Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada

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.