When we talk about Netflix in media studies we tend to focus on how its algorithms frame the user’s experience.  But there is more to the service as a cultural phenomenon than big data.  Think about when we study how different versions of format television programs are “localized.” We wonder about the politics – cultural and economic – involved in “Canadianizing” something like Idol or Project Runway. What if we gave Netflix the same treatment?

A striking feature about the Internet has been the absence of cultural nationalist rhetoric. No one was calling for Canadian editions of social networking sites like Facebook or suggesting that Google made it difficult for Canadians to “tell their stories.” While these platforms may have piqued the interest of privacy officials and the security establishment, Netflix has awakened those in Canada’s cultural industries. Representatives in the creative sector are concerned that Netflix operates outside of the policy framework that supports the production of Canadian television. Those in Canada’s highly protected broadcasting industry – that has companies with properties across media platforms from newspapers to telecommunications – are complaining that they cannot compete with Netflix because it does not have content regulations and other regulations that they have to follow.  The regulator (known in Canada by the acronym CRTC) is furious at Netflix for refusing to release subscriber information during a recent round of public hearings on the future of television (the company claimed it was not legally required to do so). With an election looming the ruling Conservatives – positioning themselves as “consumer-friendly” – have promised that they will not issue a “Netflix tax” any time soon, despite the efforts of one of the provinces to advocate for that very thing.

Canadians’ use of multiple versions of Netflix serves as a reminder of the cultures and practices of cross-border shopping that are part of Canadian life. During the 1990s some Canadian houses had satellite dishes and people would “know a guy” who could help them de-scramble services like Direct TV when substandard Canadian equivalents were on the marketplace. The same could be said for international broadcasters that were not otherwise available on Canadian cable broadcasting services, like Al-Jazeera, which received a license from the broadcasting regulator with conditions applied that all but guaranteed that no distributor would be able to reasonably carry the service.   Indeed, many of Canada’s mainstream media outlets – including the country’s largest newspaper – appeared to encourage VPN use by publishing the names of companies and services that permit its use and by suggesting that the company itself is not serious about cracking down on those working in grey zone. In the headier days when both countries currencies ran nearly at par, many living near the border rented U.S. post office boxes to avoid high shipping and customs rates.  This is to say nothing of the organized bus tours, shopping guides and special sales aimed at encouraging cross-border shopping.

All of this attention is coming at a time when Netflix’s moment in Canada may be at its apex.  Over the last few months, competing streaming services have entered the market.  Two major telcos, Rogers and Shaw, have teamed up to offer Shomi, signing exclusive deals with U.S. specialty stations and services like Amazon Prime to make shows like Transparent available to its users.  In addition, Bell now offers CraveTV and its libraries of HBO and Showtime programs to its subscribers for an additional cost. Both services are currently restricted to the company’s respective cable subscribers and are offered as part of plea to stop customers from cutting the cords but one can easily imagine that both services will be widely available at some point in the future even for those who are already adrift (a recent announcement by the CRTC signals this may be coming sooner rather than later). As the competition gobbles up streaming rights for popular programs because of their ability to expose it across different platforms will Netflix be a less and less desirable option unless its original content continues to shine? It is difficult to imagine that the company will not be brought to heel by Canada’s broadcasting regulator at some point that may nudge subscription rates higher.

Will Netflix have the stomach to stick it out if that happens?  It certainly has consumers on their side, fed up with expensive cable packages, restrictive contracts and lousy customer service that have historically characterized the  Canadian television experience.  Its current partnership with Shomi for the show Between points to a possible way forward.  Rogers will have the rights to air the show in Canada on its City television stations and on its streaming service, while Netflix will get distribution rights outside of Canada for a year before being able to show the series on its Canadian platform. It will be interesting to see how this “Canada first” windowing method plays out.

In the future we may see this moment as one of those blips in time when large numbers of Canadians engaged in a form of audio-visual media consumption outside of the policy framework. When thinking about Netflix outside of the U.S. then the big question is not how smart the algorithms are but how its entry into new locales encourages a range of cultural practices that test the political and regulatory contours of nations before they are eventually put into place.  This settles things just long enough for people to find new ways to get around them.

Welcome to Fort McMoney, an interactive web documentary designed to raise awareness of the conflicts among industrial, political and environmental interests in the development of oil. The film slash video game, which debuted in late 2013 and takes place over multiple weeks, is coproduced by Canada’s National Film Board, Montreal’s Toxa and the French/German TV Network Arte. The film’s unsubtle title indicates the stakes: visit the town, gather your evidence, and take a stand on whether Fort McMurray, the canary in the oil mines, should be allowed to develop unbridled. Your success at navigating the game is measured in terms of influence: every person you meet, every place you visit, and each survey you answer in the game raises your influence levels, giving you more leverage in the game’s regular “referenda” on oil politics. This round’s debate topic — Should Oil Be Nationalized? – currently has over 18,000 votes for and 6,645 votes against.

The docu-game is an intelligent and well timed intervention into the North American oil debate. Canada’s headlines pit the “ethics” of Canadian oil against the environmental activism of its deterrents. President Obama’s decision over whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline (which would transport oil from Alberta to the U.S.) looms.

The combination of documentary and video game attracts diverse media audiences (for instance, I don’t play video games, but I love documentaries) and the choose-your-own-adventure aspect demonstrates more directly differing points of view and the effects of various decisions. From a distribution perspective, the game is genius: Fort McMoney’s tri-national media partners Le Monde (France), The Globe and Mail (English Canada) and Radio Canada (French Canada), and Süddeutsche (Germany) are not just mouthpieces but interactive participants, as journalists from each media outlet play the game and report on their experiences. These media also pledge to publish substantive features on the politics of oil. Connective media platforms are in on the act: players get about 10 minutes of free viewing/play and then are asked to register, either through their Facebook accounts (bye-bye, personal information) or via email addresses; and the “help desk” is essentially the director David Dufresne’s Twitter feed.

If Fort McMoney’s innovation and intelligence is clear, the ultimate intention of the game remains an open question. Writing about his creation via The Huffington Post in November 2013, film director Dufresne is confident that the viewer/player’s experience will be transformative. “The world’s future is being shaped by energy issues. And gaming is a lever for raising awareness,” he asserts. “The Fort McMoney experience will be a kind of web-era platform for direct democracy.”

We need not rehearse here the problems inherent in the celebratory rhetoric of interactive media as a panacea for social and political blights. Regardless, whether intended as promotional hype or sincere evaluation, Dufresne’s claim to direct democracy deserves careful scrutiny. Matthew Hindman’s The Myth of Digital Democracy (Princeton UP, 2008) makes a compelling case for the failure of the Internet to develop the idealized public sphere. Hindman redefines the digital divide from a hierarchy of access to a hierarchy of voice, where even the most compelling ideas can be ignored, hamstrung by economic, social or algorithmic barriers to information. One hopes that Fort McMoney’s creative approach can be sufficiently amplified by its media partners and players to cut through the noise.

Perhaps a more dire problem lies not with Fort McMoney’s medium but with its message. Fort McMoney presents a vision of a sad city stretched to its limits by the ebbs and flows of oil. While the game’s players debate whether taxes should be higher, workers better treated, and environmental concerns alleviated, there is no space to say, “Stop. This shouldn’t be happening at all.” The film does not (cannot?) challenge the political, economic or cultural conditions that gave rise to this carbon democracy in the first place. Nor does it offer alternatives, asking what political possibilities might exist, what other arrangements of people, money and energy might be assembled, that could help foster less destructive situations.

This line of argument is not intended as critique. Fort McMoney presents a more radical scenario and more compelling overtures to debate than our dominant political parties and institutions have managed. The docu-game is not meant as policy prescription but as a stimulant to attention and reflection. In this sense it is a welcome intervention into the bread-and-circus routine in North American oil politics. But if democracy is understood merely as a set of conversations and referenda over already existing arrangements, this falls short. One hopes that Fort McMoney will inspire us to do more than vote for a slightly less dystopic vision of Canada’s canary.

The interview with Black comes on the heels of Ford’s admission to smoking crack cocaine and buying illegal drugs while in office, and making obscene comments about a female member of his staff and his wife. Vision TV had originally planned to air the interview on December 16th but decided to move the segment ahead one week because of “overwhelming interest and demand.”

In the promotional clip for the interview Black asserts: “The piling on to Mayor Rob Ford has been excessive. He was elected mayor of Toronto and those who do not like his style will be free to vote against him if he runs again. If there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him with crimes, due process should be followed. But he should be accorded a full presumption of innocence unless he is justly convicted. Beyond that his accusers should put up or shut up.” In retrospect, the sound byte intimated the tone the interview would take, which was, as one Toronto newspaper described it, “[t]he media-hating media baron sits down with media-hating mayor to hate on the media.”

Black’s reference to the ‘piling on to Mayor Ford’ is a reference to the media scrutiny and critique that continues to engulf Ford. Indeed, media attention on Ford is overwhelming, and increasingly tiresome, but the fact that media hold elected officials accountable for their behavior is hardly sensational. It is in the public interest to do so. Beyond a commitment to the public interest however, the media continue to report on Ford because he continues to generate controversy, which he managed to do, again, during his interview with Black.

First, Ford accused Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair of orchestrating a political vendetta against him. According to Ford, the police probe, which included surveillance on him, was a repayment for budget cuts. “The chief, I have an issue with, I think it’s political. He wasn’t happy when I told people to find efficiencies.” Second, Ford insinuated that a Toronto Star reporter was a pedophile. In Ford’s version of the events, the reporter had been peering over his back yard fence and taking photos of his children. “He’s taking photos of little kids. I don’t want to say that word, but you start thinking ‘What’s this guy all about.’” In truth, the reporter had been taking photographs of a public lot behind the mayor’s house that Ford was interested in purchasing from the city.

Black did not pursue either claim, nor did he press Ford in any manner (or on any matter). The interview is perhaps best described as softball journalism. Black’s questions were leading and served as prompts for Ford’s stock responses. At one point, Black conceded as much and said: “In effect, I’m leading the witness here, but it’s just rank hypocrisy, isn’t it?” Hypocrisy indeed.  The interview was an opportunity for Black to share the spotlight, both prior to the airing of the program, and again in the aftermath of Ford’s salacious claims.

Playing into Ford’s ideological agenda by engaging in the blame game, Black condemned the media as opposed to shifting answerability onto Ford. At the core of this transference, which victimizes Ford and absolves him of accountability (i.e. ‘drunken stupor’), is the insinuation that Ford’s voting public accepts information at face value. In this equation, the media are great manipulators of truth, and the people are dupes, void of critical faculties when it comes to the media. Someone should break the news to both Black and Ford that the hypodermic needle model was displaced in the 1950s.

The underlying discourse of the interview is that media scrutiny and critique is the modus operandi of liberal/leftist/elitists. But who, exactly, are the elitists? Ford has long played himself against such a grouping. One is left, therefore, to question how a white man born into a wealthy and politically connected family can so easily ignore his own elitism. Perhaps this is, in fact, a marker of such privilege: that one can disestablish privilege at will.

The grant will be used to launch an e-distribution service for Canadian independent artists. Given that FACTOR has been criticized for predominately supporting “a small percentage of well connected insiders” who have both grant writing expertise and an established position in the Canadian cultural imaginary (The Trews, Metric, and Stars, for instance), I found myself wondering if the tweet may have been an April Fool’s prank. Weird Canada, in my mind, wasn’t reflective of recently successful grant applicants. However, the $50,000 FACTOR grant is legit and will be used to “create a specialized e-distro serving independent and Canadian artists, labels, and record stores, along with a customer-facing online store / gateway drug into the infinite mass of Canadian music.” So why am I excited about this?

Artists and labels who identify as “independent” often do so in order to maintain creative distance from the standardized and repetitive aesthetics of major labels and/or the dominant music industry, either sincerely or, of course, sometimes as a convenient marketing ploy. With increasingly affordable production technologies, this distance is more attainable today than ever before. Yet distribution is still an issue, especially in a large country like Canada that has a relatively small and widely dispersed population.

Record labels of varying successes and statuses have faced distribution challenges. A number of labels that have started in Canada have established distribution deals with major (larger, international) record labels as they, as well as their artists, have grown in prominence. Last Gang Records, a label that has grown in recognition alongside groups such as Metric, Death From Above 1979, and Crystal Castles, has a distribution deal with Universal Music in Canada and SonyRed in the United States. These distribution deals enable the label to maintain their relationship with bands that are becoming more well-known, because the music can still reach larger national and international audiences, a task that can be beyond the resources and capability of a smaller label.

Vancouver’s Mint Records, a label that uses a handful of smaller distributors like Outside Music and Shellshock, has faced a different set of complications. For one, their former distribution deal with Canadian independent label and distributor Cargo Records resulted in Mint losing a “substantial amount of money” after Cargo went bankrupt in 1997. Because of this, Mint also lost its most lucrative band at the time, the pop-punk band Gob. Secondly, the label has also lost prominent acts like The New Pornographers and Neko Case because of its inability to manage artists past a certain point. In other words, the label cannot match the power and reach of a major label when it comes to distribution. Both of these instances are nicely detailed in Kaitlin Fontana’s Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records. In the book, Carl Newman from the New Pornographers explains that “Mint was a two-man operation, and Matador [the label that the band moved to] was based in New York and had, like, thirty people working there” (253). As well, Mint Records co-founder Randy Iwata reflects on the artists that left for larger labels, stating that “Neko [Case] and the New Pornographers proved that we aren’t big enough to sustain a band’s career after a certain point” (253).

And beyond Last Gang and Mint, there are numerous small and independent Canadian labels and artists who have access to a very limited set of resources and finances for which to promote themselves. As Weird Canada’s grant application explains, “few emerging Canadian artists or labels have the necessary business acumen, marketing guile, and social savvy to effectively market and sell their music, leaving a great majority of Canadian talent unknown to a larger audience.” The e-distro service would not only serve to connect fans and artists online but also help tangible recorded music reach record stores.

I am not suggesting that Weird Canada’s e-distribution service will remedy all of the issues, tensions, and complications concerning the circulation of Canadian independent music, or that it will result in smaller labels being able to retain their artists for longer periods of time. The current technological, economic, and legal environments surrounding music are far too tricky to make any sort of assertion, and each band or label approaches music-making with a specific set of goals and aspirations. However, distribution remains a challenge for many artists and labels and this initiative is exciting because it creates a much-needed resource that can allow artists to more easily sustain creative autonomy.

