A video archive and summary whitepaper of the conference is available.
A conference presented by the Communication Governance Observatory (CGO) and the Centre for Networked Media and Performance (CNMAP).
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?).
The Communication & Cultural Policy in the Age of the Platform conference drew together researchers in Canada and beyond to explore the intersections between media/communications/cultural policy and platforms. Sessions addressed 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.
Confirmed keynote speakers included Jesse Wente (Indigenous Screen Office), Sharon McGowan and Susan Brinton (Women in Film and Television-Vancouver), Joan Jenkinson (Black Screen Office), and Edward Greenspon (Public Policy Forum).
The conference considers the following key questions: