabrication of new modes of scholarship. Rather, it is the repurposing of already existing practices and combining them with others--whether old or new, print or digital--that will instigate a process of continuous renewal.

Journalism in Crisis addresses the concerns of scholars, activists, and journalists committed to Canadian journalism as a democratic institution and as a set of democratic practices. The authors look within Canada and abroad for solutions for balancing the Canadian media ecology.

Canada Lives Here tells the tumultuous story of public broadcasting in Canada, from its inception in 1933 to the CBC's current, controversial attempts to adapt to collapsing revenues and new technologies.

Asked to name the institutions that best define this country, most Canadians place our public broadcaster somewhere high on the list. But there is a very real danger that the CBC will not survive beyond the next two years in any recognizable form. Saving the CBC looks back at the history of the public broadcaster, digs into the goals and ideals of public service media, and plots a detailed plan for survival and growth.

Recognizing Canada's long-held reputation for producing high-quality media, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and National Film Board documentaries to children's programming, this study reveals how recent funding cuts, commercial media concentration, and a sour political environment have been steadily eroding this notoriety. The book examines developments in film, television, the internet, and newspapers, demonstrating how the quality of Canada's news and entertainment media is steadily declining, becoming increasingly restricted, and gradually losing its diversity.

Examining the past, present, and future of mass communication and its effects on Canadian society, this textbook covers such themes as media theories, law and policy, and globalization, and includes a helpful glossary of terms.

With the help of current and relevant case studies, Mediascapes, provides a comprehensive introduction to communication, media, and popular culture in Canada. Covering such issues as privacy, copyright, and globalization, each chapter is penned by an expert in the respective field and contextualized with a brief introduction from the editors.

Mass Media Communication in Canada deals with the politics of persuasion in mediating the relationship between media and a rapidly changing and increasingly diverse Canada. The text focuses on the ideology and political workings of media, rather than the policies and institutions themselves. It deals with the social dimensions of media communication, presenting media as a form of persuasion and a system of power.

In Kings of Convergence: The Fight for Control of Canada's Media, Gordon Pitts recounts the dramatic story of national and global business jockeying, and of the powerful personal rivalries that are driving this change.