Foley Rebecca IM 2016 Maste
“Crazy B****”: Discriminatory Language, Radio Censorship, Regulation, and Enforcement Policies in Canada by Rebecca Irene Marie Foley A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO April 2016 Rebecca Irene Marie Foley, 2016 Abstract This thesis focuses on the censorship, or lack thereof, of discriminatory language on Canadian radio stations. In addition to purely discriminatory based language, this project also investigated the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and ability were employed in popular music. Two data sets were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively to find that private and public radio stations in Canada are more likely to censor discriminatory or explicit content than their community station counterparts. Further, discriminatory language based on gender, is not only more likely to be contained in popular music, but it is also less likely to be censored in comparison to language based on racial or sexual orientation based discrimination. The first data set included 485 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 charts between 1985 and 2015. The second data set included 2818 songs from a six-month period (May-October 2015) of the top twenty charts from 27 different radio stations in Canada, including private, public, and community stations. Keywords: radio; broadcast policy; discrimination; popular music; Canada; ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank everyone who had a hand in helping me shape this thesis. From deep class discussions to small conversations outside of an academic environment, each interaction I had talking about my research helped me to refine, explain, and get my thoughts on paper in a relatively coherent way.
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