There have been many great developments that have enabled and facilitated do-it-yourself production practices and this new service is a step toward doing the same for distribution. Weird Canada has already established a strong online presence as a distributor and promoter of Canadian music and, thus, they are well-positioned to create and sustain an e-distribution service.

It is also nice to see FACTOR put their faith in an organization beyond the tried, tested, and true industry-types. To borrow a conclusion from a recent post on this issue by Michael Rancic, “Giving Weird Canada any money suddenly makes FACTOR a much more complex organization than they had made themselves out to be. This grant honours FACTOR’s commitment to Canadian independent musicians and represents a huge opportunity for Weird Canada to help level the playing field.”

Now in its 12th season, Canada Reads has been described as a national book club, a multi-platform media event, and a reality program, among other descriptors. Inspired in part by the rise of competition-based reality programs like Survivor and in part by book clubs like that of Oprah, the phenomenon is a reflection of the CBC’s middlebrow compromise position between the industrialized popular culture to which its audience often gravitates and the higher brow arts and literature material that this same audience typically holds in high regard, albeit often at a distance. Of course, literature has historically had a particularly close connection to nations and nationalism and the CBC has long been an ardent supporter of CanLit. In all of these respects, Canada Reads stands as a contemporary point in a much longer timeline.

The program seeks to both associate particular works of fiction with the national project and to draw Canadians into a national conversation about those works is consistent with the CBC’s mandate. This mandate calls, in part, for the institution to facilitate inter-regional conversation, ‘reflect the multicultural and multi-racial nature of Canada,’ and ‘contribute to shared national consciousness and identity.’ A lot of this is about making Canada ‘small’; it is a bit of an enigma as a settler society with a massive landmass and a sparse population. The CBC is often lauded for its ability to bind the Canadian across that space, effectively reducing the size of the national community. CBC Radio, in particular, is often discussed in terms recurring tropes of smallness, whether it is considered to be a forum for the nation as a virtual village, conversation, or, in the case of Canada Reads, book club.

These notions are useful to many, but also potentially problematic. Questions concerning the precise nature of the cultural work performed by the program have attracted increased attention from scholars in recent years. For example, Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo conceive of the program as a ‘reading spectacle’ that favors major Canadian publishers and dominant conceptions of Canadian literature and national identity. Although they acknowledge that the program presents opportunities for resistant readings and interjections, they contend that the program’s cultural work is essentially conservative in its limited vision of Canada as a diverse and multicultural country.

This argument, and the questions that precipitated it, suggest the need to revisit the question of ‘national consciousness and identity’. The CBC surely contributes to this, but for whom and on whose terms? The CBC’s radio services attract a dedicated audience that is interested in content framed in terms of the Canadian ‘nation’. For these listeners, this radio programming provides an opportunity to tap into a sort of shared national consciousness that exists in the space created by the radio, the culture this space supports, and the mythological material that has accrued around the CBC itself. Clearly, this ‘national consciousness and identity’ extends beyond the CBC’s airwaves, but to what extent is it shared? On the other hand, what about those who listen with hyphenated identities or social positions that preclude straightforward identification with normative values and ideologies? It has been suggested by many that agonistic debate over the nature of Canadian national identity might be the basis of the national culture in this settler society. With that in mind, to what extent might the CBC provide a space for the negotiation and contestation of values through its explicit orientation towards the Canadian nation-state and its myriad issues and themes? Conventional scholarly wisdom about the CBC allows for the potential for resistant readings of texts like Canada Reads, but too often seems to downplay the role or place of resistance within those programs and the discourse surrounding them. I want to consider the extent to which the CBC serves as a site of negotiation and contestation of the norms in Canadian society.

Canada Reads provides opportunities for its participants and listeners to meditate upon the issues that characterize debates about Canadian national identity. For example, this year’s theme is ‘Turf Wars’, a combative spin on the regional fissures that have themselves become something of a defining national quality. The five books and their advocates hail from five West-East regions: British Columbia and the Yukon, The Prairies and the North, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. The regional designations are themselves indicative: They reflect the influence of central Canada and the tendency to flatten the vast North into the more extensively-populated South. Having said all that, the notion of a literary turf war along regional lines seems likely to bring certain key questions pertaining to the intersectional nature of Canadian identity to the forefront of a widely-attended conversation. If the CBC can be said to reflect a broader Canadian ‘public’ in any meaningful way, it is surely through the sort of agonistic national deliberations that result from this sort of setup and the inevitable debates and pieces of commentary that will endeavor to make sense of it once it passes.

While one would need to do extensive ethnographic work in order to assess the actual cultural work performed by these programs, this year’s theme boasts the potential for a reflexive and meaningful conversation about Canada, albeit one that has been had before under similar circumstances. Regardless of how the conversation plays out, this ‘Turf Wars’ edition of Canada Reads is a timely reminder that the recent history of CBC Radio merits increased scholarly investigation if we are to develop a nuanced perspective on the cultural work performed by this national institution.

CKUW radio station. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 2011.

In recent years a number of college radio stations have been closed, some of which have moved to an exclusively online format. In January 2011, the University of San Francisco’s KUSF was sold to a classical public radio network and can now be heard online. The closing was justified by highlighting the viability of online broadcasting for smaller, or “alternative” radio stations. A New York Times article from the same year profiled American college stations that had moved online. In the article, students at Yale University’s WYBCX referred to their station as a “global entity” with shows “designed for audiences beyond Yale,” defining the station in opposition to the local and community-based mandates of many campus and college stations.

While online broadcasting can effectively carry local sounds to distant places, my research into the Canadian campus radio sector highlights the importance of licensed FM broadcasting in terms of representing the cultural and musical interests within a station’s broadcast range. By broadcasting exclusively online and abandoning space-based FM or AM broadcasting, stations run the risk of losing the community-based focus that has been integral to the programming and operations of the campus and community radio sector. In Canada, FM regulation has aided campus stations in realizing their goal of community representation through increasing their reach and relevance, which, in turn, has increased inclusivity and diversity in many instances. The following example shows how one station in Winnipeg, Manitoba, increased its prominence in the community when moving from closed-circuit radio to FM broadcasting, shedding light on what might be lost if stations were to move entirely online.

Before acquiring a FM license, CKUW at the University of Winnipeg operated as a closed-circuit station, broadcasting to speakers set up in different buildings on campus. Long-time station volunteer and staff member, Ted Turner, recalled getting involved with the station in 1990. Turner decided to check out the station after hearing so much about it. “And it was a big deal to go in there,” Turner reflected, “because you were very intimated because there were a bunch of cool people in there, right?” In those days, according to Turner, CKUW was “more of a hiding place… where these amazing records would come from Chicago and other places.” The station “had this magical mailbox where these really amazing underground records would show up and you could play them to a group of people, of which maybe a handful were ever listening.”

In order for the station to eventually receive its FM license, a number of factors had to coalesce, including mobilization towards better organization. Turner recalled that the station had to lose its connotation as a “boy’s club,” especially in the eyes of the university’s student association and administration. In 1992, Nicole Firlotte became the first woman to be hired as station manager. Turner explained that Firlotte acquiring the manager position was a critical point during the years leading up to CKUW’s FM license. He was careful to state that Firlotte was “a lot more than just the first woman to manage the station,” but that her role as manager certainly contributed to dismantling the image of the station as a boy’s club. Firlotte “brought a whole different energy, and a sense of organization and professionalism” to the station at the time.

Many of the comments made in reference to each station’s pursuit of an FM license illustrates that the full potential of these stations was not being realized when contained by campus borders. In a 1994 issue of Stylus, CKUW’s sibling publication, Alec Stuart asked, “How does it feel to know that Winnipeg is the largest city in Canada without a campus radio station?” Stuart explained that the station had begun work towards eventual broadcasting, but help would be needed. He said that financial donations were greatly appreciated, and for those that did not have the “cash to toss around,” even for a “worthy cause,” Stuart implored readers to come and see one of the many shows that the station organized that year. “If you own a business,” he said, “or work in some such place, write us a letter of support. We need a whole pile of letters to hand in to the [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] when we finish the application.”

In the December 1998 issue of Stylus station manager Rob Schmidt explained that a “CRTC license is only one of the components needed for a successful radio station…. Equipment, volunteers, and training all have to be in place before we can even hope to begin broadcasting to the community.” The license application was approved in October of that year, and in the application CKUW “promised to create programming that is diverse musically and yet has a strong focus on urban issues and concerns.”

CKUW’s successful license application involved the collective drive of students and community members who, at a particular point in the history of their campus broadcaster, felt that it was time for the station to expand beyond the confines of the campus, and reach a greater number of listeners within its locality. A small, secluded closed-circuit station can act as a private space for individuals to hide away and play records, especially if not many other people are listening or paying attention. However, as stations worked toward the goal of going FM and broadcasting to a wider listenership, the private/public ratio is renegotiated. These were public efforts, as students and radio practitioners justified their stations to other students and university administrators, asking for support that ranged from financial contributions to simply asking other students to give the station a chance and tune in. There came a time when the scale and scope of the station could not be contained by a low-range broadcaster, when students felt the need to put their connections to the wider cultural and musical communities of their city or town into practice.

What is also clear from the estimated date of completion in 2017 is that the government is placing symbolic considerations over practical ones. The CMC and Heritage Minister James Moore’s insistence that the renovated CMH will be open to the public by Canada’s 150^th birthday indicates that they must either already have significant plans in place, or they have dramatically underestimated the amount of time it takes to design and curate a major exhibition. This only highlights the lack of serious consideration of the process of public deliberation. While museum staff have been holding community meetings in cities across the country to solicit ideas, their ability to take such ideas seriously based on their timeline is unlikely. Moreover, it’s unclear who exactly will be included in community meetings: citizens must express interest by clicking on a link on the museum’s website and then wait to be invited.

Consider the consultation process that took place during the development of the First Peoples Hall. When initial plans were deemed “too traditional” as a result of the controversy surrounding “The Spirit Sings” exhibit in the 1980s, museum planners went back to the drawing board. While the CMC’s inaugural exhibits opened in 1989, it took the museum about 14 more years to finally open the First Peoples Hall in 2003. Among the factors contributing to the delay was the formation of a consultation committee with First Nations people in accordance with recommendations from the Assembly of First Nations and Canadian Museums Association. In the case of the First Peoples Hall, First Nations participants actually helped to shape the themes and content of the exhibit from the planning stages.

As another point of comparison, the Museum of Anthropology of British Columbia (MOA) was similarly involved in a major design and renewal project titled “A Partnership of Peoples.” Collaboration was key in MOA’s case as museum staff worked with Musqueam and other local communities to design physical and digital museum spaces. Plans were in place in the 1990s for an expected completion in 2010 to allow ample time for collaboration and creation of spaces that would be useful and accessible to those communities represented within them.

CMC curators know very well what it means to participate in meaningful consultation and the benefits it can have for curation, if taken seriously. Many of the museum’s curators are talented, creative and in tune with some of the most important museological shifts occurring over the last 30 years, including the sensitive issues concerning exhibition and Canada’s First Peoples. However, it is not necessarily those talented museum staff who are driving the CMC to CMH transition, and whether those staff will be there throughout or after this transition is uncertain.

This too is troubling. Although the CMH plans to continue to include Aboriginal histories in the new exhibit, it is likely to include them only as they pertain to the teleological drive and accomplishment-oriented focus emphasized by the Canadian Government. The Heritage Minister’s vision for the museum includes a history told from the perspective of a conservative, non-First Nations majority. This suggests a convenient amnesia about past curatorial shifts in Canada toward meaningful consultation and collaboration with First Peoples and with Canadian citizens more broadly.

In the meantime, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has threatened to take the federal government to court for failing to hand over documents related to residential schools in violation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Despite the millions of dollars allocated to the CMH reorganization, the National Research Centre, which will house some one million records related to Canada’s Indian Residential Schools legacy in accordance with the TRC’s Mandate, remains unfunded by the government. While the CMC’s “What is the Canadian Story?” timeline currently lists the closing of the last residential school in the 1990s as a seminal event marking the nation’s history, what of the 120 years prior to that when the schools were in operation? The testimonials of residential school and intergenerational survivors about abuses in these state-mandated institutions are not in line with the discourse of national “accomplishments,” “achievements” and “treasures” which are apparently to constitute Canadian history in the new exhibit. Perhaps this is why the CMC claimed they did not have the resources to support the TRC’s collection. In this context, it seems that meaningful conversations about historical issues that are actually formative of Canadian culture are less compelling than the $25 million incentive that comes with the tunnel vision of the Ministry of Heritage.

History appears to be a pet project of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his elected officials. Since the Conservatives came to power in 2006, several cultural institutions have been pushed into service to articulate the government’s particular conception of Canadian culture: the twin pillars of monarchy and military. The 200^th anniversary of the War of 1812, for example, has become an opportunity for the Conservatives to reframe the battle as a signal moment in Canada’s nation-building project. A budget of $28 million was earmarked for dramatic re-enactments, PSAs, a website and grade school curriculum, and an elaborate physical exhibit at the War Museum in the nation’s capital, all aiming to retrospectively situate the war as a pillar of Canadian identity. Never mind that Canada was little more than a frigid British outpost at the time; or that the outcome of that war remains a matter of scholarly and public debate. Suddenly, the government’s commitments in Afghanistan, its plans to purchase sixty-five F-35 fighter jets, and its desperate desire to thumb its nose at its American neighbor are placed on a teleological timeline whose origins can be traced to the bravery and dedication of those not-yet-Canadians in 1812.

In October 2012, Heritage Minister James Moore announced yet another project in the run-up to 2017: the rebranding and renovation of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, one of the most highly attended museums in the world, and arguably the most symbolically significant museum of Canadian heritage in the country (its collections stem from the mid-19^th century and predate the founding of Canada). Its new name, the Canadian Museum of History, signals a novel mandate for the institution: Half the museum space, currently occupied by the dated Canada Hall, the Personalities Hall, and the Postal Museum, will be cleared to make way for a selection of Canadian “accomplishments” and “achievements.” So far, Mr. Moore has focused on objects as major drivers of the exhibit’s themes, pointing to iconic national “treasures” like The Last Spike, which completed Canada’s transcontinental railway in 1885, signifying the conquest of nature through human ingenuity; and items from Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope, demonstrating the strength of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity. Both, of course, are powerful, self-edifying signifiers for the nation itself. Moore’s vision for the museum has been heavily criticized in the local press, with journalists calling the rebranding “The end of civilization” and decrying the new collection as an uncritical “Hall of Fame.”

Even more egregious than this Whig version of history is the suggestion that the museum’s new role is to let visitors decide on the tenets of Canadian history. The museum’s Web site invites users to “Be part of its creation!” by clicking through to the “My History Museum” site. “What would you put in your national history museum? What stories would you tell? How would you reach Canadians across the country?” asks the site. Users are then presented with an array of options to participate in the creation of their “very own” museum. You can take the “Public Engagement” survey, which asks you to choose how you most like “to connect with history” (“Seeing real artifacts,” “Consulting websites,” Asking “people I know”?). You can scroll through the “What is the Canadian Story?” timeline, clicking the heart icon under images of the Calgary Winter Olympics or Expo ’67 to “like” different events listed on the timeline (with some of the milestones purposely removed to allow users’ suggestions to populate the gaps). You can make a video for the museum’s YouTube channel, telling the world which Canadian “you consider to be an icon for your generation” (recent votes: The Dionne Quintuplets and one user’s grandmother).

The museum is not alone in its attempts to use personal appeals to power public engagement. The digital media company ChinaOnTV recently launched “My Channel,” where visitors upload personal videos and stories about their trips to China, forming a kind of user-generated cultural diplomacy portal. Or witness the “Curators of Sweden” Twitter campaign, a fascinating if misguided effort by the Swedish government to encourage its citizens to tell the “true” story of Sweden by turning over the @Sweden channel to different, hand-picked citizens each week. Citizens duly took on their role as Swedish ambassadors by sleeping in, tweeting about their sexual proclivities, and in one extreme case, making racist and vulgar comments.

Other Canadian institutions have made similar crowdsourcing efforts. The Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) ran a “35 Million Directors” contest, in which the “entire country” was invited to upload videos of “their” Canada. One Talkback comment on the CTC YouTube channel puts the problem in relief:

User: Although this is a very beautiful video, and I am a very proud Canadian, there was only half a frame on aboriginals…it was their beautiful land to start with.

CTC: … We’re sensitive to the concerns you’ve raised, and we can assure you that visible ethnicity in this video is solely a function of the content that was submitted by Canadians during the 35 Million Directors contest period. All Canadians were equally able to submit content for consideration in the contest.

Beyond the obvious exclusions crowdsourcing can perpetuate, there is much else wrong with this tactic. Such social media strategies are increasingly seen by government institutions as a panacea for problems of civic participation, public deliberation and transparency. Online users do not only provide the museum with content for its website; they give it the appearance of consensus. “Soft” participation platforms like Facebook comments and interactive timelines mask the hard reality that all of the really consequential decisions – the removal of archival material, the intensely problematic indemnification of the collection, the several-million-dollar budget that will require cutting other parts of the Heritage Ministry portfolio – have already been made. If citizens were really meant to be central in deciding which themes are important in Canadian history, the government would have included citizens in the decision-making process at a much earlier stage. And lest we see social media as Democracy 2.0, we would do well to recall Evgeny Morozov’s (2011) observation that oppressive totalitarian regimes also employ strategies of crowdsourcing in the process of nation-building, where “netizens” are made to feel as though they’re participating in important decisions. It doesn’t take a Hill & Knowlton associate to tell you that making people feel involved in politics is an excellent way to paper over the denial of actual political participation.

In the case of a museum, and in the case of the contested terrain of history, having the whole public involved might seem like a great idea. But in the brave new world of Governance 2.0, the invitation to Canadians to “be part of the creation” of Canadian history is an invitation to say very little that matters. And it’s the only invitation they’re likely to get.

Part 2 can be found here.

Thus there might be the temptation to see these mandates as a causal factor in the show’s genesis, but to do so would be short-sighted. Instead, in my interviews with Zarqa Nawaz (the show’s creator), Mary Darling (one of its executive producers at Westwind Pictures), and Anton Leo (the former CBC executive who advocated that the show be green-lit), people told me that they were responding to a much more complex web of relationships: the one between non-Muslims and Muslims in North America, the one between majority and minority (or “mainstream” and “multicultural”) Canadians, and the one between viewers and the various members of the television industry. To be sure, these relationships overlapped and shaped each other: the relationship between non-Muslims and Muslims was influenced, for example, by the relationship between majority and minority Canadians, although it was in many ways distinct.

The various people involved in Little Mosque’s production were positioned differently in the communities between which they were mediating, and as a consequence, the factors that influenced their creative decisions differed, too. The factors shaping Zarqa Nawaz’s creation of Little Mosque were both intrinsic (related to identity) and extrinsic (related to global geopolitics). Nawaz was concerned about the growing conservatism of Canadian mosques due, as she saw it, to the influx of imams trained outside of Canada. Her identity as a Muslim and her convictions as a feminist provided an initial impulse, which was shaped in turn by factors deriving from global geopolitical events as well as her experience in Canada’s broadcasting and film industries.

