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

This panel examines the impact of the pandemic on Canadian music making, music institutions and industries, and musical livelihoods—and how musicians and music communities are responding. The panelists will take up two key lines of inquiry:  1) What has been the role of online platforms in pandemic musical life? How have musicians used platforms to sustain communities and livelihoods? How has the turn to platforms strengthened corporate power (what corporations? what sorts of power?)? How have platforms in the pandemic reinforced and/or challenged longstanding inequalities in music cultures and industries. 2) As we look toward life after the pandemic, what do musicians and others involved in musicking need? What have been the limitations of cultural and media policy in Canada before the pandemic? What sorts of policy would help musicians, including those from marginalized communities and equity seeking groups, survive and thrive?

Participants:

Mark Campbell (University of Toronto)

Brian Fauteux (University of Alberta)

Casey Mecija (York University)

Laura Risk (University of Toronto)

Alanna Stuart