Chapter 2 Chapter Overview

The purpose of this chapter is to convey the complex relationship between communication, society, and culture, and consider the ways that history, politics and geography have shaped media in Canada. It opens with defining several key terms—society, culture, and media—and understanding how these terms relate to each other, particularly in the Canadian context. The chapter then looks back at how Canada’s European roots have impacted the development of media, beginning with Gutenberg’s development of moveable type, which helped usher out feudalism and usher in the Renaissance, followed by the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. These historical roots laid the foundation for both liberal-democratic societies and our modern media, as the divine right of rulers was replaced with the notion of the consent of the governed and the rise of humanism.

While the role of the media in society can be conceived from various ideological perspectives, in Canadian society the press and the electronic mass media have for the most part developed under market principles. By examining four of the main theories on the relationship between media and society (libertarian, social responsibility theory, the mass society thesis and critical political economy), the ways in which people understand society and how media represents it becomes more apparent.

Next, the chapter focuses on how media have historically developed in Canada. The development of modern media was particularly shaped by basic social realities such as our vast, sparsely populated, bilingual, multicultural, and regional country, which lies next to the United States—the world’s largest economy and most aggressive exporter of entertainment and information products. Finding ways to protect and grow Canadian culture remains a challenge that is exacerbated by new media and the consumption of foreign media products. Ongoing government support remains necessary way to ensure Canadians have access to media products that reflect their own cultural values.