Raboy, Marc and Shtern, Jeremy. (2010). Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Media Divides offers a report card, or democratic audit, on communications law and policy by leading analysts and writers. The authors introduce the concept of communications rights as a framework for analysis in five key domains — media, access, the Internet, privacy, and copyright — and situate debates about rights in the context of Canadian history and the emerging global media and communications environment. Their analysis reveals that because law and policy in Canada has failed to respond adequately to a host of pressures and developments, citizens have unequal access to the nation’s communications system and the freedom of expression it promises.
Media Divides not only provides the first comprehensive, up-to-date overview of democratic deficits in Canada’s communications policy, it formulates recommendations — including the establishment of a Canadian right to communicate — for the future. It is mandatory reading for students and scholars of communications and law and for policy-makers and citizens who want to understand or influence the course of public policy.
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Raboy, Marc; Landry, Normand and Shtern, Jeremy. (2010- October). Digital Solidarities, Communication Policy and Multi-stakeholder Global Governance. New York: Peter Lang.
In 2003 and again in 2005, the international community was called by the United
Nations to take part in a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This
two-phased summit placed an unprecedented global spotlight on information
and communication issues. At the same time, the WSIS represented a grand experiment
in global governance: the active participation of non-governmental stakeholders in the development of public policies at the international level.
Digital Solidarities examines the actors, structures and themes that shaped the WSIS with a particular focus on the role played by civil society. The book investigates how civil society self-organization has continued post-WSIS through the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and other policymaking venues, and reflects on what the WSIS experience reveals about the challenges and opportunities embedded in the notion of multi-stakeholder governance and its implications for understanding global communication.
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