Little Mosque creator Zarqa Nawaz.

The factors influencing Little Mosque’s executive producers, Mary Darling and Clark Donnelly of Westwind Pictures, were also intrinsic (related to identity) and extrinsic (related to global geopolitics and the Canadian television industry). As with Nawaz, questions of religious identity played an important role in the decision by Darling and Donnelly to produce the show. Darling and Donnelly are Bahá’í, holding unity across religion and race as a central value, and their faith plays a central role in their decisions about which shows to produce. Like Nawaz, they were concerned about the growing mistrust between Muslims and non-Muslims. However, their decisions were also shaped by their assessment of a show’s potential for success and their ability to secure funds for its production.

For Anton Leo, the creative head of CBC television comedy in the mid-2000s, extrinsic factors (the CBC’s regional and multicultural mandates) outweighed intrinsic factors (identity). Leo was well aware, of course, of the CBC’s multicultural and regional mandates, but for him, the question of those mandates was inflected through – and gained its relevance from – that of identity. He thought that Little Mosque had promise because it told a universal story, that of the immigrant experience, in a country where everyone (except, of course, for First Nations) came originally from someplace else. Multicultural programming, in his view, was programming to which a country of immigrants could relate.

There are many interesting things to note about how the people responsible for Little Mosque understood their relationships to the communities between which they were mediating. One is worth noting here: for Nawaz and Darling, the show was about religion, or even more to the point, about belief. For Leo, it was about culture. This difference shaped Little Mosque’s evolution, in conjunction with other features of the program that resulted in a complex show with multiple contradictory interpretations and meanings, as I describe in my next entry.

1. Happy Mother’s Day! Nielsen reports that among American moms, half have smartphones, and they love Facebook and Pinterest (Twitter, not so much). For the general US population, mobile data access is a big area of growth, while check-in apps are still mostly niche. In India, women use their phones more for talking and texting, whereas men do more web browsing.

2. “More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years,” tweets a YouTube exec, with 60 hours of video uploaded every minute. Now there’s word that YouTube could add a premium subscription service. But with YouTube getting so vast, some are finding smaller competitors offer a better platform, especially for mobile sharing.

3. Ebay and Wal-Mart are looking to develop their own search engines to battle against Google’s dominance, right as a Google report insists that search engines have First Amendment rights, which would mean Google could pick and choose which content and in what order to load up for a search reply. But Google isn’t allowed to violate internet privacy the way it apparently did by hacking into Safari to track users. Microsoft might also be cheating by making Internet Explorer the only browser that will work right on the upcoming Windows RT system.

4. While the documentary has a storied history in Canada, filmmakers are having a hard time finding funding for documentaries today thanks to federal cuts. If they can dig up an extra $20,000 or so from someplace, those filmmakers can get their films into the DocuWeeks program, which will still be a conduit to Oscar nominations, over Michael Moore’s objections.

5. News out of the National Association of Theatre Owners CinemaCon convention included 20^th Century Fox planning to end 35mm film distribution next year, which will have complex consequences. Plus all manner of new theatrical magic is on its way, including lasers. A few theater chains are reporting a surge in attendance right now, while the AMC chain might be looking to sell to China.

6. Overall home entertainment spending is up for the first time in awhile, though that’s mostly thanks to digital streaming and Blu-ray, and not DVDs and rental stores, of course. Blu-ray might decline too once people realize they’ll now have to sit through two government warnings before getting to the movie.

7. Microsoft has invested in the Nook, which is now worth more than Barnes & Noble itself. B&N is trying to find ways to reconcile physical and online book sales without killing off the former, as possibilities for survival and the future design of physical books are up for speculation.

8. April was a bad month for video game sales, and while EA did well last year, investors didn’t like its weak outlook for this year. EA has big development plans, though its big investment in social gaming company Playfish hasn’t paid off yet, as a CityVille competitor has flopped.

9. Rovio had a huge year in 2011, thanks of course to Angry Birds and its one billion downloads, and the company is hoping to replicate that success with the new Amazing Alex. Zynga is also trying to recapture magic with a Farmville sequel. Zynga’s acquisition of Draw Something’s company doesn’t seem to be working out, but its cloud technology is apparently to be envied.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: Renewals/Cancellations/ Pickups, Request for Family Programming, Dish Ad Skipper, Aereo Warning, HBO No, TV Everywhere Trademark Fight, Dish Dropping AMC?, Just Cancel, Kutcher Ad Pulled, Online & TV Ad Buys, Nielsen on Viewing, Bloomberg Wins, Hulu Authentication Coming?, BSkyB Defending Itself, Murdoch Criticism, TV & Diversity.