Algorithms and digital platforms play increasingly important roles in governing how we communicate and how we discover and engage with media and culture. The ‘platform turn’ in dominant media systems has significant implications for life opportunities, employment, participation in the digital economy (whose content is distributed and prioritized?), the star system (who is promoted and how? what counts as success?), politics (which and whose perspective is dominant? how has political deliberation and debate been re-mediatized?), international relations (whose view of the world is dominant?) and social relations (how are inequities in representation reproduced and transformed?).

This conference will draw together researchers in Canada and beyond to explore the intersections between media/communications/cultural policy and platforms. Presentations will address arts policy, broadcasting policy, communication rights, Indigenous communication and cultural policy, competition policy, cultural industries policy, heritage policy, internet policy, media policy, speech regulation, privacy, smart city regulation, and platform regulation.

For more information, go to https://cnmap.mcmaster.ca/events/comcultpolicy2021/index.html.

Speakers

Jesse Wente is an Ojibwe broadcaster from the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario. He is the director of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office, established in 2018 with the mandate of supporting the development of Indigenous film and storytelling in Canada. A long-standing commentator on pop culture and film on CBC Radio, Wente is a board member of the Canada Council of the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council. He has served as Director of Film Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox where he oversaw theatrical, Cinematheque and Film Circuit programming, and on the board of the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival.